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Slow

michaelnotebook.com

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Re: Slow

#61

Post by adamhartenz »

urquhartfe wrote: post #49
lubujackson wrote: post #26

I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…

What is a "growth tree"?

Not "growth tree" but an "old growth" tree. It just means a tree that was left to mature, and never cut down.

Re: Slow

#62

Post by wwweston »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #11

The 2nd Ave Subway in Manhattan, with preparatory construction beginning in 1942. First phase opened in 2017. Although the outcome should be celebrated, the slowness and the added costs that brings certainly should not be. While every project is unique, it is not immediately clear why digging a subway on the Upper East Side is twenty times more expensive than in Seoul or ten times more expensive than in Paris. https:…

The “it is not immediately clear” part should be taken to heart a lot more than it is. Right now I’d bet you could elect Ezra Klein president and he would be as unable to improve things as most, and he probably has a somewhat clearer picture of the factors than your average internet commentator.

Railing against optimizing for caution in a vague sense really isn’t articulating specific dynamics however well it leans into the shallow strawmanification of “regulation” that doesn’t merely dominate lay discourse but has essentially ascended into conceptual godhood without having paid real dues in sacrifice or insight.

There is no respectable theory of why that has even begun to grasp the problem.

Re: Slow

#63

Post by veqq »

lubujackson wrote: post #26

I'm reminded of the famous story of (I think) the central beam in a building at Oxford. The story goes something like: The central beam was beginning to fail and the Oxford administration knew they needed to replace it. When they went around for quotes, no one could replace the beam because it was 100 ft in length and sourced from an old growth tree. Such logs were simply unavailable to buy. To solve the issue, the s…

This is an urban legend. The college archivist covered it: http://web.archive.org/web/20020816065622/http://www.new.ox....

> In 1859, the JCR told the SCR that the roof in Hall needed repairing, which was true.

> In 1862, the senior fellow was visiting College estates on `progress', i.e., an annual review of College property, which goes on to this day (performed by the Warden). Visiting forests in Akeley and Great Horwood, Buckinghamshire (forests which the College had owned since 1441), he had the largest oaks cut down and used to make new beams for the ceiling.

> It is not the case that these oaks were kept for the express purpose of replacing the Hall ceiling. It is standard woodland management to grow stands of mixed broadleaf trees e.g., oaks, interplanted with hazel and ash. The hazel and ash are coppiced approximately every 20-25 years to yield poles. The oaks, however, are left to grow on and eventally, after 150 years or more, they yield large pieces for major construction work such as beams, knees etc.

Re: Slow

#64

Post by cma »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #15
rglover wrote: post #3

Kudos to the OP for writing this. That PC post always irked me. Not because it showed positive examples of going fast but because it felt slightly demeaning to teams/projects that move slowly on purpose, with intent.

I disagree. The PC post never demeans projects that purposefully move slowly with intent, but rather criticizes boondoggles that move slowly due to utter incompetence. The only pejorative text in the PC post is this: >San Francisco proposed a new bus lane on Van Ness in 2001. It opened in 2022, yielding a project duration of around 7,600 days. “The project has been delayed due to an increase of wet weather since the…

At least 30 deaths in the construction of the Alaska highway and obviously much lower eminent domain costs for remote tundra vs downtown SF after the second tech boom.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/alaska-...

Re: Slow

#65

Post by drivers99 »

frutiger wrote: post #20
saagarjha wrote: post #5

Kind of amusing to have this at the top of the front page considering “Fast” was there yesterday

I imagine the two events are correlated.

Just to add to that, it does link to

https://patrickcollison.com/fast (which has 300 comments from 2019 on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848860 )

which is different than yesterday's link to https://www.catherinejue.com/fast (426 comments as of now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736967 )

Re: Slow

#66

Post by aaronbrethorst »

wwweston wrote: post #62
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #11

The 2nd Ave Subway in Manhattan, with preparatory construction beginning in 1942. First phase opened in 2017. Although the outcome should be celebrated, the slowness and the added costs that brings certainly should not be. While every project is unique, it is not immediately clear why digging a subway on the Upper East Side is twenty times more expensive than in Seoul or ten times more expensive than in Paris. https:…

The “it is not immediately clear” part should be taken to heart a lot more than it is. Right now I’d bet you could elect Ezra Klein president and he would be as unable to improve things as most, and he probably has a somewhat clearer picture of the factors than your average internet commentator. Railing against optimizing for caution in a vague sense really isn’t articulating specific dynamics however well it leans i…

I recommend checking out the Vital City NYC link i shared. It articulates some of the “specific dynamics” you’re thoughtfully, if turgidly requesting.

Re: Slow

#67

Post by mateo411 »

alnwlsn wrote: post #18

A friend of mine once wrote a dictionary[1]. It has all the (normal) one syllable words in English, defined using only other one syllable words. He decided to work on it by focusing on one letter per year, so A was in 1991, B was 1992, and the book was finished in 2017, 26 years later. It's not even a very long book - only a few hundred pages - but I'm sure if I tried to do the same thing all at once, I'd probably ha…

I bet your friend is good at Scrabble.

Re: Slow

#68

Post by jenthoven »

Some are projects that have a changing variable over a long period of time (Framingham Heart Study, E. coli long-term evolution experiment) or strive to exist a long time (Clock of the Long Now). I would argue that these projects -- their process, data collection methods, and goals -- may have been developed quickly, in a short amount of time. Their longevity is proof that the original project was well established. But the same could be said of the invention of the wheel, shoe, sliced bread, etc

Re: Slow

#69

Post by twojacobtwo »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #66
wwweston wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “it is not immediately clear” part should be taken to heart a lot more than it is. Right now I’d bet you could elect Ezra Klein president and he would be as unable to improve things as most, and he probably has a somewhat clearer picture of the factors than your average internet commentator. Railing against optimizing for caution in a vague sense really isn’t articulating specific dynamics however well it leans i…

I recommend checking out the Vital City NYC link i shared. It articulates some of the “specific dynamics” you’re thoughtfully, if turgidly requesting.

Thank you for using "turgidly" as such. You've given me a new appreciation for the term.

Re: Slow

#70

Post by vik0 »

hermitcrab wrote: post #10

Most democracies have elections every 4 or 5 years. That is good, in that we can get rid of underperforming politicians and parties. But it is bad, in that there isn't a lot of incentive for politicians and parties to plan over a longer timescale than 4 or 5 years. China has the opposite problem. It can plan and finance long term projects. But there is little prospect of peacefully changing the leadership.

Long-term planning on a colossal scale (like nation-state-level) (or even on a not-so-colossal scale - think of how many plans YOU have made and how they turned out) is pointless because of black swans

Sure, having a general idea of where you want things to go is fine, and everyone already does that; but when a government starts thinking that they should set a concrete goal X and they should do Y to achieve it, it's just akin to trying to predict the future, and we all know how well that always works out, because theyre under the faulty premise of thinkin Y will be constant forever, or that even the goal itself (X) should remain constant in a world that is anything but constant

So, this is a terrible argument for not having elections, or bigger election cycles. I'm sure someone could potentially put forward a better argument, but this one is not it

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