But what if people sometimes know what they're talking about?

[nancylebov]

A while ago, there was a study which turned up that the difference between very good chess players and other chess players is that the very good players think about what happens if their preferred move doesn't work.

Here is a rant with about not getting accurate information about food allergens followed by a shocking number of comments about people who slip allergens to the allergic because "the allergy is all in their heads". While I'd heard of this happening, it was done by an especially malevolant person--I had no idea it was common behavior.

Aside from going into "I hate people" mode, is there any conceivable way to teach people to ask themselves, "But what if it doesn't work?"?

++++++++

Lunacon was at a new hotel this year, and as is commonly the case, the management didn't believe anything the committee said about how much the attendees would be using the restaurant, elevators, or anything else. Is this a matter of people just don't believe what they're told and/or that if you have a business, people will tell you how to run it, and the accuracy level isn't especially high? Could it be worthwhile for fans to put together an educational packet for new hotels with pictures of crowded restaurants, numbers from past conventions, and quotes from con-experienced hotel managements?

Comments

[redbird]

I suspect part of the con hotel problem is that, if a hotel is used to doing other sorts of conferences and not science fiction conventions, they've seen a pattern of "what conference attendees do" and don't quite believe that we're different. Because everyone thinks they're special. An educational packet with numbers and references might be useful: the trick would be getting it looked at.

On the "but what if it doesn't work?" I wonder whether it would work to say "Maybe some allergies are like that, but not all of them. Look at it this way: if you're right, this person has gotten a tasty meal. If you're wrong, the least that happens is that you're cleaning up bits of used scone from the kitchen floor. At worst, they could die. Is that sense of satisfaction worth having to clean up vomit from the floor of your nice business? Is even your grandmother's best recipe worth dying for? Worth going to prison on manslaughter charges for?"

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Thing is, the hotel industry already has detailed dossiers on science fiction conventions; our demographics and habits are perfectly well known and documented in industry publications such as Meeting News. Any hotel manager with an ounce of sense can find out everything they need to know about us in minutes. There's a limit to what any concom can do when hotel management decides to simply be stupid.

I do wonder why Lunacon moved from that wonderful hotel in Rye to the godforsaken Meadowlands. Granted, it did simplify matters by eliminating that uncertain few weeks I often experience in February and early March wondering whether I would actually go to Lunacon this year.

[deor.livejournal.com]

I was hoping to make LunaCon this year but wasn't able to in the end. Aside from the "newbie hotel with no clue about sf cons" thing, how was the hotel?

(Oh, and the long sequence of plus signs in your posts breaks my browser view. Could you please shorten such things in the future, or just use a regular HTML horizonal rule (hr) divider instead? Thanks.)

[ckd]

I'm reminded of the stories from the 1994 Worldcon, where Northwest had the only jet service from the US to Winnipeg, and didn't believe that the usual overbooking percentages wouldn't work....

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

The part of all of this that surprises me is that the best chess player I know distinctly does not think about what will happen if his strategies don't work. (He actually becomes *exceedingly* angry if you do anything unexpected and demands an explanation as to why you did that, this move made more sense for you, etc.)

Perhaps he could be even better.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Could it be worthwhile for fans to put together an educational packet for new hotels with pictures of crowded restaurants, numbers from past conventions, and quotes from con-experienced hotel managements?

Answer: No. Because even when they have all the information, the hotels won't believe it until they see it. I attended the Lunacon gripe session, and the con comm said they gave the hotel all the relevant data in advance including (most significantly) the fact that there would be 1,200+ fen descending on the hotel. But the hotel wouldn't believe it, largely because it contradicted their experience; in 18 years of operation, they had never had a convention actually *make* its room block...

If it doesn't Work

[dmsherwood53.livejournal.com]

In a civilised country such would be taught in kindergarden