Sunday Pot Luck Brunches

 

Tim is, as he puts it, cut from the same cloth as his uncle, inso­far as they both enjoy enter­tain­ing. They also live in a four-storey house, which is per­fect for such a thing.

So every Sunday, peo­ple come together for a casual pot luck brunch, where guests are invited to bring food, the idea being that it’s be eas­ier to bring a dish some­where and share with every­one than sit at home and make break­fast for your­self. Last time, I got to try fancy smoked bacon, and a pancake-batter-cooked-in-bacon-grease experiment.

At this point, enough peo­ple know about it that no one has to men­tion ahead of time whether they’ll be com­ing, but there’s enough food for all.

Tim described this pretty well in a recent e-mail:

Dear Everyone,

I’m fas­ci­nated by coor­di­na­tion problems.

Coordination prob­lems are sit­u­a­tions where all the actors involved are more or less on the same side, but there is imper­fect infor­ma­tion. Everyone wants the same gen­eral out­come but isn’t sure how every­one else is going to get at it.

Driving is a solved coor­di­na­tion prob­lem. No one wants an acci­dent so we all want to drive on the same side of the road, but there is noth­ing spe­cial about choos­ing the left or the right side. How do peo­ple pick?

In 1958, Thomas Schelling ran this exper­i­ment on a group of uni­ver­sity stu­dents in Connecticut: “Imagine that you are to meet some­one in New York City at noon, but you don’t know where and you can’t get in touch with them in advance. Where do you go?”

Without con­sult­ing one another, the major­ity of them picked the same loca­tion. I won­der if you can guess what it was (where would you go?).

Every week, we solve and re-solve a coor­di­na­tion prob­lem with brunch. Everyone wants a good and var­ied brunch spread. Different peo­ple come every week and no one RSVPs, so you can never be sure what other peo­ple will bring. We don’t con­sult in advance, I don’t assign dishes or types of dishes. The only infor­ma­tion we have is what was at brunch the pre­vi­ous week and my writ­ten sug­ges­tion about fruits, which is mer­ci­fully ignored by most of you.

Yet every week brunch has a wide range of deli­cious foods. Isn’t that amazing?

I think it’s amazing.

Hope to see you on Sunday,

Tim

If I was par­tic­i­pat­ing in Schelling’s exper­i­ment, I would have cho­sen to meet at the clock in Grand Central Station; it’s always stood out to me because of the way it was promi­nently fea­tured in the fan­tasy waltz sequence done by Terry Gilliam in The Fisher King. I had no idea that this was also the infor­ma­tion booth, and it’s this place exactly that most stu­dents chose.

And it goes with the peo­ple at brunch as well. When one per­son eats, another will get up to cook. When every­one is done eat­ing, the dishes are all put away, the pans are all cleaned. With the wis­dom of crowds, noth­ing needs to be said.

I think it’s amaz­ing too.