Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Defense of Bad Ideas

surjan.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 54 posts

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#31

Post by reactor4 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #28
bluedino wrote: post #25

I've always wondered how terrible automotive designs make it to production. Engines or transmissions that quickly fail, cars that are just garbage in quality...nobody along the years of development stopped to say "maybe we shouldn't build this..", or perhaps someone did? Did the company building this get their moneys worth when it comes to lessons learned?

When it comes to mechanical failures like that, it's never due to incompetence; it's due to cost cutting concerns (e.g. using less material, cheaper / inferior material) and / or planned obsolescence. Automotive engineers are highly competent, and most will have had a lot of education when it comes to materials, strengths, stresses, wear and tear, etcetera. And car companies build up that knowledge over the decades.…

Nissan's CVT seem to be a counterexample of everything in your first paragraph.

I could also bring a lot of counterexamples to your second paragrah (e.g.: many german cars).

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#32

Post by dmurray »

ptr wrote: post #19
thaumasiotes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> long call options > short put options I tried to think of what a "short call option" or a "long put option" would be, and I don't think the concepts exist. Do they?

Generally a “long call” would mean that you bought a call option. If you sell/write the contract, you’re short. Your position is in the derivative instrument itself, it's not cascaded onto the underlying. I also know multi-layered derivatives such as options on options and options on futures exist (as I’ve written code for them), but I’m curious what they’re used for.

Options on futures are mostly just a convenient way to specify an option on the underlying product. Instead of having the option to buy gold bars (which trade on a different exchange), you have the option to buy gold futures, which has 99% the same behaviour in terms of price.

Options on options are pretty esoteric, I've never heard of anyone actually using one. I guess you can get very leveraged exposure to volatility that way, if that's what you need.

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#33

Post by jotm »

bluedino wrote: post #25

I've always wondered how terrible automotive designs make it to production. Engines or transmissions that quickly fail, cars that are just garbage in quality...nobody along the years of development stopped to say "maybe we shouldn't build this..", or perhaps someone did? Did the company building this get their moneys worth when it comes to lessons learned?

At least for complicated mechanical devices like transmissions, or really anything that has a lot of friction between metals, getting the right alloy is essential.

An example from the world of home appliances, Bosch/Siemens have been using the same drum design for a decade, before production was moved from Poland/Spain to China, likely for cost cutting measures.

The Chinese made machines (same internal design, new model - they always do that, with a facelift and maybe new electronics) had a very high bearing and spider failure rate.

They switched the alloy supplier. Makes sense, why import it from the EU. Either they knew it was lower quality, or were duped, but anyway, their product quality took a massive dive because of a seemingly simple to produce part.

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#34

Post by jotm »

That rotary rocket looks like a design that could work, tbh

Instead of rocket propulsion, first stages could in theory deploy helicopter wings and get a decent slow down even before spinning them up to full speed (with autorotation the blades act like a parachute/wings).

Seems like it would be a harder implementation than the high precision control with a rocket, though.

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#35

Post by addHocker »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #16
perl4ever wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orbit though?

Sub-orbital. Think getting the craft up to altitude of 100+ km, hang out for a few minutes, and descend back to Earth. SpaceShip One, the prototype inspiring the Virgin Galactic fleet, was capable of reaching speeds of 0.9 km/s. [1] Escape velocity to get into orbit from Earth's surface is 11.2 km/s. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity

All it needs - is a hook and a fishersatellite to get this bird to space.

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#36

Post by PresidentChuck »

krm01 wrote: post #7

Would have loved to read a longer writeup exploring that premise (which I agree with). The difference between Bad ideas and Good ideas, is determined by the outcome. Something that seems bad but ends up working (milliondollarhomepage, pet-rock, etc.) ends up being brilliant, in the eyes of the public.

Yeah, all ideas are bad until they accepted. To create is to challenge the status quo

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#37

Post by marcosdumay »

jkhdigital wrote: post #5

Bad ideas are magical when they come in the form of long call options (bounded cost, unlimited upside). Bad ideas destroy companies/nations/civilizations when they come in the form of short put options (bounded benefit, unlimited downside).

Ideas should have a lot of "volatility", so yeah, this makes a lot of sense.

But of course, the usual environment of the financial world does not apply. "Bounded" can still be large enough to break a nation.

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#38

Post by michaelcampbell »

reactor4 wrote: post #31
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to mechanical failures like that, it's never due to incompetence; it's due to cost cutting concerns (e.g. using less material, cheaper / inferior material) and / or planned obsolescence. Automotive engineers are highly competent, and most will have had a lot of education when it comes to materials, strengths, stresses, wear and tear, etcetera. And car companies build up that knowledge over the decades.…

Nissan's CVT seem to be a counterexample of everything in your first paragraph. I could also bring a lot of counterexamples to your second paragrah (e.g.: many german cars).

"better built cars are more expensive" is not the same as "expensive cars are better built".

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#39

Post by [deleted] »

reactor4 wrote: post #31
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to mechanical failures like that, it's never due to incompetence; it's due to cost cutting concerns (e.g. using less material, cheaper / inferior material) and / or planned obsolescence. Automotive engineers are highly competent, and most will have had a lot of education when it comes to materials, strengths, stresses, wear and tear, etcetera. And car companies build up that knowledge over the decades.…

Nissan's CVT seem to be a counterexample of everything in your first paragraph. I could also bring a lot of counterexamples to your second paragrah (e.g.: many german cars).

[deleted]

Re: In Defense of Bad Ideas

#40

Post by whack »

pjc50 wrote: post #21
jkhdigital wrote: post #5

Bad ideas are magical when they come in the form of long call options (bounded cost, unlimited upside). Bad ideas destroy companies/nations/civilizations when they come in the form of short put options (bounded benefit, unlimited downside).

Succinct and accurate. A couple of real examples: the famous LTCM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management blew up in one of the late 90s financial crises by doing something that was almost exactly that (writing a lot of puts) The 2008 mortgage crisis didn't have unlimited downside, but an awful lot of parties were making tiny slivers of money off things they thought had zero chance of default whose…

There was nothing fundamentally wrong with LTCM's business model, or with writing puts. Where they failed was in their execution - they underestimated the risk of fat-tails, and the level of correlation between different securities.

There are lots of cases where we do things that could potentially be catastrophic, but we do them anyway because the risk-reward justifies it. For example, going on a road trip instead of sitting at home and watching TV. The upside of going on a road trip is bounded (fun holiday) but the downside is catastrophic (deadly car crash). If we avoided every single activity that involved catastrophic risk, our lives would be far worse.

Post reply on HN