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

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

newsletter.butwhatfor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 130 posts

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

#111

Post by CPLX »

oh_sigh wrote: post #102
CPLX wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, that is in fact what I'm suggesting.

Or to be more precise I am suggesting that the state take his money anyways, via taxation, and then decide how to spend it through democratic means.

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

#112

Post by raymondh »

hammock wrote: post #103
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 pip…

I mainly aspired to relate the thesis of the article to the origin story for the Raspberry Pi.

The only intended political statement was about the importance of small airfields.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

MisterTea wrote: post #107

> 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 loo…

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by bombastry »

snowwrestler wrote: post #85

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…

That's a really good method. I think one of the reasons why this works so well is that it makes the student think about the "why". Most people are more likely to follow rules they understand (so long as they agree with why they exist).

Telling someone to not drink on a boat is a prescriptive rule. Telling someone not to drink on a boat because being drunk will make it easier for them to drown is too vague. Including specific reasons might help, but it is easy for the student not to internalize these explanations, especially since they would likely prefer to not think about drowning.

Turning this around puts the negative outcome, drowning, in the forefront. This puts the focus on the reason why the rule was created. By thinking about why being drunk will increase their chances of drowning, they will better understand why they should follow the "no drinking" rule. In your case, it sounds like you even have them derive the rule itself. This requires at least some thought about the issue and should make it more likely that they will both remember and follow the rule.

I would guess that this technique is most effective when the negative outcome is severe and/or something the student doesn't want to think about (e.g. dying). By focusing on how to cause these negative outcomes, the student is forced to think about things they may otherwise try to avoid.

It also seems that this technique is effective when the positive outcome is the negation of the conjunction of the negative outcomes. For example, consider the goal of "staying safe while boating". Being safe is easiest to define as not doing any of the things that increase the chance of danger, or, in other words, "not being unsafe". Being unsafe in general is the conjunction of all the ways of being unsafe specifically ("NOT being drunk while boating" AND "NOT entering the water without a life jacket" AND ...). Being safe requires avoiding unsafe outcomes. By flipping the goal, it becomes more clear that we need to figure out what the unsafe outcomes are. Once these are determined, we can start to come up with ways to avoid them.

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

#115

Post by lelandfe »

csdvrx wrote: post #100
lelandfe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

That's a call to authority. Sometimes, we are stuck in a local optimum, and a new redesign is needed, which involves some tough calls and unusual solutions. As for a bedroom without windows, when I sleep I like that my bedroom is dark. When I don't sleep, I'm not in my bed or my bedroom. So I'm not exactly sure what people complain about his design.

> That's a call to authority

My comment was responding to a call for authority. I’m not using their position for anything more than to say that they’re informed.

> When I don't sleep, I'm not in my bed or my bedroom.

I’m similar now but I was in my room a lot when I was in uni. There were also plenty of kids on my hall who were in their rooms at basically all times, leaving only for class and food.

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

#116

Post by robotresearcher »

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 iterate off the end of a C array.

I would have a function call itself recursively a million times deep.

I would use a pointer that was set to a random value.

I would return the address of an automatic (i.e. stack) variable from a function and use it later.

I would allocate resources in a loop and never deallocate them.

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

#117

Post by csdvrx »

lelandfe wrote: post #115
csdvrx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a call to authority. Sometimes, we are stuck in a local optimum, and a new redesign is needed, which involves some tough calls and unusual solutions. As for a bedroom without windows, when I sleep I like that my bedroom is dark. When I don't sleep, I'm not in my bed or my bedroom. So I'm not exactly sure what people complain about his design.

> That's a call to authority My comment was responding to a call for authority. I’m not using their position for anything more than to say that they’re informed. > When I don't sleep, I'm not in my bed or my bedroom. I’m similar now but I was in my room a lot when I was in uni. There were also plenty of kids on my hall who were in their rooms at basically all times, leaving only for class and food.

> There were also plenty of kids on my hall who were in their rooms at basically all times, leaving only for class and food.

If I may venture a guess, it may have been caused by the lack of better alternatives.

Reducing the sleeping room to its core feature (sleeping!) may give more space to build rooms for other important features, while disincentivizing staying in one room at basically all times (which I see as generally a bad idea)

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

#120

Post by high_5 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #85

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…

It's actually quite old - here's a humurous take from WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URwmZq70_DU
Post reply on HN