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The Doorman's Fallacy in action

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Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#201

Post by throwaway13337 »

This can be to generalized to map versus territory.

People have a particular lens they see things through. And they forget that there is detail there that matters.

The last 15 years of metrics driven decisions has hollowed out what made most things good.

It’s a fundamental problem of scale. Decision makers that have a large amount of power can only see the map.

The solution is to decentralize power. The more successful organization would either be smaller or allow more control for smaller participants.

This is good because humans also tend to be happier when they have more localized control.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#202

Post by Telaneo »

cwnyth wrote: post #58
PufPufPuf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe. You just walk to the register and point out the items you want to pay for. I've never seen a place where paying for a group of 6 separately would be a problem, it's the default and expected.

Europe is a continent. In all the countries I've been to in Europe, the service was indistinguishable from that in the US, where the bill is brought to the table and paid there. Can you be more specific as to what country's restaurants do people normally walk up to a register after eating?

This has happened to me twice in Norway and once in Germany, but only with large groups of people, so it's never 'normally'. If you're a smaller group or alone, the waiter will either remember who had what (or have kept track in their POS system?), or outright ask who will pay for what, since there are so few items to pay for that that's pretty manageable.

The more common way to settle this in my experience, if you're in a larger group, is to announce your intention to split the bill before ordering, and then the waiter can go through what groups or individuals will pay and can track them accordingly.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#203

Post by Freak_NL »

florkbork wrote: post #144

This feels like an AI narrative, transcribed by a human. 1) Impromptu yoga class brunch. No one says "oh, who needs to top up their parking since we'll be an extra hour"; so it's technology at fault that they got a notification half way through, not the people involved? The consequence was no one got ticketed? 2) 6 people with 6 phones, some of them the "latest iPhones" scanned a QR code once each, after struggling;…

> How did these people live through COVID and never encounter a QR code they had to scan with a phone?

Was that a requirement? I got through it without scanning a single QR code. I had my vaccination status available as a QR code (on paper when travelling in order not to depend on just a smartphone), but not the other way around.

We just ignored restaurants without paper menus, as we always do. It wasn't the time to eat out in any case.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#204

Post by kayo_20211030 »

The restaurant seems to be trying real hard to externalize its costs, pushing its previous costs (menus/billing/staff) onto the diners, and hoping that the value of the experience hadn't been so diminished that the diner would baulk. I reckon the diner baulked, as I would have. The tradeoff just doesn't seem fair. Bad math. Bad business.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#205

Post by NichoPaolucci »

gcanyon wrote: post #200

I'll be the contrarian and take the opposing position: this story -- the doorman fallacy itself, ignores the obvious counter-narrative: - physical menus are hard to update - physical menus are often too simple, requiring asking the server questions they've answered a dozen times before already, hurting their efficiency, or they are book-sized and hard to navigate. - physical menus aren't cleaned between uses, so you'…

I agree with a lot of this. Sometimes it is easier to scan a code, zoom until the text is at the desired level, and scroll around the menu rather than opening a large leather book with tiny writing in a dimly lit restaurant.

Going to PAY with the QR code feels a little worse. I went out with some friends and I planned to pay cash, the waitress came over to tell us all that we should pay using the QR code on our receipts - missed me, and I had to wait 5 minutes to let them know I was using cash. My friends didn't have much trouble, but we're all younger folks so we are used to pulling up Apple Pay or whatever. I imagine some people do not enjoy that experience.

I will say that there is this inherent disdain towards automated systems, and I feel it's warranted - to a degree. Some experiences are improved with automation, others are stifled. Sometimes we just want to talk to other people who understand our problems.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#206

Post by JsonDemWitOster »

gcanyon wrote: post #200

I'll be the contrarian and take the opposing position: this story -- the doorman fallacy itself, ignores the obvious counter-narrative: - physical menus are hard to update - physical menus are often too simple, requiring asking the server questions they've answered a dozen times before already, hurting their efficiency, or they are book-sized and hard to navigate. - physical menus aren't cleaned between uses, so you'…

You make some good points but some are, excuse me, cringey-wrong.

> physical menus are hard to update

How often does a restaurant update a menu? Those that need to update frequently already solved that by having a chalk board.

> physical menus are often too simple, requiring asking the server questions they've answered a dozen times before already, hurting their efficiency...

How does a digital menu solve this? All online menus I've used have basically the same amount of information as a printed menu, with some being marginally better. The marginally better ones are the online menus for food delivery because they have a bit more flavor text, pun intended. This is however offset by restaurant-owners' tendency to put unrepresentative stock photo to go with the item and they just put a disclaimer about the photos somewhere.

> physical menus aren't cleaned between uses, so you're touching everything the server touched, and the three people before you.

Ok but please wash your hands after you order at the earliest and before you touch your food at the latest.

> physical menus aren't searchable.

Fair but only thanks to `Ctrl + F`, the best menu search interface by a mile.

> Difficulty scanning the QR code will get better over time, obviously.

I'm starting a prediction market if this will happen before or after Tesla FSD.

> it ignores how QR codes work (you don't have to be that close)

Uhhh...what? The farthest I could scan a QR code is about two handspans away. This was from the original Google Pixel! It was remarkably good at catching QR codes, I have no idea why. I thought it was the moment scanning a QR code has finally gotten better(!) so imagine my disappointment when my subsequent phones (even one Google Pixel 3a) couldn't live up to it. The 3a was still better than others. Even with flagship models, you gotta be pretty close to scan QRs not to mention wait for the exposure and focus to adjust.

(Whoever tells me "cameras can zoom now dummy" has never actually scanned a QR code from afar with the camera zoom lens. When you zoom, the exposure changes AND it becomes _super_ motion sensitive which is, obviously, not great for scanning things.)

> Does the author really think getting the server to split the bill is easier?

I am not the author but yes I do think so. Server has the table's bill in front of him and a calculator, each tells him what they had and pay in turn. Et voila.

Splitting the bill inconveniences comes down to a couple of factors IME:

1. the customers know what they had but don't know the price so they have to leaf through the menu again to calculate.

2. the table is provided with only one copy of the bill so the group has to scramble over one measly piece of paper, talking over each other, to compute their share.

Both can be solved by centralizing all that complexity on the waiter.

To be fair, I think the author's bad experience was due to wanting to keep the apple crumble gesture a secret. That is such a bizarre complaint, bro. It doesn't make sense to me either! You're all in a restaurant, everyone knows all the food will be paid for by someone! Why keep it a secret that you paid for the apple crumble?

That's enough HN for the rest of the week.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#207

Post by NichoPaolucci »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #65

Aside re: restaurant technology: In a restaurant a year ago with "pay via your phone" service. Server gave us a receipt w/ a QR code. I scanned the code, copied the URL to my clipboard, and looked it over. There was a base64 blob on the URL. I decoded it (because Termux and I'm a nerd) and saw obvious parameters I could fuzz. I changed the check ID (incremented it), left the store ID alone, re-encoded it, and found I…

I saw a team build some payment software a while ago that had a similar, if not exact, vulnerability. If someone had enough time / effort to figure out a not-super-unique ID (Something like 2456733), they could acccess the payment portal for an order.

I notified them and they said that this was noted, skipped, and they didn't believe it was an issue. Worst case scenario an attacker could... Pay for someone elses order, if this happened the attacker would be found by their payment details. Likewise on the payment screen they only see the order's total, nothing about the customer, nothing else about the order, just the total. So - I'm not sure. Maybe they're right?

I just shrugged. I would've patched it, feels like poor design and is easy enough to fix - but I couldn't really argue other than to say it felt sloppy.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#208

Post by Palomides »

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…

if we had a standardized way to deliver packages like we do mail (the heavily regulated mailbox!) this would not be a problem, it's a phenomenal waste of human effort to navigate this uniquely for every location

it's not like a doorman where there's useful social interaction

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#209

Post by AlecSchueler »

dekleinewolf wrote: post #164
michaelt wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we are all programmed to respond well to any courtesy, no matter how indirect. I once read a book called "The Media Equation" that argued humans' social cooperation/courtesy instincts are many thousands of years old, while computers are very new (the book was written in 1996). As academic HCI researchers they'd conducted many experiments, providing evidence for this, which is why it's a book, not a paragrap…

And everyone knows how well-received clippy was :D

Clippy became infamous because it couldn't actually do anything it claimed to do. It also seemingly broke the courtesy guidelines by appearing uninvited and stealing focus.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#210

Post by mhb »

darth_avocado wrote: post #114
mhb wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sure. That's the logic that elects Mamdani. Maybe you're confused because instead of going down, prices increased less than they otherwise would have. Economics happens on the margins where the reality is that store A reduces its costs and lowers its prices to compete with Store B. Or are you paying $100 for a jar of peanut butter?

Ehh. Corporate profits are at all time highs. The idea that somehow if corporations replace workers or pay them less, will somehow ensure we see smaller price increases as consumers is the fallacy that’s brought us here in the first place. Trying to make this a political discussion is pointless. In-n-out hires a large staff and pays people well, and somehow their hamburger is still $3 and top quality. The same time w…

>In-n-out, Costco, Walmart

Congratulations. You've identified different business models.

> I still remember when all the fast food chains raised their prices together

If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices? Adjust n to whatever value is lower than your hyperbole trigger.

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