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First principles thinking applies more to science and invention than engineering. And it's easy to misuse and make it into philosophical thinking. Musk appear
by eternityforest 5y ago
First principles thinking applies more to science and invention than engineering. And it's easy to misuse and make it into philosophical thinking.
Musk appears to have derived his dislike of LIDAR more from ideas than technical studies. Most of the rest of industry seems to disagree...
First principles thinking carries the implicit values of keeping things simple enough to reason about that way. It doesn't deal well with suppliers and ecosystems.
In tech, "Everyone else does it this way" IS a technical advantage because of economies of scale and compatibility.
If your custom thing is just right for your application, it's probably a liability to the ecosystem in general, because "just right" tech is tuned for one product without concern for the whole system.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoAside, does LIDAR scale? Or if every car at an intersection has it will there be too much interference?
- eternityforest 5y agoI suspect they must have thought of that by now. The return times are sub microsecond so a lot of flashes can fit in one frame time. Plus a lot of the time they're scanning one point at a time, so it's not likely two cars will scan exactly the same point very often, and when they do you can just filter it out by discarding outliers.