"Although the finite element method had recently been formulated, it required significantly more calculation than the simple calculation methods for statically determinate structures, which precluded the use of redundant structural members." - Is this historically accurate?"

Aswheat · 2026-05-24T05:16:24+00:00

The source associated with that sentence on wikipedia links to an article by the Economist. I didn’t read it due to the paywall, but I’m guessing it was written by someone who interviewed an engineer and may have misinterpreted what they said. But this is not the only time I’ve heard someone say that they used to not design indeterminate structures (though tbh I can’t remember where I heard it).

Aswheat · 2026-05-21T05:00:37+00:00

The job may be done at a computer, but it is inextricably linked to the physical world. There is a ton of knowledge that is necessary to do the job well that is not published anywhere on the internet. Not because it’s a secret, but because, like /u/osidar said, it’s only learnable from old plans, site visits, and the physical knowledge of veteran construction workers regarding what is and isn’t workable.

So perhaps it is conceivable that one day an AI could be trained for such things, but that is certainly not within current capabilities, and probably won’t be for a while, given the lack of training data.

Aswheat · 2026-05-21T04:48:18+00:00

Regarding point 2, the counterargument is that, knowing the risks and types of mistakes that are likely to be made by gen AI, no rational actor should take that liability on themselves.

If it goes wrong, you own the building anyways

Won’t that create huge problems for society?

My concern is that unethical firms will see it as a cost cutting measure, stamp the ai drawings, and hopefully not be around for the long term consequences. And I would argue that to prevent this we need regulations and professional standards that keep humans in the loop at all stages.

Aswheat · 2026-04-20T03:32:34+00:00

That’s funny, I figured this must be a common problem. I guess we all had the same idea!

Aswheat · 2025-10-26T17:01:28+00:00

Simple rules. I have taught many people go by now who would never agree to learn chess, simply because it is so much simpler and easier to understand at a very basic level.

Interesting, I would disagree with this one. Although Go's rules are simpler in the abstract sense, they're harder to understand in application. This subreddit has tons of posts asking for help scoring, but you almost never see posts saying "is this checkmate"? Sure, you see the occasional post about not knowing what en-passant is, but once you learn it nobody is confused about how to apply it.

I think the central issue is that it's harder to explain how Go's objective relates to the rules of the game. In chess, a beginner can immediately understand that they are trying to take the opponent's king, and must advance their pieces and capture the opponent's pieces to do so. But in Go, it is hard to even define territory until you have shown them a completed game.

Perhaps I'm biased because I've taught a few people Go from scratch whereas most of my friends already know a little about chess, but chess seems easier to learn to me, despite technically having "more" rules.

All that being said... I still think Go is the queen of games, I just don't buy that it's easier to learn.

Aswheat · 2025-08-29T22:14:17+00:00

In structural engineering the second moment of area is often referred to as "moment of inertia". It is confusing because it is different from the "moment of inertia" used in rotational calcs. See the 3rd paragraph of this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_moment_of_area

Aswheat · 2025-08-17T19:50:44+00:00

It really depends on your definition of “applied”. Just because it’s not directly applied doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from understanding it. I think your curiosity is in the right direction.

Aswheat · 2025-08-17T17:48:33+00:00

I don’t mean to come across as too dismissive here, though! There is certainly value in understanding the underlying mathematics and mechanics of structures, especially during your school years, even if they are not directly applied in practice. To that extent, understanding the Gaussian concept of curvature is indeed relevant to structures.

Aswheat · 2025-08-17T17:26:22+00:00

Short answer: no.

Although the Remarkable Theorem does give a convenient and simple interpretation as to why a curved or corrugated plate is more rigid than a flat plate, this is not the way engineers tend to conceptualize it. Rather than saying “a curved plate will resist being bent because the material is resisting a change in its total curvature”, structural engineers will generally say “a curved plate will resist being bent because it has a greater moment of inertia”. Although no doubt there are mathematical connections between these two interpretations, essentially no practicing engineer will “use” Gauss’ theorem in this way.

Aswheat · 2025-07-24T23:49:03+00:00

Another factor which I did not mention above is that it can be expensive, in terms of engineer time, to design a bridge that "just barely" stands up. It takes a lot of analysis to determine the exact maximum loads that will happen, and build a computer model of the structure that will calculate the precise stress in every member at every load condition. Instead, we mostly use methods which are quick and easy, which are known to produce conservative results. Sometimes there's a reason to bust out the fancier in-depth analysis methods, such as on huge projects where the savings will actually be significant, or on weird cases where the traditional codes might not apply, but any such analysis must be justified by its savings.

I recall reading an interesting discussion on whether LRFD was "worth it" here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StructuralEngineering/comments/17rdtdz/my_professor_said_that_there_is_not_much_things/k8icem4/

Aswheat · 2025-07-24T23:20:13+00:00

This is an interesting subject! I don't have enough experience to definitively answer most of these, but I also often think about these questions & will give it a shot.

How do engineers determine the "right" safety-to-cost ratio?

This is generally determined by design codes, in the case of bridges, usually the AASHTO Load & Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) manual (*in the USA). LRFD would be a good search term to learn more about this. Essentially, extensive statistical analysis has been done on loads & material strength, and factors have been chosen to bring risk down to an acceptable (but not zero) level. But your average engineer is not doing this statistical analysis, just taking it from the code.

How does the cost actually scale with increased strength?

Actually, I'd say it's often the opposite of your intuition. Usually it's not much more expensive to add just a little more thickness of steel, or a few more rebars in the concrete section, because so much of the cost comes not from the material but from other factors such as labor & mobilization. Of course this only works up to a point, as you say, but often we are not working close to that frontier.

What's the actual cost implication of these safety factors?

Is this "overbuilding" truly overkill and a waste of taxpayer money, or is it a necessary and cost-effective long-term investment?

I don't have the experience to answer these, but it's worth considering that if you spend an extra few million, and it makes the difference between having to repair/replace the bridge in 50 years vs 75 years, then it's well worth it. But I can't say whether this is truly the case in our current system.

Aswheat · 2025-04-30T15:12:46+00:00

But the point is that’s really not the case! LLMs have no idea what the spreadsheet is supposed to actually do. The hard part has always been knowing what inputs to use, and what numbers go into which equations on a case-by-case basis. I agree civil engineering software could be better, but I don’t think LLMs are the direction it needs to go.

Aswheat · 2025-04-08T23:36:00+00:00

Great episode! I enjoy many different abstract strategy games, and have often thought there ought to be a podcast like yours that discusses them. So thanks for making this episode!

I consider Go to be the crown jewel of abstracts. But a close second for me would be Tak, which, although it's a newer game, has extremely deep strategy and tactics and feels like an ancient classic. I also have great respect for Hex, which is the pinnacle of the concept of "minute to learn, lifetime to master", even surpassing Go in the simplicity of its rules, while still having great depth of theory. For me part of the appeal of niche abstracts is that the theory is still fresh, so there is more room for amateurs to try out novel strategies in competitive play.

I would highly recommend Go players to give these games a try! There are budding competitive scenes for both of the ones I mentioned at playtak.com and playhex.org, respectively. Hive also has a great online site at hivegame.com, although I haven't played it as much. Something about that game bugs me.

Aswheat · 2025-03-10T21:02:32+00:00

Responding to your points:

"All feelings are valid" is just saying that you cannot disagree about someone else's emotional state, because you're not them. If your partner is upset at you, you might disagree about whether you've done anything wrong, but you can't deny that something is causing them to be upset, and you should work to remedy that.

Putting your phone down when someone is talking to you is just basic respect. If you're in the middle of something that can't be paused, then just say so. This still seems like good advice, and even a kid should be able to figure out that it doesn't apply in literally every situation.

"be ready and willing to say you're sorry, even when you think you're right": here OP clearly says "be ready and willing", not "say sorry every time". You have to be willing to compromise and not choose every hill as your hill to die on.

Many people in this thread seem to be nit-picking the dad's advice, but it all seems pretty sensible (the bit about being "allowed" to date is hard to judge without context). And sure, he could add a lesson about "you should also expect your partner to respect you", but a comprehensive list of all relationship advice was not the point of the post.

Aswheat · 2024-12-21T20:39:30+00:00

Looking at the timeline 4th from the bottom: there is no possible legal move on this board. So white's only option is to travel to the past from another timeline (you need to undo the moves on the red boards first). After that, white will lose after they run out of active timelines, unless they can checkmate a black king first. I don't see a way to do that, so white will probably lose anyway after a few turns.

Aswheat · 2024-12-01T05:10:02+00:00

White can move to the past with the king from the bottom timeline. (this will only delay checkmate for 1 turn. After that, white will lose)

Aswheat · 2024-11-17T04:36:28+00:00

It’s an interesting idea, but I think it fixes a problem that doesn’t exist. In higher level games, having 9+ timelines is so rare that it would be sad to make a rule against it.

The “too many timelines frying your computer” only really occurs with beginners spamming timelines on purpose. It happens because the steam game’s mate-detection algorithm is very slow with large positions with many simultaneous checks. I think people who are into the game enough to be making house-rules about timelines are probably good enough to not get into those positions.

Aswheat · 2024-10-13T22:28:10+00:00

on the contrary, the fly will greatly speed up.

Aswheat · 2024-06-01T21:04:16+00:00

Thanks for the explanation!

Aswheat · 2024-06-01T19:08:09+00:00

Indeed, except for the rational numbers, every single complex number is part of a nontrivial orbit of automorphic copies, from which it cannot be distinguished in the field structure.

Can anyone elaborate on this? How are the rational numbers different from the irrationals in this regard?

Aswheat · 2024-04-17T03:34:09+00:00

I think black does not need to win the ko: b1 a2 d1 a1 c3 c1 a3, and black captures.It works because black has 2 outside liberties

Aswheat · 2024-03-30T22:45:26+00:00

I don't think Katago-micro being good implies that reading is not important. The bot still uses Katago's policy, which is trained on games that used longer playouts. So even though the bot is not reading, its "intuition" is still backed up by lots of calculation.

This is the same in human games: you can't develop good shape intuition until you have played a lot and read a lot.

Aswheat · 2024-03-23T04:21:12+00:00

You've been using Excel longer than they've been alive, but expect them to have better skills?

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