Actualization Hotel

Actualization Hotel

Samuel Bird

Welcome to my hotel, the Actualization Hotel. It is wonderful to have you! You have likely heard what a place this is and must have remarked as you walked toward it, “oh how marvelous and magnificent.” There is a strong sense of atmosphere here from the marble pillars that frame your entrance To the grandeur of the structure. This hotel is the greatest of its kind to have ever been. It is also currently the tallest hotel and even building in the world. Unfortunately, the money that we spent to make the building so large, left us with a single elevator that moves at an oddly slow speed. Still, join us here and I would gladly show you around. This is the lobby area. People wait here before they arrive or depart. Most importantly is the front desk. This is where you pay and learn about room selection. Now, we knew when we built the place that if we put the best rooms at the bottom, they would fill up as no one would want to wait for the top of the elevator for the best of the rooms. For this reason, the worst of the rooms are lower, the best at the top, with a scale of degrees between. Now here is the catch, how long are you willing to stay on the elevator? 

We never have guests just stay on this first floor, as the rooms are so cramped and ugly. However, we have never had someone occupy the top floor either, as it is too long to wait for, no matter how wonderful it was. This ruined our goal of getting all rooms filled, but we got most between. See, everyone is willing to wait sometime to not have the worst possible room. However, not a single person has been willing to spend their entire stay here at Actualization hotel, waiting to get to their room in that slow elevator. I explain the extremities to you, because I do not want you to waste your time in opting out what everyone does. It can be tempting to hear a series of options and simply choose the most extreme one because it helps you narrow it down. No, this is going to be a difficult choice. Will you have to do some sort of calculus to solve for how far to go? Well, that is where it gets difficult. We can name the speed of the elevator as a constant, minus some small acceleration, and explain how much better the features get as we go up the floors. However, we don’t know how you would like each given floor enough before you stopped to get out and see it. We also know that if you got out and looked around, we would have to wait for the elevator to accelerate, be back to that slow speed, and that is only if we are so lucky that no one else needed it at that time. There is another variable that we don’t have.

You mentioned you don’t know how much time you will have during your stay here. If you choose a floor that is two high above you, perhaps you are called away before you even get to see it, and I do apologize, but the large price of entry is non-refundable. Multi-variable qualitative reasoning will not do the trick. However, there is another medium our guests often find helpful in this decision process. There are three sorts of logics that deal with three sorts of facts or series of questions. The first is non-logical reasoning. This is when something is purely subjective and does not tie back into the world, except for the instance. Think of your favorite flavor of ice cream. Could you convince everyone of that same flavor being superior? You could get them to agree that a certain quality is best like most dopamine released in the brain or most healthy, and then infer your flavor has that. Otherwise, you are left in the world of opinions, which are certainly not evil, but struggle to ground to the world around us. The second type of reasoning is monological. This is when the precision of the question at hand is so exact, that it has a clear binary outcome of true or false. Take eight divided by two. Your opinion would likely not alter the a priori thought in the mind and posteriori experience of dividing objects, equalling four every time. That calculus I attempted to do with you was a great example of seeing if this fit into that field, which it did not. 

That is not to say we can’t be exact with ideas. With monological logic, we have deductive logic. Assuming that the individual premises of a valid deductive argument are true, the conclusion MUST be true, as surely as math equals what it does. These smaller arguments even have cute names. Take modus ponens. This is where we have a conditional statement and we affirm the “if,” to then get the “then.” For example, if I take too long to explain this, it will ruin your stay here. The first is called the antecedent and we can affirm it by saying it did happen therefore so did the conclusion. The second is called the consequent and we can deny it as the effect or output, therefore denying the input or cause. For example, I could say that I am taking too long to explain this. If that is true and the conditional is true, it is necessary that the conclusion is true and your experience is ruined. We can again deny the latter or, your experience was not ruined therefore I must not have talked too much. We can try to deny the first and affirm the second, and maybe we happen to be right, but we can’t control it. If we can measure things into numbers, we can be exact as far as we measure correctly. If we can assume our premises are true, and the argument is valid, the conclusion must be valid. 

However, it is a shame to waste your time so, but this situation is not this type of logic. It is not an opinion, because there are desires and fixed variables. It is not not deductive because there are too many variables at play. We then have to use some sort of inference. To our fortune, there is one last type of reason called the multilogical. This is where a series of given variables are weighed in judgement. It is conceptually ours in what variables are at play. However, the weighting of each variable is where it gets difficult. Take dating. Let’s say you are choosing a potential mate to be close to and share your bloodline. You will take into account a series of variables like their intellect, work ethic, value system, and perhaps beauty. Now, let’s say as you get back from each date with a new person, you input each of these metrics as you found them into a computational model. After a week of first dates with many wonderful people, you are now ready to do the math. However, we have an issue. While you were able to quantify each, you now must figure out how to weigh each of the factors. How must one do this? You will look around and find there is no way that you must, as it is a series of intersecting gradients. Strangely enough, perhaps your emotions are wise here, as they can make an inductive case for what variables have what role. While it is logically necessary what the metrics we are to weight are, it is contingent how we weigh them. In other words, it is up to our judgement. 

Now you are seeing why you disagree with people. You are not only looking at different data sets from your uniquely seperate lives, but you are disagreeing on what weight each set of variables should have. What must a person do? The mind can be genius and be throbbing with blood to feed it, and yet one would have little advantage other than more facts to keep in mind, but even then that could make one grow weary from mental fatigue causing analysis paralysis. I am sorry, you look like you must be on your way. Let us start on the elevator as we talk. Now, as we go up, we can very easily disregard the first rooms, but as we go up, we have to take them more seriously. This is where we have to practice evaluating the actual versus the potential. This is again a gradient or scalar. This is where I get to opportunity-cost. As you are an attractive person and this would be familiar to you, let me go back to my example of dating. Let’s say that you find an attractive, interesting, bright, healthy, and enjoyable person who shares your values and you would like to commit to in order to have the context to explore a marriage proposal. However, in committing to this person, you miss out on the love that could have been. However, to that thought, this person is already in your life. Hopefully sentimentality helps you not treat courtship like this purely, as this person would deserve some intrinsic loyalty, but it is a real question. 

We go back to this question of an unrealized possible wonderful perfection or a boring lesser thing that we actually have. This is the real question, when will you get off the elevator. I don’t mind holding your bags for as long as you need and keeping you company. Perhaps your need to use the restroom could rush your decision in distress. Other than that, to what degree is the wait worth the experience? I have some thoughts. You are just visiting town and have to leave soon. For that reason you should shoot slightly higher than you would. However, we can manage our evaluation of things and you should step out slightly lower than you would have. A rats! Not only do those ideas cancel eachother out, but they assume there was a point you were already shooting for, and I can tell from your face that you are no closer to making up your mind. Oh, you would like an answer of where to step out to your room? Don’t we all. Wouldn’t it be so nice to delegate our thinking, but we delegate it to others that have the same issues we do, plus any awry intentions they may have. You would end up resenting me as you walked out of the lobby to depart. 

Maybe, you could close your eyes and point to one of these thousands of lit buttons. No, don’t like that? Yes, it is too arbitrary and meaningless. You seem like someone who likes to be in control of their fate. We have discussed a lot, but I think we have to discredit something that will keep you from picking the floor that is really and truly yours: Excuses. You will say because of this outside fact or context, you will have to step out soon, but don’t betray yourself like that. This is a wonderful place and your stay here was sponsored by the most wonderful person. Don’t miss a chance to achieve whatever that break-even point you value most is. Don’t let your hang ups and excuses deprive you of that. That is a great point. What if you made the wrong choice? I guess, what would the wrong choice mean or look like to you? Could there really be a wrong choice? Perhaps in degrees there could have been one that was slightly better for you that we missed, but we can go back to you valuing something after the fact. Choose the best you can, but after the fact, make it your home and learn to love it. Well, what we have gone over today is what is called decision theory or decision process. It doesn’t necessarily give us the better answer, but is worth it because it is us being deliberate and engaging with our stay here. We have looked at the factors at play that make up a decision. You are correct, it did not tell you what to choose. However, you now know the variables at play and facts to keep in mind. You are called to make a choice and there is no single floor you must pick, but there are certainly the highest and lowest floors to avoid. You keep cheking your phone. Worried about being called away? Sorry to have rambled so much, but let me ask. When will you step out and enjoy your stay at the Actualization Hotel?