[HN Gopher] Superiority (1951)
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Superiority (1951)
Author : rgrieselhuber
Score : 89 points
Date : 2024-03-17 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (metallicman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (metallicman.com)
| Khelavaster wrote:
| An excellent classic
| sorokod wrote:
| A contemporary echo to that story: "US Navy Procurement Disasters
| - The Littoral Combat Ship and Zumwalt Class Destroyer"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odS3Kn5oGl0
| bee_rider wrote:
| Looking at Clarke's Wikipedia article
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke
|
| > During the Second World War from 1941 to 1946, he served in
| the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in
| the early-warning radar defence system, which contributed to
| the RAF's success during the Battle of Britain. Clarke spent
| most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled
| approach (GCA) radar
|
| > Although GCA did not see much practical use during the war,
| after several years of development it proved vital to the
| Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949.
|
| I think he must have had some pretty good first-hand experience
| WRT deploying new tech during a war!
|
| The US also famously had the whole Mark-14 torpedo fiasco, the
| torpedo issue in the story is not quite similar but there might
| be an echo.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| spooky
| mitchbob wrote:
| (1951)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230217152507/https://metallicm...
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The problem is always expectation, anticipation and experience.
|
| With any new technology we expect certain performance - we get
| this from the "The Economist effect" - where the simple one
| paragraph explanation of a complex field enables us to have a
| grasp on a concept but not the full difficulties.
|
| So we expect the nuclear missile to hit its target whereas the
| thing about nukes is they were designed to be used despite being
| horribly inaccurate.
|
| Anticipation is time bounded - we get depressed when the thing we
| expect is not done today - we can imagine it so why can't we have
| it. This is the problem behind all crunch development times, all
| VC funded CEO replacements and every lying progress report ever.
|
| And experience is what tells us where we really are - it is
| looking at a Trident missile spiralling round in front page
| photos and saying ... what have we missed.
|
| Weapons operate always at the frontier of what is possible.
| Nuclear weapons probably are not really there - we can fly the
| prototype over unchallenged airspace but launching rockets is
| hard.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The problem is always hubris, which leads to a distorted
| conceit of "progress" which can actually be regressive.
|
| Whether it's weapons or civilian technology like smartphones,
| automobiles, or a "cashless society" we know there are side
| effects, and unknowns. But we choose to focus on only the rosy,
| optimistic side.
|
| For most of us that is pandering to laziness, convenience, low-
| effort and less thinking. For those involved in making money,
| the negatives are far away in space and time, so they can
| always kick the can down the road.
|
| This is how supremacy becomes weakness.
|
| Money buys a louder voice and drowns out cautious minds with
| better vision of the long-term future and marginal scenarios.
| They are Cassandras. Luddites.
|
| Those with experience are dismissed as old and irrelevant.
|
| Hubris leads to absolute dependency and complacency.
|
| In a long enough time-line we'll always encounter an accident
| or enemy using older "low-tech". The greatest threat to our
| security is always our own hubris. Sadly I see buckets of it
| here on HN.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I have a very simple theory about this -
|
| If we assume the 80/20 rule to hold about most things in
| world (80% profits from 20% customers, 80% of benefits to
| society from 20% workers), then we can assume the same 80/20
| rule applies to the bits left over - ie the remining 20% of
| profits will have 80% of those generated by 20% of the left
| over 80% of customers)
|
| Roughly speaking then 96% of all good stuff comes from 36% of
| stuff we do
|
| We could say then that if we could find the 2/3 of useless
| activity that only generates 4% of good stuff we can for
| example cut carbon emissions by 2/3 - and only need to lose
| the crappy plastic toys on front of magazines, or most
| peoples commutes or ...
|
| What I think I am saying is that 2/3 of the jobs people do
| are useless - and yet in any organisation they are the
| majority and hence bend the organisation
|
| Don't worry dear reader I am sure like me you are one of the
| non useless ones ... like me , like me
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| You and I, we've gone through the same thought process and,
| sadly, where it ended up for me was;
|
| Golgafrinchans [0]
|
| Now if we could only work out what that useless third is.
| ?!
|
| But there's always the finite risk that plastic landfill
| fodder and chindogu attached to kids magazines _is_ the
| essential saving grace of humanity.
|
| :)
|
| [0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrinchans
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I think your premise is sound, but your example is unfortunate.
| SLBMs are less accurate, but still much better than "horribly
| inaccurate". And American ICBMs started out with poor accuracy,
| but are now quite accurate(1), and were by the 1970s. If you're
| standing in the target building, you are already dead.
|
| (1)I'm being a bit coy here because during Uncle Ronnie's
| administration, I had a job and security clearance involving
| this.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The thing is, well there are lots of things and I do t mean
| to impune your work some forty years ago but
|
| 1. We have learnt not to trust untested equipment
|
| 2. We have learnt that under pressure well meaning people
| will demonstrate equipment that while kind of representative
| of the reality are honed, improved and generously helped to
| perform well on test
|
| 3. Only repeatable performance under active competition is a
| real measure. It's why sane people like open well designed
| markets. And it's why weapons that get battle tested tend to
| be reliable
|
| I am sure that overall if we read the red button nukes will
| fire and land and kill millions.
|
| It's just the day after I expect that the auditors will find
| a large number failed to fire, or failed to leave the tube,
| went the wrong way or simply otherwise went wrong
|
| The point of credible threat is not one shot one kill, but so
| many shots we can basically guarantee a kill.
|
| In other other words, both sides hold enormous number of
| nukes ostensibly to ensure they have some to fire after a
| first strike - but the effects of an enemy first strike are
| indistinguishable from poor engineering and beauracracy
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Like all good scifi stories in general and ACC stories in
| particular, this is a story about A which is actually a story
| about B.
|
| There is wisdom here that is directly applicable to the work of
| the average HN denizen. Boring beats cool almost every time.
| er4hn wrote:
| It's incredible how Arthur C Clarke foresaw the downsides of full
| codebase rewrites and putting all organizational weight behind
| untested and cutting edge technologies all the way back in 1951.
| Truly prescient sci-fi writing.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| It could be argued that German military technology in WW2
| illustrated some of the same issues, and perhaps gave ACC the
| idea. They had the V2, TV-guided missiles and operational jet
| fighters, some of which had massive development / opportunity
| costs, but none of which materially changed the outcome of the
| war. The ME262 jet in particular had engines that only survived
| a few flights because by then German industry couldn't access
| the specialist metals required.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Not to mention their tanks, IIUC? Particularly the late-war
| models. Very advanced, _very_ maintenance-intensive.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Yes - the German armaments industry was very quick to
| respond to emerging requirements, leading to a
| proliferation of platforms and versions that were
| logistically difficult to support, especially as the supply
| chains were disrupted. Some mass-produced weapons (e.g. the
| Panzerfaust) were widely distributed and well supported,
| but the higher-tech ones weren't.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| There are organisations that have been following the rewrite
| strategy for 2 decades that are running 5 or more parallel
| systems and teams all doing a lot of common things with each
| with unique properties often in entirely different languages
| and a lot of integration hell. They will quite happily be
| starting a 6th such project rewrite this year to solve the
| problem of the previous 5, this time surely it will work.
|
| Another organisation I know of replaced its "old" .net desktop
| client with a nice shiny Microsoft derived web solution using
| some customised COTs and it would solve all their maintenance
| issues. Sigh its a disaster as expected made all the worse
| because they fired the developers before the switch was even
| really done.
|
| Over and over this mistake is made to rewrite and replace
| instead of refactor on the assumption the old code is crufty
| rather than battle hardened and that writing new code is easier
| than editing old. Never do these organisations learn to develop
| more maintenance friendly systems along the way.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| The flaw exhibited by the losing side was "retrofitting"
| effective and functional ships in the middle of a war. A similar
| attitude happens that I've seen countless times in live
| applications where decisions were made to allow the existing
| system to stagnate because a new shiny rewrite was going to come
| online "by the end of the year". Four years later, the new system
| isn't ready, and the "old" one (i.e. the one in production) is
| hitting scaling cliffs because it wasn't kept up to date.
|
| But I suspect this post was in response to the "it's obsolete"
| comments on the F35 post earlier today, with lots of calls for
| work on drones.
|
| The warning in Clarke's story is not that we shouldn't build new
| tech, however. We should absolutely build new tech, and have
| skunk works and the like. But we shouldn't stop building the
| existing tech as long as it is effective in battle. The concern
| comes when we don't have the capacity to build "what's next"
| because the most important piece is made in a little island off
| the coast of another continent full of potential adversaries.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Any way we go about it, the unfortunate fact is hindsight is
| the only way to tell what the right choice was.
|
| In some cases the old system is outclassed so badly attempting
| to keep using it would be a fatal mistake (cavalry charges at
| machine gun nests). Other times a new system can be way better,
| but the rate of production is so far behind the old model you
| can't make enough fast enough to make a difference. And then
| other times the new systems have such terrible weaknesses they
| can be a risk to the entire nation state.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You don't stop an old system before proving the new one in
| practice, and you don't disrupt logistic channels, ever.
|
| Those don't take any hindsight.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| I've always loved how this bit of super-science is utterly
| obsolete...
|
| _The Analyzer contained just short of a million vacuum tubes and
| needed a team of five hundred technicians to maintain and operate
| it_
|
| ...and yet it in no way invalidates the point of the story, which
| hits home just as hard as ever.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I remember reading a saying that the Germans fought WW2 with the
| weapons of the 1950s, while the Allies fought it with the weapons
| of the 1930s. Guess who won.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The Germans also used the most horses of all belligerents and
| soldiers walked.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I'm surprised not to see any comments on Ukraine here yet.
|
| USA and the west focussing on 'super weapons' like f22, f35,
| super carriers etc etc. and Ukraine is losing the war because
| they don't have enough bullets and mortars, and we don't have
| enough factories to increase production.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Or because we don't give them F35s, long-range artillery and
| 400 Abrams tanks. In Iraq 400 Abrams did a good job from what
| I'm told.
| rainworld wrote:
| >In Iraq 400 Abrams did a good job
|
| They were hardly threatened there. In Ukraine, they are
| proving to be at least as vulnerable as any other tank.
|
| https://x.com/squatsons/status/1769344446112711037
|
| >we don't give them long-range artillery
|
| They got plenty of that. As much as the West could spare and
| then some. Some countries gave literally everything they had.
|
| Ukrainians do lack barrels. Because they don't exist and
| won't anytime soon.
|
| >F-35
|
| Hilarious.
| jonplackett wrote:
| In Iraq those tanks were already old and crucially didn't
| have night vision so they just blew them up in the night.
|
| We did give them long range missiles. And now quite a lot of
| tanks. But - and this a has been admitted to by the pentagon
| - they didn't think though or provide for servicing them. The
| poor buggers have all these different western tanks with
| parts that don't match. And the Abram's is powered literally
| by a jet engine and needs constant servicing. It would be
| hilarious if it wasn't so completely tragic.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Indeed. The support has been incredibly spotty and half-
| assed throughout.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Ukraine would be in Moscow in 3 days if they had this
| technology.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Even f16s are too fragile to give to ukraine. They can only
| land on perfect runways because their engines are slung low.
|
| Most of the modern USA weapons only work under condition of
| being totally dominant and being able to have your supply
| chain work perfectly. This story really is a very good
| analogy.
|
| One further point - and this is what makes this war even more
| tragic - say Ukraine do get all the super weapons annd they
| do work as expected, and are on their merry way to Moscow,
| what would Russia do? Most likely their military doct9rine of
| dropping some tactical or not-so-tactical nukes.
|
| As Sean Bean knows, one does not simply invade a nuclear
| power.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It's a tough problem. It's not very palatable to just fold
| either. The Russian government can always wave the nuke
| card, it's not going away, but neither will their
| ambitions.
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