Comment by hdtx54 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hdtx54 | Hacker News Reader

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You think the power grid fell out of the head of some master craftsman thinking in decades? They dont teach the history of science for various reasons, but its basically a ledger of how over rated 3 inch chimp brain intelligence is. The power grid is thing of beauty. Today. But the path to that Beauty is one train wreck after another. Boiler explosions that kill hundreds. Wiring that burns down towns. Transformers that cook themselves and everyone around them. Hurricanes that blow half the grid into the sea in 5 minutes etc etc etc. We learn things the hard way. And always have. There was never any master plan. Beauty happened inspite of it with huge hidden costs that only historians tabulate and very few have the time and luxury to study. Individual Mastery is not magic. Because complexity and unpredictability in the universe is way more than what one 3 inch chimp brain can fully comprehend or ever handle. But we create more problems by pretending limits to what chimps can do dont exist. Look up Theory of Bounded Rationality.

Anyway, the original “power grid” guy was not some master craftsman or engineer, he was the original STEM influencer: Edison. He also popularized short videos.

Tesla was the real power grid guy. The scope of his invention from the generators at Niagara Falls power generation to the transformers to the motors is pretty impressive. More so given that he was eventually given the patents (originally issued to Marconi) for radio transmission.

The fact that Edison is pervasively over-credited is really another example of the highly visible executive claiming personal credit for the labors of employees.

Two others who come to mind are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmetz and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Scott_(engineer)

Steinmetz contributed heavily to AC systems theory which helped understand and expand transmission. while Scott contributed a lot to transformer theory and design (I have to find his Transformer book.)

Very valuable point!

In addition to the limits of human planning and intellect, I'd also add incentives:

as cynical as it sounds, you won't get rewarded for building a more safe, robust and reliable machine or system, until it is agreed upon that the risks or problems you address actually occur, and that the costs for prevention actually pays off.

For example, there would be no insurances without laws and governments, because no person or company ever would pay into a promise that has never been held.

Exactly. The advent of electriccity was seen as just as much of a threat to everyone as AI is today. The advent of the internet was seen similarly. In each era, those at the forefront of the technology that would fundamentally change the world, were castigated as 'psychosexual' deviants who did not understand the common man. Guess who had the last laugh?

It's not even limited to modern technology. If you go talk to certain grievance-driven individuals from tribal backgrounds (for lack of a better term) who have produced nothing for the last 10000 years, they will levy similar accusations against the very institutions that are providing them with healthcare their ancestors could only have dreamed of. In some areas, even agriculture is seen as suspect. It's ridiculous.

It's scary to me how both sides of the American political aisle have suddenly turned anti-tech and are buying into the same arguments. Gross.

It would all be undergrounded and made resilient, if it weren't for perverse incentives.

This is a tradeoff. There is value in being able to do upgrades to lines above ground. Underground is not automatically better. Like most things, it depends.

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