Really liked this one. One thing that bugs me is the recurring theme of “you can’t do anything short of the unreasonably high standard of Nature”. This goes against the post of “where recursive reasoning hits bottom” and against how most of good science and practically all of good engineering actually gets done. I trust that later posts talk about this in some way, and the point I touch on is somewhat covered in the rest of the collections, but it can stand to be pointed out more clearly here.
It’s true that Nature doesn’t care about your excuses. No matter your justification for cutting corners, either you did it right or not. Win or lose. But it’s not as if your reasoning for leaving some black boxes unopened doesn’t matter. In practice, with limited time, limited information, and limited reasoning power, you have to choose your battles to get anything done. You may be taken by surprise by traps you ignored, and they will not care to hear your explanations on research optimization, and that’s why you have to make an honest and thorough risk assessment to minimize the actual chance of this happening, while still getting somewhere. As in, you know, do your actual best, not some obligatory “best”. It may very well still not suffice, but it is your actual best.
Really liked this one. One thing that bugs me is the recurring theme of “you can’t do anything short of the unreasonably high standard of Nature”. This goes against the post of “where recursive reasoning hits bottom” and against how most of good science and practically all of good engineering actually gets done. I trust that later posts talk about this in some way, and the point I touch on is somewhat covered in the rest of the collections, but it can stand to be pointed out more clearly here.
It’s true that Nature doesn’t care about your excuses. No matter your justification for cutting corners, either you did it right or not. Win or lose. But it’s not as if your reasoning for leaving some black boxes unopened doesn’t matter. In practice, with limited time, limited information, and limited reasoning power, you have to choose your battles to get anything done. You may be taken by surprise by traps you ignored, and they will not care to hear your explanations on research optimization, and that’s why you have to make an honest and thorough risk assessment to minimize the actual chance of this happening, while still getting somewhere. As in, you know, do your actual best, not some obligatory “best”. It may very well still not suffice, but it is your actual best.
The other lessons seem spot on.