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MrMind comments on Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016 - Less Wrong
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I went to a party recently, and the host provided the food. At the end of the party, there was an awful lot left over, and my understanding is that most of it went to waste.
I had a thought when this was happening: if I was the host, why not keep track of how much food my guests actually ate, and try adjusting the amount of food at my next party to match?
The host was not a rationalist, as I suspect most hosts aren't, but upon researching the issue, it doesn't seem as if there's a widespread solution.
There are charities that focus on "recycling" food waste, and there are plenty of suggestions for how much food to bring to parties of various size, and yet I still have the experience of purchasing/preparing far too much food for parties, and almost every party I go to has far too much food available.
What exactly is going on, and how can it be made better? It seems to me as if this is a reasonably low-hanging fruit - getting people to properly estimate how much food people actually consume at parties in order to reduce food waste. It's the sort of calculation any restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet has clearly made in order to determine their price point.
Is this a publicity issue, that people don't realize they can optimize the amount of food they purchase and prepare? Or is it psychological, related to akrasia or a bias? I've been told that a host's greatest fear is that they run out of food, but why? Is the way to attack this problem through exposing that fear as unfounded?
This is one of the first external questions I've considered, since committing fully to instrumental rationality.
I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter.
Thanks.
TL;DR:
Why do people waste food at parties? Is this a solvable problem?
The reason parties are oversupplied with food is because the incentives are asymmetrical. Specifically, the loss from having too much food is considerably smaller than the loss from having too little food.
Having insufficient food is a significant loss of status since you failed as a host to provide proper hospitality. There are a bunch of obvious historical and cultural reasons why not being able to feed your guests is a bad thing, status-wise.
Having too much food is just a matter of some wasted money and/or having to eat leftovers for few days. Not a big deal at all nowadays.
That calories are used as social lubricant irks me a lot. I understand why it was so in the past, but we live in a world filled to the brim with food, do we really need tens of thousands of calories at any social gathering?
The answer is obiously not, indeed it would be beneficial to lower the amount circulating... But as Lumifer spotted and wannabe rationalists often overlook, what appears as waste and irrationality is actually a situation optimized for status.
Ignoring status is almost always a bad idea, BUT: we can always treat it as just another contraint.
Given that we need to optimize for status and waste reduction, what could we do?
These are just from a less than five minute brainstorming session, I'm sure someone invested in this would come up with much more interesting and creative ideas.
In the Western world where obesity is rampant, why do you want to pressure people into eating more?
Generally speaking, the party-leftovers issue doesn't strike me as much of a problem. I suggest doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the harm it causes.
Well, because that's what the problem statement asked for! But yeah, it's probably a forgotten purpose: what should be optimized is the amount of food not wasted, not how much food remains at the end of the party.
It's not indeed! But it's a nice simple little world, I took it as an exercise in rationality.
I don't think this is really a status thing, more a "don't be a dick to your guests" thing. Many people get cranky if they are hungry, and putting 30+ cranky people together in a room is going to be a recipe for unpleasantness.
But there is a difference between having an amount appropriate to avoid crankiness and more than can be eaten.
But like, there's variation in how much food people will end up eating, and at least some of that is not variation that you can predict in advance. So unless you have enough food that you routinely end up with more than can be eaten, you are going to end up with a lot of cranky people a non-trivial fraction of the time. You're not trying to peg production to the mean consumption, but (e.g.) to the 99th percentile of consumption.
You seem to think that people that are not completely satiated are automatically cranky. That doesn't match my observation.
Also you may have multiple dishes. For example we mostly start with a collaboratively prepared soup - which thereby will be the right size by construction. Later we have some snacks or sweets or fruits. First the fresh ones, later if needed packaged ones.
I don't think I need that for my argument to work. My claim is that if people get, say, less than 70% of a meal's worth of food, an appreciable fraction (say at least 30%) will get cranky.
Then maybe we have different experience. Or differently selected people around us.
I like your suggestions. Asking people whether they want to take leftovers is an option I have seen used a lot.
That doesn't sound to me like it's compatible with "optimizing for status".
The sentence was perhaps ambiguous: I meant that the pressure for eating leftovers derived from the stages, from the fact that that particular food in x minutes will be no longer available. You know, the usual scarcity trick.
Not that the patron should encourage attendees to finish their plates :)
I think that frequently people don't want to eat the last thing because it means that other can't eat the last thing, but social norms might vary.