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Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

I know what you mean.

I remember one time I got off the plane in Italy and I was walking with my girlfriend to customs.

At one point we branched off from all the other passengers and she was like "hey we're going the wrong way, everyone is heading there". And I said nope this is the EU passengers exit, look at the sign.

She couldn't believe it was right because the plane was full of others from our EU country. All those people couldn't be wrong, right? I explained I guessed they were all just dumbly following the herd without looking which wouldn't even occur to me. I don't really have that autopilot herd-following program in me. Even when I'm in a group I'm navigating as if I were alone.

So we got to the end and there were 6 free booths in front of us and all the other passengers were queuing up for the 2 unmanned non-EU passport booths :') a security guard had to let them into the right queue.

This applies to the bystander effect too. I'm not surprised about this conclusion at all.

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I found it surprisingly helpful to use the heuristic of just pausing when everyone is doing some thing (like moving in a mass) and just literally evaluating the opposite thing to do.

It’s a surprisingly useful heuristic.

Indeed! It gives a fresh outlook on life and a sense of freedom, of all options being open. And a lot of us are the ones that come up with solutions to problems because we think outside the box. Or more specifically: there is no box.

I could not live without that sense of freedom.

> a security guard had to let them into the right queue.

So, just looking at the final result they ended up in the right place ?

Assuming the security guard made that adjustment because they were so many of them, the strategy seems to be paying off in that specific case.

Someone like the person you replied to would consider a big failure and inefficient to be told by security where to go when there are signs. I'd be thinking about it for a while after too and it'd never happen again in an airport because I'd be even more aware next time to prevent it.

I think the point of GP is "following the herd" is also a strategy that works 90% of the time (I would argue 99% of the time if there is no malicious intent to mislead involved). It's not by chance that this behaviour has been selected by nature. It is simple. It works in a lot of cases including cases where there are no signs or where you can't read the signs. And it makes for a great fallback strategy when you have a better strategy for the specific case.

And what I was sharing is that someone like me wouldn't consider that outcome as "works". Someone that follows the herd in this scenario is exactly the type of person that would say "what do you mean, it worked anyway?".

In my mind if I'm an adult person in an airport and I missed obvious signs and just went with everyone I'd be genuinely thinking about this for days and softly beat myself up, look up the airport floorplan and for years after in every airport I would think about this.

This is not a hypothetical for me because it has happened and I'm still triggered about it to the point that's years later and I'm here typing about it.

So you’ve never encountered a situation where going against the grain, even if for completely good reasons, fails? I know I’ve been in that place more than once.

GP was only saying that going with the herd is most of the time a more successful strategy, and even if I don’t follow it, I’m not blind to my selection bias to say it doesn’t. As he stated, it wouldn’t have been selected otherwise.

> So you’ve never encountered a situation where going against the grain, even if for completely good reasons, fails? I know I’ve been in that place more than once.

I'd rather be wrong on my own decision than on one I blindly followed from someone else :)

And it's not about going against the grain. It's about making conscious decisions rather than blind following. The outcome can very well be the same as everyone else's of course.

I probably sit in the middle, where I see the value of good signs (and good design in general) to properly guide the users so they don't have to rely on heuristics and "blind" fallbacks. In particular for airports where dealing with huge influx of users at peak time is critical.

On the other hand, for many people, having to talk to a security guard and move to the lane on the other side is a non-event, and they might have tried to talk to the guard even if there was absolutely no need for it, if they felt it wouldn't be an issue for the guard (not too busy, looks bored etc.). Efficiency could be super low on their priority list, if it wasn't they'd be paying a lot more attention to the signage in the first place.

I like to exploit these things but not because of autism, but opportunity. The shorter queue at the cinema that no one joins, for example, because they didn't notice because of the big queue.

It is worth taking note of what other people are doing though. Maybe not so much at airports that should have everything running like clockwork, but some places communication of new information is poor, done verbally so not everyone hears. It is worth asking people "why you doing that" sometimes.

Alternatively: they followed the heuristic that would get them to the right place in any properly-designed airport. Unfortunately this particular airport seems to have been designed improperly.

What does this have to do with autism, though? It is not defined by the ability to read signs, is it?

A week ago I returned to America from abroad and, by reading the signs at SFO, I downloaded the CBP app and abandoned the gigantic line in favor of the completely empty line. I am evidently in the top 1% of sign readers, but I don't know if I am autistic.

> What does this have to do with autism, though? It is not defined by the ability to read signs, is it?

No but it's partly defined by the lower ability to form part of social groups and thus follow others on autopilot. And thus being more aware of situations.

The story was not really a definition rather than a symptom. One that can be caused by more than one thing.

If you've spent your whole life wondering how the fuck the bulk of people seem to make confusing or challenging decisions maybe you just evaluate 'from first principals' in more situations.

this effect seems to be especially true in airports. they seem to particularly inspire dumb herd behaviour. perhaps there's an increase in perceived danger leading to a stronger desire for safety in numbers?

another example: queueing to board the plane. other than to fit in, why on earth would I stand there and compete to spend more time in a sweaty uncomfortable seat packed with 400 other people? plus, if you get on last, you can take advantage of empty rows before anyone else

The reason becomes apparent when you take a carry on bag and find yourself desperately searching for somewhere to put it in an overhead bin, but there is none. You boarded too late and everyone ahead of you stole your allotted space.

NOW you have to check in your carry on. And waste time waiting for your bag at the baggage claim. If it even makes it. Your bag has much higher chance of being lost if checked in late.

Yup this. I'm not a herd person but I love boarding first so I can tuck my bag away. It means the worry of that is gone.

And I actually like sitting in my window seat a lot more than at the gate.

Pretty funny use of the word "stole" in this context. The space being above a particular doesn't make it that seat's space any more than the public parking space on the street in front of your house makes it yours. And I've been on probably 8 or 10 flights this year and every time they said carry-ons checked at the gate are returned planeside upon arrival; not once have they been sent to baggage claim.

Actually the opposite is true. When you gate-check your bags, they are handled carefully and go directly into the plane. Sometimes even into a corner of the passenger area. Parents routinely gate-check strollers, and it’s rare to see one get lost.

Also, gate-checked luggage is given to you at the gate when you land. So no baggage claim.

> When you gate-check your bags, they are handled carefully

Spend some time at the window seats at the gate looking at earlier flights and how gate-checked luggage is handled.

It gets thrown down this chute that drops hard some 20ft to the ground. It also gets very carelessly thrown in there, so a bunch of the bags miss the chute and just drop straight down to the concrete. If you had anything other than clothes in there, ouch! You'll get back a back full of destroyed fragments.

>The reason becomes apparent when you take a carry on bag

your unreason will become apparent when you check that bag and stroll completely unencumbered through the vast distances twixt curb and plane (x2 departure and arrival)

baggage claim really doesn't take that long, and you can come up with something zen to do for 5 or 10 minutes, make a phone call or two, talk to family or friends. Life is better when you stop inconveniencing yourself and creating a rat race when there isn't one. Let everyone around you fight over the overheads.

> baggage claim really doesn't take that long

Sure. Just recently picked up my partner from SFO on a late night arrival. It tooke THREE HOURS for the bags to start arriving on the belt. Who knows why. Zero information given to the hundreds of angry people standing there. A very miserable time.

Yes, that's not typical, but it happens. If you carry your bags, it can't possibly ever happen.

I agreed until I lost thousands of dollars of shit in a checked bag TWICE in one lifetime

The crazy thing is, the chance of someone dying is about the same as the chances of you losing your checked bags.

My intuition is that, in addition to what you mentioned and at least for longer flights, some people have residual effects from the mild hypoxia at altitude when they're on the ground in their destination airport.

I, at least, sure as hell feel dumber for the rest of the day after a six hour flight. Usually that's accompanied by a fairly debilitating headache.

Commercial airline cabins are pressurized to at most 8k feet; there are no hypoxic effects at that altitude, at least not on decision-making. You don't need continuous oxygen on the flight deck until either 14 or 14.5k feet (in the US, EU might be slightly different). The FAA is dogmatic and wrong about a lot of things, but if there was even the slightest bit of evidence showing decreased decision-making or cognition at lower altitudes, they'd be requiring oxygen immediately, economic consequences be damned.

You can watch your blood oxygen dip when flying, I don't know how significant the effect is on performance but as a sea level dweller there seems to be some observable difference in the data.

Too much CO2 is known to lower IQ scores significantly, for the duration of exposure.

alcohol always seems to hit me harder on a plane, and afterwards

I can't drink during/before flights at all, it destroys me

> this effect seems to be especially true in airports. they seem to particularly inspire dumb herd behaviour. perhaps there's an increase in perceived danger leading to a stronger desire for safety in numbers?

There's an increase in potential negative consequences. More people with guns, more chance for "security" to pick on someone they don't like. If you go off on your own and you're right, you don't gain much - if everyone gets on the wrong plane or goes through the wrong gate or what have you, there's not much they can do. If you go off on your own and you're wrong, you might get beaten up, kicked off your flight, held without charge until you dehydrate, banned from the country...

> There's an increase in potential negative consequences. More people with guns, more chance for "security" to pick on someone they don't like. If you go off on your own and you're right, you don't gain much - if everyone gets on the wrong plane or goes through the wrong gate or what have you, there's not much they can do. If you go off on your own and you're wrong, you might get beaten up, kicked off your flight, held without charge until you dehydrate, banned from the country...

Umm wut? You live in North Korea or something?

Here in Europe things are pretty mellow, there was a while after 9/11 when the security was pretty heavy-handed but luckily things are back to normal and we are now again innocent until proven guilty. We have things like rights here.

But beaten up because you walk around in the wrong public area of an airport?? That did not happen even then.

I'm European. Even pre-9/11 you'd get stopped and made to leave for saying the wrong thing. Post- we've got a guy getting jailed (famously the first person jailed for an act without criminal intent, because apparently airports get an exception from basic protections) because he went for a smoke and some people were scared of his luggage, and the person getting held without charge and without any water was also my country.

> But beaten up because you walk around in the wrong public area of an airport??

Sure, but if you take a wrong turn you're suddenly in the private area, and even if there weren't any signs, well, why did you wander off on your own, no-one else did.

Some people live in a scary world. I would think it's quite stupid to be worried about this when the worst that could happen is missing a flight, which would not happen anyway if you pay attention to your surroundings.

That's not the worst that can happen, not by a long way. You have very few rights in an airport, in practice if not in theory.

Have you looked up crime rates in airports or what gives you this idea that it's a dangerous place? Unless you're digging up dirt on Putin and flying through Russia or some outlier situation like this, nothing is going to happen.

It's not a crime when the authorities do it, sadly. I've seen plenty of anecdotes here and elsewhere of people being detained without access to legal representation and without even being informed of what they've supposedly done wrong. If you're denied entry to a country then you have no right of appeal or anything.

The danger factor needs to be weighted between probability of the event and severity of the event. The probability of the things you describe are near zero.

I've personally avoided missing flights by breaking from the crowd in airports

> why on earth would I stand there and compete to spend more time in a sweaty uncomfortable seat packed with 400 other people?

Wonder if you have flown in recent years?

Flights are now set up so that the last several groups who board have zero space for carryone luggage. So if you board after all the space is gone you are in for a very bad time. For a while it started to become an unspoken rule, and now they even announce it on the loudspeaker: if you are in group N or above (N depends on airline) you won't have any space left.

My “rational”answer is that I don’t mind standing, so it’s worth the benefit of guaranteeing space in the overhead bin near my seat, and I like being first to my row.

Plus I almost always have a window seat, so getting there first is the most convenient for myself and my row mates. I don’t do this on flights that don’t seem full.

No need to involve hypoxia, which should subside quickly at sea level. People are tired, stressed, and many have been drinking on the plane.

In Europe most people don't really drink anymore on flights because it's no longer free on most airlines.

Which is a really good thing IMO.

These days it makes sense to queue up and make sure your bag don't get checked, but I had the same initial observations.

or maybe people are in a new place and processing a totally foreign environment? Maybe theyre stressed/tired from flying? Not thinking because theyre in a rush? Its not that hard to find reasons for why people might make mistakes in an airport.

> another example: queueing to board the plane. other than to fit in, why on earth would I stand there and compete to spend more time in a sweaty uncomfortable seat packed with 400 other people? plus, if you get on last, you can take advantage of empty rows before anyone else

what? people are following direction, and the way the plane boards is actually important to how fast it loads, so youre messing with that because its a mild convenience to you and you consider that intelligent behaviour?

cpg grey has a video on this i suggest you take a look https://youtu.be/oAHbLRjF0vo?si=jv00xanestDfodPt

>what? people are following direction, and the way the plane boards is actually important to how fast it loads, so youre messing with that because its a mild convenience to you and you consider that intelligent behaviour?

What direction? The only time there were more directions than just "priority" vs "non priority" was on my flight to Korea a few years ago. Most smaller flights in Europe, sadly, do not do that.

Full service airlines board by section by direction of the gate agents pre-flight. The video explains why its important for those airlines

I've watched that video when it came out, but my point is that you can fly monthly between european countries without ever coming across proper boarding procedures. Don't get me wrong, it infuriates me, but this is the sad reality we live in.

Even on the flight from Helsinki to Bangkok there was only priority vs non-priority distinction, even though the tickets had different seating groups. Could have saved us all some convenience, but no, we all had to board the plane very chaotically.

Which is why I am usually the last one to go to the boarding, I can chill on comfy seat for 20-30 minutes instead of standing in chilly or boiling hot weather/boarding tunnels.

if this had been the case even once on the tens of flights I've taken in recent years, then I would have participated in that. in reality however, boarding is almost exclusively two naturally-formed queues, priority and not

the tone of your comment sounds to me like suppressed embarrassment. it's okay, you're not an idiot for queueing for boarding, it's just not a behaviour I'm going to participate in for no real reason

Same here. Got an anti-herd mentality that while beneficial in some ways, is detrimental in other areas associated with the social aspects. It's also given me a bit of a misanthropic outlook as well.

Reminds me of one time when we had a power outage in the central train station, there was a long queue of people lined up at the (stationary) escalator while the stairs next to it were empty. I just shrugged and went up the stairs, but I do wonder what all those people were thinking.

"Ugh, I hate the stairs I'm sure this escalator will start up any time..."

At the cinema everyone goes out through the door the first person went through. A line even forms while all the other doors are ignored.

> Even when I'm in a group I'm navigating as if I were alone

This ring true to me about my whole life, both in a good and bad senses.

Are there connections between ADHD autism in your view? I feel like if I had my wits about me, i woulda made the same choice

They're highly comorbid with a lot of common traits.

I just wonder if sociality and ease of establishing and maintaining rapport is contraindicative of ASPD/autism stuff or whether it really is not only just a spectrum in the sense of a spectrum of impairment but also on a continuum from ASPD/autism <--> "Normal" where impairment can still exist as a sort of sub-spectrum without wholly subjugating me to that subclassification where i could otherwise ddmobstrate skills and traits to the contrary

Insofar as a a spectrum of impairment is referring to a spectrum of diificulty in socializing and a deficiency of adeptness at neurotypical theory of mind

Hi, I didn't totally understand your writing.

One reason why a lot of things are comorbid: generally, few mental things have "a single gene" but are manifestations of many gene differences and nature.

One reason why a lot of things are comorbid is just that more people are a little something than a lot something, and people who get diagnosed for one thing are more likely to have resources and reasons to be diagnosed for another something.

After rereading your msg, I'm concerned you're looking for some sort of thing like "If I'm sufficiently good at X I can't be Y"

I don't think these things work this way. Many folks on the spectrum share some social skills weaknesses, but social skills challenges are not really what makes them on the spectrum.

In all, all models wrong - some models useful. An attitude of viewing these things from the lens of asking if they help you understand yourself and navigate the world is probably best. I was really worried with labels before I kept repeating to myself 'all models wrong, some models useful'

Depression, ADHD, autism, all models. All 'wrong'.Still, useful sometimes. They aren't meant to be the be all end all though, and they only sometimes (maybe often) accurately represent reality, which is a bit of a silly statement, since there isn't one reality to it all.

There we go, I got more confusing sorry :)

No like I know I'm word salad here. I just mean that I wonder to what extent certain tendencies are related to stimulant meds vs a natural desire to like be on my own, playing and entertaining myself, and not relying on anyone else to enrich or make sure I'm ok

Hmm, I suspect for example "rambly long post" is more common ADHD trait on stimulants than off. Maybe that's what you're talking about?

Besides that, I think, generally, traits will be "a combination of reasons."

For example, even before stimulants folks w/ADHD had bursts of energy and attitude that can be similar to stimulant-driven quirks. Those quirks are probably just more common w/meds

When you say "ASPD/autism" do you mean "ASD/autism"? ASPD is something very different (antisocial personality disorder, which sometimes used to be called psychopathy / sociopathy).

My understanding of the term 'spectrum' in this context is less "a scale from 0-100%" and more "a collection of traits which, if you have enough of them, would suggest you fit into this larger category".

In terms of being being able to navigate social situations, look up 'masking'. Many people on the spectrum learn to behave (sometimes very effectively) in 'normal' ways in social situations but it's a set of learned scripts and behaviours rather than being instinctive.

Yes ur correct that was an oversight. ASD/autism, although for all i know theres aspd also. Fugh

ADHD and autism are comorbid in one direction (people with autism are more likely than the general population to have ADHD, but people with ADHD are not more likely than the general population to have autism).

> people with autism are more likely than the general population to have ADHD, but people with ADHD are not more likely than the general population to have autism

I'm pretty sure that's not mathematically possible. If W people have both, X people have only autism, Y people have only ADHD, and Z people have neither, can you provide values for W, X, Y, and Z that would make that claim true?

Alright, you've nerd-sniped me.

Our assumption is that the ratio of people with autism and ADHD to people with just autism is greater than the ratio of people with ADHD to people in general. Using your variables, that is: W / (W + X) > (W + Y) / (W + X + Y + Z). This simplifies out to the constraint that ZW > XY.

We want to show that the ratio of people with autism and ADHD to people with just ADHD is no greater than the ratio of people with just autism to people in general. This is: W / (W + Y) <= (W + X) / (W + X + Y + Z).

We can recognize that this is almost the same as our assumption, just exchanging the roles of X and Y. (I guess that's obvious from the problem statement.) That means our goal is to show that ZW <= YX, which is immediately just the negation of what we're assuming. That would be a contradiction.

So, indeed, this is mathematically impossible!

(EDIT: It's surprisingly hard to write these formulae down in English without getting confused.)

I think something that would be possible is that having ADHD if you have autism is more likely than having autism if you have ADHD. For instance, "being older than 20 if you're older than 30 is more likely than being older than 30 if you're older than 20" is just obviously true, because one entails the other.

You are correct, and my memory failed me: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3876754/

People with autism are highly likely to have comorbid ADHD.

People with ADHD are more likely than normal to have autistic traits, although nowhere near as commonly as the first statement.

W (9), X (1), Y (9), Z (1)

General chance of being in either group: 50% (10 people with autism, 10 with ADHD, 20 total).

Chance of having autism if you have ADHD: 50% (9 with autism, 9 without, 10 total).

Chance of having ADHD if you have autism: 90% (9 with ADHD, 9 without, 10 total).

> General chance of being in either group: 50% (10 people with autism, 10 with ADHD, 20 total).

This is wrong. With your numbers ("W (9), X (1), Y (9), Z (1)"), 18 people would have ADHD, not 10.

We don't need mathematical or conjectural proofs here, it makes intuitive sense but if you find a soecific rebuttal to it we'll be glad to reference that as well

p(h)p(a|h)=p(h|a)p(a) therefore if p(a)=p(a|h) then p(h)=p(h|a) too.

Interesting distinction, thank you

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