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Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

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Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#81

Post by s1mon »

This reminds me a bit of FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) [1] which is used heavily by the medical, automotive, and aerospace industries. Basically you try to think of all the ways that a device or process will fail, what the hazards are from those failures, and how easy it is to detect them. Then based on the risks you've uncovered, you try to mitigate the worst ones (high likelihood, low detectability, worst outcomes - e.g. death).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analy...

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#82

Post by hinkley »

rtkwe wrote: post #33
shwoopdiwoop wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except all the outrage came from people who never lived in his buildings, and the ones who did gave it overwhelmingly great reviews.

Are you talking about the U of Michigan graduate dorms? Those seem like a vastly different design and people have some thoughts on the whole windowless thing from COVID when they couldn't use the suite's common area. For starters the units are much smaller and each suite of rooms has it's own little semi-public area instead of being a completely windowless block like his new design. The difference between the two is…

I'd like to hear more from sam0x17 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29163439) on this topic.

I think OP has confirmation bias. Lots of armchair criticism != only armchair criticism. I've lived in plenty of buildings that don't rate a rant and yet I would never live in again. And I've had friends who've lived in worse and I was so glad when they moved so I didn't have to visit their old shithole. Are we gatekeeping complaints from visitors?

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#83

Post by raymondh »

Tangent: Rather than killing pilots, work on preventing them from becoming pilots in the first place. Perhaps join neighborhood efforts to close all the small airports where people learn to fly.

Now apply the "reverse thinking" described in the article. To enable the development of more pilots, work on increasing the number of small airfields.

Apply this to your own world. What do you need to do to increase the pipeline of talent available to your company?

The origin story for the RaspberryPI is a prime example:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/we-thought-wed-sell-1000-the-i...

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#84

Post by nunez »

> Charlie inverted the problem in a similar way to the TRIZ practitioners — if he wanted to kill pilots, he could get them into icy conditions whereby they couldn’t continue flying, or put them in situations where they would run out of fuel and fall into the ocean. So he drew more applicable maps and better predicted the weather factors that were relevant by keeping in mind the best ways to do the exact opposite of bringing his pilots home.

I actually like this train of thought. Though, to be fair, this is the basis for chaos engineering. How can we destroy production? By actually actively destroying production ALL THE TIME! This way, we design our production systems to be as reliable as possible

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#85

Post by snowwrestler »

I’ve seen this used this as a teaching technique in outdoor education to good effect. For example when teaching boat safety, delivering a short class on “how to be great at drowning.” Or when in the backcountry: “How to make sure you get hypothermia today.”

Students usually think it’s funny, and it’s often not hard for them to invert the steps to avoid the outcome. For example, if step one of being great at drowning is “get drunk,” then students understand you’re telling them not to drink while boating.

It helps students acknowledge the reality that outdoor sports can be dangerous, but without getting too serious, and giving them clear steps to reduce the risk.

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#86

Post by mrweasel »

csours wrote: post #19

Suppose I never want to know what my software is doing...

Much of today was spend closing an account and deleting data about a client who terminated their account with us. Looking over their design documents before deleting makes me think that they had the idea: “Suppose I want a system with a high likelyhood of failure and which is impossible to debug and maintain” and then just decide to implement it for some reason.

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#87

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

the_af wrote: post #80
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #73

I've long carried a suspicion that some relentlessly negative people are expressing their gift for TRIZ and troubleshooting. Because their early years are filled with people who are push back against this ability, their nature tends to devolve into unproductive reactions.

The problem with being relentlessly negative is that it doesn't work. Not unless the people you're explaining the problem to are receptive to your approach, and they don't think you're just a naysayer. You must explain what you are doing and, if possible, show good results you obtained through this method. To be effective, you don't have to be just right; you have to convince others that you are right as well. To giv…

> The problem with being relentlessly negative is that it doesn't work.

This tends to be a problem with most poorly channeled abilities.

>Not unless the people you're explaining the problem to are receptive to your approach, and they don't think you're just a naysayer. You must explain what you are doing and, if possible, show good results you obtained through this method.

These are skills. They can be tough to develop in a vacuum; it may be impossible when push-back is the only feedback.

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#88

Post by LanceH »

amelius wrote: post #65

Suppose I wanted to crash my computer? See, asking this question doesn't really help in making software more crash-free.

I would have things like pointer math, programmer responsibility for memory and other resource management.

Rust seems to be working exactly along this line of thinking -- at least their obsession with "safety".

Re: Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020)

#89

Post by forgingahead »

lelandfe wrote: post #55
xyzelement wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I see in responses to you, Munger has designed other well-received dorms in the past so that gives him credibility on this topic. It doesn't mean he's right but it's a good chance his thinking is more nuanced than those shitting on it - especially coupled with the current article that describes how he thinks. This is total conjecture but I can imagine him doing something like this: Question: how do you make…

> his thinking is more nuanced than those shitting on it To be fair, an architect with 15 years on the UCSB Review Committee resigned over this... so it's not just outsiders and the media who are bagging on the design. https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-...

Munger Hall at Stanford is actually pretty nice - I was stunned by how nice the apartments were actually. However if I remember correctly they are totally opposite in concept to the UCSB proposed dorm - Stanford ones have two rooms to an apartment, a decent living area between the two rooms, not much of a big building common area, and definitely windows in each apartment.

So yes, I agree that the UCSB dorm design sounds terrible in comparison.

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