Evolved from both simpler winged aircraft and simpler rockets.
All the base components that went into the space shuttle still existed on a line of technogical progress from the basic to the advanced. Actually, the space shuttle followed Gall’s Law precisely.
The lift mechanism was still vertically stacked chemical rockets of the sort that had already flown for decades. The shuttle unit was built from components perfected by the Gemini and Apollo programs, and packed into an aerodynamic form based on decades of aircraft design.
Reducing technologically, the shuttle still depends on simple systems like airfoils, rockets and nozzles, gears, and other known quantities.
I was contemplating this exchange and wondering whether Gall’s Law has any value (constrains expected experience).
I think it does. If an engineer today claimed to have successfully designed an Albucierre engine, I would probably execute an algorithm similar to Gall’s Law and think:
The technology does not yet exist to warp space to any degree, nor is there an existing power source which could meet the needs of this device. The engineer’s claim to have developed a device which can be bound to a craft, controllably warp space, and move it faster than light is beyond existing technological capability. We are too many Gall Steps away for it to be probable.
The first development of the electronic circuit would have been a case of a complex technological system that worked, but was not based fundamentally upon existing simpler machines. The first use of chemical propulsion—gunpowder / rocketry—might have been a similar case.
(EDIT: Upon further consideration, chemical propulsion is based upon the simpler technologies of airtight confinement and incendiary materials. However, I still think the electronic circuit was effectively the rise of a new fundamental device with complex behavior unconnected to more basic technologies. If anyone thinks they can reduce the circuit to simpler working devices I would be fascinated to explore that.)
It’s a good question. I’m turning over various possibilities in my mind.
Do you still hold that the space shuttle falsifies it?
If so, I’d be interesting in hearing your reasoning, and other examples you consider similar.
The first development of the electronic circuit would have been a case of a complex technological system that worked, but was not based fundamentally upon existing simpler machines.
Electroplating and electrolysis of water both involve a circuit, but aren’t overwhelmingly complex. Samuel Thomas von Sommering’s electrochemical telegraph was based on electrolysis. It’s not like someone pulled doped silicon semiconductors straight out of the lightning-struck sand.
However, I still don’t see the circuit as reducible to simpler working components. Regardless of the medium across which the current flows, it still seems to me that the circuit is a simple machine—a basic device like the pulley, joint, inclined plane, or lever.
In considering this, I also think that chemical fuels are simple machines and belong on that list, as they are ostensibly devices (can be used by an agent to do work) but also aren’t reducible to simpler working components.
Basically, the shuttle is a system of rockets carrying a space-worthy airplane as payload. Both of these components had predecessors. Had the shuttle been the first rocket or first space-worthy airplane, it would have falsified Gall’s Law.
Isn’t the first rocket or airplane also built on simple technologies?
Couldn’t one continue to reduce components to simpler devices until you get to basic joints, inclined planes, tensors (springs), incendiary materials (fuel), etc—that all would have had to be developed and understood before an engineer could design the rocket / airplane?
(EDIT: I realize that I’m essentially positing that Gall’s Law holds if all technology should be reducible to simple machines, and that what we call “technology” is improving, refining, and combining those designs.)
Isn’t the first rocket or airplane also built on simple technologies?
I’m not saying that the first rocket and first airplane falsified Gall’s Law. I’m saying that, had the space shuttle, in the form in which it was actually built, been the first rocket or the first airplane, it would have falsified Gall’s Law.
Suppose a hyperintelligent alien race did build a space shuttle equivalent as their first space-capable craft, and then went on to build interplanetary and interstellar craft.
Alien 1: The [interstellar craft, driven by multiple methods of propulsion and myriad components] disproves Gall’s Law.
Alien 2: Not at all. [Craft] is a simple extension of well-developed principles like the space shuttle and the light sail.
You can simply define a “working simple system” as whatever you can make work, making that a pure tautology.
I would say that Gall’s Law is about the design capacities of human beings (like Dunbar’s Number), or is something like “there’s a threshold to how much new complexity you can design and expect to work”, with the amount of complexity being different for humans, superintelligent aliens, chimps, or Mother Nature.
(the limit is particularly low fo Mother Nature—she makes smaller steps, but got to make much more of them)
That’s not my point. My point is that Gall’s law is unfalsifiable by anything short of Omega converting its entire light cone into computronium/utilium in a single, plank-time step.
Edit: Not to say that Gall’s Law can’t be useful to keep in mind during engineering design.
All of these concepts are imprecisely connected to the real world. Does anyone have an idea for how we could more precisely define Gall’s Law to more ably discuss real expected experience?
I’m considering a definition which might include the phrase:
I think the key insight here is that you get a limited number of bits, in design space, to bridge between things that have already been shown to work, and things that have yet to be shown to do so.
For purposes of Gall’s law, we are interested in the number of bits of design that went into the space shuttle without ever having been previously shown to work. So you have to subtract off the complexity of “the idea of an airplane”, which we already had, and of the solid fuel booster rockets, which we already knew how to build; and also of any subassembly which got built and tested successfully in a lab first—but perhaps leaving some bits or fraction of a bit to account for the unknown environment when using them on the real shuttle, versus in the lab.
I think the key insight here is that you get a limited number of bits, in design space, to bridge between things that have already been shown to work, and things that have yet to be shown to do so.
That is a very helpful way to put it: “Gall’s Law” is the claim that there is this limited number of bits.
Of course, put so clearly, it looks kind of trivial, so I think that we should read Gall as further saying that you can get a reasonable intuitive bound on this limit by just looking at the history of innovation, but that people often propose designs when a little reasonable reflection would have shown them that they are proposing to step far beyond this limit.
This is an excellent idea—quantizing bits of design information.
It would also demonstrate that if a designer started at the “space shuttle” level of complexity, and layed out a rough design, that design would probably change drastically as the components were built and tested, and the designer collected more bits of information about how to make the complex system work.
True, the space shuttle was not completely contained on its vertical axis, but I was talking about the boosters themselves. I said the lift mechanism was a vertically stacked chemical rocket, not that the entire shuttle was a uniform tower, as it obviously wasn’t.
The boosters are components of the space shuttle, which is what we were talking about: simpler working components evolving into complex systems.
Simple working component: Rocket booster
Complex system: Shuttle with a crew module, fuel tanks, and multiple boosters
Evolved from both simpler winged aircraft and simpler rockets.
All the base components that went into the space shuttle still existed on a line of technogical progress from the basic to the advanced. Actually, the space shuttle followed Gall’s Law precisely.
The lift mechanism was still vertically stacked chemical rockets of the sort that had already flown for decades. The shuttle unit was built from components perfected by the Gemini and Apollo programs, and packed into an aerodynamic form based on decades of aircraft design.
Reducing technologically, the shuttle still depends on simple systems like airfoils, rockets and nozzles, gears, and other known quantities.
Then if that qualifies, what would falsify Gall’s Law?
Further reply:
I was contemplating this exchange and wondering whether Gall’s Law has any value (constrains expected experience).
I think it does. If an engineer today claimed to have successfully designed an Albucierre engine, I would probably execute an algorithm similar to Gall’s Law and think:
The technology does not yet exist to warp space to any degree, nor is there an existing power source which could meet the needs of this device. The engineer’s claim to have developed a device which can be bound to a craft, controllably warp space, and move it faster than light is beyond existing technological capability. We are too many Gall Steps away for it to be probable.
The first development of the electronic circuit would have been a case of a complex technological system that worked, but was not based fundamentally upon existing simpler machines. The first use of chemical propulsion—gunpowder / rocketry—might have been a similar case.
(EDIT: Upon further consideration, chemical propulsion is based upon the simpler technologies of airtight confinement and incendiary materials. However, I still think the electronic circuit was effectively the rise of a new fundamental device with complex behavior unconnected to more basic technologies. If anyone thinks they can reduce the circuit to simpler working devices I would be fascinated to explore that.)
It’s a good question. I’m turning over various possibilities in my mind.
Do you still hold that the space shuttle falsifies it?
If so, I’d be interesting in hearing your reasoning, and other examples you consider similar.
Electroplating and electrolysis of water both involve a circuit, but aren’t overwhelmingly complex. Samuel Thomas von Sommering’s electrochemical telegraph was based on electrolysis. It’s not like someone pulled doped silicon semiconductors straight out of the lightning-struck sand.
True, +1 for a thoughtful answer.
However, I still don’t see the circuit as reducible to simpler working components. Regardless of the medium across which the current flows, it still seems to me that the circuit is a simple machine—a basic device like the pulley, joint, inclined plane, or lever.
In considering this, I also think that chemical fuels are simple machines and belong on that list, as they are ostensibly devices (can be used by an agent to do work) but also aren’t reducible to simpler working components.
Basically, the shuttle is a system of rockets carrying a space-worthy airplane as payload. Both of these components had predecessors. Had the shuttle been the first rocket or first space-worthy airplane, it would have falsified Gall’s Law.
I’m not sure.
Isn’t the first rocket or airplane also built on simple technologies?
Couldn’t one continue to reduce components to simpler devices until you get to basic joints, inclined planes, tensors (springs), incendiary materials (fuel), etc—that all would have had to be developed and understood before an engineer could design the rocket / airplane?
(EDIT: I realize that I’m essentially positing that Gall’s Law holds if all technology should be reducible to simple machines, and that what we call “technology” is improving, refining, and combining those designs.)
I’m not saying that the first rocket and first airplane falsified Gall’s Law. I’m saying that, had the space shuttle, in the form in which it was actually built, been the first rocket or the first airplane, it would have falsified Gall’s Law.
Suppose a hyperintelligent alien race did build a space shuttle equivalent as their first space-capable craft, and then went on to build interplanetary and interstellar craft.
Alien 1: The [interstellar craft, driven by multiple methods of propulsion and myriad components] disproves Gall’s Law.
Alien 2: Not at all. [Craft] is a simple extension of well-developed principles like the space shuttle and the light sail.
You can simply define a “working simple system” as whatever you can make work, making that a pure tautology.
I would say that Gall’s Law is about the design capacities of human beings (like Dunbar’s Number), or is something like “there’s a threshold to how much new complexity you can design and expect to work”, with the amount of complexity being different for humans, superintelligent aliens, chimps, or Mother Nature.
(the limit is particularly low fo Mother Nature—she makes smaller steps, but got to make much more of them)
That’s not my point. My point is that Gall’s law is unfalsifiable by anything short of Omega converting its entire light cone into computronium/utilium in a single, plank-time step.
Edit: Not to say that Gall’s Law can’t be useful to keep in mind during engineering design.
I agree.
All of these concepts are imprecisely connected to the real world. Does anyone have an idea for how we could more precisely define Gall’s Law to more ably discuss real expected experience?
I’m considering a definition which might include the phrase:
“Reducible to previously understood components”
I think the key insight here is that you get a limited number of bits, in design space, to bridge between things that have already been shown to work, and things that have yet to be shown to do so.
For purposes of Gall’s law, we are interested in the number of bits of design that went into the space shuttle without ever having been previously shown to work. So you have to subtract off the complexity of “the idea of an airplane”, which we already had, and of the solid fuel booster rockets, which we already knew how to build; and also of any subassembly which got built and tested successfully in a lab first—but perhaps leaving some bits or fraction of a bit to account for the unknown environment when using them on the real shuttle, versus in the lab.
That is a very helpful way to put it: “Gall’s Law” is the claim that there is this limited number of bits.
Of course, put so clearly, it looks kind of trivial, so I think that we should read Gall as further saying that you can get a reasonable intuitive bound on this limit by just looking at the history of innovation, but that people often propose designs when a little reasonable reflection would have shown them that they are proposing to step far beyond this limit.
This is an excellent idea—quantizing bits of design information.
It would also demonstrate that if a designer started at the “space shuttle” level of complexity, and layed out a rough design, that design would probably change drastically as the components were built and tested, and the designer collected more bits of information about how to make the complex system work.
Ah, I understand.
Total agreement.
The Columbia shuttle crew would still be with us if this were correct.
True, the space shuttle was not completely contained on its vertical axis, but I was talking about the boosters themselves. I said the lift mechanism was a vertically stacked chemical rocket, not that the entire shuttle was a uniform tower, as it obviously wasn’t.
The boosters are components of the space shuttle, which is what we were talking about: simpler working components evolving into complex systems.
Simple working component: Rocket booster
Complex system: Shuttle with a crew module, fuel tanks, and multiple boosters