I was going to start this off with a Google[1] Ngram of the usage of “reality-based,” but it only goes to 2008, so it doesn’t confirm my gut feeling that the term has been tossed around an awful lot in the past election cycle. It does show a surge starting in the reign of Bush the Elder, increasing throughout the Clinton years, and peaking with GWB.
I think that we all know that most of the time that “reality-based” is used, it is a synonym for “someone who is my political ally.” But maybe we can try to give it some actual meaning? Is there such a thing as a “reality-based” community? Is there a “reality-based” mindset? I think there is, I think I’ve seen it, I think I can describe it.
In 2011, I moved to Upstate New York to open up a semiconductor fab. Most of the people involved were brought in from all over the world, since the local talent pool was almost nil. We did have some new college graduates from RPI and SUNY Albany and watching their transformation was…entertaining. During one of the earliest operations meetings, an NCG from the module responsible for classifying the finished dies was asked how the product was yielding. He answered, “it sort of yields.” This brought down great vengeance and furious anger from the person running the meeting. “What do you mean it sort of yields? Can you play video games on it or not?” (The product at the time was the CPU/GPU combo for the Xbone.) This leads me to an observation:
If you can talk your way out of it, it is not reality-based.
Reality doesn’t care about your opinion. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It does not feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead. Having said all of that, while reality will always win in the end, it’s not actually the most important thing out there. An awful lot of really great things are all about opinions, attitudes, and various human happy delusions (like natural rights *ducks*) so do not consider this some sort of attempt at setting up a hierarchy with “Reality” at the top and “Opinion” at the bottom. That’s not what I am trying to do. Though in the Glib Spirit® of encouraging conflict and snark, I will refer to the realm of opinion as “Bullshit.”
Although the unfortunate young’un at the ops meeting was presented with a binary choice, categorizing communities/mindset results in three:
1) The Bullshit community. This is a very easy community to live within, and might be the most populous community in the industrialized world. If the success/failure of your endeavor depends totally (or nearly so) on the opinion of other people, you are a bullshitter. This includes such fields as:
Entertainment
Politics
Law
Bureaucracy
Services
You can live quite a comfortable lifestyle while remaining completely within the bullshit bubble. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Even non-Bullshitters benefit from or require the application of bullshit from time to time. Sales and marketing, interface design – these are all matters of popularity and opinion. They are the bullshit that enriches the fertile fields of consumer choice!
2) The reality-adjacent community. These are people who have at least a nodding acquaintance with reality but whose work often deviates from it, or relates to it in such a way as to prevent reality from interfering too much with the results. Mathematics is a reality-adjacent field. It can model reality amazingly well when it isn’t being used to determine how many ways you can pack nine-dimensional spheres. Pure sciences can also fit into this category. If the work purports to describe reality but cannot be tested (M-theory) or relies on simulation to confirm it (climate science) then it is reality-adjacent. Likewise archaeology, history and pretty much all of the social sciences are reality-adjacent, excluding those disciplines that are bullshit. Actually, it’s the reality-adjacent people that scare me. The ability (or habit) of accepting premises as a given (spherical cows with a radius of 1 meter anyone) and then accepting that the logical conclusion is correct because the logic is correct, makes them prime candidates for all sorts of appeals to “the greater good.” I mean, there’s not too much wrong with the logic of Marx or Malthus; it’s their premises that are faulty.
3) The reality-based community. If your work can be definitely said to be successful or unsuccessful, regardless of the opinion of the observer [2], then you are working in a reality-based field. This includes, but is not limited to:
Trades
Sports
Manufacturing
Veterinary and some fields of human medicine
You can play video games using the chip, or you can’t. The fitting leaks, or it doesn’t. The engine starts, or the javelin travels 110 meters [3], or the crops grow. You may attempt to explain away the result, but you’d be being literally absurd. There is an enforced honesty in the reality-based world. A hellish, panopticon-like traceability of one’s work actions. The clash that comes about when a bullshitter tries to bullshit in the reality-based world can be hilarious. One of the labs in our group will do checks on the various process chems to verify material integrity and blender performance. Almost all of our process chemicals look identical (49% HF, 31% H2O2, 25% TMAH, 96% H2SO4, etc.) but respond very differently (potentially dangerously) when being prepared for analysis. So when some jackhole drops off samples that are labeled with the wrong chemical label they get very irate. When the lab manager complained, [insert Litigious Industrial Supplier here] demanded to know how we were so certain that they had mislabeled the chemicals. Let me repeat that: they asked the people in the chemical analysis lab who are being paid vast sums of money to analyze chemicals…how we knew what chemical was in the bottle.
For those that would say that reality is itself a matter of opinion (but, like, that’s just your opinion maaaan) [4] I would respond thusly: if there ever comes a point where you, armed with your metaphysics can defeat me, armed with a baseball bat then I will consider that you may have a point. Until then, go STFU and do a bong rip with the maharishis.
_____________
[1] Google is an excellent example of a bullshit company that pretends to be reality-based.
[2] While the outcome of a play is determined by a referee’s ruling, the actual physical result of the play is a real fact. This is why officiating that is divergent from reality is known as a “bullshit call.”[5]
[3] Gorram Frenchies polluting my healthy sporting endeavors!
[4] This Youtube clip deliberately left blank.
[5] This etymology is completely fabricated.
[6] Is there some protocol for nesting footnotes?
In 2011, I moved to Upstate New York to open up a semiconductor fab. – there’s this place called Malaysia you know
(like natural rights – not really reality based though.
, I will refer to the realm of opinion as “Bullshit.”- well to your opinion it applies /snark
I was supposed to go spend a few months at our Singapore fabs to develop BKMs. That this promise was not fulfilled irks me to this day.
BKM’s? Best known Methods I assume. Is this a common acronym in manufacturing in others fields or is it company specific? I more familiar with best practices for example.
Yes, Best Known Methods. I will admit that my company often uses too many Three Letter Acronyms. I once made a .ppt slide with 19 consecutive TLAs. I felt a peculiar sort of satisfaction.
Another oddity about this industry is that anything that does work is called a “tool.” It’s a completely generic term. A wrench is a tool and so is a 60 megabuck immersion scanner the size of a luxury touring bus. A group of comparable tools is called a “toolset.”
The “Tool” title is definitely confusing for people new to the industry as is Fab for factory.
Are there people you’ve run into who are actually confused by this? It doesn’t strike me as even slightly odd.
Yes. Particularly people in non-specialized metrology/scientific fields. They make instruments/analyzers/equipment. To them, tools are what the FSE uses to fix the instrument, not the instrument itself.
It’s tools all the way down . . . . .
It’s tools all the way down
No need to get personal. Geez.
Woo hoo! Superscripts!
Shouldn’t subscripts be used for footnotes? The idea of throwing a javelin for 143.875 cubic yards was a little confusing until I reached the end of the article and realized it was footnote.
I suppose if you designed the javelin correctly…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmTbhZCxq9s
Shouldn’t subscripts be used for footnotes?
Superscript has been used for footnotes since approximately the invention of footnotes.
Fair enough. Seems a bit counterintuitive, but I don’t set the style guides and rarely read anything with footnotes so I’ll concede.
Yeah, it really, really makes it look like you meant cubic meters.
You can play video games using the chip, or you can’t. – what actually matters is it ISO 26262 compliant? the rest is details.
Actually, we don’t conform to that spec. ISO9001, ISO14001, ISO45000, and IATF16949 are the only ones we audit to.
Well the fact that my company conforms to such specs and qa few more things is what gives us a bit of edge, cause efficiency wise we are way bellow some americans (fucking texas instruments looking down on us judging).
Excellent article! (Though I get that my compliment on your article on BS is meta-BS)
Goverment IT bridges a few of those spheres.
Our overlords live firmly within the Bullshit community.
Our boxen live firmly in reality.
The two do not have a compatable communications protocol, so we have to act as a translational buffer. It’s a crap job, but at least I’m not stuck at G- F-
Most of govt IT is bullshit with a small amount of reality adjacency. I can turn anything into bullshit with the right buzzwords.
Ahhh, so you’re a consultant!
/consultant who got yelled at by sales for killing spin.
Like the saying has it:
You can add wine to shit, and you still have shit. You can add shit to wine, and now you have more shit.
Why is Manufacturing in Red?
/ Trades For the Win! It works, that’s reality
We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us?
Where Russian Kia drives Yusef, eh Comrade?
In Soviet Russian, Kia drive you!
There’s some overlap between those categories. Trades really straddle into the bullshit group. In the overheard words of the last plumbers (which sent my wife fuming): ‘Don’t worry about. It doesn’t have to be perfect.’
“So are you willing to sign a contract that you agree to cover and and all costs, including second order costs, from when it fails becuase you did not make it perfect?”
That’s not BS, that’s fact. An Older A/C system might not work AS Well, but it’s still kinda works, so what’s the problem?
Well, with the older A/C system, it’s usually the fact that it runs a higher electric bill and I have to start weighing the “at what point does replacement become the better option”.
My point was about “does it or does it not?” Efficiency has so many variables it could be it’s own article
That was bothering me as well. Whether it’s manufacturing defect rates, efficiency to some metric less than perfection or software that works great for 90% of use cases but can have bugs or performance issues in edge cases, success can be a lot fuzzier than this article implies. Reality is awfully messy.
That’s not BS, that’s fact. An Older A/C system might not work AS Well, but it’s still kinda works, so what’s the problem?
So long as the services are rendered with that proviso, with full understanding that it might go tits up again, there is no problem.
Yes I do, UCS it’s called a Performance Bond and Insurance
Good, because I don’t want to foot that bill after having paid for something to be fixed the first time.
Not from Me, if I don’t fix it the first time….. Hell I always fix it, or I can’t bill you
But do you fix it for all eternity, so there is no possibility that it will ever break again? If not, its not perfect, is it?
It never was, But Things wear out, the Center doesn’t hold, and in the End, everything breaks down,
Even Me……
You can never beat entropy.
Best case, like with Cthulhu, is to hold it off as long as possible, and try and maintain your sanity.
The second law of thermodynamics is an absolute bitch.
Performance Bond and Insurance
These don’t cover many (most?) second order costs.
Sports = Entertainment. So Sports is clearly bullshit-based.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
He’s right. Insistence on perfection is the enemy of progress. As I have told people many times:
“Good enough is good enough.”
Resources you put into something to make it better than good enough have an opportunity cost, unless you can tell me there is absolutely nothing for you to work on that isn’t already good enough.
‘Good enough’ isn’t.
If words have meaning, though, it is.
Perfection is unachievable. Attempting to do so is a sign of/will result in mental illness.
… and so we come back full circle to the totalitarians’ obsession with perfecting humanity,
Good enough is absolutely good enough. That’s what “good enough ” means. If you think it’s not, you need to reconsider your requirements, and we can adjust our pricing.
“Good Enough” is too often used as an excuse for settling for less and slackening standards. It is used not as “necessary and sufficient for purpose” but as a remark of abandonment of additional effort.
Only because “Good Enough for Government Work” is both an observation and a condemnation.
AHHHH. Beat me to it.
“good enough” has literally be converted into a slur.
In this case, it was code for doing crappy work while billing full dollar.
And next time I had plumbing work, I called another company. Sure I get that it doesn’t need to be gold plated, but for god sakes, don’t let the customer hear you say you don’t care if your work is sloppy or not.
*narrows gaze, prepares thundering malediction*
I will never deny that useful fictions are useful. Until telepathy is invented, the only way you can know what I believe is how I act. So even if it were the case that I was an atheist, I would still claim to be a theist, simply because the concept of a God-given right superseding any governmental usurpation is so advantageous.
Bah!
*waves hand like batting away a fart*
Happens to be the name of cigarettes only available in Hell in the Sandman Slim series of books.
If your work can be definitely said to be successful or unsuccessful, regardless of the opinion of the observer, then you are working in a reality-based field. – that leaves most people out. If your manager thinks you are successful, whether it works or is used does not matter much. a box is ticked in an excel sheet, something is made green (you don not want it to be red) and voila you never hear about it again. Except sometimes some poor bastard contacts you with a bug 5 years later and you realize someone has been using the tool and makes you fell somewhat good for the day.
I would agree that the majority of people in the west owe their livelihood much more to opinion than to reality. The ultimate pretty much has to be lawyers:
1. Legisvermin get elected (bullshit)
2. Said legisvermin write laws they think will make them more electable (bullshit)
3. The laws are then interpreted by Nazgul (bullshit)
4. The interpretation is used to their clients advantage by lawyers picking the “best” arguments” (bullshit)
5. Said arguments are then evaluated by another Nazgul. (bullshit)
This explains so much about Elie Mystal and Ken White.
The ultimate pretty much has to be lawyers:
Not arguing, but most lawyers don’t do the work you describe above. Measures of success for me include:
(1) Do our contracts give us the tools we need to get the results we want?
(2) Did the surveyor cite us for regulatory violations?
That kind of thing. It may ultimately ground out on opinions (the surveyor’s opinion that we are compliant, the counterparty’s opinion that its easier to give us what we want than fight us, etc.), but that describes most human interactions.
I am disagreeing with none of this.
The law is a powerful force in our lives and one that can be completely disconnected from reality. Isn’t it a truism that the law is about delivering predictable outcomes, not true ones?
So you must really distrust the bullshit known as the free market? Nothing but idiot preferences and opinions…and incentives.
To get to reality, we would need a plan. With realists – scientists and engineers! Might take a while. How about 5 years?
You can be in charge of making the trains run on time.
Nah, I work in bullshit.
…
But I might look darn good trying!
Well, now you do. But you have also worked in reality, nest-ce pas? Did you not notice any attitudinal difference between those who were accustomed to being able convince others of the quality of their work and those that couldn’t?
Attitudes of coworkers, customers or managers vary by field.
I think the use of a pejorative to label everything except for what YOU do (and a relative small number of others) just rubs the wrong way.
Cutting a small block wood to certain dimensions maybe be a “reality” based activity – but it just might not matter to the rest of the world as much as some bullshit artist like Shakespeare, scribbling some bullshit down on paper.
It just comes across as insulting/judgmental, rather than analytical (which I assume your purpose was!).
…and you still cannot account for the free market, other than to proclaim the results “reality”? And that is mere observation.
considering that you replied directly to this, I thought that you had read it:
You know, it’s really embarrassing to have to ask for an edit fairy while in the process of arguing with someone who knows the edit fairy on a first-name basis.
Well, it is just my bullshit opinion that prefacing with “Oh, I am just spitballing/snarking” didn’t work. I think it was too much and detracted from your point. But, that is just bullshit on my part.
Understood. Your raclette-and-rosti-rich diet has [realizes that he still needs an edit fairy, not a cowbutt, deletes response]
Could you explain that whole accounting for the free market thing?
Economic reality = gold standard?
D.R.I. – 5 Year Plan
Reality indicates that nobody has the knowledge to successfully plan an economy. So why would I support something doomed to fail?
Opinion over reality is Lysenkoism. It is also Michelangelo, Paul Simon, Jane’s Addiction, Eliot, Dante, Shakespeare, sous vide-grilled pork belly and Talisker whisky.
You misspelled Laphroiag.
But not Radiohead. Never Radiohead. Opinion, logic, reality; no realm of the human experience can account for them. It can only be explained by G-d getting hammered and taking His hand off the wheel long enough for Satan to create a band.
Dean: No, you both misspelled Lagavulin.
Eh. Talisker, Laphroiag, and Lagavulin are all good enough.
Caol Ila haz a sad 🙁
As long as it’s not Oban!
Ardbeg?
ALL OF DEM!
Or often times the chip is perfectly able to play the game, but the developer just dumped a crappy port on the market.
-1 Arkham Knight.
As politics and government infect more and more of everyday life and work, everything becomes non-reality based.
DOOM
What type of “Law”?
Bird Law.
Bird law
Beer law
Jude Law
Bob Loblaw.
http://pnwstartuplawyer.com/images/bob-loblaw.jpg
https://media1.tenor.com/images/4b76d5b2d43086cc67572478f8a0600b/tenor.gif?itemid=3486058
Excellent responses, all.
The whole “reality based community” slur is just a retread of the Soviet tactic of using psychiatry against your ideological opponents. Implying that someone doesn’t live in reality is implying that their brain doesn’t work correctly and needs to be at best ignored and at worst “adjusted” (read: forcibly re-educated and/or exiled to the Gulag).
Indeed.
“The only way you can disagree with me is if you are delusional” is the obvious implication.
7 A Møøse once bit my sister
I’d put engineering in the reality-based community as well.
Huh? Some engineer thought it would be cool to design the Chrysler 300 so you have to take the battery out through the wheel well.
No, engineering is just as bulshit-laden as anything else.
To be fair, anything designed by Chrysler will probably fail catastrophically long before the battery needs to be replaced.
‘Don’t worry about. It doesn’t have to be perfect.’
“Perfect” as in “doesn’t leak” or “perfect” as in “not totally square to the world”?
Nice article, by the way.
Thanks. I just want to make sure that the Overglibs don’t have to run two links posts in a row.
ÜBERGLIBS!
Needz moar tophat.
It fell off when he tipped his head back like that.
That is why he is yelling to the skies – his top hat perished in the fire, and the electricity melted his monocle.
You mean Lyftglibs.
Uber is more shitlordy. Think of them activating that lock down program when law enforcement appears, the shitlorish C-Suite culture, etc.
Footnotes?! I haven’t seen footnotes since…well, nevermind.
Also; excellent article. I really enjoyed it.
You read a Pratchett book?
Oh, yeah. The footnotes on some Kindle versions are maddening, though.
I think that we all know that most of the time that “reality-based” is used, it is a synonym for “someone who is my political ally.”
All too often, that “reality based” label means nothing more nuanced than “agrees with me”.
Pretty much the common definition of “intelligent”, as well.
“reality has a left wing bias”
/self-serving morons
it’s also a claim refuted by reality, Otherwise California would be doing better than Texas.
“California is a paradise with great weather, mountains and enlightened people. We take care of each other. Our economy is obviously doing better than the rest of the country, we have Silicon Valley and Hollywood! Gun-toting bitter clingers in Texas don’t care about their fellow man and would prefer to see poor people dying in the streets. Their weather sucks and they talk funny.”
/Kali true believing prog
“American Tanks are not in Baghdad. They are retreating on all fronts.”
/Iraqi Information Minister
All in all, good article!
OT: This is fucked up.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/can-government-officials-have-you-arrested-for-speaking-to-them/550517/
OT: Would.
https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/dhs-chief-kirstjen-nielsen-on-trumps-reported-vulgar-comments-daca/
What’s particularly amazing about this whole shithole business, is that nobody in the media has yet mentioned is that every person in that room that would in some way benefit from lying about what happened.
Well the media itself benefits from lying.
Yup. And we have people on the record saying he said it, and saying he didn’t. I’m pretty sure they are all lying, on account of they are all politicians, but exactly how they are lying remains a mystery.
dig the hard Scandinavian vibe on that one.
OT: Will anything come of this? I’d think that the Kali state legislature would actually engage with these folks since they represent the last redoubt of Republican political power in the state. By jettisoning them, the Dems can further consolidate their power. Then again, power is what they crave most and allowing these people to leave would undermine their absolute authority.
http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/01/15/new-california-declares-independence-from-rest-of-state/
OT: Will anything come of this?
I’ll believe it when I see it.
I would peg their chances somewhere between 0% and “business is going to start moving back from Texas to California any day now”
Detroit is due for a Renaissance!
Tax cuts actually hurt the economy
Kali?
Sometimes in manufacturing a reality based result or finding is is explained with a reality-adjacent explanation resulting in a bullshit product or process.
We found that the etcher with chemistry & process A has poor uniformity etching material Z. – Reality
If we change chemistry/process A to chemistry/process B the etcher uniformity of material Z is good. – Reality for this set of conditions, product, and at this time
Therefore If we change chemistry/process A to chemistry/process B then the etcher uniformity of material Z will be manufacturable. – Reality-adjacent, as there is not long term, multiple conditions, or further data supporting this, only one experiment done at one snapshot in time.
We feel (believe, think, etc) Chemistry/process A is the cause of poor etch uniformity of material Z – Bullshit by itself without additional supporting evidence other than above. This type of bullshit conclusion can result in occasional big unexplained yield losses and huge financial losses.
Without a clear explanation and verification of the mechanism for the poor uniformity of A and the superior uniformity of B any conclusions made are bullshit.
Chemistry/Process A has poor material Z etch uniformity due to incompatibility with etch chamber o-ring (etches o-ring consuming O2), resulting in lower oxygen concentration near the edges of the wafer near o-ring. Confirmed the incompatibility with manufacturer of o-ring and by measuring the partial pressure and O2 etch rate. – Reality
If we change chemistry/process A to chemistry/process B the etcher uniformity of material Z is good.
Good enough? Or perfect?
“Within defined quality parameters”, not merely “Good enough”.
“Good Enough” quite often represents a pareto optimal point; a compromise between sufficient precision/accuracy and cost (whether blue- or green- dollars).
In many situations, the nub of the argument is that different members of the same team have differing perceptions of where said point is.
Exactly. Good enough for me may not be good enough for you. I would say that “within defined [and agreed] quality standards” is good enough.
+1 UL Tested.
Kid tested, mother approved?
Good enough to meet requirements for product or process (ie. in-specs).
Also, if that girl worked in your cleanroom, I’d love to make a little dirty.
It’s fascinating — I have coworkers that I’ve only ever seen suited. You can tell the overall body type, but otherwise it’s just the eyes and voice. I suppose it’s like living in some country where the burqa is the norm. Except nobody’s ever beaten me for speaking to a female coworker.
Do you have role-playing sexual fantasies involving the clean room suits? Have you had clean room erotic dreams? Inquiring minds…
Q’s not even asking for a friend.
Why lie?
It’s a polite Fiction, like the claim that ‘the people’ matter.
That girl is hawt
Obligatory. Stand up Philosopher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl4VD8uvgec
“Good Enough” quite often represents a pareto optimal point; a compromise between sufficient precision/accuracy and cost (whether blue- or green- dollars).
In many situations, the nub of the argument is that different members of the same team have differing perceptions of where said point is.
See, also: Environmental Protection Agency
It’s also not strictly divided by industry. As an engineer I find it interesting how often you have managers who don’t want to deal with realities. At one company I worked for we used to sometimes get into discussions how to present a problem that had been found so we would get some sort of helpful response instead denial and anger. If we found ourselves getting too far into the weeds trying to come up with something, we would usually dump the attempt and just say “It is what it is”. Reality always wins, no matter how nicely you try to present it.
At one company I worked for we used to sometimes get into discussions how to present a problem that had been found so we would get some sort of helpful response instead denial and anger.
That’s usually the sign of really terrible management. Managers are supposed to be responsible for setting the tone and creating the culture of the organization. If people are spending time and effort on covering their ass, that’s a problem in and of itself. But, it’s not the totality of the problem. It also means no one is going to go an inch out of their way to take any chance, whatsoever. Yeah, there may be an upside. But, if things go wrong, you know you’re just buying yourself into a shit-storm.
When things go wrong, the first priority of any organization should be to fix them. But, worrying about fixing a problem in too many organizations means you get tagged with the problem itself. And even if you don’t, you get tagged with responsibility for the solution. Generally, this stems from an excessive control environment. Those tasked with controls get it in their head that the path to promotion is to find fault with those in the line role. And those in the line role get dinged for those in the control role finding a problem.
“That’s usually the sign of really terrible management. ”
So much this. Fragile people that can’t admit they have a problem because they want everyone to think they know what they are doing all the time..
My worst bosses where the ones that wanted their management to think they were infallible. People like this take any mention of something that can be fixed/improved, especially processes they have foisted on others, as personal attacks, and react accordingly.
People like this take any mention of something that can be fixed/improved, especially processes they have foisted on others, as personal attacks, and react accordingly.
I think that’s always true. But, it can also be the result of a specific institutional culture (and, yes, that is the responsibility of top management). If screwing up is treated like a huge deal, people are going to avoid looking like they screwed up at all costs.
“good enough”
I have argued with other engineers for 3 decades now about “good enough”. I am fucking tired of engineers that hold up projects because they won’t finish stuff because it can be done better.
Good enough means that it performs the intended function; meets the reliability and availability goals; gets done on time; and gets done on budget. Anything beyond that is burning money that could be spent making other products.
As a friend used to say: “there comes a time in every project when you have to shoot the engineers and get into production.”
This exactly. Perfection is not only unachievable, it is undesirable.
NEVER! STEVE SMITH STRIVE TO ACHIEVE PERFECT RAPE!
I wish I had the artistic ability to create STEVE SMITH in a kimono, performing a tea ceremony.
Pick any two and you’ll have reached what gets tossed around as being ‘Good Enough’. That is why I hate the phrase.
There is an inherent compromise involved in setting any kind of standards in reality. Maybe that’s where the Bullshit Dimension and the Reality Dimension actually cross – reality will force compromises, and the compromises that get adopted are always a matter of opinion.
what gets tossed around as being ‘Good Enough’
Bullshitters are going to bullshit. The fact that they abuse the English language doesn’t mean we have to abandon words that have useful meanings. You just need to call out bullshitters for what they are.
Its funny. Periodically I have to take a bite out of someone’s ass. Just about the best way to do it, IMO, is to ask them “So, you think this [result] is good enough?” The rest of the “conversation” is about how it isn’t good enough, why that is, who is responsible, and whether they want to keep their job. But its nearly always built on the foundation of “Nope. Not good enough.”
Playing defense in those situations is a losing strategy. I always take the route of “What do we have to do to fix it?”
But people still do it.
Oh, that’s definitely one route it can take (and my preferred route). But that’s how those conversations start.
The ones where I’m pretty sure its a people problem, not a process problem, ore the ones I start with “So you think this is good enough?”.
Sometimes, I wish I had more pragmatic people working under me on projects, but then I reconsider.
On reflection, I want engineers who aspire to build the very best mouse trap they can design. I want their imaginations solving problems. It’s my job to constrain that and contain the scope of the project to a realistic domain based on many factors, the primary being cost and schedule. Some of my staff react positively to such “interference”, and some don’t, but dealing with that is one of the reasons I get big bucks too.
In short, I don’t want engineers bothering about hard budgets and speculative timelines in the early stages of a project or proposal. I do want them to appreciate that those constraints exist. I do want them acceding to those constraints I – by necessity – place on their vision.
On reflection, I want engineers who aspire to build the very best mouse trap they can design.
I have 36 patents.
I don’t want engineers bothering about hard budgets and speculative timelines in the early stages of a project or proposal.
Right now, my job is to get the fucking work done. Our customers have a critical timeline, and they won’t pay for perfection, because their customers have a critical timeline and won’t pay for perfection.
There is no single “good enough”. You can’t have people that believe quick and dirty is the right answer for every job. And you can’t have people that believe every job needs to be a work of art.
Right now, my job is to get the fucking work done.
That’s everyone’s job. The hard part is getting everyone on the same page as to what the fucking work actually is. Is it designing/producing a disposable one-time use moustrap, or an heirloom moustrap with hand-engraved bails, titanium fittings, and coil-over shocks?
Pretty much the same thing that’s hard about landing on what’s good enough.
My job is getting told the disposable one-use moustrap is an heirloom trap that should be able to keep catching mice – and then making it work even though it was never built to do the job.
Like most us, sounds like your job is taking “not good enough” and making it “good enough”.
Ain’t that all kinds of government work?
The answer then is to find a building full of heirloom mice.
Naw, that’s a “Protected Heirloom Mouse Habitat” per the EPA’s ESA determination.
So . . . . get a better job perhaps.
Speaking of mousetraps, here’s one of my favorite youtube channels
Check the one with a revolver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcSBO8YAnTQ
Acceptance Criteria.
We are switching to scrum (sorta, its scrum-butt, but still an improvement) and one of the big things that is changing is putting acceptance criteria on all tasks. THIS DEFINES WHAT DONE IS.
Does it meet that? Done.
Does it not? Not done.
Is the acceptance criteria perfect? Hell no. I am working on a subproject right now that I orginally worked on last spring, but the criteria then was X even though we knew X+Y was needed eventually. Y is getting done now.
And that is okay. I designed with Y in mind even though it wasn’t going to happen for a while.
“We are switching to scrum (sorta, its scrum-butt, but still an improvement) and one of the big things that is changing is putting acceptance criteria on all tasks. THIS DEFINES WHAT DONE IS.”
Do you call the people in charge Scrumbags like I do? 🙂
That says nothing about the quality of the ideas.
/patent atty
(just kidding. seriously though, congrats! That’s awesome!)
That says nothing about the quality of the ideas.
Bad ideas are easy to show “novel and not obvious”.
Yep.
I’ve found the “work of art” problem is usually the bigger threat. A lot of times you’re doubling the cost just to get insignificant improvements in output.
That’s one of the reasons I am (and want to be) involved in the process. Most of the projects I was (and to a much smaller extent am) involved in had some leeway because we were creating new software infrastructure, and organizationally, we understood that just about everything we built (and build) will need to be enhanced or outright rebuilt in 3-5 years.
Consequently, an engineer who comes to me with an out-of-functional-spec enhancement that makes subsequent migration easier, or will extend anticipated functionality in ways we don’t currently need, does get a hearing. Thus, we’re often deploying not just the M&S, but sometimes some C’s of MoSCoW, if it gave us some flexibility that would let us push out the rebuild to nearer 5 years, it was sometimes worth considering based on some quite loose criteria.
Boom!
Precisely.
Part of why I switched from design to manufacturing.
The design engineers used to hate me and my red pen during product reviews.
“Yeah, can uh you explain why you decided to use 126 #0 screws when a third as many #4’s would have worked? Nevermind, I don’t care about the extra 0.75% performance gain, just fucking fix it.”
+ an arbitrarily large number
There was a company called Panalytical that manufactured an X-ray defractometer that used only two sizes of fasteners for the entire thing. And the manual was an absolute dream. Then they got out by Bruker and their beautiful designs retired 🙁
Two sizes?
What the fuck was wrong with their engineers?
They were unable to find bolts that could support the goniometer that were small enough to fasten the beryllium window on the generator. They did supply double-ended torx wrenches so you theoretically only needed one tool to disassemble and reassemble it.
And they actually had rails beefy enough to maintain beam alignment…
*waxes nostalgic about my favorite XRD ever*
It’s another reason I love old cars. They seem to have been designed by people who actually worked on cars.
Fond memories of the in-line six on my high school Chevy. You could just about climb into the engine compartment with it; everything was easily accessible and workable. Compare to the engine in most new cars, which are so tight and inaccessible that if you dropped a washer it might not ever make it to the floor.
I still want to know who decided to put the fill port for winshield washer fluid on the C-Max a third of the way down and a third of the way in from the side in the engine compartment so that you absolutely must get a funnel to top up. (it’s also as crowded as described, so there’s no way to get the bottle close.)
Dude, you’re supposed to take it to the dealer for a wiper fluid refill.
And don’t forget the wiper fluid flush service.
The capless fuelling system also can’t take a gas can, so their answer was to provide a funnel – which can’t be used with the “Spilless” spouts mandated by law that actually spill more than an open nozzle.
(Pay no attention to the random water can spout I have in the trunk. That is absolutely not there for use with the gas can)
I wonder how many people even look under the hood when making a car purchase decision. I do, but I think I am in an insignificant minority now.
It takes discipline from management to keep designs clean and manufacturable. Otherwise, you end up with bullshit that works great as a prototype but has pathetic yields on the production line. They don’t teach anything like that in school.
You’re describing Tesla cars.
This applies to a lot more than just engineering. Having worked as both an AE/EE and then as a software engineer, that this is even more prevalent in the software writing world. The hardcore software geeks will keep rewriting and rearchitecting stuff, and on too many occasions end up with a product that has become so bloated it no longer even serves the function they created it for.
The software business has become the fashion business. And it didn’t get that way because of the engineers (except maybe on the security side).
At one company I worked for we used to sometimes get into discussions how to present a problem that had been found so we would get some sort of helpful response instead denial and anger.
A long time ago, I had this weird radio interference on my land line telephone. A local radio station was coming in, loud and clear, on my phone when I tried to make a call. It was bad. I called the station, and got handed off to the guy in charge of making the radio waves go out into the ionosphere. I started to tell him what was going on, and he immediately got all huffy and defensive (As if I was not the first person to experience this phenomenon). I had to talk him down off the goddam ledge; give him the ol’ “Look, I really didn’t call to give you a hard time, I just was hoping you, who know a whole lot more about this stuff than I, might have a suggestion as to what I might try, in order to make this go away. Et c, et c.” What a fucking pain in the ass. I finally got him smoothed out, to the point where he said, “Well, maybe your ground is going bad. Clean it up and see if it helps.” It fixed it. I even called him back to say thanks, but the whole thing was needlessly difficult because of that defensive “Don’t blame me” bullshit.
You do realize that you are in the 2% of the population that actually wants to help fix a problem rather than just bitch and moan, don’t you?
1) The Bullshit community.
That’s genius.
look up
*Examines ceiling tiles, shrugs*
You think I have time to read all these bullshit comments!?
Single digit temps getting old
It’s always annoying when the child labor ages out, but that’s why they’re called “temps”
Okay, that was legitimately funny.
It was
Shit, I’m just happy the number is positive.
7 degrees!!
It’s actually a sultry 31 deg up at
Chateau Numero Six.Double digits up in the CLE. 17 F right now, with it predicted to hit the mid 40’s by the weekend. These rapid temperature changes are playing hell with my sinuses.
You should have listened to Leonardo DiCaprio when you had the chance.
OT: Not seeing a downside…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455453/president-trump-undoes-obama-legacy-commonsense-nobama
This is actually one of my favorite things about agent orange. That and the fact he has made the fucking dnc operatives with bylines so angry they have abandoned any semblance of logic, reason, honesty, or objectivity in order to show how cool they are to other cunts that like them want only members of their team in charge.
Great article Adahn!
The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self-awareness.
I posted all my fan cuts in an article published friday night
Great – I’ll check them out! I’m enjoying the Batman/Superman fan edit, but have only been free to watch in brief spurts.
Invitation accepted!
I maintain that it’s our “natural rights” that are reality based, and it’s the law that’s the delusion. In fact, the realness of our laws only comes from them approximating our natural rights. I’ll give a few examples.
1) Rosa Parks said she had the right to sit in the front of a public bus but the law said she didn’t.
The law was delusional. When confronted with the reality of violating people’s rights, the law changed to conform to our natural rights.
2) The Soviet Union said people didn’t have a right to private property but the natural laws we call “market forces” had their way with the Soviet Union’s laws like the latter were natural laws’ jailhouse bitch.
Remember natural rights are actually people making choices.
Market forces are actually people making choices.
Natural rights are as real as people making choices. The law is a fantasy that only seems real insofar as it protects people’s natural right to make choices for themselves.
3) The drug war.
The law can pretend that people don’t have the right to choose their own intoxicants, and it can throw millions of people in prison and throw trillions away enforcing itself–what it can’t do is stop people from choosing their own intoxicants.
If we go by the theory that we can tell what reality is because when it collides with fantasy, it’s the fantasy that disappears, then everywhere I look, I see laws disappearing when they come into direct conflict with natural rights. People can live under the delusion of their laws for a long time (see the USSR as an example), but reality is that whenever laws violate our natural rights, they cannot do so without suffering the real world consequences of having done so.
One of the reasons ISIS collapsed was because they violated the right of people who lived under them to choose their own religion. They say that they were following the original instructions of the Quran, but when they neglected to see is that the original Muslim conquerors were forced to adapt their laws to accommodate the natural right of people to choose their own religion. At one point, in what is now modern Iran, the Muslim rulers had to declare Zoroastrians a “people of A book” and prohibit them from converting to Islam–even though the book they reverenced was not the Pentateuch nor was their god the god of Abraham. The consequences of forcibly converting people were too expensive and harmful for society. Even those early religious fanatics could not escape the reality of natural rights/
Show me some convincing examples of people violating natural rights without suffering steep consequences for doing so, and I might be persuaded that our natural rights are just a fantasy.
But what we’re really talking about when we talk about natural rights is our right to make choices for ourselves, and once we realize that, it’s difficult to imagine how we could stop people from making choices for themselves without there being serious negative consequences for society. No doubt, some societies have managed to suffer those negative consequences for a long time and survive, and yet still they suffer. When those recent guards from North Korea recently defected, it was found that they were suffering malnutrition and were full of parasitic worms. That’s common in North Korea. Those people are suffering the consequences of being forced to follow delusional laws and forsake their real world natural rights.
You hit the nail on the head in what I quoted above, except it’s the laws that are delusions–it’s our natural rights that are real.
Shorter Ken: abstractions of reality are still reality-based as long as they have fidelity to the underlying truth.
Mine came with examples.
Segregation
The Soviet Union and the abolition of property
The drug war
ISIS and Muslim extremists from ancient times
North Korea
I nixed the conclusion that our natural rights are the same in every culture and throughout history, because I figured I was already putting a lot in there–and the conclusion was implied by the examples.
Ancient Rome, China in the middle ages, London under Henry VIII, Japan under the Meji, America in the ’50s, Martian colonies of the 28th century . . .
Won’t violating people’s property rights always have the same kinds of negative consequences in the real world regardless of what they law says?
Violating all those people’s free speech rights tend to have the same kinds of negative consequences, too–cross culturally and throughout history.
Laws change.
Rights?
Not so much!
So which one’s real again?
China has existed for several billion man-years without implosion. I’m not qualified to debate any particulars of the situation, but surely there’s some sinologist in the house that could comment.
I think the sinologist is upthread getting Nephilium’s nose unstuffed.
China has survived by reforming itself to be more in tune with people’s natural rights.
The communists reformed themselves after the Great Leap Forward starved tens of millions of people to death.
The communists reformed again when they saw what was in store for them if they didn’t embrace market reforms.
The consequences of violating people’s natural rights decreases in severity when you stop violating their rights so profoundly.
To whatever extent they continue to violate people’s natural rights, they continue to suffer.
We, here in the U.S., suffer negative consequences when our government violates our natural rights, too.
Government oppression in China predates the communist takeover by what? Millennia? A long time. So, if your theory is correct, that implies that whatever natural rights may be, political self-determination is not one of them.
So, are you saying that Chinese society didn’t suffer the negative consequences of violating people’s rights before the advent of communism?
That doesn’t make any sense.
I was using an extreme example. The communists were so dogmatic, it was incredible. They had the power to enforce their will, and they used it. Their fantasy laws were so bad, they led the starvation of tens of millions of people. They had to change their dogma and their laws–in order to avoid the negative consequences of violating people’s rights. In other words, people’s rights were real. Their laws were a fantasy. That so many people died being forced to try to live by a fantasy is tragic.
What I’m saying is that if even the Chinese communists (or the Khmer Rouge, or Stalin in the Ukraine) can’t escape the negative consequences of violating people’s rights in the real world, then other governments that violated people’s rights to a lesser extent and in lesser ways have to suffer those real world consequences, too.
There were negative consequences associated with conscription in the U.S. We avoid those now. Because we suffered the negative consequences of conscription in the 1960s doesn’t mean that the government had to fall. The government could simply change its policy and avoid those negative consequences, or they could continue to violate people’s rights in that way–and continue on without losing power completely.
But just because the government didn’t fall doesn’t mean there aren’t any negative consequences or that society isn’t suffering because of they’re violating people’s rights.
It seems to me that you’re getting very close to an unfalsifiable situation if any negative effects are proofs. Bad things happen when the sun goes down, after all. To demonstrate that natural rights have reality beyond the fact that I like them very much, I’d need to be able to a) identify them and b) show what happens when these previously identified rights are violated. These may actually exist. But China hasn’t had free speech or self-government for (AFAICT) three thousand years. That would indicate that free speech and self-government might not be among these natural rights.
I don’t think what I’m saying is falsifiable. I suspect it’s more that violating people’s rights tends to have severely negative consequences associated with it. I suppose there are occasions in which one group comes in and perpetrates total genocide, takes the land of the people who used to be there, and then just wipes out the subjugated population.
Even in those cases, the victorious group needs to respect each other’s rights in order to flourish. Probably no society flourishes because rights are violated.
I can think of a few examples where that seemed to work for some period of time, but ultimately, violating people’s rights that was is burdensome to a society.. If we use Sparta enslaving the Helots, the practice of slavery in the American south, and the system of European imperialism in Africa and Asia as examples, we can see the same pattern play out. Sparta could hardly keep their army to enforce their victories out of Sparta for long for fear of slave revolt. The practice of slavery was ultimately devastating to the South. And the Europeans eventually let their colonies go because they were more trouble than they were worth. Surely, China does the world more good as a free trading partner than it would have as a vassal of Japan or a trading outpost of the British.
Notice, we’re talking about the very stuff of which free market capitalism is made. If I can’t find a situation in which government interference in a free market works out better, that doesn’t mean my ideas about free markets are unscientific or can’t be falsified. It may just mean that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You cannot ignore the laws of physics or economics without consequences. In the case of market forces, too, we’re talking about limiting people’s ability to make choices–violating their rights, in my description. Market forces are people making choices. Libertarians pointing out that you can’t ignore market forces without paying a price isn’t unscientific and it is falsifiable. Just show me a free lunch, and the whole thing is falsified.
Or show me a perpetual motion machine.
I’ve listed a number of natural rights.
Economics tells us what happens when you violate people’s property rights. A property right is a choice because “property” means the right to make choices about who gets to use something, how it’s used, when it’s used, etc. Find me an instance where the government violating that right has no negative consequences, and I’ll show you where the government systematically violating those rights led to people starving to death my the millions and being sent to gulags by the millions. That you cannot violate people’s natural property rights without consequence should be clear to anyone who knows the first few things about economics.
I’ve talked about the natural right to free speech. The government violating the right to free speech has the same kinds of consequences in every culture and throughout history–just like violating people’s property rights. I could keep going. Instead, why don’t you show me where violating people’s rights didn’t have a significant negative impact. Even in cases of armies commandeering the produce of local farms, they’ve generally found that it’s better to pay the farmers for the food–rather than suffer the negative consequences of being seen as an invading enemy of the local people. You’ll find references to this from everyone from Sun Tzu to and through modern generals.
I’ve even described where our natural rights come from. Like morality, they arise naturally as an aspect of our agency–our ability to make choices. In fact, they are morality. They’re an obligation to respect other people’s choices, and insofar as violating our natural rights produces negative consequences, protecting them makes societies thrive. All of that is falsifiable, too. Just show me where violating people’s rights made a society flourish.
Have you looked at the causes of the Irish Potato Famine?
If societies simply do not flourish because people’s rights are violated, that doesn’t make my premise falsifiable either.
Like I said, you can make a case for genocide or ethnic cleansing. When Americans wiped out Indians and stole their land, we flourished in their absence.
But you’re not arguing for that, I’m sure. But maybe that’s a falsification, right there. If you want to totally wipe out an indigenous population and steal their land, you might end up like the U.S.
Or you might end up like Nazi Germany, a pariah to their own progeny.
I’m not sure where I stand on natural rights, but I will say that people suffering negative consequences due to violating what one might consider a natural right does not logically prove the right inherently exists. The history of human civilization is replete with stronger tribes, cities, and states conquering their weaker neighbors and continuing on their merry ways. If societies which respect what we consider natural rights are more successful–something which has yet to be proven beyond a doubt–it still doesn’t prove the existence of those rights as things that exist apart from those societies.
I want to believe that there are natural, inalienable rights, but I haven’t come across a sufficient logical explanation, and I don’t find metaphysical explanations very compelling. At least no more compelling than saying, “We think these rights are important, so we’re going to just consider them inherent to the human condition.”
Like I said, governments can survive despite violating people’s rights (see North Korea), but they suffer the consequences.
Our rights, I should say, originate from our ability to make choices–and they are making choices.
I don’t think anybody here would argue that a comet hurdling towards the earth to destroy it has rights or morality–and that’s because it doesn’t have the capacity to make choices.
A “right” is the obligation to respect the ability of things that can make choices to make choices for themselves.
That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about “natural rights”. How can anyone say they don’t exist?
I’m sure we all agree that people can make choices (even determinists only hold that the outcome of our choices are predetermined by surrounding factors, not there are no choices made).
If libertarians agree on anything, isn’t it that we’re all obligated to respect each other’s rights?
All I’m saying is that the ability to make choices and the obligation to respect that is real.
*slogs through Ken’s trademark wall of text*
Now see, this is why I hang out around here.
OT: Why is this still a thing? The woman in question produced a signed statement saying that she never had sex with him (included in the article). Lord we have a pathetic media.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-porn-star-said-yearlong-affair-trump-2006-182958520.html
It’s about the #MeToo movement and embarrassing Trump.
It isn’t even just about throwing it all up against the wall and seeing if something sticks.
It’s also about feeding all the anti-Trump consumers out there something for breakfast. They’re driving clicks with that crap.
That’s really the difference between people with Trump Derangement Syndrome and people that disliked Obama (and Bush, and Clinton, etc.). The former have an insatiable appetite for hate whereas the Obama haters mostly just tried ignoring him whenever possible. Of course, part of the problem with the folks that have TDS is that they also have Obama Fawning Syndrome.
Fer fuck’s sake, its only the POTUS. Most of them are ignorant boobs, in part because the job has gotten too damn big for anyone to be competent at it. We are certainly better off having the populace hating the POTUS than fawning over him, but there’s a point where even the hate is coming from batshit insanity.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: carrying that kind of hate and vitriol is much more destructive to the vessel than the target. It’s corrosive and will suck all joy out of these people’s lives. I intensely disliked Obama personally and his policy positions, but I would never let pure hate utterly consume me like this. It would be far too tiring, ultimately futile and would make me miserable.
OT: Canuckistani professor throws a temper tantrum.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-trump-continues-to-dodge-impeachment/article37607836/
“we have temporarily removed commenting from our articles.”
Uh huh. I bet you have. I hope someone eventually does a survey of how many lefty websites vs non-lefty websites allow commenting.
Group-think uber alles!
“I was going to start this off with a Google1 Ngram of the usage of “reality-based,” but it only goes to 2008”
My recollection is that it was round about 2007 (roughly during the election campaign) that this phrase started being thrown around, and that the most common stereotype of someone using it would’ve been a religious watcher of Jon Stewart and/or reader of dailykos.