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> Sometimes the problem really is too complicated for a simple solution. I've been yelling this at the top of my lungs across a range of platforms. I understa

> Sometimes the problem really is too complicated for a simple solution. I've been yelling this at the top of my lungs across a range of platforms. I understand the hubris created by the Dunning-Kruger effect. We all fall prey to that at some point or another in life. That said, just because people don't know what they don't know it doesn't magically endow them with supernatural powers to be able to create solutions to problems that have decades of development, a complex history of evolution and are the result of intense development, testing and manufacturing by dedicated multidisciplinary teams over years of dedication. You cant Superman ventilators. Please stop. Find other ways to contribute. If you must work on ventilators, call established companies making them and ask how you might be able to help. Ask to work for them for free if you are able to.

fragmede 7y ago
> For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -H. L. Mencken
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Kalium 7y ago
> If you must work on ventilators, call established companies making them and ask how you might be able to help. Ask to work for them for free if you are able to. Anyone doing this should consider the possibility that the answer may be that there's nothing they can do on a useful timeline except write a check. If you want to help, you gotta swallow your ego.
lonelappde 7y ago
That's not what Dunning-Kruger's thesis is. I guess that makes your comment Dunning-Kruger about Dunning-Kruger.
- robomartin 7y ago
  From Wikipedia. "In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability." Engineers who don't know they don't know what it takes to design, manufacture and test a life-critical medical piece of equipment at scale. Yup, very much Dunning-Kruger. They think they know far more than they actually do. There's was a link HN just a few days ago from a bunch of physicists who set out to design a ventilators using, among other things, Home Depot parts. Let me put it this way. We have someone in my family with a PhD in Physics. Super smart guy. He has never built anything and can't build anything, much less life saving devices by the thousands. DK doesn't just apply to "dumb" people. I have worked with dozens of engineers who don't understand just how much they don't know. Maybe not the strict intent of DK, but very much the same kind of effect. Let's not split hairs. I think you know what I meant.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    I've worked at companies that do light manufacturing. Light manufacturing because we contract out components to houses that specialize in that. I feel like a lot of software people don't get that hardware at scale requires 10X the amount of resources each step from design to production to shipping and support. hardware also fails in the field in unpredictable ways. Especially to anyone without long practical experience.
    - robomartin 7y ago
      Exactly. There's a general and very real disconnect with what it takes to make things. I watch the White House and Gov. Cuomo's press conferences every day. The repeated questions about test kits, beds, ventilators, etc. drive me up a wall. I calm down when I realize none of the people asking the questions understand manufacturing one bit. And then I get rattled again because they are communicating falsehoods to the general population. We don't have enough masks, test kits or ventilators because you can't Superman hardware production. It isn't Trump's fault or anyone else's. It takes time --lots of time-- to setup a manufacturing process and start to produce product at scale with consistent quality and performance. Weeks for the most trivial of products, years for more complex hardware. Yet people don't have an understanding of this. Ventilators? Holy cow. Talk about not being able to Superman something into existence. If people understood they would realize that we made a massive mistake over the last 50 years by allowing our industrial base to evaporate and migrate to China to the extent it has. Consumers are as much at fault as the decades of incompetent politicians who allowed this to happen. While we bothered with nonsense (wars, etc.) China quietly went from an agrarian society to the second economy in the world. And, even worse, the world's factory. We, quite literally, cannot make anything in the US or Europe without Chinese components and, in some cases, all we are able to do is design in the US or Europe and have no choice but to manufacture in China. I suspect things might change over the coming years. The money we wasted in wars would have been far better spent keeping industry alive locally. Yes, subsidies, no taxes for manufacturers, relaxed regulatory burden, etc. Either we do those things or the next pandemic will, once again, find us not being able to even manufacture face masks at scale. How laughable is it that people have to sew face masks at home in the US? Sad. BTW: In Spain they just woke up to the reality that they received 340,000 bad test kits from China.
omilu 7y ago
I agree with what you are saying, but to be fair it's the exact sentiment Elon Musk had to deal with in the early days of SpaceX. Thankfully he didn't listen.

fragmede 7y ago

> For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -H. L. Mencken

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Kalium 7y ago

> If you must work on ventilators, call established companies making them and ask how you might be able to help. Ask to work for them for free if you are able to. Anyone doing this should consider the possibility that the answer may be that there's nothing they can do on a useful timeline except write a check. If you want to help, you gotta swallow your ego.

lonelappde 7y ago

That's not what Dunning-Kruger's thesis is. I guess that makes your comment Dunning-Kruger about Dunning-Kruger.

robomartin 7y ago
From Wikipedia. "In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability." Engineers who don't know they don't know what it takes to design, manufacture and test a life-critical medical piece of equipment at scale. Yup, very much Dunning-Kruger. They think they know far more than they actually do. There's was a link HN just a few days ago from a bunch of physicists who set out to design a ventilators using, among other things, Home Depot parts. Let me put it this way. We have someone in my family with a PhD in Physics. Super smart guy. He has never built anything and can't build anything, much less life saving devices by the thousands. DK doesn't just apply to "dumb" people. I have worked with dozens of engineers who don't understand just how much they don't know. Maybe not the strict intent of DK, but very much the same kind of effect. Let's not split hairs. I think you know what I meant.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I've worked at companies that do light manufacturing. Light manufacturing because we contract out components to houses that specialize in that. I feel like a lot of software people don't get that hardware at scale requires 10X the amount of resources each step from design to production to shipping and support. hardware also fails in the field in unpredictable ways. Especially to anyone without long practical experience.
  - robomartin 7y ago
    Exactly. There's a general and very real disconnect with what it takes to make things. I watch the White House and Gov. Cuomo's press conferences every day. The repeated questions about test kits, beds, ventilators, etc. drive me up a wall. I calm down when I realize none of the people asking the questions understand manufacturing one bit. And then I get rattled again because they are communicating falsehoods to the general population. We don't have enough masks, test kits or ventilators because you can't Superman hardware production. It isn't Trump's fault or anyone else's. It takes time --lots of time-- to setup a manufacturing process and start to produce product at scale with consistent quality and performance. Weeks for the most trivial of products, years for more complex hardware. Yet people don't have an understanding of this. Ventilators? Holy cow. Talk about not being able to Superman something into existence. If people understood they would realize that we made a massive mistake over the last 50 years by allowing our industrial base to evaporate and migrate to China to the extent it has. Consumers are as much at fault as the decades of incompetent politicians who allowed this to happen. While we bothered with nonsense (wars, etc.) China quietly went from an agrarian society to the second economy in the world. And, even worse, the world's factory. We, quite literally, cannot make anything in the US or Europe without Chinese components and, in some cases, all we are able to do is design in the US or Europe and have no choice but to manufacture in China. I suspect things might change over the coming years. The money we wasted in wars would have been far better spent keeping industry alive locally. Yes, subsidies, no taxes for manufacturers, relaxed regulatory burden, etc. Either we do those things or the next pandemic will, once again, find us not being able to even manufacture face masks at scale. How laughable is it that people have to sew face masks at home in the US? Sad. BTW: In Spain they just woke up to the reality that they received 340,000 bad test kits from China.

omilu 7y ago

I agree with what you are saying, but to be fair it's the exact sentiment Elon Musk had to deal with in the early days of SpaceX. Thankfully he didn't listen.