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Completely aside from the geo-political/war implications, as a general data point this supports one of my pet "things I think which a lot of other people don't.

Completely aside from the geo-political/war implications, as a general data point this supports one of my pet "things I think which a lot of other people don't." In short, it's the idea that a lot of activities people usually assume require extensive (ie multi-year) training to be even somewhat capable at, can in fact, often be taught to reasonably intelligent, capable and motivated people in a much shorter amount of time. To be clear, I'm not saying that the resulting skill set is the same in all ways, it's certainly not. It's more that in an emergency scenario where higher effort is available and some compromises may become acceptable, adequate levels of competence can be achieved in a narrower subset of tasks. Especially as compared, to the alternative which is often assumed to be "doing without." A classic example is the studies which found if we suddenly needed to do many thousands more respirator intubations of chronically ill patients, veterinarians can be cross-trained to replace doctors in a week to perform around 90% of normal intubations, leaving the specially-trained doctors to handle the remaining difficult cases. Note: Vets were notably better than other seemingly more related disciplines like e-room and surgical nurses because vets do intubations on animals quite often. That direct experience has a lot of elements which transfer quite well to intubating humans. Apparently, much better than the experiences of nurses who often assist doctors in intubating humans.

mhb 4y ago
Similarly, it might be possible to train barbers in fewer than 1500 hours: https://www.barber-license.com/rhode-island/ https://www.barber-license.com/rhode-island/
- squarefoot 4y ago
  Wait... isn't 1500 hours the same amount required to become a civil airline pilot?
ihatepython 4y ago
Another example might be brain surgery. Imagine a training course that will cross-train sushi-chefs to become brain surgeons.
- fwungy 4y ago
  Brain surgery is really just about hand eye coordination. Why not train gamers to do it in the metaverse?0
  - postsantum 4y ago
    I don't think training in VR translates to the real world. I once had an idea to create a juggling VR-simulator to help users overcome the initial barrier of learning the basic moves by slowing down time. Then I found out someone had already implemented this idea and published a paper about how it didn't have any effect
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  Or just a robot. https://www.intuitive.com/en-us/products-and-services/da-vinci/systems https://www.intuitive.com/en-us/products-and-services/da-vin...
greedo 4y ago
No, this doesn't support the idea at all. They didn't take non-pilots and train them quickly on F-16s. They took experienced fighter pilots and ran them through a conversion course on the F-16. I would expect these pilots to have thousands of hours in the cockpit.
- GalenErso 4y ago
  That's what he said. The "capable" part in "reasonably intelligent, capable and motivated people".
  - greedo 4y ago
    Capable doesn't mean previous experience though. It means having basic physical capabilities; good eyesight, good reflexes, good 3D visualization. Stuff that is used by air forces world-wide to narrow their training pool. This pool would be responsible for acting as a feeder to flight schools which can take several years to progress a candidate through propeller aircraft, to fast jets while weeding out candidates who aren't up to standards. In contrast, these Ukrainian pilots are very experienced in flying fast jets. They don't require lowered standards, or exceptions at all. They just need to be fed the syllabus as fast as possible, and get them time in the cockpit.
duskwuff 4y ago
> Note: Vets were notably better than other seemingly more related disciplines like e-room and surgical nurses because vets do intubations on animals quite often. That's exactly it, and it almost makes it an unfair example. Veterinarinans are trained to work with a fairly wide variety of animals, and most small-animal vets will have extensive experience intubating cats and dogs for surgery. Adding one more species to their repertoire isn't hard.
The_Colonel 4y ago
I agree. The normal training process is optimized for different things than training time, and different trade-offs can be made in costs, safety, depth and breadth of knowledge/capability etc.
MagicMoonlight 4y ago
It’s all just bullshit for the sake of it. For example, if you want to clean the feet of horses you need a bachelors degree in horse feet cleaning. Why? It’s literally just scraping their foot with a scraper. That’s the extent of what you do. But society says you need to spend 3 years in order to do it. We basically just invent these arbitrary time requirements in order to restrict the supply of people and allow morons to do these careers. Without the time requirements, anyone could do it. That’s bad for the people who currently do it. Take doctors for example. Multiple years of medical school and then 10 years of GP training… for what? They don’t invent treatments or do surgery. They basically don’t do anything. So why does it take 15 years? To stop people competing with them.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > Take doctors for example. Multiple years of medical school and then 10 years of GP training… for what? They don’t invent treatments or do surgery. They basically don’t do anything. So why does it take 15 years? To stop people competing with them. The market is starting to price in that extra regulation and protectionism with the rise of alternate providers such as nurse practitioners. It's unclear to me, as a consumer, why I should prefer a general practitioner to a nurse practitioner considering the number of relevant years of schooling are roughly the same.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  I’m pretty sure medicine became professionalized because of the abysmal state of medical treatment prior to it. It’s probably largely outmoded now though, given the access to information that everyone enjoys.
- lm28469 4y ago
  Open a history book about medicine malpractices and you'll have all your answers Same for pretty much every safety rules. Why do you even wear a seat belt ? statically you'll never be in an accident

mhb 4y ago

Similarly, it might be possible to train barbers in fewer than 1500 hours: https://www.barber-license.com/rhode-island/ https://www.barber-license.com/rhode-island/

squarefoot 4y ago
Wait... isn't 1500 hours the same amount required to become a civil airline pilot?

ihatepython 4y ago

Another example might be brain surgery. Imagine a training course that will cross-train sushi-chefs to become brain surgeons.

fwungy 4y ago
Brain surgery is really just about hand eye coordination. Why not train gamers to do it in the metaverse?0
- postsantum 4y ago
  I don't think training in VR translates to the real world. I once had an idea to create a juggling VR-simulator to help users overcome the initial barrier of learning the basic moves by slowing down time. Then I found out someone had already implemented this idea and published a paper about how it didn't have any effect
908B64B197 4y ago
Or just a robot. https://www.intuitive.com/en-us/products-and-services/da-vinci/systems https://www.intuitive.com/en-us/products-and-services/da-vin...

greedo 4y ago

No, this doesn't support the idea at all. They didn't take non-pilots and train them quickly on F-16s. They took experienced fighter pilots and ran them through a conversion course on the F-16. I would expect these pilots to have thousands of hours in the cockpit.

GalenErso 4y ago
That's what he said. The "capable" part in "reasonably intelligent, capable and motivated people".
- greedo 4y ago
  Capable doesn't mean previous experience though. It means having basic physical capabilities; good eyesight, good reflexes, good 3D visualization. Stuff that is used by air forces world-wide to narrow their training pool. This pool would be responsible for acting as a feeder to flight schools which can take several years to progress a candidate through propeller aircraft, to fast jets while weeding out candidates who aren't up to standards. In contrast, these Ukrainian pilots are very experienced in flying fast jets. They don't require lowered standards, or exceptions at all. They just need to be fed the syllabus as fast as possible, and get them time in the cockpit.

duskwuff 4y ago

> Note: Vets were notably better than other seemingly more related disciplines like e-room and surgical nurses because vets do intubations on animals quite often. That's exactly it, and it almost makes it an unfair example. Veterinarinans are trained to work with a fairly wide variety of animals, and most small-animal vets will have extensive experience intubating cats and dogs for surgery. Adding one more species to their repertoire isn't hard.

The_Colonel 4y ago

I agree. The normal training process is optimized for different things than training time, and different trade-offs can be made in costs, safety, depth and breadth of knowledge/capability etc.

MagicMoonlight 4y ago

It’s all just bullshit for the sake of it. For example, if you want to clean the feet of horses you need a bachelors degree in horse feet cleaning. Why? It’s literally just scraping their foot with a scraper. That’s the extent of what you do. But society says you need to spend 3 years in order to do it. We basically just invent these arbitrary time requirements in order to restrict the supply of people and allow morons to do these careers. Without the time requirements, anyone could do it. That’s bad for the people who currently do it. Take doctors for example. Multiple years of medical school and then 10 years of GP training… for what? They don’t invent treatments or do surgery. They basically don’t do anything. So why does it take 15 years? To stop people competing with them.

908B64B197 4y ago
> Take doctors for example. Multiple years of medical school and then 10 years of GP training… for what? They don’t invent treatments or do surgery. They basically don’t do anything. So why does it take 15 years? To stop people competing with them. The market is starting to price in that extra regulation and protectionism with the rise of alternate providers such as nurse practitioners. It's unclear to me, as a consumer, why I should prefer a general practitioner to a nurse practitioner considering the number of relevant years of schooling are roughly the same.
ethanbond 4y ago
I’m pretty sure medicine became professionalized because of the abysmal state of medical treatment prior to it. It’s probably largely outmoded now though, given the access to information that everyone enjoys.
lm28469 4y ago
Open a history book about medicine malpractices and you'll have all your answers Same for pretty much every safety rules. Why do you even wear a seat belt ? statically you'll never be in an accident