[HN Gopher] Donating forks to the dining hall
___________________________________________________________________
Donating forks to the dining hall
Author : kickofline
Score : 523 points
Date : 2024-05-29 04:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (1.coc0o44.preview.ben.page)
(TXT) w3m dump (1.coc0o44.preview.ben.page)
| ggm wrote:
| My partner and I donated cutlery to our Apt complex multipurpose
| media room. It's where people who live there can watch movies on
| a projector or have meetings or birthdays.
|
| We bought over 50 teaspoons. I think we're down to 5. We got
| 10-15 each of knives forks and spoons and they were predated, but
| not as much.
|
| The body corporate tut-tutted and said they wouldn't do it, I
| think it's ok to accept some people just wind up pilfering these
| things, and you deal with it. If you need flatware that badly, I
| don't mind.
|
| Its 4-5 years in, we probably need to recommit. I don't know I'd
| go to the bother of etching or stamping anything.
|
| My sister and I fought over who got the NAAFI (british army PX)
| fork with a hole in the handle. The hole was for a chain, which
| clearly somebody broke, to steal the fork, which wound up in our
| cutlery drawer at home in the 50s/60s.
| gravescale wrote:
| If you care (which it sounds like, quite reasonably to me, you
| don't really), use pliers to bend over just the very end of the
| handle or put 180 twist in the handle. Very obvious and maybe
| unappealing to the sticky-fingered, without too much
| degradation to the immediate function of the object. And for
| teaspoons bought by the score, which i assume are stamped
| metal, the handle is probably thin enough to make it easy.
|
| Though at attrition rates of under 10 per year, it could also
| be partly careless disposal leading to spoons in the bin rather
| than only deliberate pocketings of 30p teaspoons!
| ggm wrote:
| Your idea is good. Marking them in a non-intrusive (to
| function) way would serve to make it clear this is communal
| property.
|
| But, in essence we don't care, and I also think its not
| always wonton theft, I know I've shed spoons into the waste
| bin being uncareful.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It hasn't worked for banks and all the various ways they've
| tried to keep pens from walking off, nor gas station
| bathroom keys. In effort you expend is ultimately wasted,
| as someone that wants to take will take and someone that is
| unawares they accidentally disposed of the utensil will not
| be stopped by any of the attempts. However if it makes you
| feel good and you enjoy the time spend over a weekend doing
| it, by all means have at. Just know what's to know going
| in. Which it sounds like you do.
| fragmede wrote:
| thankfully, locks can now be digital, so the key is now
| your phone or a code, which has other problems, but can't
| walk off in the same way
| mulmen wrote:
| I proudly leave my "This pen stolen from the Sloop
| Tavern" pen on my desk.
|
| With that kind of marking it's like they want me to take
| it!
| jjmarr wrote:
| I've always thought people stealing pens is just a form
| of advertising which is why any company offering pens
| puts logos on them.
|
| All this post makes me think of is what other commonly-
| stolen objects one could put advertising on.
| nomel wrote:
| No, there are effective methods. One is to attach a giant
| fake flower into it.
| gravescale wrote:
| Or make the pen a T-shaped or something. It does write on
| things but who wants an annoying pen that doesn't fit
| properly in a drawer and it difficult to do anything
| other than scribble a signature?
|
| Some people also sloppily spray bikes with pink spray
| paint because then it's pretty much unsaleable. So all
| you have to worry about are the vandals who just want to
| ruin someone's day.
| pimlottc wrote:
| But you don't even need silverware to eat wontons.
| labster wrote:
| Dim sum wise words, mon.
| wyclif wrote:
| I'm in the Philippines now, and one thing I've noticed is
| that when you go out to a fast food joint (Jollibee, Chow
| King, Mang Inasal, &c.) they don't even have any plastic
| fork/knife/spoon dispensers, napkin dispensers, or
| condiment dispensers anywhere at all in the dining area.
| I'm told it's because people here take them home.
| Sometimes they steal all the napkins.
|
| If you don't get these things after paying at the
| counter, you are out of luck. You can try to approach the
| counter to get them, but most people don't bother because
| these places are always so crowded.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| I'm not judging, but how exactly does that happen? Does the
| spoon fall into the trash while you're discarding something
| and you don't want to pick it up? Or do you throw out a
| container and miss that it had a spoon inside?
| yurishimo wrote:
| I've definitely been tempted to throw away a nasty
| container that might have gotten forgotten in the car or
| at the back of the fridge and someone left cutlery
| inside.
|
| The really nice stuff is only brought out at Christmas.
| As long as there are enough forks/spoons/etc for 8 people
| in the drawer for day to day use, then I don't care that
| much.
| gravescale wrote:
| In a common area, drunk people and children sloppily
| doing a chore they don't want to, I should think. And
| depending on how grotty users of the space are, people
| leaving cutlery in dirty piles of crap for others to
| clear up, and the others don't see the hiding cutlery.
| The cleaners in my old university accommodation would
| remove dirty dishes to a box outside called the Stank
| Tank as it wasn't their job to do student washing up.
| After a month, it was binned or scavenged and a lot
| fancier stuff than a teaspoon was in there!
|
| I can't say I've thrown away a spoon knowingly myself,
| but I have dropped cutlery in the bin once or twice. I
| haven't ever abandoned it but you can imagine people
| might if they don't value it. And based on the
| university, some people would happily lose a PS30 pan
| rather than reach into the Stank Tank, so I can believe
| it.
| tjbiddle wrote:
| Is there a chance these are being accidentally thrown away,
| rather than stolen?
|
| I'm sure I've thrown a non-reusable utensil in the garbage more
| than once in my life by accident. While I of course would feel
| bad, I'm also not going to dig it out of a 50gal trash can in
| nice clothes.
|
| Surely that happens many times over 5 years when you have
| dozens or hundreds of employees.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > I'm sure I've thrown a non-reusable utensil in the garbage
| more than once in my life by accident.
|
| My partner and I somehow ran out of butter knives in our
| first apartment in under a year. We discovered that we'd
| leave a knife in a desert tin in the fridge (to cut a slice)
| but then someone would inevitably throw out the whole tin and
| the knife with it.
| JoshTko wrote:
| For the next set, buy something noticeable (i.e. bight yellow
| handles). I'd bet accidental theft will go down and folks will
| take time to return if they do accidentally take.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Reminds of of the replacement of "threeks" at the UW-Madison
| campus in the 1980s. At the time, it was common for satirical
| parties to win student elections and do odd things like cover the
| campus with plastic flamingos. One of the satirical parties was
| upset that the UW-Madison cafeteria didn't have true forks (with
| four tines) but only "threeks" (forks with three tines). So they
| decided to work with friends at Northwestern university outside
| Chicago to trade their cafeteria's forks for UW's threeks. They
| were successful, but obviously both UW's and Northwestern's
| administration weren't pleased and the trade was reversed.
| wjnc wrote:
| Don't tell me "fork" and "four" are related.
|
| Did my homework: "Old English forca, force (denoting a farm
| implement), based on Latin furca 'pitchfork, forked stick';
| reinforced in Middle English by Anglo-Norman French furke (also
| from Latin furca )."
|
| Four in Latin is quattuor. Scared me there.
| cenamus wrote:
| However, Latin quattuor and english four are related through
| the PIE word kwetwores, as basically all words for 4 in
| indoeuropean languages are
| yard2010 wrote:
| In my humble linguistics experience where there's smoke
| there's fire - many new languages words that sound similar
| may have and common abstract ancestor in one of the old
| proto languages
| shkkmo wrote:
| Yet 'consume' and 'consummate' have entirely separate
| origins so it isn't always a safe assumption.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| No. A forked stick does not have 4 branches, nor does a fork
| in the road.
| hgomersall wrote:
| It definitely is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0CmaLgxLDE0
| theodric wrote:
| I have some Dansk (which is Finnish, because logic is for
| Vulcans) flatware from the 1970s which instead of having
| forks has threeks. Still stabs food pretty well.
| hintoftime wrote:
| When I went there in 2012, there was a fee each semester for
| dining hall silverware that goes missing. They assumed that
| you'd take $60 worth of silverware and plates.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| I'd steal more than $60 worth out of principle
| xattt wrote:
| And get your money back by selling for scrap!
|
| Fun fact: replacing copper pipes with PEX during a
| renovation will often pay for tools and supplies needed for
| the replacement when the copper is taken for scrap.
| fuzzy_biscuit wrote:
| Is that fun fact legitimate? I know that you can get a
| premium for copper (see: tweakers who rip out pipes in
| open buildings and sell it), but the ratio here seems
| improbable, at least.
| schiem wrote:
| According to copper.orgs fact page, the "average" single
| family home (whatever that means) has 151 pounds of
| copper pipe. The current scrap price for #1 copper where
| I live is $2.88. That comes out to around $446.
|
| That would maybe cover the cost of the pex itself, OR the
| cost of fittings and tools, but probably not both.
| chiffre01 wrote:
| I'd argue keep the copper in place as much as possible.
| PEX is plastic. I'm sure it contributes to all the
| microplastics/PFAS we see all over the place.
| kragen wrote:
| superstitious nonsense
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Honestly don't know which pipe is worse. I've had to
| crawl underneath my house 4 times to repair pinholes, but
| squirrels seem to think pex is made out of some sort of
| heroin candy. They can't get enough. Sadly, I've never
| gotten any video of what they think of the relatively
| high pressure water at the center of this candy...
| might've be some small consolation.
| FireInsight wrote:
| Why weren't the administrations pleased and why is it obvious?
| Did they stop the trade completely or truly reverse it
| afterwards?
| jhbadger wrote:
| Yes, they made the schools reverse the trade. While it was
| done in a spirit of fun, it was technically a theft of
| utensils from both schools.
| tekknolagi wrote:
| Incredible new Tufts lore
| santoshalper wrote:
| I found this utterly charming. It reminded me how much I like
| tech people before Silicon Valley gets ahold of them and turns
| them into egomaniacs.
| hn_user82179 wrote:
| This was a very charming post! I clicked through and found
| myself reading another 8 blog posts from this person, and I
| concluded that this is the kind of person I think I'd like and
| like to work with. They appear to be an intern currently and
| probably will be looking for full-time work soon. (open hint to
| anyone looking to hire, this seems like a person I'd personally
| want to work with but alas am not in a hiring manager/recruiter
| position).
|
| And, for what it's worth, I personally think Silicon Valley
| just gives a microphone to egomaniacs, which is different from
| turning charming tech people into egomaniacs. Zuck didn't need
| fame/money to produce Hot or Not. The quirky people I knew in
| college doing cool things are still doing quirky, cool things.
| relaxing wrote:
| What generates that weird looking URL?
| nikolay wrote:
| It's not been published, by the way.
| timerol wrote:
| No idea, but the published url is much more normal:
| https://ben.page/forks
| I_o_IllI__o_I wrote:
| Lovely!
| graphe wrote:
| I'm doing the opposite. I've been amassing small disposable
| plastic spoons when I order food for my supplements from various
| establishments for my supplements, looking for ideal sizes. I
| like to use the one from coffee shops, the best ones were from
| the airport. Disposable wood chopsticks can be surprisingly
| durable as well as long as it's not basilica wood.
|
| What counts as an ideal size/shape/material for your cutlery? I
| no longer use any metal because I once chipped my tooth on one,
| and often bang it against my teeth.
| edgineer wrote:
| Balsa* wood!
| nullhole wrote:
| As the old saying goes,
|
| beware brittle balsa basilicas
| petepete wrote:
| Stealing wood from a basilica to whittle into chopsticks is
| several notches above cutlery theft.
| owlninja wrote:
| Fun post! Although is it saying they are using the previous
| apartment tenant's silverware? I feel like I've had to bring my
| own silverware to the apartments I lived in.
| tempestn wrote:
| It's common for furnished student apartments to include
| silverware.
| paulgb wrote:
| It's pretty common for student housing for houseware to be
| handed down from previous tenants when they left. It's often
| cheaper to "pay it forward" to the next group of students than
| it is to store cheap houseware.
| owlninja wrote:
| Thanks, TIL! My first apartment after leaving campus was 20+
| minutes away, but that makes sense.
| bashtoni wrote:
| I love this story, despite it being the sort of thing I can
| imagine ending up on LinkedIn.
|
| Anyway, one question I did have which made me a little suspicious
| of the neat ending: why is the fork in the last picture obviously
| of a different type to that shown in the engraving picture? The
| order was 180 forks all of the same type.
|
| Maybe Henry bought his own forks to donate?
| megablast wrote:
| You, at your new job, is like a cafeteria with not enough
| forks. You have to go out, spend your own resources in filling
| in what is required at your company. That makes a successful
| company, and a successful you!
| frizzlebox wrote:
| > why is the fork in the last picture obviously of a different
| type
|
| I think that last bit is tongue-in-cheek. That's my read,
| anyway.
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| Unfortunately many people feel they have no more forks to give
| tgtaptarget wrote:
| Asking the BIG questions here... Like wtf would a school playing
| with so much money couldn't buy forks.
|
| Kids shouldn't go to college
| vortico wrote:
| The cafeteria manager likely had no idea they were running out
| of forks. A simple email or phone call to the cafeteria
| department would have probably solved the problem, since
| managers are likely looking for ideas of things to buy,
| especially if they've been recommended by customers (students).
| ilaksh wrote:
| I disagree. I assume the manager was quite aware, but
| whenever he had previously asked for resources from his own
| boss before, they refused and implied that he needed to try
| to use even fewer resources.
|
| After your manager makes it clear multiple times that they do
| not want to spend any money, even on things that are
| important, many sane people will stop caring.
|
| He may have told the boss multiple times that they were
| running out of forks, and the boss said "well, we have over
| 200 forks, that should be enough".
|
| But in the end, I blame the higher-level main manager.
| Stupidity, poor communication, stinginess, these are all very
| common. The workers, even first line managers, can only fight
| so much against it.
|
| The first manager may have already bought a ton of spoons on
| his own.
| philwelch wrote:
| Yeah, the idea that a college dining hall administrator is
| just sitting around desperately wishing he could spend more
| money but not knowing what on earth to spend it on unless
| he receives an email from a random student to whom he has
| zero accountability strikes me as far less likely than your
| theory.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Especially so in something that is certainly a cost
| centre. Not something marketable. I would expect
| something like cafeteria to be run on bare essentials,
| after the initial build phase. Spending money there is
| not marketable or rise profile of people involved.
| gravescale wrote:
| > we have over 200 forks
|
| I see someone's ERP system is in need of a manual
| stocktake!
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| The admin costs would probably be much much higher than $44
| p1mrx wrote:
| You can always identify cheap stainless steel cutlery from the
| sharp edges that cut into your skin while eating. Presumably the
| decent ones have extra manufacturing steps to polish off the
| burrs after stamping.
| neilv wrote:
| My first utensils when living on my own, it was normal for the
| edges of the spoons to be streaked with blood as they came out
| of my mouth.
|
| That might explain the appeal to me of spoons that have the
| very noticeably rounded edges, more rounded than they need to
| be. :)
| pavi2410 wrote:
| Reading the title seemed like it was related to the Dining
| Philosophers problem.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_philosophers_problem
| beefok wrote:
| I was going to post the same thing. "What does this have to do
| with concurrent processes?!" :)
|
| It's a good problem to think about, and I hope most people
| consider it in their work.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| This reminds me of the type of page I used to get on StumbleUpon
| a decade ago.
| marssaxman wrote:
| I love this spirit.
|
| In the office where I work, the main door locks whenever it
| closes, so the first person to arrive each morning props the door
| open for everyone else. Well, a new tenant moved in to one of the
| other units, and they started taking our doorstop. Morning after
| morning we had to go find it and retrieve it, for weeks! One day
| it occurred to me that I didn't have to complain to management,
| or get maintenance to deal with it, I could just _buy a bunch of
| doorstops_. The hallway is now liberally strewn with them, more
| doorstops than there are doors, and we haven 't had to retrieve
| ours since.
| megablast wrote:
| I don't understand, they would take it into their office?
| marssaxman wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Presumably they still do, but we no longer
| care.
| albedoa wrote:
| I know this is beside the point, but did you try asking
| them to stop doing that?
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I think it is not beside the point, but opposite to the
| point.
|
| In a zero-sum game, it must be all against all. But
| sometimes it takes only one player to change the nature
| of the game. And sometimes driving that change is less
| effort than fighting under the old rules.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Many doors have a toggle on the face plate below or above the
| latch that changes auto lock behavior. But auto lock is good
| for security.
|
| I once had a friend move out of a place in part because he
| would often get locked out. I showed him how to change this at
| his move out party.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _auto lock is good for security_
|
| Exactly... in the company where I work, propping open the
| door (maybe not so much the door to the building, but
| certainly the doors to our office) would be a sure way to get
| you into pretty serious trouble. Also, opening the door with
| your own access card for other people (although I
| occasionally do that for people I know).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Well, yes. Security tends to be opposed to everything
| that's good and nice about life. Sometimes it's worth it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Sometimes that opposition is the reason there's good and
| nice things at all, though.
| mikequinlan wrote:
| >Exactly... in the company where I work, propping open the
| door (maybe not so much the door to the building, but
| certainly the doors to our office) would be a sure way to
| get you into pretty serious trouble.
|
| If it is a fire door then it can also be a fire code
| violation.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Many new doors in Britain have self-closing mechanisms -
| for instance, you can see photographs on the government
| guidance[1] for the Fire Safety (England) Regulations
| 2022. The door naturally closes shut with a spring-loaded
| lever (figure 4) or chain (figure 5), but can be kept
| open with an electromagnet (figure 6). In case of fire,
| the power to all electromagnets in the building is cut so
| that the doors can close of their own accord.
|
| Hopefully we can see more widespread use of these in
| domestic properties, where fires are still horrifically
| common[2] - well over 3/4 of all fire-related fatalities
| are in the home.
|
| [1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-
| safety-engla...
|
| [2]: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fire-and-
| rescue-inc...
| marssaxman wrote:
| I would not normally expect to get away with it, but our
| security folks don't care; you can't get onto our floor
| without a badge or PIN, and we are a young enough startup
| that everyone still recognizes each other. The managers of
| the coworking space do not care what we do with the office
| suite we rent from them, and building security does not
| care what the coworking space does with its interior doors
| so long as the fire doors stay shut. The security folks at
| the head office of the coworking chain might care, as
| they're the ones operating the PIN lock we are bypassing,
| but they're not here to express an opinion.
|
| Meanwhile, the phone rooms, bathrooms, printer, and most of
| the conference rooms are located outside our suite in the
| coworking space, so we'd all be punching in our eight-digit
| PINs half a dozen times a day getting back into our office
| if we didn't prop its door open.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| How thoughtful of you.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Haha, I would have told him ahead of time, but only learned
| of the reason at the party, after he had packed up his
| apartment and signed a new lease.
| kqr wrote:
| Yup. Similarly, if staplers and scissors always disappear from
| office cabinets, it's often because people know they disappear
| so they hold onto them to have them available. It's a self-
| reinforcing system.
|
| But if one buys a bunch of them, people start trusting that
| they will be available, and will hoard less!
| eternauta3k wrote:
| I thought the solution to the tragedy of the commons was
| institutions: we need a 1000-year old socially-enforced
| tradition of shunning hoarders and assigning dishwasher duty.
|
| Your solution sounds easier, though.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It works if you can afford it, and avoid a runaway moral
| hazard. Pretty soon you will have tractor trailers filling
| up with staplers
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| In a closed system, you could grow the commons until
| there's no scarcity anymore, and thus no tragedy either.
| This stops working once some "entrepreneur" figures your
| commons is their arbitrage opportunity, and opens the
| system to the outside world.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> In a closed system, you could grow the commons until
| there 's no scarcity anymore_
|
| I don't know what your definition of "closed system" is,
| but I can assure you the only way the dining hall gets
| more forks is if they enter the system from outside.
| Unless it's a dining hall at a fork factory :)
| pjc50 wrote:
| Ooh, you could start "forkr.com", a just-in-time peer-to-
| peer fork leasing service!
| maicro wrote:
| See, I like the peer-to-peer idea, but if you're going to
| be centralized anyway (via the service), why not have
| your own sourcing resources as well? Team up with waymo
| or whatever self-driving taxi services are around, rent
| out a small chunk of the trunk to store a good selection
| of cutlery and consumables (teabags, salt and pepper,
| sriracha packets, etc. etc.).
| buildsjets wrote:
| I'm taking this disgusting train to it's logical
| conclusion. Seeking VC to start my "mouthsharing"
| company, where you can hire someone to pre-chew your food
| up for you, like a baby bird.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You're forgetting an NFT for all my finance bro friends
| to pump and dump
| yard2010 wrote:
| Imagine how nice it would be the other way around
|
| When management realizes they don't need to complain that the
| work doesn't get done, they just do the work themselves
| buildsjets wrote:
| Please tell me you did not work at Uvalde Elementary School.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| It sounds like they're taking the door stop because they want
| the security features of the building to actually function and
| the other tenants are actively conprimising them
| paulmd wrote:
| I do this all the time just for common tools around the house.
| The easy solution to never being able to find a screwdriver
| is... going to harbor freight and buying a half-dozen
| screwdrivers and staging them in areas where you commonly use
| them. Then you just try not to drag them around the house too
| much.
|
| I do this with utility knives, flashlights, screwdrivers, etc.
| The $10 of "waste" from buying a couple extra screwdrivers is
| hugely outweighed by the convenience of "saturation".
| LegitShady wrote:
| I lived in a building where after a security event all the
| electromagnetic door holders for some reason were disabled and
| all the doors defaulted to closed. One of the other people who
| lived there decided that opening the doors (not locked, by the
| way, just closed) was too annoying and cut up a 2x4 into a
| bunch of doorstops.
|
| I had to remove the door stops that kept being put into the
| secure entrance ways as well as actual fire doors required
| (normally open but magnetically released when fire alarm goes
| off) to keep to fire code. The guy making doorstops was angry
| with me (I didn't hide my removing the doorstops) until I
| explained that we'd had multiple cases of people wandering off
| the streets stealing mail and one guy actually took a fire
| extinguisher and sprayed the lobby, damaging cars in the
| parking level, and that keeping a fire door propped open and
| unable to close in the case of fire could potentially kill
| someone as well as open him up to liability.
|
| If he wanted to keep the doors open as they were previously he
| needed to take it up with the building and get the
| electromagnetic door holders reset.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| A "flood the zone" strategy similar to this works well for cheap
| items that continually vanish, such as pens, socks, charging
| cables, etc.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| Did that for pens while employed as a pizza delivery driver
| nearly two decades ago. Customers would regularly sign for a
| credit card receipt with my pen, hand back the signed receipt,
| receive pizza, and somewhere in the object-management process
| wind up still holding the pen. The cheapest pens were like 8
| cents each at Costco, so it literally wasn't worth my time to
| try to make sure my pen made it back to me.
| bell-cot wrote:
| [Salesmen for a thousand sellers of cheap custom-printed pens
| suddenly take notice]
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Since we're on HN I half expected this to have something to do
| with repositories on github. I need to get out more.
| martyvis wrote:
| This could have been a follow-up to "The case of the disappearing
| teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of
| teaspoons in an Australian research institute"
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1322240/
| arittr wrote:
| That was a great read
| flats wrote:
| It really was
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Delighted to see a shout-out to Veet Voojagig in there!
| dmje wrote:
| Superb
| majkinetor wrote:
| Seems that the easiest solution to mentioned office problems
| would be to have a common plastic teaspoon printer.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Instead of badging in, you have to spoon in.
| rtpg wrote:
| There are so many problems that are solved by ones own money, and
| people not being jerks about it. I think a lot about how some bus
| stops will just have chairs that people leave there to offer
| seating when the city decided not to put any.
| yareal wrote:
| This is called mutual aid, and is one of the fundamental
| underpinnings to anarchist theory. People will help each other,
| generally, if doing so is not too much of a burden on
| themselves. Systematizing that behavior into genuine community
| support for one another would (hypothetically) lead to outcomes
| of increased wellbeing for all.
|
| In your example, the person who left out the chairs isn't
| worried about being paid back for the chairs. Someone has
| excess, they shared it freely without expecting anything in
| return, and the community is better for it.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Couldn't we do slightly better with communication though?
| Instead of altruistically clearing the dishwasher in the
| office every time, we can have a rotating dishwasher duty. Is
| this opposed to anarchism? What about not having an explicit
| dishwasher duty, but just a socially-enforced expectation to
| contribute?
| jstanley wrote:
| When it's a _duty_ that others have imposed on you, it
| becomes a form of oppression rather than free action.
| Instead of feeling good about helping everyone, you feel
| bad about being bossed around by everyone.
|
| The "socially-enforced expectation" is the same. You _know_
| whether you 're doing something altruistically for the
| common good, or whether you're doing it because if you
| don't others will try to shame you.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Moreover, with a _culture_ of altruism, there is no
| principal-agent problem. You want to help others, so you
| do.
|
| As soon as you introduce coercion, the type of people
| motivated by power are attracted to the power to coerce
| and corruption takes root.
| yareal wrote:
| Sort of, anarchy does not mean individualism. It absolutely
| can be built around syndicalism and federation. If a group
| of people says, "we believe it's best to take turns doing
| this labor" then they can do that.
|
| Typically there's a cultural expectation of "wellbeing for
| all", which becomes a significant social expectation. If
| it's the cultural standard, it changes the relationship to
| chores significantly - I can contribute to them knowing
| that the general person out there is also doing chores with
| my wellbeing in mind.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I recognize I'm completely ignorant about this topic so I
| have to ask: how does the theory fit within the story in the
| post?
|
| If I understand you correctly, mutual aid theory explains the
| author buying cheap forks just to do something good. At the
| same time, in the absence of penalties people will steal
| forks until barely any remains. So why should one believe
| that the balance will favor the fork buyers more than the
| fork stealers?
| yareal wrote:
| The basic theory is that when something is abundant and
| everyone has what they need, the incentive for theft
| doesn't really exist. If you set out a barrel of forks and
| say, "take what you need" then at some point everyone has
| taken as many forks as they need. If we assume this is also
| happening for other bulk items, and everyone can just have
| as much as they need, there's nothing to trade those forks
| for, so taking a bunch doesn't benefit you at all.
|
| Ask yourself, why would _you_ take more than you need? Not
| some hypothetical other person, but you, personally. Do you
| think other people are in general likely to behave like
| you? (Put another way, do you think you are fairly typical
| when presented with a "take what's fair" scenario?)
|
| It's like the candy bowl at an office or someone's house,
| or the "take a penny" cup at a store. I'm sure occasionally
| someone takes everything from it, but by and large people
| take what they'll personally use.
| roydivision wrote:
| "But I had to make sure that my altruism would be commemorated."
|
| That's not how altruism works.
| teekert wrote:
| It's tongue in cheek, it's fun, it's a nice experiment,
| everybody wins.
|
| I don't like it how people suggest altruism should always
| amount to zero (or even negative!) benefit to the person doing
| all the giving of value. It's not how altruism should work.
|
| Are you only a true altruist if you go to help some poor kids
| in some poor country and hate every second of it? If so, I'm
| against altruism, it's something for sociopaths then.
| roydivision wrote:
| Definition of altruism - "Unselfish concern for the welfare
| of others; selflessness."
|
| To be clear - I'm not at all against doing good things for
| others and getting recognition for it, there's nothing wrong
| with that. But that's not altruism.
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah I also found that: "Instinctive behavior that is
| detrimental to the individual but favors the survival or
| spread of that individual's genes, as by benefiting its
| relatives."
|
| Doesn't that just sound plain evil?
|
| I mean, I can imagine sacrificing myself for relatives,
| especially for my kids and I wouldn't consider it
| detrimental to my own interests. In fact, knowingly letting
| my kids die while I could have prevented it by giving my
| own life sounds like entering hell from that point
| forward... So altruism must be something particularly
| insidious and obnoxious. Does it really even exist? Seems
| like it would require a lot of indoctrination and cognitive
| dissonance.
| gravescale wrote:
| At the very least altruism brings some kind of positive
| feeling, be it personal happiness to see others benefit or
| some feeling of social or even religious duty fulfilled,
| even if completely privately and never mentioned to another
| living soul. I don't think any altruism can be said to be
| utterly without some kind of benefit to the altruist.
| roydivision wrote:
| Personally I don't think pure altruism even exists, per
| the definition. Actively and knowingly doing something
| good for someone else for absolutely no personal benefit
| is impossible. This is to all intents and purposes a
| contradiction.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I disagree with you, but it would probably be an
| impossibility for me to prove it! Why? Well, as soon as a
| truly altruistic act is observed by third-parties,
| there's a chance the actor could be rewarded for it (for
| instance, by being honoured by society). Then, we would
| have at least the ability to claim that the actor was
| doing it for the chance of a reward, rather than purely
| selflessly. Thus, truly altruistic acts can only be
| immune from accusations of selfishness if they are
| entirely unobservable!
|
| Of course, I hope you'd agree that such an accusation
| would not always be plausible - the higher the personal
| risk of the act relative to the potential reward, the
| less plausible selfishness is and the more plausible
| altruism is.
|
| I personally have acted altruistically - as you describe
| it, "actively and knowingly doing good for someone else
| for absolutely no personal benefit". I can't prove it to
| you, but I think it's a natural consequence of empathy.
| I'd posit that altruistic acts are often done by those in
| situations where they are vulnerable themselves, which is
| why events like natural disasters are often accompanied
| by unusual levels of social cohesion and acts of personal
| sacrifice. That instinct can be exploited, of course;
| yet, by itself, it is a beautiful thing.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| My first teaching job was at an old, prestigious boys' boarding
| school in Australia. (When I say _old_ , it was old for
| Australia.) Every boy, whether a boarder or day-boy, and every
| staff member received a hot lunch in the dining halls each day.
| There were two dining halls: most of the boys at in the less
| ornate one, but the oldest boys and the staff ate in the more
| formal dining hall. Portraits of all the previous headmasters
| gazed down on us as we ate, except for the headmaster who had
| been sacked after less than a year for having affairs with a few
| too many boys' mothers.
|
| I was teaching a topic on ecology, which required taking the
| class out into the school grounds to count the number and
| diversity of species in an ecosystem. The school grounds were
| extensive; there were about two dozen playing fields, a small
| farm for teaching Agriculture (which is an actual, examined
| subject in some Australian secondary schools), and a lot of
| bushland.
|
| In search of a suitable spot for the lesson, I headed off down
| one of the paths through the bush that went to the various
| boarding houses, and soon found a peculiar tree. It had few
| branches, and few leaves, but an enormous trunk: it was old and
| close to death. What made it peculiar, however, was the hundreds
| of knives sticking out of it - clearly pilfered from the dining
| halls and thrown by bored schoolboys.
|
| When I returned to the science department, I told my colleagues
| what I had discovered. One of them was an old boy of the school,
| and another lived in one of the boarding houses, and yet none of
| them had any idea about the knife tree.
| aembleton wrote:
| I like your writing
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| You call it old, but this sounds like quality secondary
| education far above almost everything available today, at least
| here across Western Europe, which is 99.9% read book, then do
| test. The fact that you teached ecology using actual plants and
| the outside amazes me, even though it shouldn't and should just
| be the norm.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Please don't generalize across half a continent when your
| experience is within one or two countries.
| SamBam wrote:
| I'm confused by the apparent contradiction being suggested
| between "old" and "can do ecology with plants."
|
| GP didn't say it was a bad school.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| The "knife tree", the unholy offspring of The Shrike and the
| Tree of Pain in Dan Simmons' "Hyperion"...
| CrispyKerosene wrote:
| Kings? I always wanted to explore those extensive grounds when
| ever drove along Pennant Hills Road. Unfortunately i was a
| poor.
| scioto wrote:
| What he should have done was to create a foundation for supplying
| forks, making him and his roommate the officers of the
| foundation. They could have then solicited funds, including
| matching from other organizations. From those funds, they could
| have paid themselves handsome salaries for managing the
| foundation. Then with the mere pittance left over, they would
| then purchase forks. I'm sure that there would be other tax
| breaks in there somewhere to totally live a lavish lifestyle.
| afandian wrote:
| The corollary of Spoon Day.
|
| https://www.nthmonkey.com/spoonday/
| Jun8 wrote:
| There's a common pattern in population dynamics that I've
| observed, which probably has a formal name: A given system with
| (to simplify) two types of behavior: good and bad will tolerate
| and self correct up to certain percentage of bad actors (call
| this the jerk threshold, JT) after which _all_ participants
| switch to the bad behavior. Examples are line formation for a
| service, cutting people off in traffic, stealing from common
| areas, hoarding office supplies, etc.
|
| Anecdata: When I travel back to the country I've grown up I
| resort back to being a jerk in traffic and cutting in lines
| because you _have to_.
|
| I've always wondered what the JT for different situations is,
| before the system breaks down, e.g. what percentage of people in
| a line have to cut in before everybody abandons the concept of
| forming the line.
| bombcar wrote:
| They've actually had to try to make people _more_ of a jerk in
| the midwest, and instruct them on why the "zipper merge" is
| NOT bad: https://www.dot.state.mn.us/zippermerge/
|
| Otherwise if there's a sign that says "Left Lane Closed 10
| Miles Ahead" everyone will get in the right lane _for ten
| miles_.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Arguably, unless traffic is free-flowing at maximum speed,
| doing the zipper merge is in fact the non-jerk option.
| myko wrote:
| ugh tell that to the idiots who give me the finger for
| zipper merging in Columbus, OH
| master-lincoln wrote:
| What's the legal situation? Where I live in the EU
| merging lanes demands a zipper merge according to law.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Varies from state to state since traffic laws are per-
| state in the US, but in most states the traffic merging
| is supposed to yield to the traffic staying in their
| lane.
|
| You also are supposed to maintain a "safe distance"
| (where the law might be literally "safe distance" or
| might give a specific units) which at freeway speeds
| would mean leaving enough room for zippers but I don't
| know anyone who has ever been cited for following too
| closely, except after an accident caused by following too
| closely.
| myko wrote:
| There are signs posted explaining that zipper is the
| correct way to go, but I still get run off the road for
| doing it when merging onto the outer belt in this city
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Probably should prioritize telling them that red lights
| mean stop and that the arrow on the one-way sign points
| in the only direction you're allowed to go. Maybe mention
| turn signals too.
|
| Allegedly there are three cities with worse drivers, but
| I find that highly implausible
| practicemaths wrote:
| Well if you're forcing them to break when you merge then
| that kind of requires a finger imo.
|
| Regardless Columbus has a great lack of turn signals and
| understanding of basic intersection rules.
| jstanley wrote:
| You're not forced to brake if you can see that 2 lanes go
| down to 1 and you therefore anticipate that the cars in
| the other lane are going to have to merge into your lane
| and you leave a gap to allow them to do so.
| practicemaths wrote:
| If there is an appropriate gap it is fine. However in my
| experience many people in the zipper lane merge without
| regard to what the traffic in the lane they're merging
| into is doing. Thus forcing people to slam on breaks and
| slows down the overall flow of traffic.
| jstanley wrote:
| If you don't leave a gap then you're forcing the people
| in the _other_ lane to slow down and disrupt the flow of
| traffic.
|
| It is a mistake to think that one of the two input lanes
| is more entitled to the output lane than the other. 2
| lanes go down to 1, neither is more privileged than the
| other, cars should merge in turn.
| practicemaths wrote:
| If there isn't a gap then don't force a merge. Otherwise
| you're the one driving unsafely and causing further
| traffic congestion.
|
| Your comment makes less sense when the merging lane has
| no one else it as well. That means the car in it that is
| merging over has plenty of opportunities to merge safely
| without causing traffic congestion however they don't.
| myko wrote:
| > if you're forcing them to break when you merge then
| that kind of requires a finger
|
| i do my best to avoid forcing anyone to brake, ever
|
| usually the people flipping me off are speeding ahead of
| me from the other lane as soon as they see my signal go
| on
| practicemaths wrote:
| Oh, so you end up with space to merge easily then if
| they're speeding up.
| incanus77 wrote:
| Contrast that with Oregon, where everyone will stay in both
| lanes until one car length short of ten miles.
| sircastor wrote:
| This is a pet peeve of mine, but also isn't it the most
| practical? Don't we want the lanes consumed as much as
| possible so traffic disruptions aren't distributed further
| back down the road?
| incanus77 wrote:
| Growing up learning to drive on the East Coast, my
| intuition finds a sweet spot between the two, typically
| merging while moving slowly when there is a natural gap
| between cars.
|
| What I tend to see instead is hard braking ripple back
| down the line to a half-dozen cars or more for each car
| trying to merge right at the end because suddenly there
| are two cars right next to each other and one lane of car
| width left. Every time it appears that the lane-ending
| driver is like "oh wow, my lane went away!"
| SirSourdough wrote:
| Yes and no. If consuming the lanes as much as possible
| was the goal, we'd be parked bumper to bumper with no
| available space to move at all.
|
| We want the throughput of the road to be as high as
| possible. Broadly, that means maintaining the optimal
| (minimum) spacing to make the merge safely without
| changing speed, while maximizing speed.
|
| You may get larger areas where speeds are disrupted, but
| on the average be going faster. Stop-and-go traffic
| introduces tons of inefficiencies since drivers need to
| be much more cautious than in a consistent traffic flow.
|
| The big challenge is that it's basically impossible to
| know what the optimal speed is, since it relies on
| knowing the detailed state of the road and traffic volume
| miles ahead of what you can see.
|
| Self-driving cars are interesting here since they will
| open up new opportunities for all the vehicles on the
| road to co-regulate their speed near to the optimum.
| bena wrote:
| Basically, you want both lanes to effectively spread out
| to where those in one could be placed in the other
| without overlapping vehicles.
|
| The goal is to have both lanes move slowly, but
| constantly. To basically have a "1 and 1" progression
| through the chokepoint: 1 from the left, 1 from the
| right.
|
| It is a rough balance because you have those who don't
| want to let others merge at all. And there are those who
| want to merge at all costs. Both of which violate the "1
| and 1" guideline which gives everyone at least the
| illusion of progress.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > everyone will get in the right lane for ten miles.
|
| And have 10 miles to get up to speed. As opposed to the
| zipper merge where everyone waits til the last minute, and
| everyone has to come to a complete stop.
|
| Supposing of course your observations are true. From what I
| can tell with the "lane closed in 10 miles", is some asshole
| invariably sees it as a chance to get ahead of everyone else,
| zooms through the left lane, almost causes an accident, and
| then other idiots who think he's being successful in zooming
| ahead imitate his behavior. You get your "zipper merge"
| anyway, where everyone has to come to a dead stop at the
| chokepoint anyway. We're not all one gigantic robotic
| hivemind, preparing early makes for a smoother experience for
| all and fewer hostile feelings.
|
| For those who use the shoulder on the interstate who do not
| have genuine medical emergencies (why didn't you call the
| ambulance?) I propose that they bring in mobile car crushers.
| I'm even generous enough to let them exit the vehicle first.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| In my experience there is no full stop if zipper merge is
| done right, but lots of angry people and a an inefficient
| use of the road leading to traffic jam miles before the
| merge needs to happen if people try to get into the one
| lane early.
|
| If people all zip merge, there is no zooming possible on
| the closed lane and both lanes that merge get down to
| around 20mph at the choke point.
|
| This only works in countries with civilized traffic
| participants as mentioned by OP. I have personally only
| seen 2 countries out of maybe 30 where that was the case.
| In cars many people behave like animals for some reason
| practicemaths wrote:
| So that sounds like a massive flaw in traffic management
| design.
|
| It's more efficient to develop traffic rules that work in
| how people are not how they should ideally be.
| CrispyKerosene wrote:
| Brawndo! it's what plants crave.
|
| Where do you draw the line though when catering to the
| uniformed? There is a reason we hire SME's.
| practicemaths wrote:
| You design systems for the way nature works not how you
| wish nature worked ideally.
| CrispyKerosene wrote:
| Even odder when it comes to behavior, in my experience
| people in my current city routinely fail at navigating a
| zipper merge without significantly reducing their speed,
| even coming to a full stop.
|
| But when it comes to freeway on ramps, even in busy
| interchanges, there s usually no issues, which is odd
| because they are more or less the same maneuver.
|
| There must be some psychological factors at play.
| CrispyKerosene wrote:
| I understand that my argument will lead to the inevitable
| 'well if everyone one followed all the rules all the time'
| type response, but there if people are leaving the
| appropriate following distance with perhaps a bit extra at
| the as they approach the zipper merge, than there is no
| reason the merge cannot take place at near highway speeds,
| certainly with no need to stop.
|
| Its no different than how a freeway entry works.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I can't prove it, but I suspect (strongly) that whichever
| method you believe to be the correct one, following
| distances _must_ shorten dramatically, or speeds must
| drop so low as to threaten traffic jams (which,
| perversely, leave everyone bumper to bumper). It 's all
| about how many cars are trying to use that stretch of
| road for a period of time, and if all are to fit through
| within that window, there is both a minimum speed and a
| maximum following distance. Wish I wasn't a math flunky.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It is plausibly a more efficient usage if both lanes of
| traffic are moving.
|
| In practice drivers treat the "zipper merge" as acceptable
| when the left lane is closed ahead, there is 500 ft of road
| remaining and traffic in the right lane is already dead
| stopped. It isn't uncommon to see people approaching at 1.5x
| - 2x the posted speed limit and trying to "merge" then.
| Loudergood wrote:
| That is the correct behavior. If only one lane is stopped
| its far more likely to stretch back and block an exit that
| does not need to be blocked.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > Otherwise if there's a sign that says "Left Lane Closed 10
| Miles Ahead" everyone will get in the right lane for ten
| miles.
|
| One reason for this is that it only takes one person
| "policing" from the right lane (i.e. driving down the middle
| of the road, or worse: swerving out in front of the left
| lane) to shut down zipper merging.
| yurodivuie wrote:
| For years, I thought early merging was the morally correct
| choice, until a friend in my car yelled at me for doing it.
| He was a very conscientious person, but he was also a bus
| driver in the city (and thus much better trained in driving
| through congested areas). I think it's just a matter of
| education.
|
| Another way to think of it: if you merge early, then the
| actual correct time to merge becomes indeterminate. Do you
| merge when you see the sign? Wait till you see a good gap?
| What if the person behind you doesn't have a gap, and they
| drive right past to keep looking? It becomes chaotic, and
| everyone thinks they are getting picked on when someone
| decides to merge in front of them or passes them. So much
| wasted anxiety and anger. It's a lot easier (in congestion)
| to wait until you need to merge, then merge.
|
| In free-flowing traffic, it's a bit different, but the
| Minnesota page on zipper merging acknowledges that at the end
| of the article.
| Lanzaa wrote:
| Speaking of population dynamics, I enjoyed the "Parable of the
| Polygons"[1]. It shows with simple simulations an example of
| individual biases being different from collective biases. This
| difference leads to different collective behavior depending on
| environmental conditions. Similar to your example of
| individuals having a certain "jerk"ness, but the collective can
| pass a "jerk" threshold, which leads to an increase in jerk
| behavior.
|
| [1]: https://ncase.me/polygons/
| red_admiral wrote:
| The opposite can happen too. Scott Alexander's old post "In
| favour of niceness, community and civilisation" quotes an
| Atlantic article [1] for an example of a model where all of a
| country's officials can flip from mostly-corrupt to honest at
| short notice, once corruption falls below a threshold. A lot of
| other threshold situations like the one you described feature
| in that article too - including, sadly, a "Rwanda" model for
| how when inter-group animosity crosses a threshold you can end
| up with genocide.
|
| As far as I can tell, the formal name is "population dynamics".
|
| [1] https://archive.is/BXq66
| gojomo wrote:
| See also: 'broken windows theory':
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
|
| Though this concept isn't as pat and reliable as in its most-
| simplistic formulations - you can't fix all crime with
| aesthetic enforcement - it captures real human tendencies to
| 'flock' in the space of norms-of-behavior, using visible cues
| of what will or won't be tolerated. And, it has applicability
| outside of just literal 'policing'.
|
| Keeping spaces/communities far from any chaotic boundary where
| people start to wonder - "what can I get away with? does anyone
| confront/correct problems?" - can save a lot on overall
| defection/enforcement losses in the long run.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yeah, I think Broken Windows Theory takes it a step too far.
| I believe that if you have an area without graffiti and
| broken windows, fewer people will graffiti on walls and break
| windows, but the evidence for that preventing violent crime
| is flimsy at best.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| It feels like this is happening in US politics, and has been
| for some time. I'm in the US so I can only speak to it, but
| perhaps the world over?
| sircastor wrote:
| The thing that really bothers me about this is that the Jerk
| Threshold pushes the Overton window on Jerkiness - now if
| you're not participating in Jerk behavior you're disrupting
| "The way things work" which on its own might be jerk behavior.
|
| I grew up and live in Oregon. I've generally thought of our
| drivers as relatively non-aggressive. But I've seen
| _Californians_ + who are aggressively merging and weaving (And
| if you've ever driven down in LA, you know the lay of the
| land). Then the Oregonians who follow suit, and then everyone
| is doing it.
|
| +Oregonians have been complaining about Californians since time
| immemorial. It's just pure tribalism. We blame any negative
| change on our state as "Californians moving in". My apologies
| to Californians for unfairly dished blame.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The population of California drivers seems to have this weird
| bimodality of weaving lanes or never changing lanes at all;
| the other annoying "California Driver" thing is "If you are
| going slower than I want, how _dare_ you believe that I might
| move left one lane to pass you. I 'll only do that after
| tailgating you for a few minutes and then flipping you off"
|
| Even when going 65 in the right lane I've seen this happen.
|
| The other thing that seems more specific to SoCal that pisses
| me off is: "35MPH is a perfectly reasonable speed to merge
| onto the freeway at. Not just on short ramps, but on ramps
| that are 1/4 a mile downhill where even a Geo Metro could hit
| 55. Yes I'm going to go 80MPH eventually, but not until a
| half mile after merging."
| olah_1 wrote:
| > after which all participants switch to the bad behavior
|
| This is how it has become with job applications. So many people
| started lying on resumes that the job reqs starting raising the
| requirements for a position, which causes more people to need
| to lie. If you don't lie, you just don't get a job and
| starve/die.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The tenants who lived there the year before must have gone to
| Dewick and stolen some of the university's silverware for
| themselves.
|
| I think I've found the explanation for the original shortage.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Makes me wonder if one were to take a 'college town', introduce
| tagged forks into the local dining facility at the beginning of
| the academic year, then beginning at midterms, start checking
| local thrift stores to see if they start "floating up". Increase
| these checks after the end of the academic year, to continue to
| chart when or if they appear.
|
| From this, we can perhaps extrapolate a "fork drift" factor that
| the school could then use to determine future fork ordering? ;)
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