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American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

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Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#71

Post by sokoloff »

zulgin wrote: post #49
rhplus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears Not to be negative about experts here, but of all industries, isn’t airline maintenance one of the most documented and standard procedure focused of them all? I would hope that someone maintaining a 777 doesn’t have to remember certain tricks or tips outside of what the manuals say, and when mistakes are found, they’d be noted, investigated a…

There is a famous story about how an F16 got grounded because an half inch metal pin was missing from the cockpit canopy. Nobody knew what the pin did or if it was even necessary but you can't fly a plan that 'missing a part'. After several days of being grounded they finally reached out to a guy who had retired 20 years ago who told them the pin was a part of a analogue sensor that had been replaced nearly 30 years…

> but you can't fly a plan that 'missing a part'

It’s a great story, but I assure you there is a pretty high percentage of airplanes flying with missing parts and systems placarded as INOP in both military and civilian aviation.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#72

Post by somenameforme »

watt3rpig wrote: post #67
somenameforme wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing implied about tacit knowledge being knowledge that you don't know others don't have. For instance in chess mastery, one is fully aware that you simply see the board in a different way. It's not like you're aloof of your own 'advantage', but then in lessons you work to gradually, step by step, instill such in the student. Some of the most successful teachers are those who themselves learned the game a…

28? You make it sound like he was 90!

haha, well his methods, that live on after he's gone, are a big part of the reason people are now making GM at 12.

It's unclear whether these sort of players will do as good a job at handing down their knowledge though. Think about how little you remember, in much detail at least, about stuff before you were 12 - and now imagine you were already master strength by then, let alone a grandmaster. I'm a later starter and can still vividly remember when I barely knew how the pieces moved, and I think that gives me a huge edge over most players in terms of teaching.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#74

Post by greenjudge »

rhplus wrote: post #34
embedding-shape wrote: post #5

How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every…

> unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears Not to be negative about experts here, but of all industries, isn’t airline maintenance one of the most documented and standard procedure focused of them all? I would hope that someone maintaining a 777 doesn’t have to remember certain tricks or tips outside of what the manuals say, and when mistakes are found, they’d be noted, investigated a…

[flagged]

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#75

Post by tomxor »

speed_spread wrote: post #58
zulgin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a famous story about how an F16 got grounded because an half inch metal pin was missing from the cockpit canopy. Nobody knew what the pin did or if it was even necessary but you can't fly a plan that 'missing a part'. After several days of being grounded they finally reached out to a guy who had retired 20 years ago who told them the pin was a part of a analogue sensor that had been replaced nearly 30 years…

Chesterton's fence is strong with this one

Exactly. Framing completely changes this from an absurd story causing pointless grounding due to loss of institutional knowledge, to an example of good judgement (or protocol) in the absence of knowledge and acknowledgement of the risk of unknown consequences.

What's being ignored is the 1/100 of these stories where this judgement pays off, saves aircraft and lives that make the other 99 worth while.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#76

Post by balderdash »

rhplus wrote: post #34
embedding-shape wrote: post #5

How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every…

> unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears Not to be negative about experts here, but of all industries, isn’t airline maintenance one of the most documented and standard procedure focused of them all? I would hope that someone maintaining a 777 doesn’t have to remember certain tricks or tips outside of what the manuals say, and when mistakes are found, they’d be noted, investigated a…

A former employer owned a combined cycle power plant -when they were having issues (not huge ones, but weird issues or gauge readings) they’d call this old timer and he’d come in walking around ask the operators to make some settings changes and be listening the whole time. And he’d come back and be like “hey the second stage compressor is out of balance” there were all sorts of telematics and manuals, but he could tell what was wrong just by listening…that was invaluable

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#77

Post by prmph »

bob1029 wrote: post #7
embedding-shape wrote: post #5

How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every…

It's sad but at the same time there is a sort of optimization that tends to occur each time the magic trick is rediscovered. Often it is not possible to separate the technique from the man. Things like riding a bike or flying a helicopter come to mind. A lot of what makes a master good cannot be written down anywhere. There isn't anything tangible to actually lose. How would you write a document that describes to som…

This is why I do not fear the ALI/LLMs will take over everything about Software Engineering anytime soon, if ever.

The amount of tacit knowledge I am applying to the architecture of my projects is probably too deep for LLMs to even approach, IMO. It takes very little to have Opus or even Fable make a mess that is obviously bad to anyone who understand even the first thing about effective software architecture.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#78

Post by Blackthorn »

colechristensen wrote: post #48
Blackthorn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do a lot as least. Forrest Addy has a massive library of posts that are still the top results on Google for just about any machining problem imaginable.

A small curated "best of" list of links wouldn't go unappreciated :)

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/air-compres...

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/best-way-to...

Just a couple of examples.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#79

Post by lotsofpulp »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #60
lotsofpulp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I being trolled? People live in buildings developed by real estate development companies, people take life saving and life extending medicines made by pharmaceutical companies, and people communicate and navigate using the electronics made by tech companies. The things they create (and not exclusively they, obviously the country as a whole creates too) directly lead to the share price increases and dividends that…

>Am I being trolled? People live in buildings developed by real estate development companies, people take life saving and life extending medicines made by pharmaceutical companies, and people communicate and navigate using the electronics made by tech companies. When you look at indoor square footage per capita (so like include the average HNer's share of the Starbucks and Whole Foods they patronize) and square foota…

Those are all very different topics/claims than

>Nobody plans for decades because nobody can afford the risk.

Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died

#80

Post by SteveNuts »

gwbas1c wrote: post #54
zulgin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a famous story about how an F16 got grounded because an half inch metal pin was missing from the cockpit canopy. Nobody knew what the pin did or if it was even necessary but you can't fly a plan that 'missing a part'. After several days of being grounded they finally reached out to a guy who had retired 20 years ago who told them the pin was a part of a analogue sensor that had been replaced nearly 30 years…

> Even if stuff is written down you have to know where to look. That's one of the things I love about AI: It's excellent at figuring out where to look, because it can digest so many documents so much faster than a person.

Yeah it’s great to point an AI at a very detailed and specific engineering manual and have it distilled down into bullet points. There’s certainly no room for information loss in that plan! /s
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