5 ms·

The great thing about automation is the breadth, depth and speed at which I can propagate mistakes.

by bongobingo1 4y ago

junon 4y ago
I've not seen it put so eloquently.
- dsr3 4y ago
  To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer - William E. Vaughan https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/07/foul-computer/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/07/foul-computer/
  - erik_seaberg 4y ago
    “A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.”—Mitch Ratcliffe
WJW 4y ago
Some submarine operations are deliberately not automated, because if eg a sensor is broken or miscalibrated it could sink the entire boat if a computer very rapidly acts on the wrong information. Rather they do those operations with one person operating the valve/machine/device/etc, another watching and confirming readings, and the whole thing is on a constant audio link with a third person in an engineering room who watches the readings through a centralized system. It's clearly not optimized for efficient use of personnel, but the personnel complement will have been designed to provide sufficient people at all times and the cost of getting it wrong can be very large indeed.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  This is now my headcanon explanation for why starships in Star Trek still require large crews (or crews in general).
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > This is now my headcanon explanation for why starships in Star Trek still require large crews (or crews in general The canon explanation is that automation-in-charge was experimented with and went really badly, though periodically they try something approaching it again. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ultimate_Computer_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ultimate_Computer_(... (AI, human genetic engineering, and a number of other areas of technology are affected by variants of this issue in the Trek canon.)
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    At least in ST:VOY, it has been shown that a single hologram is capable of running the ship - although one might argue "exceptional circumstances" ;)
    - wongarsu 4y ago
      In Star Trek III they jury-rig the Enterprise to fly with a crew of 5, instead of the regular crew of 400. Though in that state it can't do much more than fly: combat capabilities are strongly diminished, maintenance doesn't happen, post-combat repairs are out of the question, science missions would be much harder. On occasion the Enterprise has transported 150 passengers, so I imagine there's a lot of kitchen staff, security, etc. You only need 5 people to fly the ship, maybe 40 to fly sustainably with maintenance, but to actually accomplish their reglar mission you need the other 300 people.
  - krapp 4y ago
    On the one hand, given how often sensors fail and AIs flip the evil bit in Star Trek, limiting automation is probably a good idea. On the other hand, the Enterprise won't even warn anyone when command staff are injured, cloned, mind-controlled or vanish from the ship altogether unless a human asks the computer where a specific person is first. Of course there are Doylist reasons for all of this but I do like the premise of a general fear of AI and possible weird space BS being a factor.
- MrYellowP 4y ago
  > It's clearly not optimized for efficient use of personnel I disagree. When the sub sinks, all these people die. That's far more inefficient use of personnel. It feelf like you're putting more emphasis on the material cost ("the cost ... can be very large indeed") than on what actually matters.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    It feels like a wartime-vs-peacetime priority problem. In wartime you would care about efficiency, build the largest number of subs staffed with the minimum crew. And since training crew quickly becomes the bottleneck you would probably go for the highest degree of automation that doesn't impact production times too much. In peacetime, efficiency isn't as important. What is important is the bad PR of losing one of your submarines in a training excercise or on patrol, so crew safety becomes a much bigger concern. Losing those sailors in war would have been a noble sacrifice for the cause, losing them to the exact same accident in peacetime is a national tragedy.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      Losing a ship (boat?) during peacetime is a PR disaster. Losing one during wartime can cost you the war. An inefficient one that probably won’t sink due to combat damage can stay in the fight long enough to matter.
      - WJW 4y ago
        Submarines are referred to as boats rather than ships due to naval tradition. As a former naval officer I can only say that technically losing any vessel could be the one that loses a war, just as any soldier lost could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. But if your navy is so rickety that the loss of a single vessel is enough to lose then the main deficiency was in planning rather than any specific warship loss. Losing one in peacetime should never happen but is not unheard of even in modern times. See eg the Kursk or the Fitzgerald.
        4y ago
- JackFr 4y ago
  Working on the repo desk of a large Japanese bank in New York in the 90’s. There was a big (both in font size and magnitude) number that was on the upper left of the blotter system that ran on every traders desk, which represented the total we had to borrow that day to fund the banks trading book. There would be a number below it which would represent how much we had borrowed so far. It was “too important to automate” so a trading assistant keyed it in every morning. One morning he typed the wrong number and the mistake was in the billions digit. At 2:45 “the cage” called the repo desk and said “You know you guys are still short a billion, right?” There was then a flurry of activity as traders got on the phone to try to borrow a billion dollars in in fifteen minutes, while also trying to not let on we were kind of over a barrel. The head of fixed income prepared his explanation to the Fed about why we needed to borrow a few hundred million overnight. The number got automated in our next release, and the open procedure was changed to the trading assistant verifying the number against the “cage” report.
- papito 4y ago
  I will argue that the corporate world is the exact opposite of the training and discipline of a submarine crew. Most of the time I wonder how the businesses even survive the chaos and mismanagement, let alone make money.
ynniv 4y ago
Knight Capital will forever haunt fintech engineers... https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/06/project-failure-case-study-knight-capital.html https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/06/project-failure-case-...

The great thing about automation is the breadth, depth and speed at which I can propagate mistakes.

junon 4y ago

I've not seen it put so eloquently.

dsr3 4y ago
To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer - William E. Vaughan https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/07/foul-computer/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/07/foul-computer/
- erik_seaberg 4y ago
  “A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.”—Mitch Ratcliffe

WJW 4y ago

Some submarine operations are deliberately not automated, because if eg a sensor is broken or miscalibrated it could sink the entire boat if a computer very rapidly acts on the wrong information. Rather they do those operations with one person operating the valve/machine/device/etc, another watching and confirming readings, and the whole thing is on a constant audio link with a third person in an engineering room who watches the readings through a centralized system. It's clearly not optimized for efficient use of personnel, but the personnel complement will have been designed to provide sufficient people at all times and the cost of getting it wrong can be very large indeed.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
This is now my headcanon explanation for why starships in Star Trek still require large crews (or crews in general).
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > This is now my headcanon explanation for why starships in Star Trek still require large crews (or crews in general The canon explanation is that automation-in-charge was experimented with and went really badly, though periodically they try something approaching it again. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ultimate_Computer_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Ultimate_Computer_(... (AI, human genetic engineering, and a number of other areas of technology are affected by variants of this issue in the Trek canon.)
- mschuster91 4y ago
  At least in ST:VOY, it has been shown that a single hologram is capable of running the ship - although one might argue "exceptional circumstances" ;)
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    In Star Trek III they jury-rig the Enterprise to fly with a crew of 5, instead of the regular crew of 400. Though in that state it can't do much more than fly: combat capabilities are strongly diminished, maintenance doesn't happen, post-combat repairs are out of the question, science missions would be much harder. On occasion the Enterprise has transported 150 passengers, so I imagine there's a lot of kitchen staff, security, etc. You only need 5 people to fly the ship, maybe 40 to fly sustainably with maintenance, but to actually accomplish their reglar mission you need the other 300 people.
- krapp 4y ago
  On the one hand, given how often sensors fail and AIs flip the evil bit in Star Trek, limiting automation is probably a good idea. On the other hand, the Enterprise won't even warn anyone when command staff are injured, cloned, mind-controlled or vanish from the ship altogether unless a human asks the computer where a specific person is first. Of course there are Doylist reasons for all of this but I do like the premise of a general fear of AI and possible weird space BS being a factor.
MrYellowP 4y ago
> It's clearly not optimized for efficient use of personnel I disagree. When the sub sinks, all these people die. That's far more inefficient use of personnel. It feelf like you're putting more emphasis on the material cost ("the cost ... can be very large indeed") than on what actually matters.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  It feels like a wartime-vs-peacetime priority problem. In wartime you would care about efficiency, build the largest number of subs staffed with the minimum crew. And since training crew quickly becomes the bottleneck you would probably go for the highest degree of automation that doesn't impact production times too much. In peacetime, efficiency isn't as important. What is important is the bad PR of losing one of your submarines in a training excercise or on patrol, so crew safety becomes a much bigger concern. Losing those sailors in war would have been a noble sacrifice for the cause, losing them to the exact same accident in peacetime is a national tragedy.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    Losing a ship (boat?) during peacetime is a PR disaster. Losing one during wartime can cost you the war. An inefficient one that probably won’t sink due to combat damage can stay in the fight long enough to matter.
    - WJW 4y ago
      Submarines are referred to as boats rather than ships due to naval tradition. As a former naval officer I can only say that technically losing any vessel could be the one that loses a war, just as any soldier lost could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. But if your navy is so rickety that the loss of a single vessel is enough to lose then the main deficiency was in planning rather than any specific warship loss. Losing one in peacetime should never happen but is not unheard of even in modern times. See eg the Kursk or the Fitzgerald.
      - 4y ago
JackFr 4y ago
Working on the repo desk of a large Japanese bank in New York in the 90’s. There was a big (both in font size and magnitude) number that was on the upper left of the blotter system that ran on every traders desk, which represented the total we had to borrow that day to fund the banks trading book. There would be a number below it which would represent how much we had borrowed so far. It was “too important to automate” so a trading assistant keyed it in every morning. One morning he typed the wrong number and the mistake was in the billions digit. At 2:45 “the cage” called the repo desk and said “You know you guys are still short a billion, right?” There was then a flurry of activity as traders got on the phone to try to borrow a billion dollars in in fifteen minutes, while also trying to not let on we were kind of over a barrel. The head of fixed income prepared his explanation to the Fed about why we needed to borrow a few hundred million overnight. The number got automated in our next release, and the open procedure was changed to the trading assistant verifying the number against the “cage” report.
papito 4y ago
I will argue that the corporate world is the exact opposite of the training and discipline of a submarine crew. Most of the time I wonder how the businesses even survive the chaos and mismanagement, let alone make money.

ynniv 4y ago

Knight Capital will forever haunt fintech engineers... https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/06/project-failure-case-study-knight-capital.html https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/06/project-failure-case-...