3 ms·
His best lesson, in my opinion: https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html His writing style is very good, and he succinct
by pizlonator 2y ago
His best lesson, in my opinion: https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html
His writing style is very good, and he succinctly summarizes the phenomenon where a technology that is substantially complete to the point that it has known issues is looked down upon while a technology that is purely "on paper" (the "paper reactor" as he calls it) is treated as a good alternative, since the paper technology isn't far enough along for the problems to even be known. That's not even a good TL;DR, so you should just read Rickover's essay.
- gnfargbl 2y agoIt's like the current situation with "vibe coding". An LLM can build you something which demonstrates a principle in some kind of hand-wavy fashion, but the gap between the thing produced by the LLM and a sustainable product is just huge. And, as with the gap between Rickover's paper reactor and his practical reactor, it's often extraordinary difficult to explain to a non-specialist why that is so -- because the difference is all in the detail.
- pizlonator 2y agoThat's a good analogy! A lot of the bubbles in our field have been like that.