Hacker News Reader

Comment by hunglee2 | Hacker News Reader

bamboo scaffolding might be one of those examples of where a superior local solution gets replaced by an inferior, yet more scalable generalisable solution. Bamboo is organic, therefore non-standard, therefore harder to track, measure, quantify, maintain - everything you want to do in health and safety, organic material will frustrate. So even though it is better solution in so many ways (cheaper, lighter, flexible, green, man-portable etc) because it is non-standard it ends up being considered unsafe

View on HN

I dunno. Framing lumber is organic, yet we have systems to grade it and charts to show how strong it is (taking into account random imperfections).

Yeah, since they use so much bamboo, it might be feasible to grade the pipes by thickness and/or some other objective measure of strength. Heck, they probably already do, informally.

As for imperfections, the bamboo masters seem to know how to (over)compensate for them, i.e. they build the scaffolding to withstand several times the expected load. As would any good engineer.

> Heck, they probably already do, informally.

I feel like I'm seeing more and more of this kind of conjecture on HN about things that are quite easy to verify.

It also surprises me that anyone would assume they're either operating without any standardisation or that they'd only be doing it informally. It's China, first of all, and it's the 21st century.

The guidelines from the local government are available here: https://www.bd.gov.hk/doc/en/resources/codes-and-references/...

The bamboo is specified by genus, age, drying time, thickness etc. with exact tolerances given for variation.

Hell, even in the 5th century or before, they'd have had enough experience to know that bamboo of certain size would be appropriate or not. Sure, they might not now the exact tensile strength in Netwons or lbs/in or whatever unit, but they'd have enough experience to know that to make a bridge for an ox to cross would need certain sizes of bamboo. Even if that knowledge came from losing an ox or two, it would have been learned quickly enough.

    > It's China

No, Hongkong is not China. It has totally separate civil construction and worker safety rules.

Two systems, one country.

Is there a reason you make the distinction, i.e. a reason to believe that Hong Kong is more likely to practice safety standards on at best an informal basis?

Apparently

> It has totally separate civil construction and worker safety rules.

That doesn't logically imply that the separate rules are operating on an ad hoc and informal basis. I linked to the regulations in my initial comment.

There are separate civil construction and worker safety rules in the United Kingdom for example, but that doesn't mean there's no formal system in the UK.

Yes the standards are different. Also true for restaurants and sanitation.

I think that there are ways to standardize organic components. One of the links provided in another comment to the south china morning post has a good write up on the scaffolding. They show the minimum thickness of the wood as well as the minimum diameter. We know that wood of specified dimensions have the necessary strength. Sure, these components might not be "straight", but as long as they have the minimum specs, they can be considered standardized. Hell, go to your local big box hardware store, either the blue one or orange one, and look at all of the non-straight standardized lumber they offer. People build houses out of that crap

I believe you're touching on the idea of 'legibility'. The topic is explored in the book Seeing Like A State (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com