[buellerbueller]

>If you need medical treatment, will you go to a doctor operating out of an office, or a doctor operating out of their own garage? Theoretically, either one could be good or bad at medicine, but in practice, professionalism is a useful signal.

Is it a garage that has the same hygiene standards and medical equipment as an office? Your metaphor kinda falls apart here, because those are not orthogonal to the medical service outcomes, the way that a menu is orthogonal to the food quality.

>No, it's entirely rational to judge a service based on external signals.

This is the crux of why we disagree: you think of a restaurant as a seller of a service and you count things like "menu" as part of that service. Thats fine if you want status signaling from your restaurant. I see a restaurant as a purveyor of a good: the food that is produced, and the menu is orthogonal to that. You and I are optimizing for different things.

"Experience" versus food.

[bccdee]

> Is it a garage that has the same hygiene standards and medical equipment as an office?

Maybe! A garage can be cleaned very thoroughly, especially if you renovate with that in mind. I wouldn't bet on it, though. A good doctor probably could operate out of a garage, but they wouldn't. And a good restaurateur would take time to think about their menu.

These signals select for people with domain knowledge and experience. Status has nothing to do with it. Even the cheapest street food will be evaluated against its competition based on external signals, and so better, more experienced vendors will tend to know how to present themselves well.

All else being equal, would you rather eat a hot dog from a cart with a nice sign, or from a guy sitting on the sidewalk who sharpied "Hotdog $3" on a piece of cardboard?

[buellerbueller]

>All else being equal, would you rather eat a hot dog from a cart with a nice sign, or from a guy sitting on the sidewalk who sharpied "Hotdog $3" on a piece of cardboard?

You keep introducing these silly confounding variables. I wouldn't eat from any hotdog vendor who is sitting on the sidewalk, regardless of their signage. If both had carts, the signage wouldn't affect my decision, particularly because hotdogs are shit in my opinion. As nice sign on a hotdog cart is like putting lipstick on a pig.

[bccdee]

I'm introducing examples. It's logical to judge a thing based on its context and circumstances, because those can tell you about the thing. A menu can tell you about a restaurant in the same way that the presence or absence of a cart can tell you about a street-food vendor.

> hotdogs are shit in my opinion

Then by all means, substitute the street food of your preference. Unless you disdain street food in general, which would be irrational, unless eating at a specific place is meant for its societal signaling value rather than for its food :)