I & II. Proof That I Know Economics Buzzwords
Markets, assets, externalities. Excess inertia. Market failure, market failure, externalities, market failure. The overwhelming majority of literature concludes that Dvorak is superior. Market failure. Excess Inertia. Market failure.
III & IV. Effective Argument For My Opponent's Case Despite Attempt At The Opposite
A. The Literature, Examples On How To Misread It
Now, there may have been this multitude of Navy experiments which conclusively showed the Dvorak layout to be extremely easy to learn and to surpass Qwerty speeds considerably for the full range of unremarkable to talented individuals, but these were totally conducted by the Navy, and Dr. Dvorak himself was distantly affiliated with the Navy! Yes, gasp you should. How
odd that typographic expert Dr. Dvorak would produce an effective product for an institution that paid him to do so, don't you think? How
convenient for Dr. Dvorak that his expertise ended up serving him well in the relevant field.
Dr. Dvorak had financial stake in these experiments, as expert typists are known internationally to be obscenely wealthy fucking rockstars, and the glitz and glamour of the typewriter layout "game" motivated him to doctor the results of these experiments from across the globe using his psychic powers.
In this one study, for example, 7th graders freshly trained on Dvorak fucking
schooled high schoolers who got more practice but on Qwerty. But because the amount of practice was off (*cough* granting the advantage to Qwerty *cough*), this study is both inconclusive
and simultaneously concludes that Qwerty is better some-crazy-how, because fuck logic.
Similarly, lots of other studies consistently say that retraining in Dvorak produces massive gains --
however, the authors of these papers then conclude that Dvorak is superior, so clearly they cannot be trusted. The ignorant among you might fail to realize that their biases must have been built by their future selves already having a preponderance of evidence for Dvorak's superiority before they even started the experiments. Therefore their experiments were biased before they started, because time definitely works that way.
IN FACT, there were totally these two obscure studies we dredged up that show that Dvorak produces
smaller (albeit still statistically significant) gains than other studies have shown, and I will for some reason try to flaunt these as reasons to believe Qwerty is better. For example, non-doctor Earle Strong did this experiment where he made typists use randomized keyboards, alphabetic keyboards, Qwerty, and Dvorak, and the primary conclusion was that the most
expert of typists didn't actually care about the layout. Now, this may strike you as patently fucking absurd, and that's because it is, but we agree with Strong's recommendation thereafter to... train new typists in Dvorak? Oh, god fucking damnit. Whatever, we're still counting this as a pro-Qwerty paper.
And oh, look, here's a Japanese dude who agrees completely with Dvorak. Let's pretend he disagreed, though.
B. Ergonomics
Dvorak proclaims three major benefits that everyone agrees with:
- The loads on the left and right hands are equalized.
- The load on the home row is maximized.
- The frequency of alternating hand sequences is maximized, and the frequency of same-finger sequences is minimized.
Dvorak was designed with all three in mind, and consequently owns face at all of them.
However, while I now incongruously admit that Qwerty's designer was trying intentionally to sabotage typists' speeds, and while I further admit that Qwerty blows goats at A and B, in some rare cases it's still possible to find somewhat common alternating key sequences that use different hands in Qwerty (i.e. the first half of point C). Therefore, they're basically the same in terms of ergonomics.
Also, the first touch-typist (who beat a hunt & pecker who was also using Qwerty by touch-typing at a pathetic 30-something words per minute) said that you type sentences better when you practice them. Despite the fact that I have previously imposed unreasonable standards for Dvorak's studies, I assert without any quantification or even argumentation that practicing arbitrary sentences is actually the largest deciding factor for all touch-typing everywhere.
C. Dvorak Marketed His Layout Poorly
This totally proves anything whatsoever about its effectiveness.
D. Typing Competitions
Here's a list of typing competition champions. All of them used a keyboard layout that was neither Qwerty nor Dvorak. Sorry, I was high when I wrote this, and it seemed relevant then. With nothing whatsoever to say from this entire section about Qwerty or Dvorak, the best I can do to fool your mind into inferring a particular conclusion is to end it with the mention of Qwerty.
V. Conclusions
I have not forgotten any of those economics buzzwords I mentioned in the first section.
Also, Dvorak eats babies. I saw him do it once.
