I bought a subscription and tracked down the offending LW comment:
Another fundamental issue with the analysis is that it relies on aggregating votes of a kind from Less Wrong readers and the associated community. As we discussed here, it’s common to see the most upvoted comments in forums like HN, lobsters, LW, etc., be statements that can clearly be seen to be wrong with no specialized knowledge and a few seconds of though (and an example is given from LW in the link), so why should an aggregation of votes from the LW community be considered meaningful?
He doesn’t actually give a link to a LW comment, but he describes it. He says Jeff Kaufman asked why there are so few 6-door cars, and the top comment said that doors are an expensive part of the car, but this is obviously false because (a) they can’t be thousands of dollars each and that’s what it would take to make them a noticeable fraction of the cost, and (b) if that were true we’d expect cheap cars to more often have two doors instead of four, but instead cheap cars usually have four doors and if anything it’s the expensive sports cars that have two.
Tracking down the original post, it appears to be this one. Top comment is roughly as described. It has 5 upvotes.
What’s my overall take? Well, I don’t think the explanation is as obviously false as Dan Luu thinks. But I do agree that a and b are good objections to it.
It’s not obvious to me that (a,b) are such good objections, and furthermore the comment doesn’t just say “it’s because doors are expensive”.
The comment in question says: doors cost money and worsen crash safety, so cars with more doors would cost more, and most buyers don’t value the extra convenience enough to justify what it would cost them, so the market would be small which would make it not worth the development cost.
I agree that it’s unlikely that the cost of an extra pair of doors is multiple thousands of dollars per car. But the price is, let’s say, 3x the cost, and I don’t have any trouble believing that an extra pair of doors might increase the cost by say $700, meaning a price $2000 higher. Is this “clearly seen to be wrong with no specialized knowledge”? Doesn’t seem so. So, then the question is how willing buyers with large families would be to pay an extra $2000 for the convenience of a third door. Again, it’s not clear to me that this wouldn’t hurt the sellability of the vehicle. The idea that making such a vehicle as safe as everyone expects these days could be difficult also seems plausible to me. I would expect that families with multiple smallish children are (1) the main potential market for 6-door cars, (2) very safety-conscious, and (3) often very price-conscious.
I guess point (b) is meant to undermine the idea that adding doors increases the cost at all, or something. I’m not convinced by this. Isn’t it plausible that the gain in convenience in going from 2 to 4 doors is substantially bigger than the gain in going from 4 to 6? Or that the loss in safety in going from 2 to 4 is smaller than going from 4 to 6? … And some cheap-and-nasty cars have had only two doors. For instance, if I try to think of a cheap and crappy car, the first thing that comes to mind is the old Reliant Robin: four seats, two doors. (Also, three wheels.)
i don’t know whether that comment is right. But I don’t see how danluu reckons it’s obviously wrong with a few seconds of thought. I wonder whether danluu might change his mind about its obvious wrongness if he thought about it for more than a few seconds.
Oh yeah, I should have clarified that I agree with your take—Dan seems totally wrong to take this comment as significant negative evidence about the epistemic standards of LW. Waaaay too big of a stretch. It’s just one comment with 5 upvotes, plus it’s not obviously wrong & may even be right.
I bought a subscription and tracked down the offending LW comment:
He doesn’t actually give a link to a LW comment, but he describes it. He says Jeff Kaufman asked why there are so few 6-door cars, and the top comment said that doors are an expensive part of the car, but this is obviously false because (a) they can’t be thousands of dollars each and that’s what it would take to make them a noticeable fraction of the cost, and (b) if that were true we’d expect cheap cars to more often have two doors instead of four, but instead cheap cars usually have four doors and if anything it’s the expensive sports cars that have two.
Tracking down the original post, it appears to be this one. Top comment is roughly as described. It has 5 upvotes.
What’s my overall take? Well, I don’t think the explanation is as obviously false as Dan Luu thinks. But I do agree that a and b are good objections to it.
It’s not obvious to me that (a,b) are such good objections, and furthermore the comment doesn’t just say “it’s because doors are expensive”.
The comment in question says: doors cost money and worsen crash safety, so cars with more doors would cost more, and most buyers don’t value the extra convenience enough to justify what it would cost them, so the market would be small which would make it not worth the development cost.
I agree that it’s unlikely that the cost of an extra pair of doors is multiple thousands of dollars per car. But the price is, let’s say, 3x the cost, and I don’t have any trouble believing that an extra pair of doors might increase the cost by say $700, meaning a price $2000 higher. Is this “clearly seen to be wrong with no specialized knowledge”? Doesn’t seem so. So, then the question is how willing buyers with large families would be to pay an extra $2000 for the convenience of a third door. Again, it’s not clear to me that this wouldn’t hurt the sellability of the vehicle. The idea that making such a vehicle as safe as everyone expects these days could be difficult also seems plausible to me. I would expect that families with multiple smallish children are (1) the main potential market for 6-door cars, (2) very safety-conscious, and (3) often very price-conscious.
I guess point (b) is meant to undermine the idea that adding doors increases the cost at all, or something. I’m not convinced by this. Isn’t it plausible that the gain in convenience in going from 2 to 4 doors is substantially bigger than the gain in going from 4 to 6? Or that the loss in safety in going from 2 to 4 is smaller than going from 4 to 6? … And some cheap-and-nasty cars have had only two doors. For instance, if I try to think of a cheap and crappy car, the first thing that comes to mind is the old Reliant Robin: four seats, two doors. (Also, three wheels.)
i don’t know whether that comment is right. But I don’t see how danluu reckons it’s obviously wrong with a few seconds of thought. I wonder whether danluu might change his mind about its obvious wrongness if he thought about it for more than a few seconds.
Oh yeah, I should have clarified that I agree with your take—Dan seems totally wrong to take this comment as significant negative evidence about the epistemic standards of LW. Waaaay too big of a stretch. It’s just one comment with 5 upvotes, plus it’s not obviously wrong & may even be right.