mens rea

I have been arguing that social decay is ending technological and scientific progress.  In most areas it has strikingly slowed, in some areas, going backwards in the west, as we forget how to do what once we could do.  Others, however, argue that technological and scientific progress is still running hot, or that if it has slowed, it is that we ran out of low hanging fruit.

But a big tell is that people are lying about it. The lie indicates not only failure, but that the failure is shameful – that the failure is in us, not in external circumstances.  That we are lying about it shows the failure is social decay.

IC manufacturers continue to announce new generations, 45 nanometer, 32 nanometer, 22 nanometer, and coming soon, 14 nanometer, though in fact we have been stuck at 64 nanometer for quite some time.  There have been process improvements, but these are incremental improvements.  The line pitch remains 64 nanometers.  We cannot actually build circuits smaller than we could eight years ago.  That these are improvements is no lie, but to label them by a size is a lie. If they had said “second generation 64 nanometer” instead of “45 nanometer”, if they had said “third generation 64 nanometer instead of “32 nanometer”, then they would have been speaking truth, or at least speaking hype rather than lies.

Similarly, it is embarrassing that while the twin towers had one hundred and ten habitable floors, their replacement, the freedom tower, merely has ninety four habitable floors. That the top story of the freedom tower is labelled 104 shows mens rea.

The US government gets wonderful ratings for lack of corruption by various organizations quietly dominated by the US government, but that really has not been my experience. And if you suspect that my personal experience might be atypical, or that I might view the behavior of various governmental entities I have dealt with with undue cynicism, consider the extraordinary crimes revealed in the financial crisis, the lack of prosecutions for those crimes, and the failure of civil suits against financial misconduct.

You cannot do large projects in the US any more, because any new project attracts a horde of government officials seeking a payoff, the bigger the project, the more people seeking a payoff, until eventually you get a hundred officials each seeking five percent of any added value the project would generate. Possibly this a result of the well known effect of diversity in lowering trust, trustworthy behavior, and social pressures that enforce trustworthy behavior. Add five percent affirmative action blacks to the ruling elite, get one hundred percent Chicago style corruption.

The Challenger inquiry revealed that our rocket scientists are idiots. Mulloy and Hardy would talk technobabble whenever they were in a corner, and everyone would solemnly treat their technobabble as if they were making sense.

CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Read it again. And as I read it, it means that if the primary seal fails that the mission will fail. Am I wrong?

And of course, the reason for the inquiry is that the primary seal failed, causing the space shuttle to blow up.

MR. HARDY: That is not my interpretation.

Because black is white and white is black.

CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Well, let’s read it. “Loss of mission” – this is actual loss. “Failure effects summary. Actual loss. Loss of mission, vehicle and crew due to metal erosion, burn-through, and probable case burst, resulting in fire and deflagration.” Now “Note, leakage of the primary” -and this is the part that I want to refer to.

“Leakage of the primary O-ring seal is classified as a single failure point “-” as a single failure point “-” due to possibility of loss of sealing at the secondary O-ring because of joint rotation after motor pressurization.”

Now, that suggests to me that the critical items list says that if the primary O-ring seal fails, that you have got a good probability that the mission will be a catastrophe. Am I wrong about that?

MR. HARDY: You are not wrong,

Observe that Mr Hardy has directly contradicted himself.

if I might put my clarification into that, if the primary O-ring fails after motor pressurization, after joint rotation.

In other words, if primary O-ring fails when it is needed, the shuttle will blow up.

CHAIRMAN ROGERS: I guess what I’m saying is, isn’t that a possibility of exactly what happened in this launch?

MR. HARDY: I don’t believe so.

CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Why?

MR. HARDY: Well, I will elaborate on that a little bit later here.

Later he gives us a stream of gibberish technobabble.

But in the considerations, at least in the considerations of the subjects at hand, relative to the discussion on the 27th, the discussion on the 27th had to do with the possibility of the cold temperature delaying the complete actuation of the primary seal, thereby extending the duration of blow-by.

Now, when we talk about blow-by of the primary seal, blow-by has to go somewhere, and where it goes to is the secondary seal. If blow-by occurs as soon as the pressure gets to the primary seal, early in the ignition, and that seal doesn’t sustain that pressure, it goes immediately to the secondary seal, prior to the time that the joint is rotated.

Too long, don’t read. The short of it is that when the pressure rises then the joint rotates, and then the shuttle blows up if the primary O-ring has failed..

CHAIRMAN ROGERS: This says “possibility of the loss of the sealing of the secondary O-ring.”

MR. MULLOY: After the joint has rotated, sir. The condition that is on the screen now is before joint rotation.

DR. WALKER: But I think a critical and a literal interpretation of that waiver has to be that the primary seal is a single point failure. Now, the wording goes on to explain why this is so, but the wording does not make an exception. It merely explains why the single point failure mode refers to the primary seal.

But a strict interpretation of that wording to my mind is that the primary O-ring is a single point failure.

Of course Mr Mulloy does not want to admit that he signed off on a study saying that if the primary O-ring failed, the shuttle would blow up, and another report that the primary O-ring was going to fail. But neither can he deny it. So he technobabbles.

MR. HARDY: I wouldn’t deny that. I am relating to what many of us knew about the performance of that joint, its rotation, when we lost-when we could lose, because of the stackup of [836] tolerances, when in the ignition transient prior to full motor pressurization or after full motor pressurization when we could lose that secondary seal.

Our interpretation or my interpretation of the waiver was not to remove the secondary seal from the hardware.

So he would not deny it, but then he does deny it. If the primary O-ring is a single point of failure, that means that if it fails, there is no backup, the mission fails. The secondary O-ring will not serve. If the secondary O-ring would serve, then the primary O-ring would not be a single point of failure. That is what “single point of failure” means. Due to joint rotation, if the primary O-ring is failing to seal, the secondary O-ring will fail considerably worse.

Now because Mr Hardy is not making any sense at all, Dr Ride then comes to his aid with more technobabble, and then there is much meaningless gibberish back and forth between them in which each solemnly and respectfully treats the other as if he is making sense, much like Jacques Derrida discussing “the Einsteinian Constant”.

There was a lot of this sort of thing, technobabble in place of technical argument, in the events that led to the destruction of the shuttle, and during the shuttle inquiry.

If someone engages in technobabble, he is lying to idiots, so our rocket scientists are, at the top, liars and idiots.

Which explains where we are going in space.