4 ms·

It would be possible to build an ornithopter, evidenced by the existence of avians, but it turned out the easiest ways to make flying machines were otherwise.

by kleton 8mo ago

fooker 8mo ago
> easiest This is the keyword here, just because the other approach is harder does not mean it is impossible. It's a decent gamble to try and do things the hard way if it is possible to be deployed on cheaper/smaller hardware (eg: no lidars, just cameras).
- fancyfredbot 8mo ago
  Is it still a decent gamble after you've been trying (and failing) for a decade, and numerous well funded competitors are going the easy way, and when there is huge upside to being first, and when the value of FSD easily covers the rapidly falling cost of LIDAR? No. It's not a good idea. It's not a good gamble. It's stupid, and the engineers can see it's stupid. A lot of them have quit, reducing the very slim chances of it working even further.
  - FL33TW00D 8mo ago
    But why is FSD "failing" is the key question. Hint: it's not the sensor inputs that are the bottleneck!
  - fooker 8mo ago
    Yeah you could be right. Not my area of expertise, so I’d rather not try to predict what will work and what won’t.
FL33TW00D 8mo ago
I like the comparison, but with aviation on a fundamental level we made it simpler (removing actuation), not added more (senses we dont need)
- javawizard 8mo ago
  Jet engines do not strike me as being inherently simpler than muscles, not by a long shot. They're still the best way we know of going about the business of building a flying machine, for various reasons.
  - rightbyte 8mo ago
    Piston engines surely are more complex than jet engines though? Which replaced the "flapping engines".
    - readmodifywrite 8mo ago
      They are not. Turbine engines require much higher quality manufacturing and tolerances and operate at much higher speeds and pressures. There is more to it than the perceived number of moving parts.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- jeremysalwen 8mo ago
  I'm not sure I agree. I think just having wings that flex a bit is mechanically simpler than having an additional rotating propellor. After all, rotating axles are so hard to evolve they never almost never show up in nature at a macro scale. Sort of a perfect analogy to lidar actually. We create a new approach to solve the problem in a more efficient way, that evolution couldn't reach in billions of years
  - adrian_b 8mo ago
    Rotating axles have not evolved in animals not because they were complex, but because any part of an animal requires permanent connections with the other parts, not only for the supply with energy but also for the continuous repairing that is required by any living body, to avoid death. Artificial machines rely on spare parts manufactured elsewhere, which are used by external agents to replace the worn out parts. For an animal to have wheels, it would have to grow wheels in some part of the body, periodically, then use its limbs to detach the wheels and attach them on the axles, after removing the old wheels. This is something sufficiently complex to be extremely unlikely to appear from evolution. Even this huge complication would be enough only for passive wheels. For active wheels there exists no suitable motor, as the rotational motors with ionic currents are suitable only for the size of a bacteria. All bigger living beings use contractile motors, which cannot be used for a rotation of unlimited angle. So active wheels would also need a different kind of motor, which can work without a solid connection between the 2 moving parts. The artificial motors of this kind use either electromagnetic forces or fluid expansion due to temperature or pressure variation. Both would be very difficult to evolve by a living being, though electric fish and bombardier beetles show some possible paths.

It would be possible to build an ornithopter, evidenced by the existence of avians, but it turned out the easiest ways to make flying machines were otherwise.

by kleton 8mo ago

It would be possible to build an ornithopter, evidenced by the existence of avians, but it turned out the easiest ways to make flying machines were otherwise.

fooker 8mo ago

> easiest This is the keyword here, just because the other approach is harder does not mean it is impossible. It's a decent gamble to try and do things the hard way if it is possible to be deployed on cheaper/smaller hardware (eg: no lidars, just cameras).

fancyfredbot 8mo ago
Is it still a decent gamble after you've been trying (and failing) for a decade, and numerous well funded competitors are going the easy way, and when there is huge upside to being first, and when the value of FSD easily covers the rapidly falling cost of LIDAR? No. It's not a good idea. It's not a good gamble. It's stupid, and the engineers can see it's stupid. A lot of them have quit, reducing the very slim chances of it working even further.
- FL33TW00D 8mo ago
  But why is FSD "failing" is the key question. Hint: it's not the sensor inputs that are the bottleneck!
- fooker 8mo ago
  Yeah you could be right. Not my area of expertise, so I’d rather not try to predict what will work and what won’t.

FL33TW00D 8mo ago

I like the comparison, but with aviation on a fundamental level we made it simpler (removing actuation), not added more (senses we dont need)

javawizard 8mo ago
Jet engines do not strike me as being inherently simpler than muscles, not by a long shot. They're still the best way we know of going about the business of building a flying machine, for various reasons.
- rightbyte 8mo ago
  Piston engines surely are more complex than jet engines though? Which replaced the "flapping engines".
  - readmodifywrite 8mo ago
    They are not. Turbine engines require much higher quality manufacturing and tolerances and operate at much higher speeds and pressures. There is more to it than the perceived number of moving parts.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
jeremysalwen 8mo ago
I'm not sure I agree. I think just having wings that flex a bit is mechanically simpler than having an additional rotating propellor. After all, rotating axles are so hard to evolve they never almost never show up in nature at a macro scale. Sort of a perfect analogy to lidar actually. We create a new approach to solve the problem in a more efficient way, that evolution couldn't reach in billions of years
- adrian_b 8mo ago
  Rotating axles have not evolved in animals not because they were complex, but because any part of an animal requires permanent connections with the other parts, not only for the supply with energy but also for the continuous repairing that is required by any living body, to avoid death. Artificial machines rely on spare parts manufactured elsewhere, which are used by external agents to replace the worn out parts. For an animal to have wheels, it would have to grow wheels in some part of the body, periodically, then use its limbs to detach the wheels and attach them on the axles, after removing the old wheels. This is something sufficiently complex to be extremely unlikely to appear from evolution. Even this huge complication would be enough only for passive wheels. For active wheels there exists no suitable motor, as the rotational motors with ionic currents are suitable only for the size of a bacteria. All bigger living beings use contractile motors, which cannot be used for a rotation of unlimited angle. So active wheels would also need a different kind of motor, which can work without a solid connection between the 2 moving parts. The artificial motors of this kind use either electromagnetic forces or fluid expansion due to temperature or pressure variation. Both would be very difficult to evolve by a living being, though electric fish and bombardier beetles show some possible paths.