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The engineering analogue to Fermi estimation (quick and dirty science) should be called Dyson fabrication, after Freeman Dyson. His ideas like the nuclear rocket had such overpowering leverage in a few elements, they could be sloppy and unoptimized everywhere else.
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A good Dyson fabrication allows you to go to extremes in m variables of n-dimensional design space so that you can waste (n-m) variables For example, a sledgehammer doesn’t really need a smooth face
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Engineers sometimes get nerdsniped by featuritis too much. They don’t think enough like physicists — get the big things so right, all other features can be left to taste
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Speaking of starships, Ken Brouwer’s The Starship and the Canoe is probably the best book I’ve read in the last 3 years. Set my true north early in the pandemic and probably helped preserve my sanity.
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Next up in my twitter live reads: The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower, on physicist Freeman Dyson and his historian son George Dyson (ht @andersen for reco) amzn.to/2TfcNBv
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A good Dysonian design is not elegantly balanced. It’s ridiculously overdesigned along a few strategic dimensions. Like iPhone is probably camera performance and build robustness.
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