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Comment by jhbadger | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps Charlie Munger's enthusiasm for this sort of inverse reasoning explains his (now cancelled) plan for the windowless dorm building he designed for UC-Santa Barbara -- he was creating the worst possible dorm building in order to get insights into what a good dorm building would be.

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I love deep dark places. My favorite memory is of visiting the Grand Canyon Caverns. I loved when they turned out the lights and it was absolutely pitch black. A dorm like that would be amazing for me. No street lights, no car noise, no windows for people to peek into. However I can see why it would make a bunch of non troglodyte people feel weird.

Visiting is one thing. Living there is something different.

That is true, but I would love to try it out sometime.

Decommissioned lookout Bunker stations here in the cliffs over looking the sf golden gate have extremely deeply sunken thick concrete buried barracks. we turned off the flash lights and it's the darkest I've been in and absolutely quiet with a group of 30+ kids and chaperones. Had better ears back then so no ringing ears. And sunken structures have the benefit of about 65° stable temperature compared to the cold outside air

It was comforting

I've had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. I kind of like the sound of the ringing. Reminds me of tibet singing bowls or a buddhist bell. The sound of my life.

Or, maybe, Munger figured out that what was viewed as obviously correct wasn't actually correct, and created a unique design to explore the possibilities when the obviously correct thing was removed.

The rebuttals to his design are basically just "every room needs a window", without any real justification. Do you think he didn't think of that? That he just forgot to put windows in?

My dorm at college had windows, and they were entirely worthless. There were 2 windows, 2'x6', frosted glass, and they could open about 3". I don't think they added much to the room

> Or, maybe, Munger figured out that what was viewed as obviously correct wasn't actually correct

Nah, looking at the floor plans, he was just optimizing for cost at the expense of user experience.

To rebut your anecdata with my own: My dorm rooms at college had large 5' x 4' windows that opened. The unlimited fresh air and view over the campus helped me keep my sanity while studying for a 4-year engineering degree. A windowless room would have driven me stark raving mad in the first year.

> The rebuttals to his design are basically just "every room needs a window", without any real justification. Do you think he didn't think of that? That he just forgot to put windows in?

I think Munger should build a dorm room for himself that doesn't have windows and live in it for a few years before deciding that other people don't need them.

I bet you would’ve liked your dorm more if it had better windows!

> The rebuttals to his design are basically just "every room needs a window", without any real justification. Do you think he didn't think of that? That he just forgot to put windows in?

Whether he thought of it or not, bedrooms without windows are unsafe because in a fire you're trapped. Safety regulations are written in blood.

Details on dorm cancellation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37213589

TBD, apparently, is an alternative source of ~$1B:

> Estimated Budget: The projected construction budget for Phases 1 and 2 of the Project is $600M – $750M.

I thought the idea was to spend as little time in rooms as possible

I’m told people rave about his KITP dorm building - maybe that’s where all the lessons learned went

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