Can’t tell if serious or ironically humorous. But the author’s experience includes years of work in each of these fields: linguistics, biology, cryptanalysis, air traffic management, artificial intelligence, and animation. And the author described five specific problems with science. If you don’t understand that the point of the article is that those five problems are the important scientific problems facing us now, then you missed the point entirely. If you’re complaining that you want “scientific problems” instead of problems with how science is done, well, that’s not my job here. I’m identifying the problem, not writing a grant proposal.
What’s the author’s specific experience with Air Traffic Management? (TMU controller, Facility Manager, or alphabet soup router?) When you proposed air traffic solutions, what allowances did you make for the specific knowledge that you lacked, or did you believe that you understood operations two or more steps outside your airspace?
I designed and implemented the prototype (“Build Zero”) for one of NASA’s ATM simulators (I forget what they call it now; it’s been AER, VAMS, VAST, and ACES), and did some work predicting the likely consequences of Free Flight (giving air crews more autonomy and requiring less intervention by controllers). I’ve been to facilities, but never worked at them.
That was one of the projects that helped make me cynical. I spent over 2 years doing almost all of the design, implementation, reporting, meetings, and promotion myself. Then when my hard work paid off, and won Raytheon a $30 million contract, dozens of people jumped on the project. My boss at the time took it over and gave himself (but not me) a giant bonus, and published papers on it but didn’t mention me anywhere in them. I did probably 90% of the work on the first deliverable, which about 6 companies collectively received millions of dollars for, but was never credited anywhere.
My opinion is that Free Flight sounds like a great idea, but almost all problems occur in TRACONs (the area just around an airport, that’s controlled by the airport controllers (EDIT: decius is correct; TRACON controllers and airport controllers are separate)), while the en-route airspace is managed well and doesn’t have nearly as much room for improvement. It probably has more symbolic importance—to get people used to the idea of airplanes having more autonomy. It may also weaken the controllers’ union, which is important in order to improve air traffic efficiency and safety. ATC is a task that humans are bad at and computers are good at, and humans should be doing as little of it as possible.
Let’s get the definitions straight: TRACONs typically exercise control jurisdiction over IFR aircraft and advisory responsibility for participating VFR aircraft from 500′ AGL to roughly 10,000 MSL, mostly in Class E airspace. I suppose that Class B airspace might be the first to be managed properly by computers, since the software wouldn’t have to predict the actions of aircraft that aren’t within its control jurisdiction. (It would still have to deal with emergencies, deviations due to weather, VFR aircraft unable to follow instructions while remaining clear of clouds, and other factors). Any such system that required new equipment in aircraft would fail, simply due to the political power of AOPA and other pilots’ organizations; requiring a $5-10k upgrade to every aircraft simply isn’t on the table.
Computers might be marginally better at handling high-volume routine situations, and a solution that provided computer assistance to pilots and allowed pilots to make more decisions might provide improvements. Computers might be well suited to controlling Class A airspace, because of the relative predictability there and lack of visual separation, but they simply are not well developed enough to provide vectors for a visual approach around clouds, a task which combined tower/TRACON controllers can and do perform. Anything short of a General AI is simply never going to be able to handle the airport environment, even to the point of observing the current weather conditions and selecting a runway configuration, much less to the point of dealing with snow removal situations, wildlife, vehicle or pedestrian deviations, blown tires, and emergency situations.
I also disagree that weakening NATCA is a step towards improving efficiency and safety, and none of the experience that you claimed indicates that you have any basis to observe any of the safety initiatives forced through by the union (like required rest periods, ATSAP reporting, and cultural changes toward a solution-oriented vice a blame-oriented culture.)
And your opinion is factually wrong; more problems occur in the airport environment than in the terminal environment. That’s also where visual separation is most often used and where virtually all emergencies end up being resolved. Small things, like replacing a centerline light on an active runway, can be handled easily by people and their ability to create fuzzy plans; I can not conceive of any traditional computer that could handle that situation without the airport NOTAM closing the runway.
Dude. Chill. By “within the TRACON” I meant to include the airport, which I think of as within the TRACON because I never had anything to do with airport controllers. They have the hardest job, yes. That was why all the theorizing about en-route airspace didn’t really help; delays almost always come back to runway problems.
I said the union has to be weakened because most en-route controllers should be replaced by computers, and the union won’t let that happen. The union wants to keep computers out of it and humans in it, and no amount of required rest periods (which, yes, I know about, and it’s pretty cheap of you to try to discredit me because I didn’t decide to talk about rest periods in a SINGLE PARAGRAPH’S discussion of ATC) will change the fact that computers are better than humans at keeping lots of vectors from intersecting.
On the other hand, most accidents and near-misses happen on and near the tarmac, and that’s not going to be computerized anytime soon. So I guess we can leave the union alone for now. And, in fact, we never got near the union anyway—when I left, the battle for automation was still between NASA and the FAA, and NASA has no power.
The TRACON is more like the enroute center than it is like the tower. Did you spend enough time with TMU to realize that the only ways to reduce delays due to volume is to increase the capacity of the airport or reduce the number of departures to the airport?
BOS learned that lesson well, and they cut everybody’s delay time significantly by allowing a circling approach to a shorter runway (ceiling permitting). Not everybody can make the approach, but the ones that can are exempt from the delays because they don’t use a scarce resource.
Again, keeping the vectors from intersecting is a tiny fraction of the job of controlling, even if that is what they mostly do. The big fraction is stuff like identifying the symptoms of hypoxia in pilots, talking the passenger of a heart attack victim onto a runway, and giving the pilot of an Airbus with severe birdstrike damage every option available.
Humans scale very well when you can divide their responsibilities clearly; the workload of a controller in a sector that has N operations per hour scales roughly with N, regardless of the size of the sector within reasonable limits. A computer system that identified and suggested corrections and changes in the enroute (or even the TRACON) environment would probably improve safety, but it would only reduce delays if it was responsible for maintaining specified separation on final, and did a better job than humans do. There are a lot of failure modes in vectoring for a final.
When you characterize controllers as being ambivalent about safety and acting to preserve their jobs, you are victim of and contributing to a false stereotype of unions and union employees. Everyone in professional aviation takes safety very seriously, and no silicon-based computer system currently in existence can respond to novel situations as well as a human can.
What I’ve learned after years in the field is that what most scientists really want to do is prove how smart they are
What I’ve learned after years of being a decent human being is that most scientists are regular people who don’t appreciate being insulted. I’m a scientist, my parents are scientists, my best friends, my teachers, my sister, my uncle, aunt, and two cousins are scientists.
what most scientists really want to do is prove how smart they are
That’s offensive, and the rest of the post comes off similarly.
In response to fubarobfusco: there is a major difference between “fuck you!” and “I’ve been personally offended by you. Here’s why.”
This is one of the very few cases where I feel the need to explain a downvote. The passage that you quoted and responded to was not worth the response. iDante’s comment could be summarized as “fuck you!” — an otherwise contentless exclamation of hostility — so it should be downvoted without response.
(I also think meta comments about the voting system should be downvoted; but I can’t downvote my own comment. Go ahead.)
In the past four decades, behavioral economists and cognitive psychologists have discovered many cognitive biases human brains fall prey to when thinking and deciding. (LessWrong homepage)
I’m a human, my parents are humans, my best friends are humans, my teachers, my sister, my uncle, aunt, and cousins are humans.
Now, should I feel offended?
Or should I learn about my biases and try to become stronger?
No, because the claim on the front page is backed up by evidence. It’s not just pulled out of one person’s limited experiences. It IS offensive to negatively stereotype a group of people without evidence.
The author’s great “problems” of science are the same way. A broad generalization is made from limited experience, then no actual investigation is performed. Bold assertions are provided in place of careful statistics. The conclusion, “the biggest problem in science is management,” is utterly unconvincing.
Can’t tell if serious or ironically humorous. But the author’s experience includes years of work in each of these fields: linguistics, biology, cryptanalysis, air traffic management, artificial intelligence, and animation. And the author described five specific problems with science. If you don’t understand that the point of the article is that those five problems are the important scientific problems facing us now, then you missed the point entirely. If you’re complaining that you want “scientific problems” instead of problems with how science is done, well, that’s not my job here. I’m identifying the problem, not writing a grant proposal.
What’s the author’s specific experience with Air Traffic Management? (TMU controller, Facility Manager, or alphabet soup router?) When you proposed air traffic solutions, what allowances did you make for the specific knowledge that you lacked, or did you believe that you understood operations two or more steps outside your airspace?
I designed and implemented the prototype (“Build Zero”) for one of NASA’s ATM simulators (I forget what they call it now; it’s been AER, VAMS, VAST, and ACES), and did some work predicting the likely consequences of Free Flight (giving air crews more autonomy and requiring less intervention by controllers). I’ve been to facilities, but never worked at them.
That was one of the projects that helped make me cynical. I spent over 2 years doing almost all of the design, implementation, reporting, meetings, and promotion myself. Then when my hard work paid off, and won Raytheon a $30 million contract, dozens of people jumped on the project. My boss at the time took it over and gave himself (but not me) a giant bonus, and published papers on it but didn’t mention me anywhere in them. I did probably 90% of the work on the first deliverable, which about 6 companies collectively received millions of dollars for, but was never credited anywhere.
My opinion is that Free Flight sounds like a great idea, but almost all problems occur in TRACONs (the area just around an airport, that’s controlled by the airport controllers (EDIT: decius is correct; TRACON controllers and airport controllers are separate)), while the en-route airspace is managed well and doesn’t have nearly as much room for improvement. It probably has more symbolic importance—to get people used to the idea of airplanes having more autonomy. It may also weaken the controllers’ union, which is important in order to improve air traffic efficiency and safety. ATC is a task that humans are bad at and computers are good at, and humans should be doing as little of it as possible.
Let’s get the definitions straight: TRACONs typically exercise control jurisdiction over IFR aircraft and advisory responsibility for participating VFR aircraft from 500′ AGL to roughly 10,000 MSL, mostly in Class E airspace. I suppose that Class B airspace might be the first to be managed properly by computers, since the software wouldn’t have to predict the actions of aircraft that aren’t within its control jurisdiction. (It would still have to deal with emergencies, deviations due to weather, VFR aircraft unable to follow instructions while remaining clear of clouds, and other factors). Any such system that required new equipment in aircraft would fail, simply due to the political power of AOPA and other pilots’ organizations; requiring a $5-10k upgrade to every aircraft simply isn’t on the table.
Computers might be marginally better at handling high-volume routine situations, and a solution that provided computer assistance to pilots and allowed pilots to make more decisions might provide improvements. Computers might be well suited to controlling Class A airspace, because of the relative predictability there and lack of visual separation, but they simply are not well developed enough to provide vectors for a visual approach around clouds, a task which combined tower/TRACON controllers can and do perform. Anything short of a General AI is simply never going to be able to handle the airport environment, even to the point of observing the current weather conditions and selecting a runway configuration, much less to the point of dealing with snow removal situations, wildlife, vehicle or pedestrian deviations, blown tires, and emergency situations.
I also disagree that weakening NATCA is a step towards improving efficiency and safety, and none of the experience that you claimed indicates that you have any basis to observe any of the safety initiatives forced through by the union (like required rest periods, ATSAP reporting, and cultural changes toward a solution-oriented vice a blame-oriented culture.)
And your opinion is factually wrong; more problems occur in the airport environment than in the terminal environment. That’s also where visual separation is most often used and where virtually all emergencies end up being resolved. Small things, like replacing a centerline light on an active runway, can be handled easily by people and their ability to create fuzzy plans; I can not conceive of any traditional computer that could handle that situation without the airport NOTAM closing the runway.
Dude. Chill. By “within the TRACON” I meant to include the airport, which I think of as within the TRACON because I never had anything to do with airport controllers. They have the hardest job, yes. That was why all the theorizing about en-route airspace didn’t really help; delays almost always come back to runway problems.
I said the union has to be weakened because most en-route controllers should be replaced by computers, and the union won’t let that happen. The union wants to keep computers out of it and humans in it, and no amount of required rest periods (which, yes, I know about, and it’s pretty cheap of you to try to discredit me because I didn’t decide to talk about rest periods in a SINGLE PARAGRAPH’S discussion of ATC) will change the fact that computers are better than humans at keeping lots of vectors from intersecting.
On the other hand, most accidents and near-misses happen on and near the tarmac, and that’s not going to be computerized anytime soon. So I guess we can leave the union alone for now. And, in fact, we never got near the union anyway—when I left, the battle for automation was still between NASA and the FAA, and NASA has no power.
The TRACON is more like the enroute center than it is like the tower. Did you spend enough time with TMU to realize that the only ways to reduce delays due to volume is to increase the capacity of the airport or reduce the number of departures to the airport? BOS learned that lesson well, and they cut everybody’s delay time significantly by allowing a circling approach to a shorter runway (ceiling permitting). Not everybody can make the approach, but the ones that can are exempt from the delays because they don’t use a scarce resource. Again, keeping the vectors from intersecting is a tiny fraction of the job of controlling, even if that is what they mostly do. The big fraction is stuff like identifying the symptoms of hypoxia in pilots, talking the passenger of a heart attack victim onto a runway, and giving the pilot of an Airbus with severe birdstrike damage every option available. Humans scale very well when you can divide their responsibilities clearly; the workload of a controller in a sector that has N operations per hour scales roughly with N, regardless of the size of the sector within reasonable limits. A computer system that identified and suggested corrections and changes in the enroute (or even the TRACON) environment would probably improve safety, but it would only reduce delays if it was responsible for maintaining specified separation on final, and did a better job than humans do. There are a lot of failure modes in vectoring for a final. When you characterize controllers as being ambivalent about safety and acting to preserve their jobs, you are victim of and contributing to a false stereotype of unions and union employees. Everyone in professional aviation takes safety very seriously, and no silicon-based computer system currently in existence can respond to novel situations as well as a human can.
What I’ve learned after years of being a decent human being is that most scientists are regular people who don’t appreciate being insulted. I’m a scientist, my parents are scientists, my best friends, my teachers, my sister, my uncle, aunt, and two cousins are scientists.
That’s offensive, and the rest of the post comes off similarly.
In response to fubarobfusco: there is a major difference between “fuck you!” and “I’ve been personally offended by you. Here’s why.”
Whether something is offensive or not should be distinguished from whether or not it is true (or even whether or not it is relevant).
I should have said “That’s offensive and untrue, and the rest of the post comes off similarly.”
This is one of the very few cases where I feel the need to explain a downvote. The passage that you quoted and responded to was not worth the response. iDante’s comment could be summarized as “fuck you!” — an otherwise contentless exclamation of hostility — so it should be downvoted without response.
(I also think meta comments about the voting system should be downvoted; but I can’t downvote my own comment. Go ahead.)
I’m a human, my parents are humans, my best friends are humans, my teachers, my sister, my uncle, aunt, and cousins are humans.
Now, should I feel offended?
Or should I learn about my biases and try to become stronger?
No, because the claim on the front page is backed up by evidence. It’s not just pulled out of one person’s limited experiences. It IS offensive to negatively stereotype a group of people without evidence.
The author’s great “problems” of science are the same way. A broad generalization is made from limited experience, then no actual investigation is performed. Bold assertions are provided in place of careful statistics. The conclusion, “the biggest problem in science is management,” is utterly unconvincing.