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Why take less space when can take more?
Kevin took that advice to heart
I nearly wet myself laughing
It’s still rational if you don’t care about those people though
Willful denial of the feelings of others is irrational in itself. Everything you know about humanity should lead you to believe that others have feelings too
I guess it depends on your definition of “rational”. From a pure logic perspective (i.e. the math definition) being rational just means making optimal choices in pursuit of your goals. I can be perfectly rational, understand that others have feelings, and simply not care about them unless they benefit me. Being perfectly rational basically makes you a sociopath, only considering other factors or people when they further your goals. Emotions and feelings are irrational to begin with, but sometimes it’s better to be a little bit irrational
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Feelings are not rational or not; they are a state and part of the deduction you’re calling logic. Your description of following reason as being sociopathic is wrong. What you are describe is being over-biased to your wants. Nothing about logic says it’s ideal to live only for yourself. Any suggestion of what you should use sense for is arbitrary.
I think you’re just fundamentally misunderstanding what being rational means. There is nothing inherently rational in being selfish or only caring about your own goals and what benefits you, especially not when you are a member of a species that evolved to be extremely social and community focused. Emotions and feelings aren’t inherently irrational either. They can certainly be expressed in irrational ways, but they themselves are neither rational or irrational. They’re just a fact of nature. You might as well say it’s irrational for living creatures to have to excrete waste. Sure, it may be irrational to take a piss on your boss right before asking for a raise, but the act of taking a piss is not in itself rational or irrational. It’s just a bodily function. So if you refuse to take that factor into consideration because you claim it’s irrational, well that’d just be ridiculous.
Imagine a teacher refusing to let a student get up to go to the bathroom because they claim it’s irrational to need to take a piss, and therefore perfectly rational to force them to stay where they are and ignore their bodily needs. The teacher is being selfish in that situation, only making optimal choices in pursuit of their own goals (to teach the class without interruption), and doesn’t care about the other person’s need to perform bodily functions unless it benefits them. And yet I think most people with even half a brain cell will agree that the teacher in this scenario is not in any way shape or form acting rationally. They’re just being a dickhead.
Sociopaths aren’t more rational than other people or “too rational”, they lack the ability to feel empathy or they only feel a small amount of empathy but not enough to affect their decisions. It has nothing to do with being rational or logical, sociopaths can often be very stupid irrational people. Not to mention, while sociopaths often don’t care about how other people feel, they do often care about how other people perceive them.
“Why? Because fuck ‘em. That’s why” turns out is not a rational mind set.
She’s counting on people behind her not doing the rational thing which would be ignoring her and just passing her if there’s lot of empty room in front of her.
You don’t care about the people behind you inline but you still care enough about the people in front of you to wait behind them? Weird lol
Rationality doesn’t exclude emotions or empathy. That’s just being literal, not rational.
Its only the same if you strictly consider ‘the time I stand in this line’.
Its different because everyone behind her loses a feeling of progress from moving up, and it increases the queue length (at least visually) which can impact other people’s decision on which queue to join which, of course can impact the other queues.
To think the way the image suggests is to be inconsiderate to others around you.
losing a feeling of progress
Right, that’s why it says perfectly rationally. If someone is really being perfectly rational they should only care about how long they wait inine, not a feeling of how long they wait. I don’t think being “perfectly rational” is something folks should strive to do.
I don’t think the person’s behaviour is rational at all. The queues in an airport are set up like they are for a good reason, to maximize the amount of people queuing in a given area. That is the rational behind the setup.
The person in the picture is ruining the system based in the time being spent queueing. But she is not considering the space taken up by the queue as a whole. Not very rational.Being impolite isn’t the same as being irrational.
Fuck everyone else though right? That doesn’t sound rational does it? In that case why even wait in the line? Just walk to the front because that will shorten your time
Right, it’s illustrating the foolishness of endlessly pursuing “rationality”, it’s not something people should do. I literally said it’s not a good thing. Just because something is rational doesn’t make it good. Humans are emotional beings.
Nice strawman bro
Except being rational is not void of emotional reasoning, so “perfectly rational” does not mean “thinking without any emotional logic involved whatsoever”. This person isn’t thinking rationally, they’re just thinking very literally.
I think rational in this context doesn’t include emotional logic. I see your point though. I’m just saying I think they’re using the word differently than you.
If it doesn’t include emotional logic when humans are fundamentally emotional beings, then it’s not rational.
Which is why I think it’s clear they’re using the term rational differently and not including emotional logic.
Not only is it the same amount of wait time, but you have to pick up and put down your suitcase less times.
If you can’t lift your bags, pack less.
But it’s just a feeling of progress not actual progress. Whether she moves or not there’s still the same amount of people ahead of you in queue. Plus it’s an airport you queue for the airline that you booked with there’s no decision of queue to impact. The only actual factor is whether or not it spills out past the barriers so she can periodically check and move if that’s the case
The feeling of progress literally affects how our brains perceive time. We experience it passing more quickly when we are moving and feel like we are progressing. To our brains and our perception of time, it very much is the same as actual progress.
Yes and the whole point of the post is about pursuing perfect rationality which means only caring about facts and logic not perception.
True rationality and logic would not dismiss perception. Time is literally relative. How the brain perceives the passage of time and the factors that affect it is a fact of biology. If you perceive time as passing more slowly when you aren’t moving, then being forced to stand still will literally make it take longer for you from your frame of reference.
Absolutely… the subjective experience is an objective fact.
Considering the feelings of others is a thing though, and many airlines have multiple queues even for the single airline. I guess it depends on how large the airport is but the consideration of others remains. Traveling is stressful, why add to that just because you can?
Yes the point of the post is that a single person acting perfectly rationally will be seen as mad by a civil society which is also perfectly illustrated by people saying “yes that does make sense logically but what about my irrational emotional perception of time?”
Unless they considered all of those things and only didn’t move because there wasn’t any point, which to me is ultimately what staying in place is about.
In that very specific situation, yes it’s inconsiderate. We’re missing details like how busy the airport is etc so it’s a little unfair to point out though.
the photo is from someone behind her. Even if one person is behind her then she is being inconsiderate to that person by waiting even if the other elements are not present.
That person behind her could be her partner or friend, we don’t know. I’d imagine in that case they may feel a little stressed, but breaking that stress would be good imo. Why let a line-up bother you? Theres 3 more lines to choose from with hers being the longest. It’s also confirmed not spilling out if you observe the image.
There’s a possibility she’s being inconsiderate, but there’s a bigger possibility she’s fine based on visual evidence over reddit rhetoric.
In the context of the meme shes holding up a line and people are bothered by it. It takes little effort to progress through a queue instead of causing an issue for others just because you can.
It only takes little effort now, because she’s skipped 5 cycles of picking up her bags, progressing a couple feet, setting them back down.
And if noone actually upset was behind her, nothing was lost and she benefits :)
We don’t know if anyone is bothered by it except whoever posted it to the reddit and everyone here imagining a ton of people behind her. The photo might not even be owned by the OP. If someone has evidence of the contrary I’d change my mind, but otherwise there’s 0 reason to be triggered by this.
The person who took the picture is presumably the one who wrote the caption, so unless they’d call their partner or their friends “this girl”, we do in fact know that isn’t the case.
Since this is an airport those lines are likely for different services, not just 3 options for the same service.
If something you’re doing is annoying an entire group of people around you and they’re all asking you to stop, then 9 times out of 10 what you’re doing is inconsiderate. There’s no good reason to just stand there ignoring everyone else instead of moving with the line and conserving space other than because you only care about how you personally feel on principle and your desire to die on a really stupid hill.
If her choice just affected her then that’d be one thing, but she’s forcing her choice on everyone in line behind her regardless of whether they want to keep moving or not. If she wants to stand in place and wait so badly then she can ask someone in front or behind her to remember her place in line and let her back in later (most people are willing to agree to this if asked politely), then she can stand off to the side until her spot gets to the front, and go back to where she was once it’s her turn, then everyone gets what they want.
You can say and do literally anything online. I’d need empirical proof, like the actual OP posting photos with the girl more or something substantial. Not a fucking twitter/X reply to a screenshot of a reddit post from a rage-bait farm.
Until then, this is a hypothetical situation. But in this hypothetical situation, we know there is at least one person behind her. We can estimate there’s at least not enough people to spill into the main area based on the remaining space in the photo showing the last section of the line empty. We gather that data based on a reliable presumption that the neighboring line-ups are fairly identical. At most, anyone behind her is feeling the mad breakdown of societal rules stripping away and beind made fun of in the actual post.
The only context I’m missing is airport procedure, it’s been awhile. I don’t know if one must line up at a specific line for departure check-in.
If she was actually causing problems and being snarky about it, I’d be on that drama. I just don’t see the evidence for being mad, especially for people feeling a little anxious over something that’s probably relieving her of anxiety. Fuck lines and chill out until it’s time. Moving will not change the fact you have to wait.
The person who took the picture is presumably the one who wrote the caption, so unless they’d call their partner or their friends “this girl”, we do in fact know that isn’t the case.
Social media and “like” counts make that statement invalid.
If she wants to stand in place and wait so badly then she can ask someone in front or behind her to remember her place in line and let her back in later (most people are willing to agree to this if asked politely), then she can stand off to the side until her spot gets to the front, and go back to where she was once it’s her turn, then everyone gets what they want.
We can all do that! Just remember what order we were in and stand off to the side until our turn in order comes up. Though, to make sure no one gets in other’s way when it’s our turn, we should stand off to the side in order of who’s place in line is first. Then we can all just stand off out of the way, all queued up!
Wait… what’s that? You’re saying I just made a whole other line in a different spot in a less efficient layout and not the area selected by the airport as closest to our destination? And this person’s “system” only works because she’s the only one doing it and she thinks that she’s figured out a cheat-code for life, but is actually an asshole?
Society would break down if everyone just did the thing that was best just for them with no credence given to anyone else. The only reason she’s able to get away with doing this kind of thing is because everyone else cares more about moving on with their life and the established systems moving forward rather than grinding them to a halt to get her on board. It doesn’t make her more logical. It makes her more selfish.
I’d argue it’s always inconsiderate if there is even one person behind her
It’s less work for everyone involved, because they have to pick up their things fewer times.
The length of the line is determined by how many people are in it, not how close they are standing to each other. Being up in the business of the person in front of you doesn’t make anything go faster.
Also it would be beneficial to a person joining this line, because it has less people in it compared to other wines of the same apparent length.
So the only people who are actually negatively affected are the ones who join other lines. And the neurotic who get irrationally angry at seeing the gap.
That ONLY assumes that everyone is perfectly aware enough to not cause the line to extend out of the allotted area, AND nobody misses the fact that the front of the line moved far enough that they never cause a pause at the front. Assuming everyone has the ability to do this means that there shouldn’t have been a line in the first place. (and nobody has their face in their phone, like the person in the picture)
The line staying in the allotted area doesn’t make TSA work any faster. But you’ll get no argument from me that the people near the front of the line need to be paying attention.
Personally I would rather pick my heavy stuff up for shorter stretches, especially if there’s more than I can carry at once. Can you imagine the chaos of her moving forward 20 feet and each person behind her having to carry two bags forward 20 feet and then run back for their other bag/pet carrier/baby car seat? Especially if they don’t wait for each other? Or someone tries to help but now the helpee can’t say they’re the only one who’s handled that bag? Dragging everything 3 feet at a time is hugely preferable.
It’s not even the same if you strictly consider ‘the time I spend in this line’, which I would assume is to most people the time that actually matters.
Everyone behind her doesn’t just lose the feeling of progress, they lose actual time (granted it’s probably just a few seconds). And she loses that time also.
The actual justification here seems to be that she’s busy doing something on her phone and doesn’t want to be distracted every 30 seconds, which in her mind trumps the handful of seconds she and everyone behind her would gain.
Which imo would be fair enough, if you didn’t have to also add the annoyance of the people behind her to the equation.
Many people standing in such queues are tired, stressed about catching their flight, or otherwise impaired and someone holding up the queue for no obvious reason can become aggravating fast.
If people don’t more forward, the line ends up overflowing past the stanchions and maybe even outside. It’s not the same :P
5th person in line is a mile away on the side of the road outside the airport.
The 10th is on the moon
It’s the same for her, not for everyone behind her. She’s a perfect example of thinking only of herself.
It’s the same for everyone, unless they plan to jump queue.
It’s the same until the line backs up enough to be out of the roped off area.
Technically, same until just before then, unless everybody responds very quickly and joins the line in order with no issue
Its the same for everyone behind her as well, unless you forgot how lines work. Id rather stand still for 5 minutes and move 15 feet than 18 inchs every 30 seconds.
Have you never been to a busy airport before? The lines already fill the breezeway even when they move forward. What do you think is going to happen with the constant flow of people arriving at a line that doesn’t move? It’s going to quickly become a safety hazard.
Been to quite a few, only one that has ever been packed to the point it would matter would have been Dulles. I tend to go to smaller airports.
This is exactly the mentality in the roads on my country “either way there’s traffic so I stop 10 meter from the car in front of me when on the traffic light” then less cars pass the light which means mor traffic waiting at the lights. People just do t get it but they only think about themselves
Behaving rationally in a society means taking into account other people, as that’s literally what a society is. This is irrational and selfish behavior.
I get it, but I’d be worried that someone approaching the queue would see the big gap and mistake it for the back of the line. Then, instead of zig zagging through from the back, they duck under the ropes in front of her. She’d have her face buried in her phone and wouldn’t notice. SO, this puts me in a position of having to watch out for such an occurrence - which stresses me out.
She should just move the fuck up.
Or the queue could get so long that it is no longer within the allotted space and is now obstructing other passengers. It’s true that it is the same for HER if she moves along or waits, but that is not necessarily true for everyone else.
Yeah if more followed her logic it would be a bad scene
There’s presumably people behind her so you’d have to walk past other people in line to do that.
I was going to post saying she isn’t wrong but you changed my opinion. Brb grabbing my pitchfork
Nah, move your ass forwards. It’s no different to you right there in that point in the line.
But at the back of the line its no longer people queuing in the barriers, they have started making up their own queue which has now branched off in two directions and new people arent sure which branch to join. Other people are trying to get to something on the other side of these queues and have to squeeze past people.
I get the logic, and it’s quite a good point if you have unlimited space for the queue, but stop being so entitled and move your stinky ass up the queue.
stinky bum bum
Another point is the perception of progress. We all enjoy a progress bar that gradually fills up to one that sits at 20% then jumps to 100. It reduces our anxiety.
Looks kinda empty to me in the picture
You can’t even see the line behind the lady that is stopped. We have no perspective here. Looks empty from this specific angle, but what’s behind her in the line? There could be hundreds of people for all we know.
Exactly, we don’t know, so let’s not insult her until we have the full context.
She’s not on trial, there’s no punishment for judgement. We are discussing that the situation that is being caused is non-optimal for society and you should tend to move forward with the line at a comfortable pace.
There’s very little upside for leaving that giant gap, and quite a bit of downside if you don’t pay perfect attention to the full situation in front and behind (which you aren’t doing if you’re staring at your phone…)
Well, she obviously doesn’t carry a trebuchet in her backpack, or 50 pounds of Columbian coke up her ass, like I do on every flight.
She is leaving Buenos Aires through Ezeiza, si she might be doing one of those…
i would literally go around her. if it’s all the same to you sweetie, i’ll just behave like a rational person and take all that open space up in line. ain’t nobody (normal) got time for that sh…
If someone askl her to move why don’t she ? As it don’t change anything out worlds both ways. In a society people take care each other. It’s just a stupid and childish behavior
Why would anyone aske her to move? It makes no difference how much space is in front of her. To me, creeping up on the people in front of you is the childish behavior.
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Counterpoint: Because you are not advancing, neither is everyone behind you. And as a result, the experience in the queue is one of stagnation, which makes waiting in the queue more frustrating until the very moment that it’s finally your turn.
So no, I think staying put while the queue ahead of you is moving is worse behaviour than creeping along.
So because the customer service is so abysmal, we should voluntarily engage in our own little acts of self placation to compensate for the liveable hours we’re contributing to the system? That doesn’t seem healthy. Seems like a quick way to end up with absurdly long lines for no discernable benefit.
Following that logic, taking a turn and waiting to be called up, would be the most frustrating outcome of all?
You mean like at the dmv? Yeah, I’d say you’re probably right.
Not quite, you are still aware numbers are being called and you can equate that to progress through the wait. It would be the same if they somehow concealed all sense of forward progress through the queue.
You can still see there are fewer people left in the queue… unless it’s really long and you’re far in the back, but then likely wouldn’t notice much of a difference either.
No, that’s what makes a queue a queue. Think if everyone in the queue acted like this, you wouldn’t have a queue, just a bunch of people standing around without organisation. We move up striaght away to maintain the structure of the queue so we can all tell where it starts and ends, who is I front of and behind who.
If we do not respect the core structure of a queue we surrender to discord and forsake the simple beauty and elegance of the queue and betray the civilation that queue allows us to make.
Source: am British.
well said, I’d also just skip ahead of her since she is no longer in a queue
No, if everyone acted like this it would be a tightly packed queue apart from one gap near the start. There would only be a gap behind her if she was moving too quickly for the person behind her to bother moving, and the whole point is she’s not doing that. The one gap doesn’t matter because of the barriers.
This is why I hate airports. She’s right and her behavior actually makes it better for everyone, but people are too illogical to see it and get angry with her. There are simple logical solutions to every part of the airport experience, but people just do what they’ve always done or behave like dumb animals instead. Like rushing to be at the front of the boarding queue, when seats are reserved. Or crowding tight around the luggage return as if that makes your bag come faster, when if everyone stood back you could casually walk over and pick it up when it came.
It doesn’t make it better, large gaps in the line extend the amount of space the line needs in the facility. During busy hours that would extend the line far out into areas needed for other things.
It’s only the same thing for the person leaving the gap, due to the fact that there’s ropes preventing people from getting between the person standing there and the person in front of them.
Also, if the gap gets big enough that the time spent gathering up your luggage and moving to the front of the line causes delays, those delays will add up during busy times.
It’s a game of chicken at that point, and if everyone acted like that, it would significantly increase wait times.
you would be right, but the social construct of a line is one of managed movement. stand right behind the person in front of you, moving forward every time they adjust their standing position so you’re breathing down their neck the entirety of the queue? wrong. Stand there while a gap enough to fit 10 people opens in front of you? also wrong.
in the first scenario you’re making the person in front of you uncomfortable, in the second scenario you’re making the people behind you frustrated at the lack of movement.
you’re in a walking queue, if walking is inconvenient for you to such a degree that you can’t move forward with the pace of the line, then an accommodation such as a wheelchair, a luggage carrier, or checking in elsewhere should be arranged by you.
she IS in the wrong.
Living in their own smartphone. Just like you while you drive.
Because we don’t know how much space is behind her, and the people waiting behind her. By her not moving to fill the available space, she may wind up causing people to overflow the line.
Reminds me of the solar opposites episode.
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She’s out of line, but she’s right.
Err…
But then the person behind her would just wait to move at all until she’s made it through, the line would continue to grow backwards and each next person would have further to walk, and have to have better prediction times/cause longer waits at the service till.
It’s a meme, don’t over think it.
You can’t “reference a meme” whose text constitutes a response to the discussion (even modifying the quote to make it more applicable to the new situation) and then try to pupu someone when they comment on your response. You’re tryna have your cake, eat your cake, and deflect anyone who mentions that you ate your cake too. And that’s not allowed.
If you wanted to make a non-sequitur, you could have. But you chose to make use of a quote that (by omission of further context) espouses agreement albeit grudging agreement with one of the two prevalent positions being discussed and so you’re now in the discourse.
What is rational for YOU might not be optimal for SOCIETY. This is the first lessons taught to toddlers when they learn about social ettiquete and mores.
Lubricate don’t agitate, is another neat saying. Some things just help everyone stay calm and feel in control in shitty situations, it’s not the time to make edge lord points.
you ask once and if they refuse you bypass them.
if they stop you, apologize then wait for them to get distracted again and go.
it won’t take them long to keep up with the line, I guarantee it.
But why would you do that? She’s in front of you in the queue, so unless you have priority, human etiquette dictates that you should wait for your turn.
Skipping the line is just being mean to the people you skipped.
I’d argue that by not moving up she’s opted out of the queue and is no longer participating
I said if they stopped me I’d apologize.
You also said you’d try again - it’s not a real apology
why is my apology not real?
But shes still right. Assuming that everyone is still in the queue area and not overflowing into the general concourses, it does not matter when she moves. The forward progress is an illusion if youre still queued after you move.
but it does matter.
if she doesn’t move then I will go in front of her.
she can stand there all day if she wants.
The post isn’t about a solution. It’s about how we think and how we act. About which of those things we do are based on what makes sense, or what people think makes sense.
i wasn’t offering a solution, I was pointing out a flaw in your rational.
your rational is how you think and act.
I have no idea what that last sentence means.
You could move in front of her if she were right behind the person in front of her too. All it proves is that you’re a dick
I’m a dick for getting in line? sure, imma be a dick for getting in line.
yes
Do you think she was keeping track of whether people were overflowing into the general concourses ?
Yes, in the thought experiment sense. If the premise is that she only moves rationally, a rational time to move is to keep the queue in the queue.
Realistically, outside of the thought experiment? Probally not so much. Maybe in a general background way.
The forward progress is an illusion if youre still queued after you move.
Only if you count the amounts in the queue; if you count the positions, you’re still making progress because you have materially moved closer to the finish line: you’ll spend more time in the queue being “closer” than “farer” to the finish.
She could cause folks to ito be in the queue lanes, and be left in the “open walking space” of the terminal, thus materially decreasing the usage of folks not trying to join that line.
I think it’s just people want the illusion of the line moving so they can feel safe of reaching the end of the line, cause at the airport you want to the quickest way to your gate.
Yeah, it makes sense, but thats a emotional choice. You do that because it feels good, it seems productive. I think this is pointing out shuffling forward 2ft every 2 minutes is actually more of a waste of effort then going 40ft in 20 min. You need to exert some common background attention that we all just got used to doing with the shuffle way. The “leap forward” method is likely more mechanically efficent in a minute sense.
It feels better, but it’s technically worse.
Emotional and rational get damn chummy when my missing my flight becomes a risk. I seek to eliminate unknowns to 0, such that I am SURE I’ll make my flight. Each checkpoint is an unknown of trouble, and until I’m papered and present at my gate I am seeking choices to arrive there.
