--- title: "The Price of Maybe" canonical: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/52/vision/article/52836/the-price-of-maybe" publication: "TinyFish" publisher: "TinyFish" language: "en-US" guide: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/llms.txt" format: "Possible Futures" author: "Sable Whitford" author_url: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/team/201" issue: 52 section: "vision" section_name: "Vision" published: 2026-10-23 updated: 2026-10-24 description: "Assistants that book three slots and cancel two could break reservation systems built on human laziness, and push the costs onto someone else." word_count: 773 source_links: 15 --- # The Price of Maybe *By [Sable Whitford]()* *October 23, 2026* [Read on the website]() If you've run servers, you've met the SYN flood. When a visitor says "hello," the server sets aside a little memory and waits for confirmation. Attackers send thousands of hellos and never confirm, crowding out real visitors until timers clear the junk. The fix, SYN cookies, reserves nothing until the visitor proves it will finish the conversation. A system that lets you say "maybe" for free tends to fill up with maybes. Booking systems keep learning this. In March 2025 the U.S. Embassy in India [cancelled about 2,000 visa appointments](https://scroll.in/latest/1080720/us-embassy-cancels-2000-visa-appointments-made-by-bots) that bots had grabbed. Recreation.gov [holds a campsite in your cart](https://www.recreation.gov/articles/list/tips-for-making-campsite-reservations-at-popular-locations/281) for 15 minutes, then releases it. California State Parks [keeps every fee](https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=31977) from no-shows and late cancellations and bans repeat no-shows for a year. Each rule admits that "maybe" was never free. Those rules target scripts that grab too much and people who never show. What worries me is the polite assistant, which has a real person's intent and a script's stamina. Assistants can already help you book [restaurants](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-searching-the-web-with-chatgpt) and [hotels](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/book-travel-ai-mode/). Their public docs don't describe booking three options and quietly cancelling two, but it's a short step, and it would feel like great service: grab the Tuesday dentist slot, keep looking, drop it if Monday opens up. That's a fair thing to want and a real problem for the dentist. What kept this in check was effort. Booking three things and remembering to cancel two is a chore, so most people don't. The real design decision in any [hold](https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/49/vision/article/40501) is how long it lasts, and booking systems have mostly left that to laziness, then built their forecasts on top. A [review of 105 studies](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29482948/) found clinic no-show rates from 4% to 79%, averaging 23%, so some clinics overbook and bet on the empty chairs. Airlines [model no-shows flight by flight](https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/706603.pdf) and are very good at it: between April and June, about 3 in 10,000 passengers [took a voucher](https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2026-10/October%202026%20ATCR%20revised%2010-22-2026.pdf) to give up a seat, and just 0.15 in 10,000 were bumped against their will. That math assumes people flake for scattered reasons (a sick kid here, a missed bus there) that average out into something forecastable. If a few assistant products all run the same book-now-cancel-later logic, the reasons could stop being scattered. Cancellations could land together, say in the hour a better slot opens across town. Then the clinic is no longer forecasting a crowd. It's forecasting a handful of enormous customers who change their minds at once. The server fix doesn't carry over. A server can wait to reserve memory until you prove you're serious; a clinic can't, because 9:30 on Tuesday is the thing being held. Somebody eats the cost. Say clinics respond with deposits and late-cancellation fees (Medicare [already allows](https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Manuals/Downloads/clm104c01.pdf) missed-appointment charges). A user whose assistant cancels an hour before the deadline pays nothing. A patient who can't front the cash never books, and one who loses track pays. The next patient never sees the slot that was held and dropped. Clinic staff absorb the overbooked days, which some studies link to [overtime and longer sessions](https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocac242). Clinics can refill dropped slots fast. At UCSF, a tool offering freed slots to waitlisted patients got those who took one [seen a median 14 days sooner](https://www.jmir.org/2024/1/e52071/), though who took them varied by age and language. The damage comes from cancellations nobody catches in time. If you run a booking system, check how long a hold lasts and whether anyone chose that on purpose. Then ask what your no-show model does when one person's "maybe" becomes five bookings that vanish in the same ten minutes, and how fast those slots find new takers. If nobody can answer, you're still counting on people being too lazy to cancel. ## Things to follow up on... - **Yosemite's one-shot lottery:** Yosemite's [North Pines early-access lottery](https://home.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/lottery-pilot.htm) charged a nonrefundable $10 to apply and let each winner make a single reservation, putting a small price on wanting a site. The same page acknowledges bot-assisted bookings but says Recreation.gov has no evidence of widespread hoarding. - **Lawmakers asking about bots:** On October 22, Colorado lawmakers [asked federal agencies what countermeasures they are developing](https://www.bennet.senate.gov/2026/10/22/bennet-leads-colorado-lawmakers-to-demand-trump-administration-maintain-an-effective-functional-recreation-gov-online-booking-system/) against reported autonomous-bot activity on Recreation.gov, though their letter did not quantify verified bot-made bookings. - **Does predictive overbooking work:** A [2023 systematic review in JAMIA](https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocac242) found the effect of predictive overbooking on clinic attendance uncertain and flagged open questions about cost, acceptability and equity. - **Airlines' 24-hour maybe:** For tickets bought at least seven days before departure, [DOT requires airlines](https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/buying-ticket) to offer either a free 24-hour cancellation or a 24-hour unpaid hold. Both are a regulated, time-limited version of the free "maybe." ## More - [Vision — Issue 52]() - [Issue 52]() - [Publication guide]()