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I think there's at least a chance the people opposing this also know what they're talking about (as indeed do the Building Regulations people in my country, whe

I think there's at least a chance the people opposing this also know what they're talking about (as indeed do the Building Regulations people in my country, where this design wouldn't be legal to let as accommodation). If Munger's had good advice on this it's not exactly coming across in his interview.

roenxi 5y ago
If your country has banned designs with no windows you're talking to a badly skewed sample of people experts. Obviously nobody would be able to figure out if the idea work well, since it is banned. Months can go by without me raising the blind in my bedroom. While I certainly want a window there, I don't think it is essential.
- notahacker 5y ago
  You've gone from suggesting I'm possibly underestimating the quality of advice Munger receives to insisting that literally every construction professional in the UK (as well as all the critical experts in California) must know less than him about the habitability and safety of buildings because having banned certain designs, they can't possibly understand the reasoning behind their regulations. Wow, and I thought Elon Musk was Peak Contrarian Billionaire Worship.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    > ...that literally every construction professional in the UK (as well as all the critical experts in California) must know less than him about the habitability and safety of buildings... Not every one. But it does seem likely that Munger has access to people with more experience building windowless bedrooms than anyone in the UK. I've heard from a source on the internet that it would be illegal to have such experience in the UK, so I doubt anyone does. It is a trivially obvious one. You won't have people with experience in a technique available if it has been banned. It is a safe guess that the US architects will be better at this than UK ones.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      You will also find more experts in the practicalities of employing children where child labour is legal (or at least de facto tolerated). This doesn't mean that a billionaire who insist that everyone who objects to him hiring children to work in his factories is ignorant is correct, and the experts who think it's a bad idea just haven't employed enough children to know anything about the consequences. Permanent accommodation which is multiple doors away from the nearest natural light source, relies on artificial means to circulate air and has a distinct lack of exits might find a few more supporters than child labour, but funnily enough the laws ended up in place for similar reasons. We saw what happened when we assumed that people must know best because they were rich enough to pay people to agree with them (and others were too poor and uninformed to have much choice) What is trivially obvious is that you won't have a building design with windows in bedrooms if the person funding the design makes funding contingent on the building not having windows in bedrooms, as Munger states he's doing. In all probability the experts hadn't built masses of windowless cells backing onto windowless kitchens connected via windowless corridors to the outside world before (the reason the design is controversial, after all, is that its not exactly standard building practice in the US either) and probably had plenty of ideas on how to maximise floorplan whilst guaranteeing natural light to inhabited spaces, but they detailed this design because the person cutting the cheques told them to. Your implicit argument that a design constraint imposed by the ego of a billionaire design dilettante is likely to yield better advice than a design constraint imposed by regulators based on decades of built environment research is far from trivially obvious... And if Munger had some insight the regulators missed, it's not exactly evident from the bizarre set of contradictions he offers up in the interview..
Chris2048 5y ago
> where this design wouldn't be legal Can you demonstrate that this is true. AFAIK UK regulations consider fire-safety, and they have nothing to do with banning windowless-rooms outright.

roenxi 5y ago

If your country has banned designs with no windows you're talking to a badly skewed sample of people experts. Obviously nobody would be able to figure out if the idea work well, since it is banned. Months can go by without me raising the blind in my bedroom. While I certainly want a window there, I don't think it is essential.

notahacker 5y ago
You've gone from suggesting I'm possibly underestimating the quality of advice Munger receives to insisting that literally every construction professional in the UK (as well as all the critical experts in California) must know less than him about the habitability and safety of buildings because having banned certain designs, they can't possibly understand the reasoning behind their regulations. Wow, and I thought Elon Musk was Peak Contrarian Billionaire Worship.
- roenxi 5y ago
  > ...that literally every construction professional in the UK (as well as all the critical experts in California) must know less than him about the habitability and safety of buildings... Not every one. But it does seem likely that Munger has access to people with more experience building windowless bedrooms than anyone in the UK. I've heard from a source on the internet that it would be illegal to have such experience in the UK, so I doubt anyone does. It is a trivially obvious one. You won't have people with experience in a technique available if it has been banned. It is a safe guess that the US architects will be better at this than UK ones.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    You will also find more experts in the practicalities of employing children where child labour is legal (or at least de facto tolerated). This doesn't mean that a billionaire who insist that everyone who objects to him hiring children to work in his factories is ignorant is correct, and the experts who think it's a bad idea just haven't employed enough children to know anything about the consequences. Permanent accommodation which is multiple doors away from the nearest natural light source, relies on artificial means to circulate air and has a distinct lack of exits might find a few more supporters than child labour, but funnily enough the laws ended up in place for similar reasons. We saw what happened when we assumed that people must know best because they were rich enough to pay people to agree with them (and others were too poor and uninformed to have much choice) What is trivially obvious is that you won't have a building design with windows in bedrooms if the person funding the design makes funding contingent on the building not having windows in bedrooms, as Munger states he's doing. In all probability the experts hadn't built masses of windowless cells backing onto windowless kitchens connected via windowless corridors to the outside world before (the reason the design is controversial, after all, is that its not exactly standard building practice in the US either) and probably had plenty of ideas on how to maximise floorplan whilst guaranteeing natural light to inhabited spaces, but they detailed this design because the person cutting the cheques told them to. Your implicit argument that a design constraint imposed by the ego of a billionaire design dilettante is likely to yield better advice than a design constraint imposed by regulators based on decades of built environment research is far from trivially obvious... And if Munger had some insight the regulators missed, it's not exactly evident from the bizarre set of contradictions he offers up in the interview..

Chris2048 5y ago

> where this design wouldn't be legal Can you demonstrate that this is true. AFAIK UK regulations consider fire-safety, and they have nothing to do with banning windowless-rooms outright.