Of course the utility lost by missing a flight is vastly greater than that of waiting however long you’d have needed to to make it. But it’s a question of expected utilities—if you’re currently so cautious that you could take 1000 flights and never miss one, you’re arriving early enough to get a 99.9% chance of catching the flight. If showing up 2 minutes later lowers that to 99.8%, you’re not trading 2 minutes per missed flight, you’re trading 2000 minutes per missed flight, which seems worth it.
Yes, that was my point. If you set reasonable numbers for these things, you get something on the order of magnitude of 1% chance of missing one as a good target. Hence if you’ve made fewer than 100 flights then having not yet missed one is extremely weak evidence for having spent too much time in airports, and is largely consistent with having spent too little.
Most people have not made 100 flights in their lives, so the advice stands a very high chance of being actively harmful to most people.
It would be more reasonable to say that if you have missed a flight then you’re spending “too much” time in airports, because you’re probably doing way too much flying.
Yes, it’s a question of expected utilities. But if you take the saying literally, someone who has taken ten flights in their life should have taken a >10% chance of missing each flight. At that rate the consequences of missing a flight weigh heavily in the expected utility.
An alternative saying: if you’ve ever missed a flight, you’re spending too much time in airports, either because your carbon emissions are too high, or because you are taking an excessive risk of missing a flight, or both.
(or you’re a pilot, or you were unlucky, or …)
Of course the utility lost by missing a flight is vastly greater than that of waiting however long you’d have needed to to make it. But it’s a question of expected utilities—if you’re currently so cautious that you could take 1000 flights and never miss one, you’re arriving early enough to get a 99.9% chance of catching the flight. If showing up 2 minutes later lowers that to 99.8%, you’re not trading 2 minutes per missed flight, you’re trading 2000 minutes per missed flight, which seems worth it.
Yes, that was my point. If you set reasonable numbers for these things, you get something on the order of magnitude of 1% chance of missing one as a good target. Hence if you’ve made fewer than 100 flights then having not yet missed one is extremely weak evidence for having spent too much time in airports, and is largely consistent with having spent too little.
Most people have not made 100 flights in their lives, so the advice stands a very high chance of being actively harmful to most people.
It would be more reasonable to say that if you have missed a flight then you’re spending “too much” time in airports, because you’re probably doing way too much flying.
Yes, it’s a question of expected utilities. But if you take the saying literally, someone who has taken ten flights in their life should have taken a >10% chance of missing each flight. At that rate the consequences of missing a flight weigh heavily in the expected utility.
An alternative saying: if you’ve ever missed a flight, you’re spending too much time in airports, either because your carbon emissions are too high, or because you are taking an excessive risk of missing a flight, or both. (or you’re a pilot, or you were unlucky, or …)