Kinda my point. I too can “easily imagine” things—privileging a hypothesis and describing it vividly achieves exactly that.
Before reading this article, was “Trump as a competent NASA director” a hypothesis in your mind? Did this article provide evidence in favor of it? For me, the answers are “No” and “No”. But after reading the article, it became much easier to imagine things like that.
Trump is president of the USA and discussing a world in which Trump would be NASA director is a completely different discussion than the one we are having. Confusing the two seems to be a mistake that’s worthy of being mentally recognized as such (eg. when you recognize a mistake you see where your model needs updating).
The question is whether the Trump administration could put someone at the head of NASA who acts this way. I listened quite a lot to Peter Thiel and one of Thiel’s statement is that the US government did great when they did the Apollo program but today’s way of doing government projects is much worse and the government doesn’t get things like the Apollo program done because it’s too bureaucratic.
This means that there are concrete steps that could be taking to have NASA structured like it was under Apollo.
This article basically says that there’s a specific way of management under which the Apollo project was done and how that differs from the status quo.
I also think that it it’s Trumps way of doing things to give power and responsibility to a specific person instead of distributing it widely the way it is distributed in the bureaucratic status quo.
Another of Thiel’s examples: Nixon declared war on cancer.
Could you imagine Bush, Obama or Clinton declaring war on cancer and setting a goal like this and declaring war on Alzheimers?
I couldn’t. On the other hand I could imagine Trump declaring war on Alzheimers. I could imagine him declaring it and putting a team with the kind of structure that the Apollo team had on the task.
Whether that’s the best way to go forward is another question. I personally hated the Human Brain project and would have rather preferred the money to be giving out in lot’s of small grants doing lots of different things.
The question is whether the Trump administration could put someone at the head of NASA who acts this way.
Hypothetically speaking, yes it’s possible. But what is the probability of “Trump administration will put someone at the head of NASA who will direct it in ways described in the article, and during the following 4 or 8 years will achieve results comparable with the results NASA achieved back then?” More than 10%?
To me that looks like a quite narrow prediction. Till now I haven’t seen anything that suggest that space will be a priority for the Trump administration.
Given that both Bush and Obama had a token commitment of putting a man on Mars I don’t see that there’s much to gain for choosing this public goal.
I do think there more than 10% chance for a >10 billion science/technology project that organized more like how the Apollo project was organized then how projects are currently organized.
Kinda my point. I too can “easily imagine” things—privileging a hypothesis and describing it vividly achieves exactly that.
Before reading this article, was “Trump as a competent NASA director” a hypothesis in your mind? Did this article provide evidence in favor of it? For me, the answers are “No” and “No”. But after reading the article, it became much easier to imagine things like that.
Trump is president of the USA and discussing a world in which Trump would be NASA director is a completely different discussion than the one we are having. Confusing the two seems to be a mistake that’s worthy of being mentally recognized as such (eg. when you recognize a mistake you see where your model needs updating).
The question is whether the Trump administration could put someone at the head of NASA who acts this way. I listened quite a lot to Peter Thiel and one of Thiel’s statement is that the US government did great when they did the Apollo program but today’s way of doing government projects is much worse and the government doesn’t get things like the Apollo program done because it’s too bureaucratic.
This means that there are concrete steps that could be taking to have NASA structured like it was under Apollo.
This article basically says that there’s a specific way of management under which the Apollo project was done and how that differs from the status quo.
I also think that it it’s Trumps way of doing things to give power and responsibility to a specific person instead of distributing it widely the way it is distributed in the bureaucratic status quo.
Another of Thiel’s examples: Nixon declared war on cancer. Could you imagine Bush, Obama or Clinton declaring war on cancer and setting a goal like this and declaring war on Alzheimers?
I couldn’t. On the other hand I could imagine Trump declaring war on Alzheimers. I could imagine him declaring it and putting a team with the kind of structure that the Apollo team had on the task.
Whether that’s the best way to go forward is another question. I personally hated the Human Brain project and would have rather preferred the money to be giving out in lot’s of small grants doing lots of different things.
Hypothetically speaking, yes it’s possible. But what is the probability of “Trump administration will put someone at the head of NASA who will direct it in ways described in the article, and during the following 4 or 8 years will achieve results comparable with the results NASA achieved back then?” More than 10%?
To me that looks like a quite narrow prediction. Till now I haven’t seen anything that suggest that space will be a priority for the Trump administration.
Given that both Bush and Obama had a token commitment of putting a man on Mars I don’t see that there’s much to gain for choosing this public goal.
I do think there more than 10% chance for a >10 billion science/technology project that organized more like how the Apollo project was organized then how projects are currently organized.