Building a bridge!

You: We're building a bridge! It's going to be great! We've been thinking about it a bunch, and we're even starting work on it. We've got lots of great people. Let me tell you about why it's going to be great and very aesthetic.

Me: Nice! Can you tell me a bit about the loads you're planning for the bridge to carry, and how they'll be supported?

You: We'll work it out. We'll have great people. Great people are strong and make bridges that are strong and can carry mighty weights.

Me: I'm asking about the bridge itself, not the people. How much weight will the bridge carry, and what materials will you use, and how will the loads be distributed to the pylons, and where will the pylons be embedded? If you don't think about these things and try to build a bridge anyway, it will just collapse.

You: I don't get what you mean, you're being vague. Can you show a specific way that our bridge will collapse?

Me: I can give an example scenario, I guess. Suppose several trucks carrying logs drive across at the same time; the weakest support might buckle; and then the remaining supports will bear more weight, so the next weakest buckles, and so on, until the whole thing collapses. Or maybe there's corrosion from the sea breeze, and cracks widen as the bridge sways. Or resonance from pedestrians. I don't know, there's tons of ways the bridge could fail, and the physics of loads and corrosion and resonance and metal fractures and so on is actually complicated and I don't know about it... I'm just saying, you obviously have to be thinking about that stuff.

You: Having new bridges is good. By starting with a blank slate, we can build something new and better, less encumbered by scleroses of existing bridges. Do you think it's not possible to build a bridge that will stand?

Me: It's possible, but you have to think about the details. You should have five rejected proposals for every one proposal that you're going forward with. You should have showstopper problems that you're worried might not be solved yet, that you can point to as open problems, and you should be able to discuss possible approaches and why they might not work.

You: You're being pedantic. It's about the vision.

Me: You're aware that bridges have been collapsing right? It's not a trivial problem.

You: There should be lots of bridges, and then people will drive across the ones that stand the test of people driving across them.

Me: That's fine, I don't disagree. There should be more experimentation and more building, absolutely. But you say you're trying to build a bridge. That's one specific bridge that you are making, plucked out of the realm of all possibilities for what a bridge could be. It's not the general idea of having more bridges. You should be thinking about how to make your bridge stand the test. Or like, someone on the project should be thinking about it, and you should be able to point to them.

You: What's the obstacle? Be specific. I don't see what you're worried about.

Me: No I'm saying... Bridges have to support weight. That's a core part of what they do. If they can't, they fail. You say you're excited about this and working on it and want more people working on it. I'm saying, great! The world needs more bridges! But if you're serious, you should be thinking about load, and load distribution, and pylons and stuff. It's a general thing, I don't have just one failure mode in mind. Bridges have to do this, and you're not thinking about how to do this, and you don't even seem concerned with it. Which makes you seem not serious about building a bridge, or confused about what building a bridge involves, and therefore your project is not a good project to join, especially if you can't notice that the question I'm asking is important. If you're not actually concerned with actually building a bridge, that's totally fine! Imagining different aesthetics for bridges could be fun, and thinking about the economic impact of a bridge here or there could be fun and useful. But, like, why pretend you're actually trying to build a bridge?

You: Pretending? We've already got many hundreds of people who have joined this project.

Me: Ok. And you have no sense about loads and pylons and stuff?

You: We'll see who is virtuous and who is not virtuous, and only let in the first type, and the virtuous people will make a good bridge.

Me: You don't seem very serious.

You: Brrubrrubllb harumph brrbrrbrubllblb. Well I never!