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jsteinhardt comments on Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 11 July 2016 07:09AM

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Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 July 2016 03:45:52PM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 13 July 2016 07:35:14PM -1 points [-]

But there is a difference between having an amount appropriate to avoid crankiness and more than can be eaten.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 July 2016 09:01:50PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 13 July 2016 10:55:11PM -2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 14 July 2016 01:17:27AM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 14 July 2016 08:16:33PM 0 points [-]

Then maybe we have different experience. Or differently selected people around us.