ares
Commander, USN (ret). Former Googler. Computer programmer.
User ID: 2527
ares
1d ago
There could be benefits. Some immediate thoughts about challenges:
The current military procurement process is adversarial: the government creates the most detailed and specific requirements they can, and companies bid as low as they can to meet those requirements. So if a company can find an oversight or shortcut to deliver something shitty while still meeting the letter of the requirements, they (mostly) will. If, in the process of designing and delivering a new ship, its discovered that a new radar is 6" bigger than was originally planned so it has to be moved, you better believe that the company making the ship will get extra time and money in order to make that change, with rules for changes and delays and payments clearly spelled out in the contract. Those incentives don't translate well to commercial shipyards and designs. For a company like Maersk, they can develop a business relationship with their shipbuilders. They can say "Yeah, shipbuilder A is cheaper, but they're assholes to work with on maintenance. It'll be better to pay a little more to go with shipbuilder B who really takes care of us." When the government/military awards contracts based on existing relationships, it's called corruption (unless someone writes a detailed report proving the cost/benefit of shipbuilder B, which does happen, but is a lot more work than just doing the obviously correct thing).
It's still a very small market for military ships compared to commercial ones, so there will always be a bit of a premium there.
Military contracts are frequently political, with Senators and Congressmen ensuring those jobs and dollars go to their constituents. Changing this will be painful.
Even if everything was public spec, the military still has an incentive to maintain control and security over the entire building process. You can have innocuous objects planted in sensitive areas that may give foreign militaries valuable information. It's difficult enough to prevent Sailors from doing stupid, intelligence-leaking things when the design and building of ships is mostly controlled. I'm reminded of the German mathematicians' response when they discovered the Allies had broken the Enigma machine: they knew it was possible, but they were surprised we had gone through the trouble to do so. The incentives to sabotage or infiltrate US Navy ships are so great that I can't even imagine all the crazy schemes foreign militaries would try if they had more access to the construction process. If you mildly irradiate some of the steel used to build the ships hull, maybe you could detect that radiation signature at the ports it has visited in order to get a better understanding of US ship movements, deployment schedules, and maintenance periods. Subtly reducing the quality of some bolts or welds in key locations could cause major damage (and therefore loss of operational capability) long after a ship is delivered.
A known trend in military procurement is that America is addicted to cramming as many missions into each platform as possible. The Pentagon Wars focuses on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, but I think it's worse for ships. Why was my landing ship, dock doing oil platform defense in the Gulf of Oman? Because we could, and we were already over there. Does it make sense to design amphibious troop carriers so that they can also prevent hostile insurgents from sabotaging oil platforms on the open ocean? Fuck if I know. Doesn't seem like it should, but that's how America does it, and we do have the best Navy in the world. Commercial shipbuilders can iterate and improve on straightforward things like reliably carrying cargo, but US warships need to do a bunch of everything. A tradeoff between, for example, an additional missile launcher versus a better stealth profile is a political decision as much as an engineering one.
The US is also very sensitive about naval losses. Strategically, we've known for a long while that lots of small ships win against fewer big ships, but there's no way that we'd accept losing a missile boat and a few sailors as a matter of course, nevermind sending sailors on suicide missions. So we can't even really optimize our fleet for winning a near-peer naval engagement. The free market, in turn, can't really optimize for something when there isn't a consistent view of what's "better".
Again, there could be benefits to moving to a more "open source" shipbuilding model, but there would also be plenty of challenges, and I don't think it's clear how the scales would tip until we start hammering out the details.
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1d ago
And this one is just fun: https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-ships
Hadn't seen that one. Amusing. Having served on a landing ship, dock, which is very similar to the landing platform dock discussed in the article, I will say that the history of the USS San Antonio is pretty average in terms of mechanical issues and cost overruns. My ship had similar problems. I think they have probably gotten enough of the kinks out of the Arleigh Burke Destroyers (74 active ones right now) where they'll have 1/2 to 1/3 of the issues that small run ships like the San Antonio class (13 ships) will have. Still an order of magnitude more than an equivalent sized civilian ship. The US Navy tried to take all the lessons and technology they could from the civilian shipbuilders, and the resulting Littoral Combat Ships were a complete clusterfuck. The automations and efficiencies never really materialized, and instead you had a Frigate-sized ship with 1/3 the crew and 2-3x the number of systems that would break down.
There are some valid reasons why warships will be more expensive than cargo ships. Generally, you don't have to design a cargo ship to be able to still deliver its cargo after getting hit by a missile. There are a lot of "Program of Record" systems that are developed (mostly) independently from the actual ship (definitely lots of them made by companies directly competing with the shipbuilder) that all have to get integrated. And the market for warships is much smaller than for commercial vessels. Everyone knows about the bloated and corrupt US military procurement process, and it's very difficult to trim the fat because 1) we can't stop or even significantly slow down procurement without unacceptable risks to military readiness, and 2) many very smart and wealthy people's entire job is to make sure the current system continues to give them and their companies contracts, and they do that by complicating the entire processes while obfuscating their shortcomings. Anyone claiming there are simple solutions is either a liar or an idiot.
Still, it's great to contrast what the free market gets you versus what comes out of that military procurement process.
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16d ago
Pawn stars meme: Best I can do is bomb threats from Russia to Georgia.
No, our Georgia this time.
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19d ago
Another data point: my good buddy at Google is in charge of [major thing that hundreds of millions of people use]. When he was in High School, there was a time when he was stealing regularly from retail stores. He was addicted to the thrill. Got caught, got community service. Lots of people know/knew him, but I'm pretty confident that only a handful are aware of this fact. The poor, white culture he and I came from (and I would bet you too, if you're a white American) views being a thief as shameful, so there's huge social pressure to keep it secret.
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20d ago
Eternal September is a real thing that happens to communities when too many newcomers arrive and don't adapt to the existing culture. We literally have a rule asking to not link to here from high participation platforms. This community is small, and the mods already have to work very hard to keep the current quantity of us cretins obeying the rules.
We just saw a sliver of attention to our little Rationalist corner of the internet by a US Vice Presidential candidate on the most popular podcast in the world. Even if he's not pointing people directly to this site, I think it's completely valid to believe that there are ways where fractions of fractions of Joe Rogan listeners find their way here. "What was that article Vance mentioned?" "I liked that article, where could I discuss it?" "No talking politics on Reddit? Where else could I go?" And we get a few thousand new users. Sure, that's unlikely, but that's not a criterion for making a claim here.
If you disagree then please engage with the substance instead of doing so with mockery.
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20d ago
Mildly interesting: Tweet from a guy who saw JD Vance rush out of the mini golf course at the time
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20d ago
I'm trying to come up with a joke about Trump choosing to go out in a "hyperbolic" chamber/suicide pod, but I can't quite get there. "We really have the best pods, don't we, folks? This isn't just ending, it's ending with a flair, with class."
JD Vance was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and references Scott's Gay Rites are Civil Rites. It happens at 23:45. As TracingWoodgrains says, the Eye of Sauron approaches.
I apologize if I can't add much more insight. Are there going to be left wing smear articles explaining the evil Rationalists that have the ear of JD Vance? Or is there so much chaos right now around the election that this will get passed over, widely unremarked upon?
Threats to our community aside, it's pretty awesome that a VP candidate referenced one of Scott's articles.
Edit: Andy Ngo is boosting this part of the interview, focusing on the trans children discussion, without commenting on the article.
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27d ago
obtaining military experience?
I recently retired from 20 years in the US Navy. If this is something you truly want in your heart of hearts, I'd be happy to chat with you about your options, of which there are a number. I'm not interested in a debate about whether it's too late in life to do something if you're not actually interested in doing it.
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28d ago
There are plenty of stories of wildly successful people who were failures in their early to mid lives. There are almost no things that are too late to turn around.
Winter in Alaska is tough, though. Someone in the Rational spaces (maybe Eliezer) noticed that his SAD light was rather, well, sad. He bought a ton more of them to actually get lumens equivalent to daylight everywhere in his living room, and it turned to be all he needed. So if the SAD light helps you, but not enough, why not try more dakka?
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28d ago
In the US military, there's a tradition of senior leaders serving food for a single meal, like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Example 3-Star Admiral serving Thanksgiving dinner. In my 20-year Navy career, I have never heard anyone be critical of someone's choice to participate in this sort of event. I heard (and contributed to) whining as a Junior Officer because our CO decided the entire Wardroom would be doing it, but in the end we all did it and enjoyed ourselves. I have heard multiple sailors complaining that their CO didn't do it. I have never even heard of anyone be an asshole to a senior leader serving the food, although punishments are pretty quick for unjustifiable assholery to food service workers even when they aren't Admirals.
But even when people aren't being dicks to you, I will testify that it's quite humbling to be serving food to your entire command. It's good and valuable to get your head out of the big - often intangible - problems of your regular senior job, and focus on all the little things that have to come together in order to get plates of food for a stream of sailors. It's humbling, in my experience, going from worrying about writing official memos or following up on a logistics request, into just having to deal with ensuring that there's another tray of mashed potatoes ready for when we run out of this one: you absolutely can fail at the latter even if you have a Masters degree and 70 people reporting to you. It reminds you that for all your skill and power, you're still beholden to basic reality. It brings into sharp focus how no matter how brilliantly the potatoes were ordered and shipped, no matter how cutthroat the price negotiations were, if you don't do the basics of cutting them up and putting them into a mixer, cooking them, and having them ready to go when they're needed, then its all for naught.
If human nature hasn't changed too much, I would bet Saturnalia gave the masters a similar humbling experience.
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2mo ago
After 3 kids, I've concluded that their temperament is effectively random. They'll be easy or hard in unpredictable ways, but it's never so easy that you'll feel like you've figured out all you need for parenting, and it's never so difficult that you can't get through it.
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2mo ago
Good advice. Children are unrelenting like nothing I've ever experienced. I made a list and pinned it to a screen on my phone of reasons the baby could be crying, because when you're sleep deprived it's impossible to recall:
- Sleep/tired
- Dirty diaper
- Gas
- More food/milk
- Bored/play
- Hot
- Cold
- Bath time
Using this list saved us many hours of crying with realizations like "oh, yeah, he's still wearing his warm pajamas"
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2mo ago
Advice from a dad of 3 for where you are right now:
- Don't tell family and friends until you get a heartbeat. Miscarriages are surprisingly common before that point.
- Strongly consider getting a doula. She'll be your support and counselor even when all the hospital staff are out taking care of other patients. My sister-in-law's doula resuscitated her daughter when she stopped breathing and the nurses were all out of the room. Our doula had us lay out a birth plan covering how we wanted to handle various contingencies; not having to think about all the little (and big) decisions while actively giving birth was really nice. It's also reassuring to turn to someone you trust and ask "is this normal?", without the feeling like they're answering how hospital policy and insurance require them to answer. Lastly, while I'm usually pretty good with words, for our first kid I said the absolutely stupidest things trying to support my wife during labor; my doula was able to calm my wife and give me hints to shut the fuck up for a while.
- My wife found a moms' club that was great to be part of. They set up a "meal train" to cook/deliver food through the first 2 weeks after the birth, which was nice. It also helped with play dates for babies, adult socialization, getting ideas for gadgets, etc. We started using a bottle warmer machine but seeing someone else just microwave it and stir it thoroughly was one of those "duh, why didn't we think of that" moments. And we got to try a friend's expensive bouncer instead of the cheap one we'd started with.
- We put all our kids to sleep on their backs as recommended by the professionals. Here's a long thread to consider: https://x.com/ruthgracewong/status/1818895404542627881. If I could do it all over again, I'd probably try to convince my wife to put our kids on their bellies, which they clearly preferred.
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2mo ago
It's been years since I've read any SCP articles, but I really enjoyed them at the time. It breaks my heart to hear they, too, have been coopted. Everything sacred must be profaned, apparently.
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2mo ago
I recently watched so that’s why they cut all her scenes from the movie from CinemaStix about how different the movie Constantine was before being recut, as well as when the editor has to fix it in post about Ferris Buler's Day Off. Amazing how different those movies could have been without big changes by the editing room. As an outsider, all those changes seem like things a competent reader would have been able to tell from the script.
Your post reminds me of the old What if Star Wars Episode I Was Good, and II and III by Belated Media. These sorts of plot fixing recommendations just sound like common sense; what is wrong with the production process that produces this billion-dollar nonsense?
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2mo ago
That's a fascinating reddit post. Also see this post on X discussing the technology and crash. I have 20 years in the Navy but no real insights to add. Yep, we have some cool technology that does things like automatically detect and burn off debris that gets into the gearbox. Yep, the people operating the machines don't really understand all the nuances. "The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots."
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2mo ago
What a fascinating bit of history I wasn't aware of!
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2mo ago
While I personally believe it is obvious that the blue tribe deliberately generated the crime, I think yours is a reasonable request for evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory the claim is, and am glad you asked. Thanks!
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3mo ago
I know posting memes in the culture war thread probably isn't great, but I do really appreciate seeing memes from "my time". None of whatever the fuck kids these days are meming. It makes me feel strongly that this is my in-group.
Anyways, here are the lyrics to Ievan polkka so you can sing along: https://youtube.com/watch?v=d0FV3_i-6WU?si=pU4i_Oh-loSfzoPS
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3mo ago
NBC has not deleted that particular fact check, either.
This does seem to be the case. "There is a widespread opposition and suspicion to seeking compromise or harm reduction with Republicans" Instead, they're hoping the increased abortion-related deaths will ensure it's a salient issue for voters.
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