3 ms·
This analysis is great. It makes for a great blog post, university lecture or similiar. But unfortunately you can't have these kinds of discussions in an engi
by throwaway0a5e 5y ago
This analysis is great. It makes for a great blog post, university lecture or similiar. But unfortunately you can't have these kinds of discussions in an engineering meeting, or other shared context because anything that could be perceived as arguing for less safety will attract opposition because there's tons of people who want the cheap virtue points and ass-covering that goes with being the guy who's always in favor of more safety.
- gostsamo 5y agoIf you use such an argument in a real design meeting, you might be asked to leave. Either you have data to support changing the parameters of the assignment, or you keep your silence. Accusing everyone else in virtue signaling is at hominem attack that brings nothing to the table.
- rossdavidh 5y agoI think it tends to come up more in fields, such as aeronautical engineering, where there is a safety tradeoff. If you make the plane heavier, it may be safer from material failure, but now there may be less margin for error by the pilot because the plane does not respond the same. You have traded one kind of risk against another. I remember being present when a friend who was a civil engineer heard that they used a safety factor of only 1.5 in aeronautical engineering, and she was kind of shocked it was so low; when you don't have to fly the thing, you can afford to make the factor significantly higher.