Originally Posted by
livedarklions
In fairness, 5% is really not a lot,
Perhaps, but it's also a whole hell of a lot more than 1%, which was the original postulate. And 5% may not be a day-and-night difference, but people pay a hell of a lot of money for much smaller differences.
and you clipped the part where he said 4 minutes was a couple of traffic lights.
Because I felt it was simply trying to paper over having underestimated the difference.
It's really not goalpost shifting if a person says this much change is too little to matter, then you say what about this change? and the answer is that's bigger but it's still too little. Goalpost shifting would be if someone said "I can see paying for 5%" then when you show 5%, they say "actually, it would have to be 7.5% to be worth it." 5% was never postulated as any kind of goal.
But that's not what happened. It was "This is the change and it's too small to matter", which I rebutted with "Here are some data suggesting the change is much larger".
And you do understand that since you're the rider, you have a sample size of 1 here, so this isn't exactly persuasive data.
Of course! And there are tons of confounding variables! But they're the data I have, and while the N is small, actual data are more persuasive than a number pulled out of thin air.
In the end, people ride for different reasons. My reasons are complex, or I wouldn't have 8 fairly disparate bikes. One reason is I like going faster, so 4 minutes over 25 miles is a big difference to me. OTOH, I also really like riding my 40 year old bike, so even though it's slower for the same effort, I will keep riding it, flogging it as hard as I can.