Donating forks to the dining hall
ben.page
ben.page
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.
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.
That would maybe cover the cost of the pex itself, OR the cost of fittings and tools, but probably not both.
it's disturbing that people saying things like 'I would bet that running a single load of synthetic clothes in the dryer creates more microplastic than making 1000 cut and crimped connections of PEX tubing.' get flagged to death as if they were spamming penis enlargement pills; that comment was obviously correct
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.
Otherwise if there's a sign that says "Left Lane Closed 10 Miles Ahead" everyone will get in the right lane for ten miles.
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.
Allegedly there are three cities with worse drivers, but I find that highly implausible
Regardless Columbus has a great lack of turn signals and understanding of basic intersection rules.
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.
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.
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
when they see my signal they are behind me so making it much more difficult to merge cleanly - i can either hop over as soon as i signal (not safe) or brake so i can merge behind them, where if they hadn't sped up i'd just move over naturally in the flow of traffic
it really feels to me like your comments are meant to needle my complaint re: folks not understanding the zipper merge, am i misreading you? do you think the zipper merge should not be used?
This is how you're supposed to merge. When you get on the freeway you don't expect the current flow of traffic to accommodate for you, instead you accommodate for them.
"it really feels to me like your comments are meant to needle my complaint re: folks not understanding the zipper merge, am i misreading you? do you think the zipper merge should not be used?"
I am not sure you're understanding how it's supposed to work... People in the flowing lane aren't meant to stop or slow down to let you over.
The zipper action is meant when it's backed up. The zipper lane isn't designed for you to disrupt the current flow of traffic.
Edit: here's a video, maybe it will help you understand better
> This is how you're supposed to merge. When you get on the freeway you don't expect the current flow of traffic to accommodate for you, instead you accommodate for them.
Specifically, you should read the rest of the line you are replying to here.
I mentioned people behind me speeding up to make it impossible for me to merge without braking, after I signal. At no point did I say they should "stop" or "slow down".
I was pointing out that people deliberately speeding up to make it harder to merge without braking are causing problems. It was a light-hearted comment about the failure of many drivers in my town to properly zipper merge.
Here is a video demonstration of zipper merge to help you better understand appropriate driving behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX0I8OdK7Tk
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!"
Duh.
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.
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.
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.
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
It's more efficient to develop traffic rules that work in how people are not how they should ideally be.
Where do you draw the line though when catering to the uniformed? There is a reason we hire SME's.
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.
Its no different than how a freeway entry works.
The general rule is, no, they are not. Unfortunately there is really no penalty in the US if you're following to close unless you get in an accident. I quite often drive on I-35 and so often it's in conditions I call a fast moving traffic jam. People are traveling nearly 80MPH with 2 car distances between each other. Quite often this turns into multi car pileups because someone has to emergency break.
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.
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.
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.
I never thought of it as a moral thing, but I merge as early as possible (ideally, I set myself up in the lane I need for the entire trip and avoid merging at all) simply because it's the safest thing to do.
When I don't do this, I will either miss the exit I want, or I'll get stuck at a standstill waiting for the rare kind soul in the lane next to me to let me in.
As far as I can tell, the formal name is "population dynamics".
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.
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.
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."
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.
In the classic prisoner's dilemma, your payoff is +3 if you defect and the other prisoner doesn't, +2 if neither of you defects, +1 if both of you defect, and 0 if you don't defect and they do. There's no Jerk Threshold in this problem - regardless of your opponent's behavior, in isolation, you are always better off defecting.
But let's add the extra Antijerk Term - call it A - that you pay to defect. This could be you feeling bad about defecting, or it could represent the chance that you face retaliation for defecting later, whatever - there's some slight cost to being a jerk. We can see how the Jerk Threshold changes.
Your payoff matrix is now [[2, 3-A], [0, 1-A]]. If your opponent has a probability p of defecting, you can compute:
E[cooperate] = p * 0 + (1-p) * 2 = 2 - 2p, with the former term corresponding to you getting screwed and the latter corresponding to cooperation.
E[defect] = p * (1-A) + (1-p) * (3-A) = 3 - 2p - A, with the former term corresponding to the defect-defect state and the latter one being you screwing them.
For A < 1, 2 - 2p < 3 - 2p - A, so you're still in a prisoner's dilemma. But for A > 1, the problem abruptly shifts into a cooperation game, because 2 - 2p > 3 - 2p - A for A > 1.
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In this case, the Jerk Threshold abruptly shifts from 0 to 1 (that is, nothing could make you cooperate -> nothing could make you defect). But in the real world, the A term varies depending on context. The A term with a friend is very high, because you have a lot of opportunity for retaliation and they'll feel especially bad screwing you over. The A term with a stranger you're somewhat hostile to is low (maybe even negative). And A varies from actor to actor - some of us have stronger consciences than others. So you end up with bubbles where there's a stable local equilibrium (because the A values are high internally and that maintains stable cooperate-cooperate equilibria) despite differences with the outside world.
Properly modeling this probably looks something like the Ising model [1] on some complicated social graph. Which explains why we see these kinds of phase transitions - most real graphs are dense enough to have them. The bubbles we just described correspond to magnetic domains, and the incentives not to cooperate while in contact with a defect-bubble (or vice-versa) correspond to the high potential energy of domain walls.
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.
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.
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.
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).
If it is a fire door then it can also be a fire code violation.
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...
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.
But if one buys a bunch of them, people start trusting that they will be available, and will hoard less!
Your solution sounds easier, though.
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 :)
When management realizes they don't need to complain that the work doesn't get done, they just do the work themselves
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".
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.
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.
GP didn't say it was a bad school.
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.
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!
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.
With that kind of marking it’s like they want me to take it!
All this post makes me think of is what other commonly-stolen objects one could put advertising on.
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.
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.
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.
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 £30 pan rather than reach into the Stank Tank, so I can believe it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As soon as you introduce coercion, the type of people motivated by power are attracted to the power to coerce and corruption takes root.
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.
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?
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.
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.
beware brittle balsa basilicas
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?
I think that last bit is tongue-in-cheek. That’s my read, anyway.
I have also been quite generous with friends, trying to teach them the way. However, I've found that I'm just enabling bad habits in careless people, and before you know it I've run out of anything popular. So now, I still flood my zone, in secret, and let others fend for themselves.
From this, we can perhaps extrapolate a "fork drift" factor that the school could then use to determine future fork ordering? ;)
It's a good problem to think about, and I hope most people consider it in their work.
That might explain the appeal to me of spoons that have the very noticeably rounded edges, more rounded than they need to be. :)
The problem could have been solved in many ways but it was a nice hobby for me. I ended up switching to work there as an employee and have been for ten years. I still use the mugs so it worked out OK.
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.
I think I've found the explanation for the original shortage.
That's not how altruism works.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you yourself not an observer? If you feel good about having done it, it can't be completely selfless, you are benefiting by feeling good.
I realise I'm splitting hairs here, just to re-iterate - I'm not trying to take away from kind acts.
altruistic does not mean hair-shirted
Kids shouldn't go to college
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.
I see someone's ERP system is in need of a manual stocktake!