Comment by _bpgl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _bpgl | Hacker News Reader

> The Wright brothers are a timeless example of how private enthusiastic entrepreneurs can outperform heavily financed and government backed organizations. They’re also a prime example that a degree or title in itself doesn’t qualify you for success in an endeavor. Experience, imagination, and courage will generally be the currency that pays for success.

You sort of knew that bit was coming, but you can't really be prepared for that much hogwash that quickly.

First, they're obviously not a timeless example. A distinguishing feature of their time, compared to ours, is that there were no qualified aerospace engineers. Another feature is that the scientific and analytic culture was far more disjointed, immature, and parochial at the time. Consider, for example, fusion research today. No amateur will produce a burning plasma. ITER will. Because the scientific environment is more sophisticated, and is able to take on challenges outside of what amateurs can.

Second, they are not a prime example about the efficacy of a degree regarding "success," not least because n=1 in an endeavor riddled with variation. It's equally likely that they got very, very lucky, in spite of their apparent rigor.

Third, and finally, "[e]xperience, imagination, and courage" are not dichotomous with a "degree or title." It's not really apparent to me that, outside of the imaginations of sophomoric libertarians, that anyone believes that the world is stuffily dismissing outsiders who clearly have the facts on their sides in scientific and technical endeavors. Focusing on this fair-tale split between imagined elitists in their ivory towers and the pragmatic and gritty masses betrays a fascination with a staple of corny Americana, the garage workshop and its ilk. It's trite, predictable schlock.

> It's equally likely that they got very, very lucky, in spite of their apparent rigor.

I recommend reading a detailed account of their R+D program. They were not lucky. They did not randomly produce a flying airplane. They first identified each of the problems, and set about building prototypes directed at solving each of the problems one by one.

You could say that the Wrights invented the directed research and development process.

Whether one is able to settle on a working solution involves luck. The article says they "noticed" that birds warp their wings. They were unlucky, for a time, in that they experienced adverse yaw. Then they were unlucky, for a time, when a fixed tail arrangement did not work. Then they made the tail assembly steerable.

They were also unlucky in that they killed a passenger, but lucky that it wasn't rather than one, or both, of themselves. I realized that luck-minimizing framings are popular within entrepreneurial settings, and particularly in cultures where we're all "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but it would be far healthier if we took on board the role that fortune plays in success. We would be, for example, far more heroic if we were facing odds, rather than a grind with a guaranteed success at the end.

Examining birds and noticing how they fly is not "luck".

Langley had 70 times as much money to spend, and his Aerodrome failed because it was underpowered, did not have enough lift, did not have an adequate control system, the wings were too flexible and would not hold their shape, the airframe was not strong enough for the loads, and the catapult tangled with the airplane and pulled it to pieces.

That's not bad luck, that's bad engineering from start to finish.

what would you call odds-maximising behaviour when directed at a project that is known to be possible (given birds already flew)? At some point you have to credit the Wright brothers for their skill, ingenuity and perseverance as well as some element of luck. Even the luck aspect is limited (in my opinion) to being born in the right situation (era, country, etc), and having not had more difficult competition in the race to fly. Trying to dismiss it all as luck seems excessively nihilistic.

> No amateur will produce a burning plasma. ITER will.

I think the jury is still out on this.

I think we can all agree that the best solution includes private and public trying to find answers to a problem.

Here's a podcast episode from last week on that very topic

http://www.econtalk.org/mariana-mazzucato-on-the-value-of-ev...

There are plenty of examples going in both directions, it's not a matter of absolutes, or can be resolved in some political us vs them style argument (all libertarians are idiots, all gov is great, etc).

NASA's greatest successful decade happened shortly after they swept up all of the private organizations and talent from universities to form the organization. It's been said their efficient culture at the time reflected private industry culture that remained, combined with the rigour and scale of the job at hand found in university and government experience they had access to.

Everyone loves pointing to NASA 1950/60s accomplishments as the counter-point to private industry but basically just because gov finances something doesn't mean the positive effects of private industry can't still linger in government agencies well after they've been founded. Where the negative effects of top-heavy administrative machines, with endless risk-management and management-staff itself taking precedent over engineering talent (https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html) have not yet crippled their R&D efforts.

That said, no one said gov isn't capable of great things but whether it's a sustainable repeatable thing as long-term large-scale organizations acting in a waterfall-esque process - I'm not so sure. The ideal is probably some middle ground where gov organizations can take an entrepreneurial style approach building small teams, while still providing them the access of gov resources and public-incentive structure, but without the damaging effects of administrative culture.

I'm not convinced gov contractors are the solution to this either due to the aforementioned public incentive structure and how it encourages graft, crony-capitalism, and poor oversight of public spending.

Not to mention context is incredibly important Fusion and the first humans in space are at a different scale than "first person to fly", given the amount of resources the Wright Brothers required. So again it's not black/white.

There are indeed many examples of both Government and private industry succeeding and failing. Perhaps the differentiator is bureaucratic interference, which private industry is somewhat less prone to, but by no means immune from. Government, meanwhile, tends to create over-bureaucratized organizations, but can sometimes under some conditions create highly efficient organizations in some places.

Perhaps it's a good thing that we still have plenty of diversity in organization so that we can try all possible options for how to do something. New, small, and inexperienced companies, large and highly organized companies, and government departments large and small can all try their hand at creating new things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com