Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned • Hacker News Board

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#381

Post by kragen » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 12:51 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #323

dlss wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this happens soon. The risk/reward trade-offs don't seem to be understood by most AirBnB landlords (99.99% chance of earning $100, 0.01% chance of losing $50k+). Even though this is strongly positive expected value, for a family that can't afford to lose $50k this is a game of russian roulette. My heart goes out to the author of this; I hope the person who did this to her is put in jail, and the system (AirBnB…

I think you are dramatically overstating the risk at 0.01%. Suppose past performance predicts future results. AirBnB has had, what, 10 million rental deals? And this has only happened, as far as we can tell, once. That's not an 0.01% risk. It's more like 0.000001%. Overstating the risk by a factor of ten thousand is a very substantial exaggeration. It's hard for human beings to understand very large and very small nu…

Update: Airbnb's new post http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/on-safety-a-word-from-airbn... says "undermined what had been – for 2 million nights – a case study demonstrating that people are fundamentally good." If I take that to mean that 2 million nights had been booked via Airbnb to date, then I underestimated the (frequentist) risk by a factor of around 350: 2 million nights are only a quarter of a million weeks, so this is a one-in-a-quarter-million chance, 0.00035% rather than 0.000001%. Also, my original figure, "It's more like 0.000001%," was wrong; that would have been one in a hundred million, not one in ten million. And the original "0.01%" was an overestimate by only about a factor of 300, not ten thousand.

So the risk of this happening to you is not like the risk of dying by traveling 20 kilometers by car, but more like the risk of dying by traveling 700 kilometers by car.

(Of course that's assuming that past performance is some kind of a guide to future results. It could be that all kinds of tweakers are going to get on Airbnb now and trash things that one of their friends has had a taste, or it could be that future people thinking of doing this kind of thing will be deterred by the rapid arrest of the apparent culprit in this case.)

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#382

Post by demallien » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 1:23 PM UTC

mkramlich wrote: post #368

vladd wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey brian, - what's your side of the story on being unreachable 14 hours after the event? - did you offer AirBnB credit or compensation to the victim to stay elsewhere during this?

I think it's presumptious to assume AirBnB owes anybody anything. The renter knew (or should have known, if not retarded) the risk she/they were taking. And AirBnB cannot literally be responsible for every single human being's action who is a party to their service. The person that, allegedly, trashed/robbed the place is clearly the person who did something evil and illegal. Blame the perpetrator, not a middleman or…

You know, the problem is that unless AirBnB is willing to pick up the tab on this sort of thing, they dramatically increase the risk associated with using their service.

Regardless of their legal responsibility, I would think that it was in their best interest to pay up in this type of situation. For example, a guarantee of say $10,000 for any damages (which AirBnB can then try and recoup from the perpetrator) would go a long way to making people feel more secure about renting out their apartment. That, along with a warning to store personal documents off-site, would reduce this type of event to being more of a nuisance than absolutely destroying someone. I would even think that that $10k limit could be waived in exceptional cases like this one.

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#383

Post by dbingham » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 2:29 PM UTC

mcantelon wrote: post #357

sukuriant wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on what you're thinking the authority can do, "for survival's stake" may very well be exactly what those people in the Milgram Experiment were experiencing. "No, I-I can't, b-but he's in authority, and I'll be in trouble if I don't, so", he cringes, "I must."

The Milgram Experiment doesn't indicate that it in any way threatened the participants for non-compliance, yet these people were willing to knowingly endanger someone else's life. I think why they were willing to do that lies more with the belief that the authority would take the blame rather than any reasonable fear of punishment from the authority.

My guess is that they were rationalizing it in the experiment context. "The authority is telling me to go ahead, there has to be something else going on here. His life can't really be in danger."

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#384

Post by alanh » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 3:16 PM UTC

Hyena wrote: post #378

alanh wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people know what they do is wrong and do it anyway. How does this make people "good"? It makes them knowingly evil.

Or they felt trapped by their agreement to participate in the experiment. They made an offer to annul the contract, which would indicate that they were following through with what they had agreed to do. Moreover, the situation they were in was greatly outside their experience with what people had ever asked them to do in fulfilling an agreement. If you promised someone "I'll do whatever it takes for you to have a goo…

I am familiar with the psychological phenomenon you are referring to, but these people were not forced to do anything; they clearly considered it wrong; and yet they proceeded. Feeling trapped isn't being trapped. Being rude to a researcher is not as bad as physically injuring an innocent person. Excuses do not change the fundamental reality that people commonly do things they know to be wrong and suboptimal – we are so far from perfect agents! Improving this through rationality is the whole purpose of e.g. lesswrong.

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#385

Post by sjs » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

jeffool wrote: post #380

sjs wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't matter. They are obligated to investigate each and every phone call to their fullest extent. Only if the same person called repeatedly could they even begin to think about the "boy who cried wolf" excuse.

Sure, I just mean to say that a person calling the urgent line because someone may have accidentally pocketed a key and the homeowner is concerned, is reasonable. That should be investigated. But the guy calling with a police report on his entire place being completely trashed? The calls for the support staff to have a Bat-Phone to someone at a very high level, if not the top.

Oh I see, that's even better.

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#386

Post by sukuriant » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

mcantelon wrote: post #357

sukuriant wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on what you're thinking the authority can do, "for survival's stake" may very well be exactly what those people in the Milgram Experiment were experiencing. "No, I-I can't, b-but he's in authority, and I'll be in trouble if I don't, so", he cringes, "I must."

The Milgram Experiment doesn't indicate that it in any way threatened the participants for non-compliance, yet these people were willing to knowingly endanger someone else's life. I think why they were willing to do that lies more with the belief that the authority would take the blame rather than any reasonable fear of punishment from the authority.

The mere presence of authority could have been threatening to some people. We'd need studies for this too, though.

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#387

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

AretNCarlsen wrote: post #261

edw519 wrote: post #147

I get angry when I realize I will never again be who I've always been before, someone who lived strong and free by the creed that people are essentially good, that if you think optimistically, trust others. Please don't let them steal this too. I'm really sorry for your bad experience, but remember: - You can still live strong and free. - People are still essentially good. - You can still think optimistically. - You…

> People are still essentially good. Experiment indicates that the majority (65%) are not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment I am sorry to be a downer, and I agree that it is nice to pretend that people are essentially good. Ignoring the Milgram results, however, leads us to forget why we have to maintain societies with complex crime deterrent schemes, and why we should not trust anonymous individuals w…

[deleted]

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#388

Post by zenica » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

AretNCarlsen wrote: post #261

edw519 wrote: post #147

I get angry when I realize I will never again be who I've always been before, someone who lived strong and free by the creed that people are essentially good, that if you think optimistically, trust others. Please don't let them steal this too. I'm really sorry for your bad experience, but remember: - You can still live strong and free. - People are still essentially good. - You can still think optimistically. - You…

> People are still essentially good. Experiment indicates that the majority (65%) are not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment I am sorry to be a downer, and I agree that it is nice to pretend that people are essentially good. Ignoring the Milgram results, however, leads us to forget why we have to maintain societies with complex crime deterrent schemes, and why we should not trust anonymous individuals w…

I agree. They should do the same experiment and replace authority with $$. Maybe they did but I cannot find reference.

I think you will see 60% of people will do horrendous things for a little bit of money.

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#389

Post by chc » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

edj wrote: post #359

chc wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the same sense that we can say "intenex wears a diaper" (because you were once a baby). Defining somebody by an off moment is one way to look at things, but I'm not sure it's particularly reasonable.

Depends on the type of moment... I like Lord Acton's exhortation to "judge talent at its best and character at its worst".[1] [1]: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_A...

I think that's good advice in general, but you'll miss the point if you stick too closely to it. You kind of have to weight your judgments. I mean, yes, a guy who beats his wife if he's had a bad day at work should be judged pretty harshly based on that. But if you-at-your-worst is somebody who is kind of grumpy and maybe a little bit selfish, you're a whole lot better than somebody who constantly acts like a crabby miser.

Re: Violated: A traveler’s lost faith, a difficult lesson learned

#390

Post by ansgri » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 6:31 PM UTC

a3camero wrote: post #234

js2 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This family bicycled 26,000 miles over 43 months and didn't run into a single one of those nasty horrible people. Maybe they were extremely lucky, but I like to think you can't live your life worrying about the few nasty horrible people. http://familyonbikes.org/blog/2011/01/isn’t-bike-touring-dan...

For an alternative anecdote see this 2008 BBC article: "'World peace' hitcher is murdered". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7344381.stm A woman hitchhiked through the middle east dressed as a bride to promote world peace and was murdered and raped. Are either of these anecdotes indicative of people's experiences when travelling? No. Is there potential danger in relying heavily on stranger's good intentions? Perhaps.

People generally don't like outliers. If not-so-decent people see someone not like them (probably noticeably better), they would have a natural desire to make them harm. At least of envy.