15 ms·
Forgetting the Asbestos – how we lose knowledge and technologies
- elil17 4y agoAnother, closely related example: A lot of the welding abilities needed to build another Saturn V were lost. We couldn’t replicate the rocket without having a lot of people relearn old welding techniques.
- avmich 4y ago> We couldn’t replicate the rocket without having a lot of people relearn old welding techniques. We can perhaps create sufficiently close replicas, which may work well enough, using very different technologies.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoThis seems at odds with the current production of several launch systems of comparable or greater size. Do you know which parts required these special welding techniques?
- elil17 4y agoWe have better ways to do things now - adhesives, new welding techniques that impose different design constraints, etc. IIRC there was some thought of reusing parts of the Saturn V design on the Artemis program but it was not practical because of the welds involved.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoIsn't the Starship simply being welded together from stainless steel sheet metal?
- HyperSane 4y agoMaking a Saturn V today wouldn't make sense because manufacturing tech has improved tremendously since then. They didn't even have CAD! A modern design would take perhaps a tenth of the hours of labor.
- pfdietz 4y agoIn particular, and apropos to the comment you are responding to, we have a wonderful new way to weld aluminum alloys: friction stir welding. It was invented in the 1990s, long after Apollo.
- postalrat 4y agoLets see your fancy friction welding work on compound curves you might see on a rocket engine.
- selectodude 4y ago"United Launch Alliance applies FSW to the Delta II, Delta IV, Atlas V, and the new Vulcan expendable launch vehicles along with their Cryogenic Upper Stages, and the first of these with a friction stir welded interstage module was launched in 1999. The process was also used for the Space Shuttle external tank, for Ares I until the project was canceled in 2012, The SLS Core which replaced the Ares, and for the Orion Crew Vehicle test article and the current model of the Orion at NASA, as well as Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets at SpaceX.[53] The toe nails for ramp of Boeing C-17 Globemaster III cargo aircraft by Advanced Joining Technologies[7] and the cargo barrier beams for the Boeing 747 Large Cargo Freighter[7] were the first commercially produced aircraft parts. FAA-approved wings and fuselage panels of the Eclipse 500 aircraft were made at Eclipse Aviation, and this company delivered 259 friction stir welded business jets, before they were forced into Chapter 7 liquidation. Floor panels for Airbus A400M military aircraft are now made by Pfalz Flugzeugwerke and Embraer used FSW for the Legacy 450 and 500 Jets[8] Friction stir welding also is employed for fuselage panels on the Airbus A380.[54] BRÖTJE-Automation uses friction stir welding for gantry production machines developed for the aerospace sector, as well as other industrial applications.[55]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction_stir_welding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction_stir_welding
- pfdietz 4y agoWe're talking about Apollo. Which rocket engine there was made of aluminum? The F-1 was made of Inconel, the J-2 of stainless steel.
- agumonkey 4y agoaren't there other industries with similar welding skills ? nuclear plants seem to have high grade requirements, maybe not space grade right off the bat but also maybe not too far off ?
- buscoquadnary 4y agoIt's this exact situation that makes me fear the most about Copilot how long before all our understanding and knowledge is lost, and we collectively descend into superstition that forbids tampering at risk of breaking something. Copilot seems to allow us to write more code, but the problem was never the amount of code produced but understanding the code that would solve the problem. It worries me what we are losing But I have faith 01000110 01110010 01101111 01101101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101111 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01110011 01110100 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100001 01101011 01101110 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100110 01101100 01100101 01110011 01101000 00101100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110011 01100111 01110101 01110011 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100011 01110010 01100001 01110110 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110100 01110010 01100101 01101110 01100111 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100011 01100101 01110010 01110100 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110100 01111001 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110011 01110100 01100101 01100101 01101100 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100001 01110011 01110000 01101001 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01110101 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000010 01101100 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01001101 01100001 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100101 00101110 00001010 00001010 01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100011 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01101100 01100101 01110011 01101000 00101100 00100000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100011 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100110 01100001 01101001 01101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110 00100000 01001111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100011 01110010 01110101 01100100 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101111 01101101 01100001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110100 01100101 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100111 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110 00100000 01000010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 01111001 00100000 01110011 01100001 01110110 01100101 01100100 00101100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001101 01100001 01100011 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01101101 01101101 01101111 01110010 01110100 01100001 01101100 10000000100110 00001010 00001010 00101110 00101110 00101110 01100101 01110110 01100101 01101110 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110011 01100101 01110010 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001111 01101101 01101110 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01100001 01101000 00101110
- linuxftw 4y agoThis fate is befalling the entire post-industrialized world. Boeing learned this the hard way when they opened up that plant in SC. Institutional knowledge can't always be replicated.
- mach1ne 4y agoAlthough we attempt to store information in external mediums, it's humans who make the world go round. Funny to think that, in practice, the collective knowledge of mankind is a fuzzy imprecise mess coupled with a few scribbled notes.
- Gumbercules 4y agoI'm pretty sure the world would keep going round if humans did not exist.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y agoYeah, but once the humans are gone, why keep the simulation running? /s
- quickthrower2 4y agoCockroaches
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- leobg 4y agoTrue. Engelbart would be appalled to see where things are at in 2022.
- danbmil99 4y agoI recall reading that the lack of documentation for the Saturn 5 was related to politics behind the space shuttle. The accusation was that NASA intentionally lost or destroyed the Saturn V docs so the space shuttle would be the only option.
- indymike 4y agoThis happens often in the military. For example, shredding the machines used to build the F-14 and F-22.
- HyperSane 4y agoI read that they actually carefully documented how to make the F-22 and also stored all the tooling. We could restart making them but it wouldn't be cost effective to do so.
- plasticchris 4y agoAnd the Blackbird, sadly
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- csours 4y agoI'm looking at a pile of several hundred shell scripts, and I feel this intimately and personally. What was your intention script author xb412j? --- For a very different example, look to older satire groups like The Goon Show or Firesign Theatre or Monty Python. Monty Python may not be old to some people reading this, but try to explain some of the things they were making fun of. Many of the sketches are timeless, but many are very 'of their time'
- abathur 4y agoThere could probably be a form of punishment or a group party game based on deciding whether or not a short option in a pipeline is a bug or correct (without comments, of course). Mix legacy/GNU/BSD/*box options if you'd like to ruin relationships.
- _trampeltier 4y agoThe Air Force Is Having To Reverse Engineer Parts Of Its Own Stealth Bomber https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39537/the-air-force-needs-to-reverse-engineer-parts-of-its-own-stealth-bomber https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39537/the-air-force-ne...
- virgulino 4y agoThey also had to reverse engineer some nuclear warheads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
- eclipxe 4y agoThat was in the article.
- plasticchris 4y agoMaybe John Romero can help, he mentioned working on it. I guess there’s a 6502 in there somewhere
- cogman10 4y agoAsbestos encapsulates a problem with society at large. We, unfortunately, are simply too binary in our thinking "Oh, asbestos causes cancer? We better purge it from everything everywhere". The context of when and why (and to who) asbestos causes cancer is simply ignored. This sort of problem exists everywhere. If something bad happens or is caused by something (politics, economics, etc) we are simply too quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater. From a tech standpoint, I see this a lot. Postgres at my current company got banned because one team one time had a bad experience with it (after they misused it).
- Retric 4y agoManaging complexity is important even if it results in suboptimal solutions. Imagine if when building a house you needed to shape every single brick for it’s actual load. Sure you end up using less materials, but you lost economies of scale and suddenly need vast quantities of computing power for minimal gain. Using uniform bricks and banning stuff may seem wasteful, but it enables efficiency elsewhere.
- cogman10 4y agoThat's not what's happening in terms of asbestos. Rather, it's more like "Electricity has caused buildings to burn down, so lets ban electricity". Rather than focusing on the safe use of a material, we instead lean towards removing it all together. Older materials with known faults (such as wood being flammable) are deemed acceptable simply due to having known weaknesses in a period where we didn't care about safety. If we found out wood causes cancer, we'd still use it in building and furniture because we've always used it in building and furniture. It's not an economies of scale problem. When you get right down to it, the people that got mesothelioma from asbestos pretty much universally directly worked with it (usually in the form of doing things like blowing it in loose form for insulation). Yet we spent an ungodly amount of money and time stripping asbestos from buildings that had been there for decades not causing any problems. Ironically, directly exposing people to asbestos in the process (more than you'd ever be exposed to it was left undisturbed).
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- MisterTea 4y ago> And I don’t understand why. What did she hear that I didn’t? Easy answer: Her personal zeitgeist. The author seems to focus on the lyrical meaning of the song being the root cause for her emotion. But her reaction is likely far more complex than "satire of communism" but a time capsule or snap shot of memories and emotions of her world when she heard this song. It not only recalls memories of a painful part of her life but also the pleasant parts: friends, relations, family, things and places which are long gone; A temporal marker to a place which she cannot travel to. Of course the author kind of explains this in the next paragraph, but then seemingly backtracks to her interpretation of the lyrics: "We will never be able to truly understand or feel how the satire hit under the weight of an oppressive communist regime." I highly doubt it was only about the weight of an oppressive communist regime. When I hear "eye of the tiger" I can get a bit emotional. It has nothing to do with "Rising up to the challenge" or the band Survivor but the whole of the period in which I heard the song. It brings back a simpler time: childhood bedroom, my father was still alive, the joy of being a kid and discovering rock music. It's so much more than the subject of the song and lyrics...
- Night_Thastus 4y agoThis is an excellent article. It's fascinating (if a bit sad) to see examples of what was once common knowledge disappear for no good reason.
- munificent 4y agoThe article laments this but I think it's important to understand forgetting as an essential part of progress. We all have finite mental capacity and attention. Time spent learning outdated tools and processes is time not available to use for more valuable ends. We understand this deeply when it comes to software architecture where encapsulation and information hiding are fundamental principles but it applies everywhere. There is a value in not knowing, or not needing to know, because it frees up brainpower for other stuff.
- permo-w 4y agoam I wrong in thinking that the author is over-estimating the ubiquity of the image of the Saturn V? I googled it, assuming he was talking about this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Space_Shuttle_Atlantis_launches_on_STS-132.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Space_Sh... because for me this is the standard image of a space rocket. I don’t recall ever seeing a picture of the Saturn V, but perhaps this is an age thing?
- Vecr 4y agoThe Saturn V was the first and second stage of the system that sent humans to the moon as part of the Apollo program, that's why a huge number of people knew about it. I'm not sure what you mean by "an age thing" (are you too young? too old?), but it's in the "current" paper copy encyclopedias (most even have images) that I assume most schools still have, and encyclopedias from the 1980s and 1990s appear to as well, so it's not just a 1970s thing.
- mhneu 4y agoThe context of when and why (and to who) asbestos causes cancer is simply ignored. Asbestos causes a very, very nasty cancer - mesothelioma - that causes almost certain death. Painful death. With a very bad prognosis. And mesothelioma is caused mainly by asbestos. There's a reason why we purged asbestos. No one wants to get mesothelioma. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/malignant-mesothelioma/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/malignant-mesothelioma/causes-... The main risk factor for pleural mesothelioma is exposure to asbestos. In fact, most cases of pleural mesothelioma have been linked to high levels of asbestos exposure, usually in the workplace. Note that talc is a mineral crystal/fiber a little like asbestos, and talc is connected to ovarian/uterine cancer. Let's not play around with dusty tiny pieces of rock, they seem to be bad for our bodies.
- areoform 4y agoAuthor here, the point of the piece isn't the asbestos. It's that we literally (in the original sense of the word) forgot the asbestos; asbestos was used as a part of the first stage F-1 engine's thermal protection system for the famous Saturn V rocket. As the insulation was applied at the very last step, there aren't many photos of the final product. Add the presence of the cancer-causing asbestos, none of the existing displays and museum pieces show this vital component. Because the museums don't reflect this fact, it doesn't exist in popular culture. And because it doesn't exist in popular culture, and that the people who built the Saturn V are dying off, we are largely in the process of forgetting what the most famous machine of the 20th century looked like. The point of the piece is the forgetting. Not the asbestos.
- themitigating 4y agoThe information on asebestos can be found in some book or technical documents
- highwaylights 4y agoGiven that’s the case, you didn’t need to include Asbestos in the title of the article to garner more clicks, as I’m sure you must have realised it would have done.
- nyanpasu64 4y ago> The example is likely subpar as it is a fictional example Is placing asbestos around the rocket engines a fabricated example with photoshopped images, or is the description of the design process behind the actual images fictional?
- Multicomp 4y agoDocumentation can't save us from being human. No data translated from one medium (brain) to another (paper) and back (brain) is 100% efficient. But documentation is not only 'tutorials' / how to do something. Documentation is also 'design' / what to do, 'requirements' / why we're doing it, 'changelog' / why we are making the tweaks we are making in the process. I'm enough of an antiquarian to be interested in why the phone guy who installed the phone lines for the theme parks did what he did...turns out burying the phone lines directly in the dirt was for a particular reason (cheap / good enough) and for decades, it was indeed good enough. But because nobody read the roll up paper showing the phone line runs, the lines were destroyed when someone came along and installed a roller coaster with a greater than 180 degree turn in that spot, cutting the bundle. The documentation wasn't missing data, but the humans failed to read it. We do forget things all the time, sure. But don't blame documentation when humans don't read it. The weakness in the system are humans, always. Now is not the time to give up documenting things. All salutes to the ongoing flamewars over 'code should be self-documenting means I never have to write AnYtHiNg down' aside, someone said civilization advances by the number of things we can write down...because we only have so much wetware / RAM / brain space. Someone said this and I'm stealing from them: under similar conditions, the wimpiest charcoal on the flimsiest napkin lasts longer than the sharpest mind. In this knowledge-based industries, no matter our particular focus, we individually would be served better by improving our communication skills, namely documentation of more than just the brittle business processes and API interfaces, but the who/what/when/where/why of what we're doing.
- mrw 4y agoI liked Jonathan Blow’s ‘Preventing The Collapse of Civilisation’ talk on the same topic from 2019. [1] Although, it’s more related to software engineering. Previously discussed on a couple occasions. [2][3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945452 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25788317
- dale_glass 4y agoThe ending doesn't quite work, and I'd say neither does the article as a whole really. First, we didn't really forget "greek fire" or "roman concrete" exactly. We don't know what the formula for "greek fire" was exactly because it wasn't recorded. But in modern times we have an amazing chemistry and can come up with a hundred formulas for napalm -- we just don't know which of those matches "greek fire". Nothing was lost but the association between a formula we almost certainly know and a name. Same goes for roman concrete. We know far more about concrete than the Romans did. We just don't bother to engineer everything to last forever, because that costs money and has little point to it a lot of the time. Yes, some buildings are works of art, but many things just have a function to fulfill, which is often temporary. Nobody is sad that the millions of mass-made soviet residential crappy buildings aren't still as good as new. If they were made to a better standard they'd still be ugly cookie cutter things. And I'd say the same goes for the Saturn V. We didn't forget material science or heat shielding. We launch plenty rockets and even landed car sized robots on Mars -- that required excellent understanding of heat shielding. If we had any reason to build a modern copy, we'd use whatever shielding is required, after accounting for modern improved materials. We wouldn't be dumbfounded that the thing melted down on the launch pad. That in the popular consciousness we see the engines without the asbestos covering doesn't really mean much of anything.
- taeric 4y agoI'd say this goes to some odd myth that I see all too often. That if "you do it right," you won't have to do it again. Somehow, superior technique and dedication of past attempts was lost and that modern attempts are doomed to failure. In large, paradoxically to the explanation, because we are better at building things that just barely accomplish their goals. That is, it is an odd blind spot to not realize that "barely exceeding the goal" is often far far harder than over building.
- cwkoss 4y agoI'd be interested in making some concrete objects that can last 1000 years. Could anyone suggest some resources or search terms to learn what 'forever' concrete entails in our modern scientific understanding, and how much more it would cost?
- emeraldd 4y agoThe mention of Roman Concrete is interesting. Was it that we forgot the recipe or didn't know what was special about the recipe in the first place? I can't find the article now, but I remember reading a while back that part of the reason it was lost was that the materials to make it could no longer be found and apparently equivalent materials didn't work the same.
- 8note 4y agoMaterial availability is a big deal with Roman concrete. It used ash from the nearby volcanoes, which isn't available everywhere.
- hnbad 4y ago> Of course, as you’ve probably surmised, the song isn’t really about the color film. It’s a thinly veiled satire aimed at the communist regime by the artist, toying with everything from the regime’s attempts to pass its citizens’ lives as being nice to Western audiences to the drabness of communist Germany. That's not entirely truthful, though? The artist said that the song complained about the drabness of life in socialist East Germany and being confronted with the economy of scarcity (making a color film hard to replace if you forgot to bring it) even present in the moments you escape it (by travelling to places with nicer scenery). But the entire jab at "the regime's attempts" and "Western audiences" seems to be conjecture on the part of the author and isn't in the interview they seem to be referencing. Also for the record, the artist has somewhat disowned the song because the song's writer was a child abuser and rapist. Another piece of knowledge largely lost to time. I think the author is a bit too invested in seeing the song in an American Cold War context that doesn't match the experiences of those in divided Germany for whom the Cold War was more about two equally untrustworthy superpowers threatening their annihilation over inconsequential power plays and engaging on continuous proxy wars. It reads almost like the author thinks Merkel is weeping over memories of how she suffered under the East German government when in reality 2020 alone had plenty of reasons for her to feel sad and the song represents a tiny act of polite rebellion at the end of a reign that culminated in her watching powerless over federal ministers making decisions she disagreed with but would receive the blame for.
- ltbarcly3 4y agoEqually untrustworthy? You must consume a very large amount of Russian media evety day to be able to say that in earnest.
- hnbad 4y agoRussian media hates the Soviet Union other than the vague idea of it as a continuation of a pan-Russian empire, so I'm not sure how you're jumping from "Cold War era US was untrustworthy" to me being pro-Russia (which I'm not, Putin is a fascist). I'm not even pro-Soviet Union or pro-German Democratic Republic (because I'm not a fan of oppressive governments even if they get a red coat of paint). We have a lot more transparency and insight today (in part thanks to the advancement of modern technologies like the Internet) and Germany has matured beyond being a direct pawn in an international conflict (in part because the US won the Cold War and Russia is politically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things). But projecting the current state (and the public perception of it) back on the Cold War era is ahistorical. Did you forget the purge of leftist (not just Soviet-aligned) organizations both under McCarthy but well into the Civil Rights era? The US participation in the Vietnam War, which was protested worldwide not just in the US? The Cuban Missile Crisis? I realize many of these events were perceived very differently in the US but from the POV of a country stuck right in the middle of the two world powers the US was just as likely to pull the trigger (or provoke the other party into doing so) as the Soviets. The Cold War was decidedly not a "just war" (unlike WW2, arguably) but a power play between two nuclear super powers continuously threatening to end the world as we know it at a whim. The fear of nuclear annihilation is why there's still a strong bias against nuclear energy to this day. Positive public perception of the US in Germany was largely an aftereffect of the post-war era and a response to fear of possible Soviet revanchism for German war crimes. Heck, the Marshall Plan was publicly perceived as an act of charity when in reality it was a loans program strongly tied to anti-communism (again exceeding mere "anti Soviet influence" but targeting leftist politics in general) and had the goal of building up Western Europe and West Germany as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Say what you will about Americans, US organizations or even how the US government has changed since then, but the Cold War era US government was scary and much like the Soviet Union felt more like a force of nature than a diplomatic ally you could reason with.
- svnt 4y agoClive James wrote a book — Cultural Amnesia — that comes at this concept from a slightly different angle, but still very interesting.
- openrob 4y agoIs this why when picking up a skill I always head to YouTube and forum posts? Because someone taking through a problem informally always reveals something that wasn't clear in text/literature. Anything from DIY projects to tech to cooking, it's always something important
- krisoft 4y agoMeh. People are overly worried about forgetting. In my view forgetting is a normal part of information processing. You keep what is important and chuck out the rest. Same with technological information. The way you keep information is by doing things. You bet that we won’t forget how to make bricks, because a lot of people in a lot of factories make bricks every day all around the world. The Saturn V was a white elephant and once the special circumstances which made it viable has ended people forgot how to build it. Who cares? If someone wants a rocket they can design one for themselves. And turns out, they do. And those newly designed rockets are better for them. Not better in some tech spec sense, but better suited for the task they want it for.
- judge2020 4y agoThe difference is that you don't necessarily know what is important until you forget it and try to recall it later. If you record everything, then you can make a more informed decision later on whether to keep, archive, or delete the information.
- flippinburgers 4y agoHave you never found yourself in need of a backup or wishing you had one?
- Animats 4y agoThe author of the article does not have a manufacturing background. It shows. Knowing about, and measuring, sensitivities to process variation is a big issue. Look up Deming, quality, the Toyota production system, and such. Manufacturing has random, environmental, and systematic variation. Random looks like noise, environmental correlates with weather and other external factors, and systematic comes from tool and die wear. Statistical quality control is about separating those. Do we need to control the humidity more tightly, or replace the dies sooner? (One of the problems the US has in manufacturing is the loss of a culture where more people have a clue about a manufacturing plant works.)
- johndhi 4y agoAs an in-house lawyer, preserving the why is basically my job. I write up 'memos' in which we examine a problem, arrive at a solution and recommendation, and make the recommendation. Often times the team that makes the recommendation doesn't do a great job documenting the 'why' in its Jira ticket and so their organization can tend to forget why something is done. I try to make sure that doesn't happen, when it comes to important things. Unfortunately we aren't always certain of what is important and what deserves a detailed writeup.
- k__ 4y agoI think, asbestos is a good example of gone by times. Same as leaded gas, or benzol. They are superior products from simpler times. There were made with a singular purpose and everything else was sacrificed to that purpose, even the health of us all.
- brutusborn 4y agoIronically I think the article is a good example of why we forget things. It's more desireable for the author to write a longwinded article about how we forget, than to try and put effort into ensuring society remembers important things. In essence, societal maintenance isn't sexy. The final solution provided is for thr author to better preserve their own output, which isn't a very good solution unless the author is producing important breakthroughs. To better preserve knowledge, people need to be happy to spend effort maintaining _other people's discoveries_.
- MacroChip 4y agoWas the documentation a failure? Or did the US save untold amounts of money because of the mothballing->documentation? The failure of the 20M attempt doesn't mean the overall strategy was bad nor that the documentation was net negative.
- entaloneralie 4y agoReading this made me think of how newer homes and furniture burn faster, giving you less time to escape a fire. Research shows that 30 years ago, you had about 17 minutes to escape a house fire. Today it's only 3 or 4 minutes.
- unnouinceput 4y agoIn EU we have fire code for house furniture. Often the furniture doesn't burn, but only the light synthetic materials. I don't know how it is in US, but I think the 17 minutes vs 3 minutes you say comes from this video: https://youtu.be/bSP03BE74WA?t=165 https://youtu.be/bSP03BE74WA?t=165 which depicts a typical American setting.
- stephc_int13 4y agoThe general loss of knowledge is something I've only personally started to notice during the last 2-3 years. For most of my life I didn't even think that we were still at a stage where we could lose valuable knowledge. But it clearly is everywhere, including basic everyday technology such as Electronics, Software, Wood working or even Cooking. My gut feeling is that the knowledge loss that occurs at every generation is non-linear depending on the field, but it is higher than 75% overall, and probably more. The loss rate could be reduced by increasing healthy lifespan.
- skybrian 4y agoIt seems off-target to get an emotional response from pointing out that millions of people have a slightly wrong picture of what a Saturn V rocket looked like. This is trivia. Most of those people aren't rocket engineers. Having a better idea of what it looked like would help you draw one slightly more accurately, and that's it. It doesn't help us understand how much important knowledge was lost by the people who really should know how to do it. It seems like SpaceX is doing okay?
- cratermoon 4y ago"The day-to-day compositions were recorded in a notebook, but the why behind it and the how were a closely guarded secret." This has become more and more apparent to me over my career. Having a document that describes the steps to get to the end product is not useless per se, but it lacks context. Anyone coming in anywhere from 6 months to 6 years later could maybe reproduce the steps, but anyone who has considered such problems at all would realized that rote reproduction doesn't get very far. What your future self cares about is how and why you came to the end you did. Why did we use an unsigned int here instead of signed? Why is the field exactly 13 bytes?
- rpastuszak 4y agoLittle trivia piece: it is said that Iranian shah Khosrow II used to entertain his guest by cleaning his asbestos napkins in fire.
- boilerupnc 4y ago> Nothing we have tried in the past two hundred thousand years of our species’ existence has successfully captured and preserved sufficiently complex knowledge for future transmission. I would argue that DNA has done an admirable job in this regard and I would deem it successful at capturing and preserving complex knowledge for future transmission. I enjoyed the post and enjoyed its thought provocative stance. I feel like recording the “why” is important, not to facilitate recreating a given “thing” but rather to help our future creativity by staying aware of past inspiration triggers.
- kapsi 4y agoA sufficiently smart and malicious AI could wipe out most of our knowledge, now that everything is stored on electronic devices.