last time I flew Delta it was not amazing, though to be fair I don't fly Delta very often. I generally fly United or JetBlue, both of which have a rep for "good" wifi, but I've never felt particularly satisfied by it.
I'd personally pay more, endure less convenient timing, and sit in a less comfortable seat if it meant I had fast wifi.
like right now flying is pretty time costly for me because most of my highest value work can only be done with internet, so flying means losing a lot of high productivity hours. fast wifi would mean the only time cost of flying is the tiny bit I spend walking through the airport on either end.
I think anyone who has ever tried to work on a plane knows that plane wifi is bad enough to reduce your productivity hugely. so I don't think business travellers who are already paying thousands to fly would shy away from paying hundred of dollars for actually good wifi on a long haul flight.
I'd predict most business travellers are not really using being on a plane as an excuse to not work.
why is it taking so long to upgrade planes to use starlink? it doesn't sound like there are huge technical barriers to doing so, and it would be hugely profitable. i would not only pay a lot per flight for good wifi, i would also fly way more often
people lie about some crazy shit
this feels intuitively true to me, but I'm also very biased - I've basically shovelled all of my skill points into engineering and research intuition, and have only a passable understanding of math, and this generally has not been a huge bottleneck for me. but maybe if I knew more math i'd know what I'm missing out on
I think this is almost but not quite exactly right. it is indeed true that many people's ambition is just to climb their local status ladder to a comfortable middle level.
however many of the most successful founders were previously middle-to-high status in some existing company's status ladder. being a middle manager in a big company is strong bayesian evidence that they will be a successful founder. there are way more low status people than high status people inside existing ladders, and there very very few extremely successful founders, so you don't need that many high status extremely successful founders before high status is bayesian evidence for extreme success.
I also think there's some adverse selection / lemon market effect where people who choose to opt out of the existing ladder often do so because they would be unable to win on the existing ladder even if they tried their hardest. in this case, trying to meme your way into countersignalling might be a good strategy. unfortunately, it means that other people have to be very skeptical of countersignallers who haven't demonstrated that they really are in the winner's bracket. I'd guess most examples of people who succeeded after opting out of one status ladder have done something that is legibly high status in some other existing recognized status ladder.
related to contrarianism: not invented here syndrome. I think rationalists have a strong tendency to want to reinvent things their own way, bulldozing Chesterton's fences, or just reinventing the wheel with rationalist flavor. good in moderation, bad in excess
I don't really care that much about not having a monitor. it's a minor productivity hit, whereas not having reliable vaguely-fast internet completely ruins productivity.
I would absolutely fly so much more. weekend trips become way more feasible if I can fly out on Friday and return on Monday. working remotely but visiting HQ occasionally (or otherwise splitting time between two cities) gets a lot easier, because you no longer lose a day of productivity (or a night of sleep) each time.