4 ms·

Also responsible for the windowless college dorm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29038356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29038356

bagful 3y ago
May his afterlife be exactly as comfortable as his idea of a dorm room
davidivadavid 3y ago
That tells you about as much as you need to know about the guy, doesn't it? Incredibly successful, and yet a penny pinching tasteless bore until the bitter end. At least "robber barons" of the past built things that looked good. That he's worshiped around these parts of the internet is truly embarrassing and sometimes makes me question how I ended up here.
- kypro 3y ago
  I actually agreed with his reasoning on this and don't think it was motivated by greed at all. Firstly it would have been cheaper for the students. But secondly and more importantly, the buildings did have windows, it was only the dorms themselves which didn't, but the reasoning for this was that were primarily built for sleeping so he argued they didn't need windows. And not requiring windows meant that each student would get their own room and would not need to share. The building was designed so that when not sleeping the students would make use of the communal areas which did have windows. You don't have to like it, but it wasn't a completely stupid idea. The main problem really was just that the idea of a billionaire who wanted to build dorms without windows to save on development costs was too tasty of a story for the media to not run with.
  - _zoltan_ 3y ago
    have you ever been to a dorm? do you think people just sleep there? especially a couple thousand people?
    - stickfigure 3y ago
      That's probably the whole point - they "just sleep" in their small single occupancy rooms and do most of their socializing in attractive common areas. If you're wondering how the kids are going to hook up - well, window or not, single-occupancy beats the hell out of literal room-mates, which was my dorm experience. And we sure as hell found a way. If you ask students whether they'd rather have a windowless private room or a shared room with a window, what do you think the breakdown will be?
      - pjscott 3y ago
        According to Munger that was, indeed, the whole point. His dorm design focused on making the common areas nice places where people would enjoy spending time, while optimizing the dorm rooms for bed-related activities. It seems like a reasonable strategy.
        phone8675309 3y ago
        Unless you’re an introvert in which case this design is maximally wrong.
        autoexec 3y ago
        You don't even need to be an introvert to want a quiet place to study that isn't also as dark as a closet and entirely without fresh air.
        phone8675309 3y ago
        Yes, but I'm trying to phrase my response in a way that even the most unrepentant of sociopaths can understand.
        andyferris 3y ago
        Though I doubt introverts desire a roommate, either. Ideally the common areas are plentiful enough that you can enjoy some solitude outside of the sleeping room (at least for some of the day).
  - Kaibeezy 3y ago
    Speaking as a person with an architecture degree, it is, in my opinion, plainly a completely stupid idea. I cannot imagine one person I have ever met with similar professional training who would consider it anything other than completely stupid. As a person who hasn’t paid any attention to his corner of the finance sector, this horrible dorm was my introduction to the man. My immediate conclusion was that he rose to the level of his incompetence. I may yet read his speech on decisionmaking biases, but it will be with a degree of skepticism about whether it is cooked in its own juices.
    - therealdrag0 3y ago
      Get off your high horse. You don’t know what everybody wants. To choose between having a dorm mate or having no windows I would absolutely pick no windows.
      - Kaibeezy 3y ago
        It’s not a high horse, it’s an educated horse. If you want to live in a box, go for it. Students, especially poor ones, don’t always have a meaningful choice in the matter. Why not make the coffin-rooms half height too? People sleep lying down, right? All that wasted space.
    - infecto 3y ago
      What buildings have you designed with your degree?
      - Kaibeezy 3y ago
        More than Charlie Munger.
        infecto 3y ago
        I take that has having done nothing then. Its ok, surprising though because of how low class your comment was.
  - davidivadavid 3y ago
    But it's not so much a "story" considering the reasoning is still motivated by cost savings. I don't really care to condemn "greed", to be honest. I'm mostly baffled by how terrible those rich people are at spending money. Why doesn't a billionaire like Charlie Munger want to be remembered for building the most lavish building with the most incredible experience ever on the campus, instead of the one that optimizes for a problem with constraints that are mostly made up ("it might cost too much money for Charlie Munger")? It's just straight up dumb.
paulpauper 3y ago
I don't understand the outrage over this. Are windows a major selling point of dorm rooms? When I was in college i don't recall dorm windows being that important. I was studying or elsewhere most of the time anyway.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  [flagged]
- missedthecue 3y ago
  I have noticed very online communities were outraged about this and other people I knew in real life weren't. I wonder if it's because people who dominate HN and reddit are more likely to spend their college life in their dorm, where a windowless environment would naturally get depressing very quickly. My dorm room was windowless when I went to university and I didn't notice because I was only there when it was dark anyway. But I remember I got the flu once and was inside for a while and I very distinctly recall that the lack of natural lightcycle began to take its toll. Still, cheaper room and board would be my preference.
- VladTheImpalor 3y ago
  I'm going to assume your comment is in good faith. In which case, yes, they are more important than almost anything else. Modern humans spend more and more time indoors, and this has catastrophic consequences on our mental and physical health. Even in properly sized apartments, most of us have too much CO2 in our rooms. But worse (and especially in the US), there is all manner of ghastly outgassing from furnitures, fumes from cooking, germs from other people and whatnot. This is in buildings that are not too cramped to begin with (unlike Munger hall). Not every college student is an outgoing, life-of-the-party, loves hiking type. And the trend thanks to the ubiquity of screens means more and more teenagers are shut-ins. In which case, the deleterious effects of no sunlight and no fresh air are even worse, especially at a developmentally-important age. But what is worse is the hubris of billionaires who think they know best. It's what Maciej Ceglowski calls the lack of imagination at the top. What do the billionaires of our society, our overlords, want for the rest of us? What are their hopes and dreams, their utopia? Elon Musk wants to terrorise Mars with nasty bacteria from Earth. Bezos wants to run driverless cars around the city to replace public transport. And copy Musk. Page and Brin want to cure ageing, cowards unprepared to die both of them. Dipshit billionaires want shitty things like AI assistants who see and hear everything, lithium cars instead of walkable cities and trains. They want us to have Tide buttons in our houses so we can order it like a Pavlovian monkey. Dipshit billionaires convinced we're living in a simulation. Assholes buying bug-out bunkers in New Zealand. Or fuckers like Altman hoarding gold by the tonne, and gas masks from the IDF, while they pillage and rape San Francisco and its former residents shit on the streets and then sleep there. And now, they even want to take away our sunlight and our fresh air. Even though the architects telling them otherwise railed against the idea, and resigned. Hubris like this gave us open offices. They want their chattel to be well-behaved and do what it's told. Sit in your privacy free 1m2 'office', drowning in the din made by your fellow plebs, during the day, and sleep in your windowless prison in the night.
SirensOfTitan 3y ago
The top comment in that thread is a link to student reviews of the dorm, which are largely positive.
berserk1010 3y ago
so much envy and jealousy over someone's wealth that you must find ONE disagreeable/controversial thing from that person (Charlie munger was probably hard to do so for) and do some character assassination. maybe you should improve your way of thinking, you might live a healthier live.

bagful 3y ago

May his afterlife be exactly as comfortable as his idea of a dorm room

davidivadavid 3y ago

That tells you about as much as you need to know about the guy, doesn't it? Incredibly successful, and yet a penny pinching tasteless bore until the bitter end. At least "robber barons" of the past built things that looked good. That he's worshiped around these parts of the internet is truly embarrassing and sometimes makes me question how I ended up here.

kypro 3y ago
I actually agreed with his reasoning on this and don't think it was motivated by greed at all. Firstly it would have been cheaper for the students. But secondly and more importantly, the buildings did have windows, it was only the dorms themselves which didn't, but the reasoning for this was that were primarily built for sleeping so he argued they didn't need windows. And not requiring windows meant that each student would get their own room and would not need to share. The building was designed so that when not sleeping the students would make use of the communal areas which did have windows. You don't have to like it, but it wasn't a completely stupid idea. The main problem really was just that the idea of a billionaire who wanted to build dorms without windows to save on development costs was too tasty of a story for the media to not run with.
- _zoltan_ 3y ago
  have you ever been to a dorm? do you think people just sleep there? especially a couple thousand people?
  - stickfigure 3y ago
    That's probably the whole point - they "just sleep" in their small single occupancy rooms and do most of their socializing in attractive common areas. If you're wondering how the kids are going to hook up - well, window or not, single-occupancy beats the hell out of literal room-mates, which was my dorm experience. And we sure as hell found a way. If you ask students whether they'd rather have a windowless private room or a shared room with a window, what do you think the breakdown will be?
    - pjscott 3y ago
      According to Munger that was, indeed, the whole point. His dorm design focused on making the common areas nice places where people would enjoy spending time, while optimizing the dorm rooms for bed-related activities. It seems like a reasonable strategy.
      - phone8675309 3y ago
        Unless you’re an introvert in which case this design is maximally wrong.
        autoexec 3y ago
        You don't even need to be an introvert to want a quiet place to study that isn't also as dark as a closet and entirely without fresh air.
        phone8675309 3y ago
        Yes, but I'm trying to phrase my response in a way that even the most unrepentant of sociopaths can understand.
        andyferris 3y ago
        Though I doubt introverts desire a roommate, either. Ideally the common areas are plentiful enough that you can enjoy some solitude outside of the sleeping room (at least for some of the day).
- Kaibeezy 3y ago
  Speaking as a person with an architecture degree, it is, in my opinion, plainly a completely stupid idea. I cannot imagine one person I have ever met with similar professional training who would consider it anything other than completely stupid. As a person who hasn’t paid any attention to his corner of the finance sector, this horrible dorm was my introduction to the man. My immediate conclusion was that he rose to the level of his incompetence. I may yet read his speech on decisionmaking biases, but it will be with a degree of skepticism about whether it is cooked in its own juices.
  - therealdrag0 3y ago
    Get off your high horse. You don’t know what everybody wants. To choose between having a dorm mate or having no windows I would absolutely pick no windows.
    - Kaibeezy 3y ago
      It’s not a high horse, it’s an educated horse. If you want to live in a box, go for it. Students, especially poor ones, don’t always have a meaningful choice in the matter. Why not make the coffin-rooms half height too? People sleep lying down, right? All that wasted space.
  - infecto 3y ago
    What buildings have you designed with your degree?
    - Kaibeezy 3y ago
      More than Charlie Munger.
      - infecto 3y ago
        I take that has having done nothing then. Its ok, surprising though because of how low class your comment was.
- davidivadavid 3y ago
  But it's not so much a "story" considering the reasoning is still motivated by cost savings. I don't really care to condemn "greed", to be honest. I'm mostly baffled by how terrible those rich people are at spending money. Why doesn't a billionaire like Charlie Munger want to be remembered for building the most lavish building with the most incredible experience ever on the campus, instead of the one that optimizes for a problem with constraints that are mostly made up ("it might cost too much money for Charlie Munger")? It's just straight up dumb.

paulpauper 3y ago

I don't understand the outrage over this. Are windows a major selling point of dorm rooms? When I was in college i don't recall dorm windows being that important. I was studying or elsewhere most of the time anyway.

phone8675309 3y ago
[flagged]
missedthecue 3y ago
I have noticed very online communities were outraged about this and other people I knew in real life weren't. I wonder if it's because people who dominate HN and reddit are more likely to spend their college life in their dorm, where a windowless environment would naturally get depressing very quickly. My dorm room was windowless when I went to university and I didn't notice because I was only there when it was dark anyway. But I remember I got the flu once and was inside for a while and I very distinctly recall that the lack of natural lightcycle began to take its toll. Still, cheaper room and board would be my preference.
VladTheImpalor 3y ago
I'm going to assume your comment is in good faith. In which case, yes, they are more important than almost anything else. Modern humans spend more and more time indoors, and this has catastrophic consequences on our mental and physical health. Even in properly sized apartments, most of us have too much CO2 in our rooms. But worse (and especially in the US), there is all manner of ghastly outgassing from furnitures, fumes from cooking, germs from other people and whatnot. This is in buildings that are not too cramped to begin with (unlike Munger hall). Not every college student is an outgoing, life-of-the-party, loves hiking type. And the trend thanks to the ubiquity of screens means more and more teenagers are shut-ins. In which case, the deleterious effects of no sunlight and no fresh air are even worse, especially at a developmentally-important age. But what is worse is the hubris of billionaires who think they know best. It's what Maciej Ceglowski calls the lack of imagination at the top. What do the billionaires of our society, our overlords, want for the rest of us? What are their hopes and dreams, their utopia? Elon Musk wants to terrorise Mars with nasty bacteria from Earth. Bezos wants to run driverless cars around the city to replace public transport. And copy Musk. Page and Brin want to cure ageing, cowards unprepared to die both of them. Dipshit billionaires want shitty things like AI assistants who see and hear everything, lithium cars instead of walkable cities and trains. They want us to have Tide buttons in our houses so we can order it like a Pavlovian monkey. Dipshit billionaires convinced we're living in a simulation. Assholes buying bug-out bunkers in New Zealand. Or fuckers like Altman hoarding gold by the tonne, and gas masks from the IDF, while they pillage and rape San Francisco and its former residents shit on the streets and then sleep there. And now, they even want to take away our sunlight and our fresh air. Even though the architects telling them otherwise railed against the idea, and resigned. Hubris like this gave us open offices. They want their chattel to be well-behaved and do what it's told. Sit in your privacy free 1m2 'office', drowning in the din made by your fellow plebs, during the day, and sleep in your windowless prison in the night.

SirensOfTitan 3y ago

The top comment in that thread is a link to student reviews of the dorm, which are largely positive.

berserk1010 3y ago

so much envy and jealousy over someone's wealth that you must find ONE disagreeable/controversial thing from that person (Charlie munger was probably hard to do so for) and do some character assassination. maybe you should improve your way of thinking, you might live a healthier live.