[HN Gopher] Suppose I wanted to kill a lot of pilots (2020)
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Suppose I wanted to kill a lot of pilots (2020)
Author : stanrivers
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-08-21 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsletter.butwhatfor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsletter.butwhatfor.com)
| jedberg wrote:
| This is basically the idea behind Chaos Engineering. Think of all
| the ways a system can break, make it happen, and see if we
| survive. If we don't, fix it so we do next time.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Perhaps Charlie Munger's enthusiasm for this sort of inverse
| reasoning explains his (now cancelled) plan for the windowless
| dorm building he designed for UC-Santa Barbara -- he was creating
| the worst possible dorm building in order to get insights into
| what a good dorm building would be.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I'm told people rave about his KITP dorm building - maybe
| that's where all the lessons learned went
| mhh__ wrote:
| I thought the idea was to spend as little time in rooms as
| possible
| foxyv wrote:
| I love deep dark places. My favorite memory is of visiting the
| Grand Canyon Caverns. I loved when they turned out the lights
| and it was absolutely pitch black. A dorm like that would be
| amazing for me. No street lights, no car noise, no windows for
| people to peek into. However I can see why it would make a
| bunch of non troglodyte people feel weird.
| googlryas wrote:
| Or, maybe, Munger figured out that what was viewed as obviously
| correct wasn't actually correct, and created a unique design to
| explore the possibilities when the obviously correct thing was
| removed.
|
| The rebuttals to his design are basically just "every room
| needs a window", without any real justification. Do you think
| he didn't think of that? That he just forgot to put windows in?
|
| My dorm at college had windows, and they were entirely
| worthless. There were 2 windows, 2'x6', frosted glass, and they
| could open about 3". I don't think they added much to the room
| deepspace wrote:
| > Or, maybe, Munger figured out that what was viewed as
| obviously correct wasn't actually correct
|
| Nah, looking at the floor plans, he was just optimizing for
| cost at the expense of user experience.
|
| To rebut your anecdata with my own: My dorm rooms at college
| had large 5' x 4' windows that opened. The unlimited fresh
| air and view over the campus helped me keep my sanity while
| studying for a 4-year engineering degree. A windowless room
| would have driven me stark raving mad in the first year.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| > The rebuttals to his design are basically just "every room
| needs a window", without any real justification. Do you think
| he didn't think of that? That he just forgot to put windows
| in?
|
| I think Munger should build a dorm room for himself that
| doesn't have windows and live in it for a few years before
| deciding that other people don't need them.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Details on dorm cancellation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37213589
|
| TBD, apparently, is an alternative source of ~$1B:
|
| > Estimated Budget: The projected construction budget for
| Phases 1 and 2 of the Project is $600M - $750M.
| pikminguy wrote:
| This reminds me of How to be Miserable by Randy Patterson. A
| guide on all the ways to ruin your mental health so you can not
| do them.
| franky47 wrote:
| This reminds me of the drawing of WWII bomber planes with bullet
| holes mapped out, showing that the critical systems were where
| there were no holes, not because the hull was strong enough, but
| because a hit there would cause the plane not to return and be
| recorded.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
| sillywalk wrote:
| Here's a bit about the bombers. And it doesn't seem to have a
| medium paywall.
|
| https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not-to-...
| gustavus wrote:
| There's an episode of Sienfeld about this. George realizes that
| he always makes the wrong decision so he decides to do the
| opposite of whatever he would normally do, and it ends up working
| out for him pretty well.
| JCM9 wrote:
| There are some real life "George" figures that I pay attention
| to. If they think something is a great idea and that's in line
| with something I'm thinking about doing, I'll take a hard look
| at what I might be missing since X's judgment is usually
| terrible. In an odd way, their consistently bad judgment has
| proven a valuable tool.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I figured out a long time ago that the Reddit hivemind is a
| superb contraindicator.
| datavirtue wrote:
| God damn, break out the AI...we are on to something
| afterburner wrote:
| Speaking of X...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's even an investment fund on this principle. If Jim
| Cramer goes up on CNBC to talk about a stock, they buy the
| opposite of his recommendations.
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/love-him-or-hate-him-
| new-e...
| asciimike wrote:
| Same vibe: https://galloway-index.webflow.io/
| [deleted]
| dharmab wrote:
| Most of the best decisions of my life were the opposite
| decisions my parents would have made. They're not stupid
| people, but they grew up in a totally different time and
| place. Nowadays I sometimes ask for their advice as "inverse
| input."
| kurthr wrote:
| I suspect part of this is that there are other parts of
| society (corporations) that are preying on their older
| intuition. It also means that as we get older, we should
| also question "obvious answers", because others will have
| learned to take advantage of them (and any accumulated
| wealth).
| DanielBMarkham wrote:
| Related essay: Negatives Stack, Positives Don't
| https://danielbmarkham.com/negatives-stack-positives-dont-a-...
| phkahler wrote:
| Same thing applies to figuring out what you want. First identify
| all the stuff that you don't want - particularly things you
| already have and are willing to get rid of. Getting rid of things
| really reinforces the notion that you don't want them. This also
| makes space and frees up time to explore things you do want even
| if you're not sure what that is yet.
| aftbit wrote:
| An interesting concept. If you want to succeed but cannot see the
| solution, spend a lot of time thinking about how you might fail,
| then just don't do that.
| User23 wrote:
| Ah, the Douglas Adams technique for flight: just throw yourself
| at the ground and miss.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Yes, it's a neat concept. Have you ever met someone who has
| unerringly bad judgment? Maybe it's useful to know a few and
| ask them for advice.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Find your Eddie Mush. Never bet the same way :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ulWjFfLsL0
| fnimick wrote:
| Oh hey, this is me, when it comes to products. I am almost
| certainly of the "harbinger of failure" group where if I like
| your product, it's going to be a disaster.
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/certain-customers-
| sp...
|
| Not only did I buy a Zune, I was an early enthusiastic
| customer of their streaming subscription service and thought
| that it would topple the iTunes sales model. We all know how
| well that went.
| _ah wrote:
| Also: subscription streaming _did_ topple the iTunes sales
| model. It just wasn 't Microsoft that made it work in the
| marketplace.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Same here. "Split brain," logical, analytical person. We
| aren't even a rounding error in market numbers. If I like
| it it is probably the superior product providing the most
| value...rarely ever matters.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Except Zune wasn't a bad product. I liked it. It had a
| radio and was easy to develop apps for.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Doomed to failure. How come none of Microsoft's bad
| products ever die? RIP Windows Phone.
| don_neufeld wrote:
| While funny, I think that misses the point.
|
| I see the value here being: when you can't understand the
| causal relationships for success, use the causal
| relationships for failure that you can understand and then
| avoid specific failure modes.
|
| "Friend gives generally bad advice" is not that kind of a
| clear causal relationship.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I've often thought in life that I've learned most of what I
| know by seeing examples of what not to do. If for no other
| reason than that there are many more people running around
| without a clue than truly wise individuals making well-
| reasoned decisions. At least that's how it's seemed IME; I'm
| sure in reality people are just doing the best they could and
| making decisions in the moment, but they often seem to be
| thinking in the extremely short term (and then sometimes,
| still wrong even for that).
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A bit stronger: Think about all the ways you could fail, then
| _make sure those things don 't happen_ (to the extent you can).
|
| That is, failure isn't always caused by me doing something.
| Sometimes it's caused by something external. My wonderful new
| box might not ship if we can't get the chips to make it? I
| should probably look at lining up a second source. (Yeah, a
| couple of years ago we saw that that may not work. You can't
| always prevent everything bad that can happen. You can prevent
| some of them, though, and it makes enough difference to be
| worth trying.)
| pixl97 wrote:
| The only problem I see with this is the potential ways to fail
| are unbounded, maybe possibly infinite. While the ways to
| succeed may also be unbounded its growth metric is much
| smaller. That is, some infinite sets are larger than others.
| neilv wrote:
| Another "think a bit differently" trick, which sometimes helps
| me, is to ask myself what I would advise _someone else_ to do, in
| a similar situation.
|
| This can help get past some individual biases.
| elSidCampeador wrote:
| tldr - "invert, always invert" or something to that effect that
| Jacobi said
| isoprophlex wrote:
| See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duality_(optimization)
|
| _In mathematical optimization theory, duality or the duality
| principle is the principle that optimization problems may be
| viewed from either of two perspectives, the primal problem or the
| dual problem. If the primal is a minimization problem then the
| dual is a maximization problem (and vice versa). Any feasible
| solution to the primal (minimization) problem is at least as
| large as any feasible solution to the dual (maximization)
| problem._
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I saw something like this for suicide. Dark, and fairly graphic.
| All the possible ways you might want to kill yourself, complete
| with descriptions of how it usually goes wrong and you'll just be
| maimed for life instead. The intent was clearly to convince
| people not to do it.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Complete_Manual_of_Suici...
| asah wrote:
| One of my favorite versions: when Steve Jobs immersed an early
| iPod in water to see if any bubbles came out, and therefore it
| could be made smaller/tighter.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+ipod+water+air+bu...
|
| Another is when Feynman ducked a piece of o-ring in a glass of
| ice water, causing it to fail.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=feynman+challenger+o+ring
| xtracto wrote:
| A summary ChatGPT gave me:
|
| - The article discusses the concept of solving problems by
| focusing on failure instead of success. - It introduces the
| theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) developed by Genrich
| Altshuller, which emphasizes the importance of understanding
| developments outside of one's primary field. - Altshuller sent a
| letter criticizing the lack of innovation to Joseph Stalin, which
| resulted in his imprisonment. - TRIZ practitioners use the
| Anticipatory Failure Determination mental model to solve problems
| that cannot easily be identified. They design methods of failure
| in order to find ways to avoid it. - Charlie Munger, inspired by
| the TRIZ approach, applied the concept to his work as a
| meteorologist during World War II, where he focused on preventing
| pilots from being harmed by predicting weather conditions that
| would pose a risk to them. - Applying this concept in daily life
| can help in making better decisions and resolving complex
| problems. - It suggests thinking about what actions would result
| in a terrible outcome and then avoiding those actions to move
| closer to achieving success. - The approach must be iterative,
| continuously re-evaluating and testing how to avoid failure in
| order to achieve success. - The article concludes that by
| avoiding surefire ways to fail, individuals may stumble upon a
| path that leads to something better.
| HtmlProgrammer wrote:
| Is this not just the general approach to system design? When I'm
| writing software, my first thought is list everything that could
| go wrong?
|
| Or am I just a hopelessly anxious person lol
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I think it's the right approach, as long as you realize you
| won't be able to think of _everything_ up front, and don 't let
| that thought be a burden.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| But definitely give it some times to think of it upfront.
| Weight them by 2 factor: severity and frequency. Then try to
| tackle as much as you can from the top list of severity *
| frequency level.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Simply being aware that there exist things that you don't
| know you don't know can save your project.
|
| This is the general basis for why I tend to pick tools &
| concepts that are at least a half-decade old. The space of
| unknown unknowns in something that has been around this long
| should be vanishingly-small, especially if we are applying
| the tool or concept in a typical way.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| > You have to think your optimization approach from the other
| end, as how it might fail.
| brianpan wrote:
| Definitely agree it sounds like good system design. I think the
| overlap is the big picture thinking. It provides a way of re-
| framing goals to give a clearer picture of the most important
| things.
|
| So not just list everything that could go wrong, but maybe:
| what's a terrible day for your service/system that's most
| likely to happen? Cascading failures? Outage that makes
| accessing/recovering your system impossible? Backups unusable?
| cle wrote:
| Charlie Munger would get his OpenAI account suspended.
| titzer wrote:
| I feel like there is/should be some kind of programming language
| design equivalent of this. If you wanted to make programmers
| basically incapable of writing correct programs, how would you do
| it?
|
| Here's where I'd share examples and it wouldn't be funny and
| instead start a flamewar.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't think the value of inverse reasoning is that it lets you
| think of new ideas. If you're trying to list all the ways
| something could go wrong, you're pretty much just listing the
| ways they could go right, and flipping them. What I mean is, I
| think your list of bullet points for "how to have a great career"
| would be able as long as your list of bullet points for "how to
| have a terrible career". Both lists would usually contain the
| same essential information, just framed differently.
|
| Where I think such a practice can be useful is in forcing you to
| confront unpleasant possibilities you would otherwise try to
| ignore, and thus at least briefly plan for them.
| louwrentius wrote:
| I'm not really fond of this concept.
|
| I think the simple idea of "risk analysis" is much more intuitive
| and better captures the idea that is being conveyed.
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