Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Plumbers always have the best restaurant recommendations

Whenever I use the security lane at an airport, I enjoy watching people retrieving their bags and metallic items when they emerge from the X-ray machine. You can quickly divide the population into two: a small minority of ‘logistically aware’ systems-thinkers and the logistically challenged majority.

To anyone with a grasp of systems thinking, it is obvious that the throughput of a security line is reduced when only a few people can retrieve their belongings at once. People who self-importantly collect their stuff as soon as it exits the scanner are slowing the queue by 70 per cent or more. The answer is first to remove empty trays from the end of the belt, pushing any full trays as far as they can travel; this leaves far more full trays in reach of their owners at any one time, freeing many people to retrieve their laptops, car keys and coins simultaneously.

Interestingly the people who grasp this are not the people you might expect. It’s never the educated middle-class holidaymaker, but a scaffolder called Dave on his way to Magaluf. It’s one of those areas where intellectual and social standing are inversely correlated with quality of judgment.

Indian restaurant recommendations are like this. Whenever I have tried an Indian eatery on the advice of a knight of the realm or a Nobel laureate, I get served crap Frenchified muck. When a plumber or a builder recommends a curry house, however, it’s always bang on the money.

In recommending a restaurant, the eminent are more interested in displaying sophistication and discernment than in relaying useful information. It is this signalling instinct that led to the culture wars. A noisy minority has co-opted the focus of political debate from discussing how problems can best be solved, to demonstrating how much you care about those problems.

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