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Comment by antr | Hacker News Reader

"Annoying because the underlying thought is "Those NASA/JPL guys are so dumb""

I have to disagree with this statement and the article. I've asked some of these questions in the past, and the reason I ask is because I'm curious, not because I'm trying to call anyone "dumb".

The fact that people try to understand the underlying technology of such a complex mission, and later followup with a "why" question, simply shows how the general public is interested in these events.

I'd be more worried if people didn't ask any questions at all, implying that they do not care for such scientific and technological breakthroughs.

Indifference can be a dangerous thing.

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Fairly big difference between asking "Why don't they...?" and "Why don't they just...?". The 'just' tacked onto the end of the beginning of the question implies it should be totally obvious.

regardless of semantics, it is ignorance--not knowledge--that is the true engine of science

No.

It is the desire for knowledge.

I loathe semantic games in arguments as much as anyone, but I too often see "ignorance" being given some kind of special place in science, where it doesn't belong.

There's a reason why NASA didn't just dedicate 8 years, $2.5 billion, and a tremendous amount of human effort to land a rover called "Ignorance" on another planet.

Curiosity: in this glorious age of Google, Wikipedia, Wolfram-Alpha, and so many other free and readily available resources, it doesn't start with the words, "Why don't they just..."

read ignorance as a lack of knowledge - not the voluntarily action to ignore.

>read ignorance as a lack of knowledge - not the voluntarily action to ignore.

Same thing. You cannot do anything with just "lack of knowledge", whereas you can do lots with either "knowledge" (e.g process it and extract more knowledge, conclusions, dis/prove theories etc) or curiosity (e.g obtain knowledge).

Lack of knowledge is passive. Curiosity is active.

"regardless of semantics". Why is this such a common phrase in debates? Semantics is the study of meaning in language. Requirements, code, comments and documentation are often much better when people do pay attention to semantics ;-)

It is ok to ask questions and wonder why they did it this way and not another way.

It is not ok to just go "they should have done it this way" without consideration for the millions of factors and limited resources they have

Especially from some people that have no idea how hard it is, how hardware can fail in hundreds of ways, how things are harder in a slower processor, in low level programming, in real time app

"Oh but they should have used Erlang/OCaml/LISP/JavaRT/NodeJS for that they are soooo stupid" SHUT UP

They did it, not you, and they have to live with the consequences, not you.

I don't think this is what jgc was saying.

The point is that it's foolish to assume you know better than someone, particularly when you are unaware of the background to their decisions. And doubly so when the someone in question is as smart as the NASA/JPL staff undoubtedly are.

I had the same reaction. "Why don't they just" questions are essential to understanding engineering, and we should, if anything, encourage them.

Which happens to be the point of this article.

Also people don't really share NASA's motivation. Mostly we just like looking at Mars, and if that was NASA's motivation they probably could have designed a better rover by swapping in cameras later in the process.

Dumb questions can have interesting answers. Even if people don't ask them nicely.

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