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The Doorman's Fallacy in action

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Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#271

Post by kjs3 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #260
kjs3 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more, when the concept of "AI agent" appeared on their radars, they were the first people who they thought they're gonna replace. I worked on a project where they replaced virtually all tier-1 customer service reps with an AI chatbot, which worked ok, because 90% of those calls are things like "what's my balance" and "I need a replacement credit card", which an AI can competently navigate. Phase 2, I was informe…

> how are you going to train up the tier 3 reps iterative feedback loops using memories for context, of course. just like they trained the first two tiers

Where are the feedback loops for customer issues that haven't arisen before, or happen very infrequently. The existence of a tier 3 is for problems that aren't an everyday occurrence. Further, these are often all or partially 'people problems', not 'technology problems'.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#272

Post by senordevnyc »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #103
senordevnyc wrote: post #85

The more I think about it, the more dumb the premise of this "fallacy" sounds. I lived in a doorman building in NYC for almost a decade. It's great! It's also really expensive to have your building entrance staffed 24/7, which is why the vast majority of buildings do not have a doorman, and you'll pay quite a bit more for one that does. It's a luxury. And literally anyone who has ever lived in a doorman building know…

Isn’t it a hotel in the original version? Doormen for nicer hotels seem very common

Fair point, but also an even dumber example. I promise you, the people running the kind of upscale hotels that have a doorman are under no illusion that the main job is opening the door.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#273

Post by senordevnyc »

venzaspa wrote: post #154
senordevnyc wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That fact doesn’t make it a fallacy. The fallacy part is the idea that the people choosing to automate that job are just stupid and ignorant, and don’t understand what the job really is. Which I’m sure is true for some automation, but doormen are a terrible example.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#274

Post by mhb »

darth_avocado wrote: post #236
mhb wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> Congratulations. You've identified different business models. So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how? > If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices It is true. https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-pric…

> So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how?

It's a problem because the business models are providing alternatives of what their customers value. You're arguing that because Costco, one of, if not the most successful retailers in the world, can do it why can't all stores? I can assure you every business wants to be Costco.

But also, I've been to Costco. And they offer what they want in quantities that they want. And it's often not what I want no matter how well they treat their employees. Also the checkout lines were very long.

Business 101? Take a step back. What you're describing is the feedback mechanism of the competition that drives prices down. Supply, demand, price. Econ 101. The reason prices aren't infinite is not because the evil corporations are conspiring to increase them slowly enough that customers barely notice. It's because, if they increase them too much, they will lose business to their competitors.

Apple has the ability to raise prices because customers value its ecosystem. But, OK. Why didn't they raise the price by thousands? Do you think people didn't notice the few hundred dollar price increase drip? It looks to me like people did notice. It's because at a certain price, it's worthwhile to hold your nose and use a different operating system.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#275

Post by senordevnyc »

DangitBobby wrote: post #120
senordevnyc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe there’s any evidence whatsoever for that, and I refuse to adopt that kind of loser mindset, where the agency of 99.999999% of people don’t matter at all to how our culture and civilization develops.

Pattern recognition is now a loser mindset

Using this alleged “pattern recognition” as an excuse for learned helplessness, and justifying theft from other victims of these top 0.000001% (if you believe that) is absolutely a loser mindset, yes.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#276

Post by alex43578 »

rmunn wrote: post #138
alex43578 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it way easier and way more damaging to just take a photo of him? Receipts aren’t even associated by name unless you’re picking up food.

True; a more realistic scenario would have to include "covert surveillance" (where you don't want to let him know you're watching), and even there I'm not sure much could be gleaned about any individual. In theory you could use that to build up a picture of someone's habits, in practice other techniques are better. Though... you could use that to spy on the store, actually. If you're a tax auditor making sure they ar…

This whole chain reminds me of https://xkcd.com/538/, in a good way. It’s interesting to hear what some people have come up with.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#277

Post by H1Supreme »

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 stayed at the same Sonder hotel (in NYC) multiple times, and there was absolutely a front desk person.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#278

Post by saulpw »

mishellaneous wrote: post #180
senordevnyc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe there’s any evidence whatsoever for that, and I refuse to adopt that kind of loser mindset, where the agency of 99.999999% of people don’t matter at all to how our culture and civilization develops.

so, essentially, you and the other commenter are arguing whether it is everyone that has a little fault for being naughty, or is it just a couple of psychos who are fucking everyone else over. but even if it was just a couple of psychos that were responsible, it'd be hard to justify stealing from the grocery store, because you are not guaranteed to do damage to the psychos directly -- maybe what'll happen instead is…

Those grocery store employees [at a national chain supermarket] were not going to get a nice raise regardless, and petty theft is either already accounted for or covered by insurance.

One outcome I can see though, is that if enough is skimmed off the top through self-checkout, then maybe the beancounters will realize that self-checkout isn't as 'efficient' as they thought, and will reinstitute human checkers.

Just like how we hope that the hotel that laid off the doorman eventually realizes their mistake and hires him back.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#279

Post by pronik »

To me, this seems like a typical "how hard can it be" startup mentality. People, especially those "fast to the market" type, tend to vastly underestimate all the corner cases of the technology, mostly tending to the happy path and outsourcing the pain to their customers. The reason they still have customers is because most of the market has the same problems and a solution that covers those corner cases is way more expensive and also way more extensive in terms of infrastructure you'd need. You would have hoped there is middle-ground there, i.e. a startup on the cheaper side with a vision for corner cases, but knowing how markets and marketing works I'm not holding my breath for that.

A big part of those corner cases is the assumption of the user being an independent responsible adult without problems. Voice control is only acceptable if you don't startle anyone with or don't have anyone talking or screaming while you are talking. Booking tickets with "one ticket per smartphone" doesn't work when you have kids. Doing basically anything that's smartphone-only requires you to have it on you, charged and for the most part with an internet connection -- great for underground parking garages. God forbid you have lost your smartphone while drunk or have been robbed -- forget driving home with the virtual car key only being in your phone, forget paying for a taxi, forget entering your home protected by a smart lock. All of this assuming the tech works perfectly and durably, which we know is not the case for most of modern tech.

Re: The Doorman's Fallacy in action

#280

Post by michaelmrose »

ralferoo wrote: post #168
michaelmrose wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Home Depot self checkouts are large touch screens with a nice wireless gun. It doesn't even check weight. It is one of the least shitty SCO experiences unless you have a bunch of bolts and shit in which case why are you even in self checkout when they always have at least one physical register open? I don't understand why people do this.

We don't have home depot, but most self-checkout tills in the UK have scales and a separate bag weighing area. You can usually do everything at the till, but they also have scales and barcode printers around the loose fruit and veg areas too (and you have to print a barcode to scan if you're using the portable scan gun thing I mentioned earlier).

Why would you need a barcode printer? either it has one or it doesn't in which case you look it up and it's added negating any need to print
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