i agree from the « ac takers » ‘ perspective and more generally don’t object to people choosing ac, but of course, it’s still important to acknowledge that the whole point of the ac roulette is asymmetric information.

in other words you may know that if someone picks the middle seat you’ll offer them another, but conversely, the fellow passenger has no way of knowing if the people sat in à and c are travelling together or not - in other words, no way of knowing if there is a “hidden” role indie or aisle on that row that they can get by taking that middle seat or just a middle seat to take.

when we book the a c combination in a nice row (exit, bulkhead etc) we thus try to push them to take a worse seat to minimise the risk they might be stuck in b.

In that sense letting them pick the seat we hid from them in the first place (if they so wish) is more basic acknowledgement our code was broken than chivalrous heroism