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The Doorman's Fallacy in action

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Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#151

Post by bonesss »

consp wrote: post #149
superfrank wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hadn't heard of it, but I feel like it's kind of a corollary of the whole, "what's measured is managed" idea or maybe the Streetlight effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect ). It's easy to measure a doorman's cost, but hard to measure their impact. Few, if any, guest are likely to mention the impact of a doorman on their stay except in the exceptional case. That means when budgets start to g…

Isn't the hard data the loss of the hotel a few years down the road due to being noncompetitive due to declining customers caused by the penny pinching?

That's the heart of the issue: insufficient accounting.

You can't plan any better than your models, and if your models are insufficient then your decision making will be inherently flawed. Penny pinching is good until it's not, and the data to see when the transition occurred isn't on the balance sheet until maybe it's too late. At the point you're pinching the penny of the doorman, you don't have the data about the impending customer decline.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#152

Post by Peanuts99 »

rmunn wrote: post #115
alex43578 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s such a benign vulnerability that it doesn’t even feel like one. Per your description, the worst thing an attacker can do is see the food ordered to a check number (in a public restaurant) and pay a bill that isn’t their own? On the flip side, some services go absolutely overboard trying to secure low-blast-radius things, or don’t properly scale security to the risk of an activity. I have a service provider tha…

Eh, there could be privacy implications. E.g. you see someone in the restaurant whom you know, and you know he is not supposed to be drinking alcohol (for whatever reason: maybe his religion forbids it, maybe there's a medical reason for it such as a prescription drug he's on that really should not be mixed with alcohol, the reason doesn't really matter in this example). You see that he was served a pork chop with a…

I don't think you've got an expectation of privacy when it comes to what you're eating in a restaurant. You could just walk over to their table.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#153

Post by XorNot »

devindotcom wrote: post #3

My favorite version of this is robotic and drone-based package delivery. In many ways it could be useful and add efficiency to a congested system. But then you find out just what it is that delivery people actually do, the variety of security systems, steps and walkways, exceptions to rules, and so on and realize that what drones and robots automate is not really "the job" at all. The last mile, in logistics, hospita…

Conversely the last step to the door is as complicated as it is since till recently there was no plausible middle ground. You would always be sending out couriers so no real improvements in cost could be made.

But if you can get a drone or a robot most of the way there, that changes incentives.

I would personally love there to be a regulated, standard design for parcel drop off: but there isn't one. Not yet, and no human delivery will use anything I devise properly.

But if nonhuman delivery would, well now everyone looking at new motivation.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#154

Post by venzaspa »

senordevnyc wrote: post #80
DanHulton wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user. What? No, you're making the Doorman fallacy here, explicitly. The company THINKS they're saving money by pushing the work to the customer/end user, but there's more to wait staff than just taking orders and payment - they provide the ability to smooth over any difficulties experienced during the meal, they…

Someone giving a pretty basic idea a catchy name like the doorman fallacy doesn't mean that any replacement of humans with automation is a net loss for the company. Lots of automation can be very profitable, even if some positive things are lost in the bargain . Incidentally, the vast, vast majority of residential buildings don't have doormen, and wouldn't be more profitable by the addition of one.

Isn't it named after the hypothetical scenario about a doorman? The doorman fallacy isn't even specifically aimed at what is more profitable, its just saying that there are softer roles that aren't well defined that aren't replicated when the role is automated away.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#155

Post by internet_points »

makeitdouble wrote: post #128

> But when 6 people simultaneously tried to pay their share of the bill, chaos ensued. Hasn't that been a fact of life ? If anything, apps made it barely made easier through splitting either the whole bill equally or offer a bit by bit checking interface. Otherwise on the role of QR codes and online menu, it actually helps a lot for allergies as everyone can check their for each individual item and adjust accordingly…

In my experience, waiters tend to be quite good at splitting bills. I feel like many of them remember what people had, maybe they get good mental maps of seating or person meal type just like taxi drivers used to get good mental maps of London before GPS.

(And printed menus tend to have allergy info too, just like online menus sometimes don't.)

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#156

Post by benj111 »

bonesss wrote: post #151
consp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the hard data the loss of the hotel a few years down the road due to being noncompetitive due to declining customers caused by the penny pinching?

That's the heart of the issue: insufficient accounting. You can't plan any better than your models, and if your models are insufficient then your decision making will be inherently flawed. Penny pinching is good until it's not, and the data to see when the transition occurred isn't on the balance sheet until maybe it's too late. At the point you're pinching the penny of the doorman, you don't have the data about the…

But doormen became a thing, so the value was understood. We have now lost that knowledge.

I suppose it's like enshittification. It's presented as a progression to a new worse thing when it's more of a Dark Age of 'soft' knowledge.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#157

Post by shibaprasadb »

makeitdouble wrote: post #128

> But when 6 people simultaneously tried to pay their share of the bill, chaos ensued. Hasn't that been a fact of life ? If anything, apps made it barely made easier through splitting either the whole bill equally or offer a bit by bit checking interface. Otherwise on the role of QR codes and online menu, it actually helps a lot for allergies as everyone can check their for each individual item and adjust accordingly…

I was a bit surprised by the way the payment is being made here.

Do people pay it separately like this? In general, if it isn't a prepaid restaurant, then just one of us makes the whole payment, and we pay our share to that person.

Don't people follow that generally?

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#158

Post by benj111 »

rmunn wrote: post #115
alex43578 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s such a benign vulnerability that it doesn’t even feel like one. Per your description, the worst thing an attacker can do is see the food ordered to a check number (in a public restaurant) and pay a bill that isn’t their own? On the flip side, some services go absolutely overboard trying to secure low-blast-radius things, or don’t properly scale security to the risk of an activity. I have a service provider tha…

Eh, there could be privacy implications. E.g. you see someone in the restaurant whom you know, and you know he is not supposed to be drinking alcohol (for whatever reason: maybe his religion forbids it, maybe there's a medical reason for it such as a prescription drug he's on that really should not be mixed with alcohol, the reason doesn't really matter in this example). You see that he was served a pork chop with a…

Why should we be protecting hypocrisy though?

Living in a nation where ones religion gives you protection under the law and allows you to do things others can't, I don't think you can defend covering up instances of people not living up to the standards they themselves set, and therefore give them special privileges.

How is it different to a police officer doing something slightly illegal. Should we respect their privacy or should we hold them to the high standards they supposedly hold?

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#159

Post by Tarq0n »

benj111 wrote: post #156
bonesss wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the heart of the issue: insufficient accounting. You can't plan any better than your models, and if your models are insufficient then your decision making will be inherently flawed. Penny pinching is good until it's not, and the data to see when the transition occurred isn't on the balance sheet until maybe it's too late. At the point you're pinching the penny of the doorman, you don't have the data about the…

But doormen became a thing, so the value was understood. We have now lost that knowledge. I suppose it's like enshittification. It's presented as a progression to a new worse thing when it's more of a Dark Age of 'soft' knowledge.

Labour was cheaper back then. Even valuable jobs can stop making sense if the costs outweigh them. That's the difficulty with automation making other sectors more efficient, wages get driven up while your productivity stays the same.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#160

Post by Tarq0n »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #130

If you remember that hotel chain Sonder which went bankrupt last year, they had a zero-local-employees model: no front-desk, outsourced maintenance and housekeeping. I think they made the same mistake. Your typical interaction with the hotel receptionist is extremely formulaic. Many other hotels have replaced the sign-in process at least with a machine. That's most prominent in your mind, so its easy to assume that's…

I've been to staffless hotels (numa) that were good and noticeably more affordable than their neighbors. I don't know if the housekeeping was outsourced though, I imagine that, without at least some local management staff, conditions would deteriorate rapidly.
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