Suppose I Wanted to Kill a Lot of Pilots (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by csdvrx » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

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…

> the whole windowless thing from COVID when they couldn't use the suite's common area.

Here's a daring thought: maybe the problem isn't the windowless bedroom by itself, but the idea that it's acceptable to lock people inside their own residence, or even to forbid people to use the common areas of their own residence.

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

#102

Post by oh_sigh » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #57

xibalba wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazingly "on brand" that HN commenters upon the Munger quote at the top of this article. Being a fellow HN'er, I'll follow suit: The most obvious response to Munger's critics is, "Then don't live there." The U.S. is blessed with a huge number of universities, meaning lot's of choice. Particularly for those individuals with the type of accomplishments that would get them into UCSB. (It's not Stanford, but it is…

And the most obvious response to billionaires who think their money buys them the right to run public institutions is "go fuck yourself". The University of California system is owned by, and created for the benefit of, the people of California. Decisions about how it should be run and what the dorms should look like should be made by democratic institutions and accountable to the public through regular elections. Bil…

If you don't want the money, then don't take the money. It isn't like Charlie bumrushed them and said he was building a dorm whether they liked it or not.

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

#103

Post by hammock » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

raymondh wrote: post #83

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 pipel…

> 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?

Are you describing covid lockdown efforts and the US economy?

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

#104

Post by oh_sigh » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

jquery wrote: post #26

g_sch wrote: post #12

It took a second for me to make this connection, but the Charlie Munger in this article is the same Charlie Munger who designed that windowless dorm at UCSB that made the news a few days back. [0] I wonder if he applied the same principles to designing that building. [0] https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-...

Yes. Except it looks like he was thinking “how can I make student housing intolerable” and stopped there, instead of inverting it.

Or...perhaps he put the actual thought into it, instead of you who is just going with their gut reaction.

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

#105

Post by rileymat2 » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

named-user wrote: post #42

bsaul wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, TDD has a bit of a similar effect on your perception on a problem. By first designing the test that would make the code fail, then making sure it fails, then create the code to have the test pass, you kind of change the way you think about the original problem, and it sometimes helps.

Unit tests only catch known failure modes. TDD only catches assumed known failure modes.

That’s not true, tests also cover happy path, so you can catch failures you had no idea about for instance when running them in a different environment, with a different os, with a different compiler.

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

#106

Post by oh_sigh » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

tgb wrote: post #79

oh_sigh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Architects for his other buildings didn't resign though. Why do you trust this one specifically over the other ones who followed through creating the buildings?

Surely the architect working on this building is the one to listen to about this building.

That would only make sense if architects had an impeccable record of creating truly livable buildings. Which they don't.

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

#107

Post by MisterTea » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

> For example, let’s say you are trying to figure out “How can I have a great, fulfilling career?” Instead, ask yourself “How can I have a terrible, worthless career?” and whittle away at the choices that you know will ensure that outcome[...]

This sort of sounds like the old joke of asking a sculptor how they carved a horse and the sculptor reply's: "Start with a block of stone and remove everything that doesn't look like a horse."

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

#108

Post by oh_sigh » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #92

oh_sigh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Architects for his other buildings didn't resign though. Why do you trust this one specifically over the other ones who followed through creating the buildings?

His other buildings weren't so wildly divergent from the consensus about good building design either. The closest seems to be his University of Michigan graduate housing. In the building he does have windowless dorm rooms (often complained about) but there's only 7 of them off a shared kitchen and living room space instead of 70+. He took the design of Munger Hall and scaled it up almost directly with some rearrangin…

But everyone is complaining about windowless dorms, not too great a distance from sunlight. I don't know if his design is great, but HN is just filled with 98% middlebrow dismissal on the topic.

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

#109

Post by rtkwe » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

csdvrx wrote: post #101

rtkwe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the whole windowless thing from COVID when they couldn't use the suite's common area. Here's a daring thought: maybe the problem isn't the windowless bedroom by itself, but the idea that it's acceptable to lock people inside their own residence, or even to forbid people to use the common areas of their own residence.

That's largely tangential from the issues with the UCSB dorm and there were complaints well before the COVID lockdowns so we shouldn't get mired in the unrelated morass of the pandemic response.

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

#110

Post by rtkwe » Tue, Nov 09, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #108

rtkwe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His other buildings weren't so wildly divergent from the consensus about good building design either. The closest seems to be his University of Michigan graduate housing. In the building he does have windowless dorm rooms (often complained about) but there's only 7 of them off a shared kitchen and living room space instead of 70+. He took the design of Munger Hall and scaled it up almost directly with some rearrangin…

But everyone is complaining about windowless dorms, not too great a distance from sunlight. I don't know if his design is great, but HN is just filled with 98% middlebrow dismissal on the topic.

The two things are related. If my bedroom is windowless but I can easily spend semi-private time in a naturally lit area the problem with the bedroom is diminished, the Michigan dorms have that feature, each 'pod' has a lit space shared by a small number of people. In the UCSB design you have to move to a decidedly public space shared by many people. That transition has a lot of problems, it's no longer 'your' space as you have no control over it and can't meaningfully modify or control it.