To put it another way: just as people sometimes say “if you’ve never missed a flight, you’re spending too much time in airports,” I think that if we never have a comment section that devolves into chaos and requires moderator intervention, we’re staying way too far away from a domain where it’s really important to be developing sanity-inducing social technology.
Wait what? People actually say that first thing? The expected utility loss due to consequences of missing a flight are usually vastly greater than the time wasted by aiming to get there earlier. If people do say that, I suspect they must be the jet-setting elites who fly more than a hundred times in their life.
Apart from a terrible analogy, your point is perhaps well made. The utility loss from (very occasional!) chaotic messes that need moderators to take action may well be outweighed by the benefits of examining the Sanity Devouring Pit more closely without falling in.
On the other hand, I see that quite a few of the comments to this post take issue with the specific somewhat-political examples given, and not with the concept they were intended to illustrate. I felt the pull of the Pit myself, before reminding myself that the examples are not themselves the concept and that refuting an example has very little weight on whether the concept is useful.
Is the concept useful? Well, the adjective doesn’t seem useful. All options are fabricated, in that they have been created. The connotation is also “a fabrication”, meaning a deliberate untruth. The untruth aspect is fine: all options are untrue to some extent, in that they are based on flawed models that never correspond exactly with reality. Are “fabricated” options deliberately untrue? It seems more likely to me that the crucial distinction is just that the model behind it is more critically flawed, and whether that is accidental or deliberate is irrelevant.
With some reservations about the name, it does seem to be a useful concept, with the proviso that in practice these things seem to be on a scale rather than a dichotomy.
(My partner Logan is currently working on investigating what the act of fabrication actually is/what happens in one’s internal experience when fabricating options, and why we do it/what the process is trying to achieve. Hopefully that content will make it to LW.)
Wait what? People actually say that first thing? The expected utility loss due to consequences of missing a flight are usually vastly greater than the time wasted by aiming to get there earlier. If people do say that, I suspect they must be the jet-setting elites who fly more than a hundred times in their life.
(Anecdote: in my case, the only time I missed a flight I got to my destination at the same time anyway, at no extra cost, albeit my luggage didn’t and there was some hassle about that. The cost of getting to the airport earlier would have been significant, since I’d have had to take a different mode of transport or stay there overnight.)
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 …)
Wait what? People actually say that first thing? The expected utility loss due to consequences of missing a flight are usually vastly greater than the time wasted by aiming to get there earlier. If people do say that, I suspect they must be the jet-setting elites who fly more than a hundred times in their life.
Apart from a terrible analogy, your point is perhaps well made. The utility loss from (very occasional!) chaotic messes that need moderators to take action may well be outweighed by the benefits of examining the Sanity Devouring Pit more closely without falling in.
On the other hand, I see that quite a few of the comments to this post take issue with the specific somewhat-political examples given, and not with the concept they were intended to illustrate. I felt the pull of the Pit myself, before reminding myself that the examples are not themselves the concept and that refuting an example has very little weight on whether the concept is useful.
Is the concept useful? Well, the adjective doesn’t seem useful. All options are fabricated, in that they have been created. The connotation is also “a fabrication”, meaning a deliberate untruth. The untruth aspect is fine: all options are untrue to some extent, in that they are based on flawed models that never correspond exactly with reality. Are “fabricated” options deliberately untrue? It seems more likely to me that the crucial distinction is just that the model behind it is more critically flawed, and whether that is accidental or deliberate is irrelevant.
With some reservations about the name, it does seem to be a useful concept, with the proviso that in practice these things seem to be on a scale rather than a dichotomy.
My general reply is “if you think you’re spending too much time at the airport now, try missing a connecting flight”.
Different airports vary greatly in how much it sucks to unexpectedly spend the night in the terminal.
(TBC I have never missed a flight “on purpose” in this way, by just saying “eh, I’d rather spend less time at the airport.”)
(My partner Logan is currently working on investigating what the act of fabrication actually is/what happens in one’s internal experience when fabricating options, and why we do it/what the process is trying to achieve. Hopefully that content will make it to LW.)
i linked this as a top level comment, but i figure i should put it here too: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NjZAkfio5FsCioahb/investigating-fabrication
Afaik this is the post that popularized the phrase: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=40
(Anecdote: in my case, the only time I missed a flight I got to my destination at the same time anyway, at no extra cost, albeit my luggage didn’t and there was some hassle about that. The cost of getting to the airport earlier would have been significant, since I’d have had to take a different mode of transport or stay there overnight.)
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 …)