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> It's like that in other fields of engineering too, when they are making something they haven't built before. Exactly this. I like to use an analogy of buildi

> It's like that in other fields of engineering too, when they are making something they haven't built before. Exactly this. I like to use an analogy of building bridges :) - OK, we have this valley and we want to drive cars over it. What do we do? - Hmm, we could just make the road along the bottom of the valley - Wouldn't that cause the cars to fall because of the steep angle? - Good point. Maybe if we built the road with a lot of twist and turns - Then it's a slow and long drive. - Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars across the valley - That would make safety a concern though. Is there a way we could use helicopter rotors to suspend a road in mid air over the valley? - Or what if we attach the road to each side of the valley and make a road that's strong enough to not crack in the middle under its own weight? - Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. How do we make sure it can hold its own weight, though? - .....etc

exikyut 8y ago
Very interesting point. I must admit that when I saw valley in > OK, we have this valley I immediately thought about SV, and then as I read > - Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars > * across the valley* I imagined some kind of scenario happening in an alternate reality where a startup was trying to dream up a viable way to actually achieve this in SV. It was funny because of the fact that a lot of the ideas people do come up with are probably ideologically very similar in magnitude and ridiculous impossibility.
majewsky 8y ago
> Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars across the valley This was played for laughs by German satire news website "Der Postillon" (like The Onion, but in German): "Department of Traffic to replace ramshackle bridges by jumping hills" Nicely photoshopped picture at: https://www.der-postillon.com/2014/11/lander-ersetzen-marode-brucken-durch.html https://www.der-postillon.com/2014/11/lander-ersetzen-marode...

exikyut 8y ago

Very interesting point. I must admit that when I saw valley in > OK, we have this valley I immediately thought about SV, and then as I read > - Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars > * across the valley* I imagined some kind of scenario happening in an alternate reality where a startup was trying to dream up a viable way to actually achieve this in SV. It was funny because of the fact that a lot of the ideas people do come up with are probably ideologically very similar in magnitude and ridiculous impossibility.

majewsky 8y ago

> Maybe we could build some sort of catapult setup to throw the cars across the valley This was played for laughs by German satire news website "Der Postillon" (like The Onion, but in German): "Department of Traffic to replace ramshackle bridges by jumping hills" Nicely photoshopped picture at: https://www.der-postillon.com/2014/11/lander-ersetzen-marode-brucken-durch.html https://www.der-postillon.com/2014/11/lander-ersetzen-marode...