4 ms·

Looks like he ordered trains that were too tall, risking issues with tunnels, turn engineering, derailment, etc, and got caught by people who actually did know

Looks like he ordered trains that were too tall, risking issues with tunnels, turn engineering, derailment, etc, and got caught by people who actually did know the engineering and science involved. Some things require credentials because it's evidence that the person knows what questions to ask, what to look for, and how to plan within the constraints of their domain of expertise. This guy could probably do a great job supporting a person or team that had the right training, but his ignorance was risky, regardless of his intentions. I've seen the flip side, too, where PhDs have given awful people license to behave badly, inflicting their "expertise" on people as if it made up for the lack of diligence and follow-through, leaving destroyed companies and people in their wake. Gotta have the work ethic and the training - the institutions behind formal engineering disciplines do a great job of ensuring they qualify the people who will put in the work and know what they're doing.

api 2y ago
Credentials are one of those things that amplify social effect. A good person with credentials can do more good more easily. An idiot, dishonest person, or delusional ideologue with credentials can do a lot of harm. A good example of the latter effect is that thoroughly debunked autism/vaccine paper from a while back that has probably cost thousands of lives at a minimum.
sublinear 2y ago
I bet this guy still made better decisions than any AI as well.
arp242 2y ago
Asking "will these trains actually work on our infrastructure?" is a pretty obvious question to ask, not requiring any great in-depth engineering education or insight. This is also the sort of question a chief engineer can just delegate to an underling to research. It's of course easy for me to say that in hindsight, but you really do need to be beyond clueless to never even consider it. I just did high school, don't know much about trains, and I'm reasonably sure I would checked. I might have been found out in some other way, but not through this. Seems more of a good old-fashioned corruption case. And oh yes, by the way, he also faked his PhD.

api 2y ago

Credentials are one of those things that amplify social effect. A good person with credentials can do more good more easily. An idiot, dishonest person, or delusional ideologue with credentials can do a lot of harm. A good example of the latter effect is that thoroughly debunked autism/vaccine paper from a while back that has probably cost thousands of lives at a minimum.

sublinear 2y ago

I bet this guy still made better decisions than any AI as well.

arp242 2y ago

Asking "will these trains actually work on our infrastructure?" is a pretty obvious question to ask, not requiring any great in-depth engineering education or insight. This is also the sort of question a chief engineer can just delegate to an underling to research. It's of course easy for me to say that in hindsight, but you really do need to be beyond clueless to never even consider it. I just did high school, don't know much about trains, and I'm reasonably sure I would checked. I might have been found out in some other way, but not through this. Seems more of a good old-fashioned corruption case. And oh yes, by the way, he also faked his PhD.