Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#281

Post by taneq » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 8:00 AM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #139

taneq wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geometry is set up to be stable at a higher speed. Even then some sports bikes require a steering dampener to prevent "speed wobbles" (which, yes, are an actual thing and are much worse at 260kph than at 30kph on your BMX when you're a kid.)

Is "speed wobble" anything like the Jeep "death wobble" (actually can happen on any 4wd vehicle, but Jeeps seem to have the problem more as steering and suspension components wear)?

I hadn't heard of the "death wobble" but it sounds like the same thing. Basically your suspension geometry is set up to be dynamically stable over a wide range of speeds, but if you go outside that range it's possible for oscillations to build up. Example on a bike: https://youtu.be/SAnjjHKclZs

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#282

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 8:41 AM UTC

Isamu wrote: post #138

yyzhero wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't blame yourself. Go read argument culture. Everything is positioned as a debate rather then a discussion ; take an opposing side and it's about winning not understanding. As an example If you've caught yourself ever leveraging syntax in a discussion to derail someone's ideas

I've always hated debate because of that and could never understand why it was valued. It is always about winning and never about getting to the bottom of what could be the truth.

That's a great point.

Even the very word discussion comes from late Middle English (in the sense ‘dispel, disperse’, also ‘examine by argument’): from Latin discuss- ‘dashed to pieces’, later ‘investigated’, from the verb discutere, from dis- ‘apart’ + quatere ‘shake’.

We generally don't do a very good job of talking about things in way that brings those things, or us each other, closer together.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#283

Post by CurtMonash » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 9:16 AM UTC

grigjd3 wrote: post #91

falcolas wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, Bozeman doesn't have an opera house. Certainly not one with a burger stand across Main Street. Just sayin' ;)

Should likely read the comments by the author about just what is and what isn't made up.

Who has that kind of attention to detail? :)

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#284

Post by liotier » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

le-mark wrote: post #127

sly010 wrote: post #117

A few years ago I co-founded a standing desk company without any experience in real world products in general. The plan was to source desks and sell them to companies. How complicated could it be? Well, the freight company requires a lot of information about the destination building. The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a litt…

If you're like my old boss, just tell the employees to assemble their own desks, and then wonder why all these developers who requested a standing desk, are still using their old sit down desks.

That was tradition at the first company I joined: every new hire assembles his own Ikea desk, with help from his new colleagues - it was fun !

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#285

Post by ci5er » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

sorokod wrote: post #116

alextheparrot wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it is less directly cheapening all research and more bifurcating the term between engaged and unengaged audiences. The audience must decide when searching becomes researching, which I doubt is the second time you are feeling lucky. If I google, find a primary source with reasonable data, and form an argument based on that, then I’ve done research. It was simply easier based on the Internet, but the research is…

I accept that to research doesn't have a binary quality and the amount of effort can vary. Nevertheless I encounter research close to the second meaning you mentioned frequently.

> Nevertheless I encounter research close to the second meaning you mentioned frequently.

Would you mind sharing the context?

I work in a field where the PR machine of my target "research" jumps ahead of the methodological reports. Then those reports are often vague (length limits?) about the details of their methodology. That makes me not trust much that I find - but I've got to have something - so I end up doing some sort of meta-analysis. It's time-consuming, exausting and frustrating - and has confidence-bars that might as well be non-existent - but without doing the on-the-ground fundamental-study - it's what I've got. For example - I just spent 60 hours over the last 4 days trying to triangulate a "probably correct-ish" value and range for a variable from a heck-of-a-lot of studies that didn't use the same methodology. Would that count as research in your book, or not?

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#286

Post by paraschopra » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

This actually has parallels to how I recommend finding startup ideas: observing the reality and noticing anomalies and surprises. Here's my writeup: https://invertedpassion.com/to-get-good-startup-ideas-look-f...

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#287

Post by iClaudiusX » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

cosmotron wrote: post #223

jasode wrote: post #53

>Do you remember the insights that were crucial in learning to ride a bike or drive? The author mentioned bicycles and inadvertently missed an opportunity to show another "unknown reality" that beautifully illustrates his point. Consider typical adults (not physicists) with 20+ years of bicycle riding. If you ask them, "how does a bicycle turn?" , they'd respond that "you just lean into the direction of the turn and…

There's another neat example of this: asking someone with years of car-driving experience to hold their hands out as if gripping a steering wheel and mime the motions necessary to change lanes. [1] The steps are: 1. Turn the steering wheel towards the lane you wish to enter, 2. Re-center the steering wheel, 3. Counter-steer the same amount as in step 1. Step 3 is what people tend to forget about. [1] https://99percen…

You skipped the turn signal, which seems accurate to most of the drivers I see on the road.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#288

Post by calgoo » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #247

le-mark wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're like my old boss, just tell the employees to assemble their own desks, and then wonder why all these developers who requested a standing desk, are still using their old sit down desks.

Ha, at my partner's work(large IT company in UK) they are not even allowed to move or adjust the height of their own desks, because it's a health and safety violation and if anything happened to them doing it the insurance wouldn't cover them. I think HR would get a heart attack at the thought of employees assembling their own desks.

Yea i always found this funny. I was not allowed to move a monitor in the office, but was racking 4u servers by myself in the datacenter. When i asked they claimed it was because the insurance for the monitor, not me, would not be covered if it was not the local IT guy who moved it.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#289

Post by philipwhiuk » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

hornbaker wrote: post #102

foxhop wrote: post #71

This is an incredible read, very thought invoking. I've never replaced stairs but I have learned enough of the "details" by repairing them (or being aware of them) to know it's a really hard to get right. A single 1/4 inch difference between two steps can feel wrong; a 1/2 inch difference and people will likely stumble or tumble down them on their first approach. Our intuition and pattern recognition impacts how we s…

A gif of what happens when one step is just slightly too high: https://imgur.com/hl3YWJD

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap-22FjgoE4

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#290

Post by eru » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #217

sly010 wrote: post #117

A few years ago I co-founded a standing desk company without any experience in real world products in general. The plan was to source desks and sell them to companies. How complicated could it be? Well, the freight company requires a lot of information about the destination building. The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a litt…

Sounds like the minimum level of automation that would work is full blown AGI + autonomous robots that could at least match humans in terms of skill and strength.

Nah, be creative. Think how Uber et al replaced the skilled taxi driver via a random human plus Google maps. (And that's a good thing!)