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Superiority (1951)
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- javajosh 3y agoNowhere is the zero-sum nature of research vs materiel clearer than in real-time strategy games. The fundamental choice is actually three-fold: you can spend your economy on growing the economy, researching better units or building units. It's like choosing a constant in front of a first- versus second-order DE. Of course the choices vary over time, and the curve is complicated and interesting, at least in well-made games.
- all_these_years 3y agoThe obvious parallel right now would be the introduction of AI (a known flawed technology, IMHO), replacing jobs of experienced engineers and experts in most fields, in a moment of social and political instability...
- doctor_eval 3y agoThis is a story about perfect being the enemy of good!
- Khelavaster 3y agoAn excellent classic
- sorokod 3y agoA contemporary echo to that story: "US Navy Procurement Disasters - The Littoral Combat Ship and Zumwalt Class Destroyer" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odS3Kn5oGl0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odS3Kn5oGl0
- bee_rider 3y agoLooking at Clarke’s Wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke > During the Second World War from 1941 to 1946, he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early-warning radar defence system, which contributed to the RAF's success during the Battle of Britain. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach (GCA) radar > Although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, after several years of development it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949. I think he must have had some pretty good first-hand experience WRT deploying new tech during a war! The US also famously had the whole Mark-14 torpedo fiasco, the torpedo issue in the story is not quite similar but there might be an echo.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y agospooky
- ioreofi39090 3y ago[flagged]
- narrator 3y agoThis is a propaganda story. They just use generic 4G modems and SIM cards. Western processors, FPGAs etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136 Chips from 1983 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS320 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS320 "The Russian-manufactured Geran-2 is believed to have a "state-of-art antenna interference suppression" system that suppresses jamming of the GNSS position signal, designed by Iran using seven transceivers for input and an FPGA and three microcontrollers to analyse and suppress any electronic warfare emissions.[39]"
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- mitchbob 3y ago(1951) https://web.archive.org/web/20230217152507/https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/superiority-by-arthur-c-clarke-full-text/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230217152507/https://metallicm...
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- idiotsecant 3y agoLike all good scifi stories in general and ACC stories in particular, this is a story about A which is actually a story about B. There is wisdom here that is directly applicable to the work of the average HN denizen. Boring beats cool almost every time.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoThe problem is always expectation, anticipation and experience. With any new technology we expect certain performance - we get this from the “The Economist effect” - where the simple one paragraph explanation of a complex field enables us to have a grasp on a concept but not the full difficulties. So we expect the nuclear missile to hit its target whereas the thing about nukes is they were designed to be used despite being horribly inaccurate. Anticipation is time bounded - we get depressed when the thing we expect is not done today - we can imagine it so why can’t we have it. This is the problem behind all crunch development times, all VC funded CEO replacements and every lying progress report ever. And experience is what tells us where we really are - it is looking at a Trident missile spiralling round in front page photos and saying … what have we missed. Weapons operate always at the frontier of what is possible. Nuclear weapons probably are not really there - we can fly the prototype over unchallenged airspace but launching rockets is hard.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoThe problem is always hubris, which leads to a distorted conceit of "progress" which can actually be regressive. Whether it's weapons or civilian technology like smartphones, automobiles, or a "cashless society" we know there are side effects, and unknowns. But we choose to focus on only the rosy, optimistic side. For most of us that is pandering to laziness, convenience, low-effort and less thinking. For those involved in making money, the negatives are far away in space and time, so they can always kick the can down the road. This is how supremacy becomes weakness. Money buys a louder voice and drowns out cautious minds with better vision of the long-term future and marginal scenarios. They are Cassandras. Luddites. Those with experience are dismissed as old and irrelevant. Hubris leads to absolute dependency and complacency. In a long enough time-line we'll always encounter an accident or enemy using older "low-tech". The greatest threat to our security is always our own hubris. Sadly I see buckets of it here on HN.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoI have a very simple theory about this - If we assume the 80/20 rule to hold about most things in world (80% profits from 20% customers, 80% of benefits to society from 20% workers), then we can assume the same 80/20 rule applies to the bits left over - ie the remining 20% of profits will have 80% of those generated by 20% of the left over 80% of customers) Roughly speaking then 96% of all good stuff comes from 36% of stuff we do We could say then that if we could find the 2/3 of useless activity that only generates 4% of good stuff we can for example cut carbon emissions by 2/3 - and only need to lose the crappy plastic toys on front of magazines, or most peoples commutes or … What I think I am saying is that 2/3 of the jobs people do are useless - and yet in any organisation they are the majority and hence bend the organisation Don’t worry dear reader I am sure like me you are one of the non useless ones … like me , like me
- er4hn 3y agoIt's incredible how Arthur C Clarke foresaw the downsides of full codebase rewrites and putting all organizational weight behind untested and cutting edge technologies all the way back in 1951. Truly prescient sci-fi writing.
- KineticLensman 3y agoIt could be argued that German military technology in WW2 illustrated some of the same issues, and perhaps gave ACC the idea. They had the V2, TV-guided missiles and operational jet fighters, some of which had massive development / opportunity costs, but none of which materially changed the outcome of the war. The ME262 jet in particular had engines that only survived a few flights because by then German industry couldn't access the specialist metals required.
- alan-crowe 3y ago"Professor-General Norden" might be a dig at the Norden Bomb Sight, an American high-tech wonder weapon that under-performed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6D5rXbMBKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6D5rXbMBKo tells the tale.
- Sharlin 3y agoNot to mention their tanks, IIUC? Particularly the late-war models. Very advanced, very maintenance-intensive.
- KineticLensman 3y agoYes - the German armaments industry was very quick to respond to emerging requirements, leading to a proliferation of platforms and versions that were logistically difficult to support, especially as the supply chains were disrupted. Some mass-produced weapons (e.g. the Panzerfaust) were widely distributed and well supported, but the higher-tech ones weren't.
- nicbou 3y ago
- lowbloodsugar 3y agoThe flaw exhibited by the losing side was "retrofitting" effective and functional ships in the middle of a war. A similar attitude happens that I've seen countless times in live applications where decisions were made to allow the existing system to stagnate because a new shiny rewrite was going to come online "by the end of the year". Four years later, the new system isn't ready, and the "old" one (i.e. the one in production) is hitting scaling cliffs because it wasn't kept up to date. But I suspect this post was in response to the "it's obsolete" comments on the F35 post earlier today, with lots of calls for work on drones. The warning in Clarke's story is not that we shouldn't build new tech, however. We should absolutely build new tech, and have skunk works and the like. But we shouldn't stop building the existing tech as long as it is effective in battle. The concern comes when we don't have the capacity to build "what's next" because the most important piece is made in a little island off the coast of another continent full of potential adversaries.
- pixl97 3y agoAny way we go about it, the unfortunate fact is hindsight is the only way to tell what the right choice was. In some cases the old system is outclassed so badly attempting to keep using it would be a fatal mistake (cavalry charges at machine gun nests). Other times a new system can be way better, but the rate of production is so far behind the old model you can't make enough fast enough to make a difference. And then other times the new systems have such terrible weaknesses they can be a risk to the entire nation state.
- marcosdumay 3y agoYou don't stop an old system before proving the new one in practice, and you don't disrupt logistic channels, ever. Those don't take any hindsight.
- iainmerrick 3y agoI’ve always loved how this bit of super-science is utterly obsolete... The Analyzer contained just short of a million vacuum tubes and needed a team of five hundred technicians to maintain and operate it ...and yet it in no way invalidates the point of the story, which hits home just as hard as ever.
- codethatwerks 3y agoVacuum Tube -> A100 cluster Technician -> MLOps Engineers
- zabzonk 3y agoI remember reading a saying that the Germans fought WW2 with the weapons of the 1950s, while the Allies fought it with the weapons of the 1930s. Guess who won.
- aj7 3y agoThe B-29. Nukes? Are you kidding me?
- nicbou 3y agoThe Luftwaffe towed their jets with horses. Don't judge an army by the what-could-have-beens from their R&D department.
- zhengiszen 3y agoWithout nearly 30 millions Russian dead in WW2 they would never won
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- actionfromafar 3y agoThe Germans also used the most horses of all belligerents and soldiers walked.
- jonplackett 3y agoI’m surprised not to see any comments on Ukraine here yet. USA and the west focussing on ‘super weapons’ like f22, f35, super carriers etc etc. and Ukraine is losing the war because they don’t have enough bullets and mortars, and we don’t have enough factories to increase production.
- actionfromafar 3y agoOr because we don't give them F35s, long-range artillery and 400 Abrams tanks. In Iraq 400 Abrams did a good job from what I'm told.
- jonplackett 3y agoIn Iraq those tanks were already old and crucially didn’t have night vision so they just blew them up in the night. We did give them long range missiles. And now quite a lot of tanks. But - and this a has been admitted to by the pentagon - they didn’t think though or provide for servicing them. The poor buggers have all these different western tanks with parts that don’t match. And the Abram’s is powered literally by a jet engine and needs constant servicing. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so completely tragic.
- actionfromafar 3y agoIndeed. The support has been incredibly spotty and half-assed throughout.
- jonplackett 3y agoThe most basic problem is that Russia have treated it as an existential threat. Mobilised their entire economy, and it turns out, had been planning for this for years. The west just gave Ukraine all their spares and didn’t make any kind of plan for what to do next. It’s a complete failure of leadership and forthought and we’re really just lucky that it _isnt_ an existential threat for us, because we’d be really screwed if it was.