> There are endless examples of the same sort and that pose the exact same conundrum.

Yes, there are countless cases of it actually making sense to have a spare bedroom. But that's beside the point. My point was that for a lot of people it is a decision that they take instinctually, but does not really make sense.

I really think that's the crux of the matter: these things are all personal preferences that stem from a deeply emotional place, and emotion rarely makes sense according to the laws of logic.

For example: my parents have a truck, a van, and an SUV. Do they need all of those vehicles? No. Do they get used all the time? Yes: my parents are both avid gardeners, they generously lend their vehicles to those who happen to need a truck or a van for the day, and I have several younger siblings who occupy them the rest of the time.

And even if they didn't, I could well see my dad still owning a truck purely for the convenience of being able to drive to the local garden center and pick up a load of mulch on a whim - even if in practice that happened twice a year.

Emotions are strange things.

I guess I don't understand the advantage of having a truck over just doing Home Depot scheduled deliveries, if it's only a few times a year. He's paying like $1,000 for each of those two mulch runs, it's much cheaper just to pay someone else to deliver it to you in their truck, and I'd say it's a lot more convenient, since they're doing all the work there. What am I missing there?

>"for a lot of people it is a decision that they take instinctually, but does not really make sense."

And for a lot of people it does. so what's your point. People will figure out what makes them feel good. They do not need help in this department

The point is loss aversion is a cognitive blind spot which results in people being less happy.

Perhaps you really do make use of a guest bedroom often enough it’s worth spending 10’s of thousands on. But isn’t the case everywhere. Perhaps you’re wasting money on excessive car insurance etc across a lifetime of choice it adds up to a massive drag.

In terms of EV’s people are spending more time driving to stations because they picture the once a year vacation driving taking 1 hour longer rather than the wasted 5 minutes 48 weeks a year which costs them 4.

None of what you say applies to me.

Think whatever you want, but loss aversion is a well studied issue. And you are definitely making sub optimal decisions because you’re human.

In the end I’m just describing a common mistake, not suggesting you specifically should buy an EV or whatever.

>"And you are definitely making sub optimal decisions because you’re human."

Nope. I prefer to do what I want. And want is the criteria and hence optimal by definition. What others might think about it does not matter at all.

This is about what would actually make you happier down the line, not about what other people think.

If you could accurately predict what would make you happy, and decide based on that, it would be optimal.

You don't.

> so what's your point.

My point is that there is a cognitive bias towards overweighting the allocation of resources toward low-frequency events.

> My point is that there is a cognitive bias towards overweighting the allocation of resources toward low-frequency events.

As I pointed out upthread, low frequency is not the same as low probability.

It might not make sense to upfront allocate resources for a low probability event, but it certainly could make sense for a high probability event even if it was low frequency ... like a spare bedroom, or a dining room, or a car with good range.

The probability of using those things are 1 i.e. guaranteed.

I think you’ll probably also find that the “spare” bedroom in many houses ends up getting used for other things—storage, a hobby room, (famously) perhaps an office or second office.

My spare bedroom has a futon couch but I actually use the space for various other things most of the time. Most people may have space that’s underutilized much of the time but that doesn’t mean it’s sealed off until they have an overnight guest or a large dinner part. Things aren’t that binary.

I'm surprised to see such a bad take on resource allocation on HN.

When provisioning servers, do you average your throughput and get enough capacity for that average?

Of course not, that would be assinine. You need to be able to serve 24 hours a day, even - especially - during your edge cases. Follow your advice and explain to the CEO that since Black Friday is a "low frequency event," it's fine that your site was down during that one day.

A better argument is that you should choose things, including houses and cars, based on edge cases since that is where meaningful differentiation occurs. If I take one road trip each quarter and my car is unable to handle it, then I bought the wrong car.

No, the correct analogy would be paying for, maintaining, and storing enough servers for Black Friday year round when the option existg to rent them on Black Friday for 1% the cost.

What exactly do you think AWS does mate, during black Friday?

Exactly my point

Unless your point is that someone should somehow rent an extra bedroom in their own house, it isn't. Such things aren't fungible.

Maybe not with the once per quarter road trip. That might not be a bad frequency for renting a nice road trip vehicle. But I generally agree with what you are saying.

You do not really know how low the frequency is for a particular person and how important those events are. I think you are making baseless guesses.

Some of these are family, friends I know very well, and even myself in the past. So I have some reliable information.

I honestly wonder how your friends and family feel about this attitude. Do you think they share it?

Having read his comments, my guess is that family members don't want to burn the bridge and put up with it, for the sake of family.

How is renting a room in a local pub inadequate? I did it for my wedding reception and it was, pardon my french, a fucking blast.

I think it's one of those things that if you don't get it, you don't get it(and that's fine). There is an emotional element to hosting your guests in your own home - if you don't feel that way then well, there's no need to argue about it, no one is right or wrong here.

It requires:

- Up front planning

- A pub to exist nearby. While I as a presumably fellow Brit would not buy a house without being able to walk to multiple pubs, that is not the common case in the US where I actually live.

- The pub to have a room that it rents out. Again, not the common case even in London, let alone in the US.

- Your potential guests to be OK with being at a pub.

- Potentially childcare. If you have to have your party away from your house, you can't put your kids to bed and return to your guests, you have to go home. That part, if you will pardon my French, really fucking sucks.

> Up front planning

Hosting your own party has a lot more planning. And don't discount the planning that went into obtaining your own party room in the first place.

> A pub to exist nearby. While I as a presumably fellow Brit would not buy a house without being able to walk to multiple pubs, that is not the common case in the US where I actually live.

Don't get hung up on the 'pub' part. It can be a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.

It can even be another room in your house. Move some furniture around, put in some speakers, BAM, party room.

> Hosting your own party has a lot more planning.

It really doesn't. I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so. Most of my neighbours are the same.

> a restaurant, public park, street (block party), arcade, bowling alley, or whatever is fun and convenient for you.

- Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.

- Drinking in public parks is not typically permitted, nor is street drinking.

- Arcades and bowling alleys are out in the burbs and require driving to.

What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.

I don't care whether you like that or not - I'm not the one who was getting "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.

Yeah. In practice I’d probably coordinate food, make something, and make a run to the liquor grocery store but I could also easily handle 8-10 people showing up at my door.

> I don't care

We’re all well aware now that you don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself and your fancy desires.

I bet you’re real fun at your awful house parties.

Twat.

> Restaurants do not like large groups showing up without reservations, and the cost is wildly different.

Keep in mind this cost is compared to an extra or bigger room in your house. You can throw many restaurant parties for the money you'd spend on a larger house. (Invest the difference and the restaurant parties are effectively free)

Sure, you could.

I don't really understand what people are imagining here though - it's not like "entertaining space" is some gilded-age ballroom for most people making this choice, and the price difference matters if and only if there is an otherwise comparable house you can buy that meets your other constraints.

Even if you buy a house with an entertaining space, you can use it for something that you do more often. For instance, my house had a 'dining room' but I use it as a music studio/band practice room. This way it gets used every single day.

Ours is being used as an office right now, and has been like that since 2020. Still has a dining table, but it's pushed up against a window and home to indoor plants right now, and we've gotten rid of the chairs since then (they were old and beaten up anyway).

Also I don't think it always makes sense to get a smaller house. We got a smaller house and I kind of regret it now, since housing prices and mortgage rates have shot up so much it's now so much harder to upgrade (and the house we got was intended to be a starter home), and also we'd get so much more if we sold a larger house today than our house now.

For example, let's assume prices went up about 50% on average in the past five years for the sake of easy math (not too far from how much my home actually did go up after a reappraisal last year). Buy a house at $300k and it goes up 50% means you can sell it for $450k and make $150k out of it. But buy a $500k home and it goes up 50%, means you can sell it at $750k and made $250k out of it. Granted you're making higher payments that whole time as well but not as much as it went up.

That math doesn't make as much sense now, with prices starting to dip a bit and high mortgage rates muting demand somewhat, however.

You are overstating the difficulty of finding and renting a public place. It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.

You are also discounting the costs you have already sunk into throwing your own parties ("I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.")

> What is fun and convenient for me is to have parties at my house, in the entertaining space space that does not require manual labour to reconfigure.

Good, I'm happy that you know what you want and are pleased. But I didn't say it was impossible to derive value from that.

> "kind of annoyed" by the preferences of others.

More frustrated with the way some people try to fulfill those preferences, and that every time I bring it up people get so defensive.

Look, no offence, but I'm a lot less likely to go to your rented public space for a party than I am to drop over to the over poster's house for dinner. They're not comparable experiences, other than being social events.

I also think you underestimate how often many people (especially in more social cultures) socialise. It could be literally 100's of times per year.

Exactly. The insight in this thread into how solitary (I would say lonely, one-dimensional) some HN users' lives are has shocked me.

I'm not going to go to the room you rented at a local business, bring a six pack of interesting beers to try together, bring my baby that my friends have been so excited to meet and play with, etc. My friends who like weed aren't going to show up. Not to mention holidays, the hardest time to rent public spaces and the most likely time for friends to gather...

> It takes about 20 minutes starting with looking up 'party space' on google maps.

Sure. “Hi, I know it’s closing time, but can I rent your party space for my friends and I to drink our own alcohol in starting in 15 minutes time” is not exactly the kind of call a landlord would be particularly receptive to.

I think we’re done here.

> I have a backstock of beer and wine and cheese and a subscription to Apple Music, I can literally do it with 15 minutes notice, and have had plenty of practice at doing so.

The party you're describing doesn't sound like it needs a dining room.

Okay. Then how should we measure the emotional value of seeing and smelling gasoline? Experiencing the nostalgia of pumping gasoline just like the good old days of yore? Can you see the problem here? People ascribe emotional value to all sorts of things that may be financially unwise or environmentally damaging. You waste your money I don't care; but we all have one earth to protect.

My point is, climate change is an extremely big threat that we simply don't have much room for these affordances. 2024 is the year to make personal sacrifices to switch to EVs because that's how urgent the situation is.

I’m pro-ecosystem and pro-weaning off fossil fuels. I’m also tired of the argument that we’re at the point where it’s a do-or-die for individuals to make monetary/QoL sacrifices to switch to EVs as if we had reached the point where this is what’s left and blocking the world from putting an end to global warming.

Maybe focus on area that will have a bigger impact then yet again, foisting the responsibility onto the consumer. Subsidize railroads and public transit, build out commuter rail, reduce air travel, electrify the railroads, move more freight onto rail, electrify trucks.

There are far better targets to reducing the amount of oil and gas burned, ones that are more uniform and less varied them peoples lives not to mention moving people to transit and commuter rail is better then evs anyways

The areas you are describing may have bigger impact like switching to railroads and public transit, but they are more difficult to achieve than switching to EVs and represent a bigger change to people's lifestyles. Relying on that is not going to work. Be practical. If I'm downvoted when I said let's make personal sacrifices to switch to EVs, can't you see the amount of personal sacrifice is way bigger to switch to rail and public transit?

The carbon comes from the ground. The car’s just the delivery mechanism. Why not phase out fossil fuel production à la the Montreal Protocol? If somebody somewhere someday can make money burning oil, they will. Buying an electric car isn’t going to keep carbon in the ground by itself.

And, as long as there are wars to be fought, the military is happy to burn the fuel by the millions of gallons per day.

Finally! Someone who says it the way I see it. I believe the personal-responsibility-as-a-framework (PRAAF) for solving pollution problems is a joke. I genuinely believe that big petrochemical companies and other stakeholders pushed this story to be able to d business as usual for as long as possible. I know it's true for the "plastics recycling" narrative. Which is and has always been a joke¹ and the petrochemical companies know this. We should not strofe about whether range anxiety is a real problem or not. We should unite to keep oil companies responsible for destroying the climate. They are the ones that made sure every little town in america had a fuel station, thus creating demand, they lobbied against electric cars, they downplayed climate change. We should not wave our finger at other individuals who's contribution to climate change is negligible. We should unite with people who have range anxiety and fix these problems. Force Exxon Mobile/BP/Shell to install fast chargers in every town where there is a fuel station. Force them to install fast chargers all over the country as a start of the reparations for destroying the climate.

¹ https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

Isn't phasing out fossil fuel basically already announced as a goal by various governments around the world? To make that goal realistic, EVs are a stepping stone; you simply can't phase out the production of something when the consumption hasn't been phased out yet.