Surfin’ Safari posted an interesting remark that highlights the power of suggestion.
There’s a tip floating around to speed up the Safari web browser by changing a hidden setting, “page load delay.” There are testimonials by people who are really impressed with how much faster Safari is after making this change. Only one problem: The setting doesn’t exist anymore in current versions of Safari (1.3 or later), so changing it has no effect.
The author of the shareware tool in question responded, saying that he honestly had no idea that the setting had been removed, and offering a refund to anyone who wanted their money back. And there are a couple of other optimizations it can make.
There are some things that the human mind just isn’t good at measuring objectively, and perception of time depends very much on circumstance. “Time flies when you’re having fun” and “A watched pot never boils” have been known for ages.
I wouldn’t be TOO surprised if those same folks are STILL convinced of the usefulness of changing that now-nonexistent, hidden setting.
Heh! Me neither. There’s something in human nature that makes us want to believe our own subjective judgments over someone else’s, whether subjective or objective.