The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy

Re:The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy by RobertRoberts on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @03:35AM (#16527660)

I knew a guy who lived through WWII, he was German. He came to America and bought a 50s Mercedes. When I met him in the late 90s, it had 1,000,000 miles on it. He said he changed the brakes twice and the clutch once.

Over course, I doubted him, but he went into great detail about how he had to drive in post-war Germany, as they couldn't afford replacing anything back then, so everything had to last. He was extremely careful with his down shifting, and only barely touched the breaks at the very end. Accelerated very slowly, etc...

I wonder how much WWII played in Germans making solid stuff still to this day. (and the rest of Europe)

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Re:The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy by lloeki on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @04:00AM (#16527732)

Reminds me of the guy who drove his Accord up to a million miles[0]. Proper maintenance and showing respect for the hardware goes a long way towards hypermiling.

[0]: https://jalopnik.com/5852681/man-shows-remarkable-stamina-dr...

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Re:The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy by driverdan on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @11:45AM (#16529945)

While it's nice to hear those anecdotes it still proves nothing. As OP said, this is survivor bias.

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Re:The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy by RobertRoberts on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @12:25PM (#16530279)

Are you suggesting that the life of a product does not depend on how it's used?

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Re:The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy by alphakappa on Friday March 09, 2018 @01:56PM (#16553966)

No, and you didn't suggest that he used it in any extraordinarily careful manner either.

His point is that what you have is a nice anecdote, and survivor bias means that you only hear about the products that ended up lasting, but not all the Mercedeses that bit the dust along the way.

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