This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.
Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
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It doesn't qualify 100%, because there were little prototype shuttles. Still, you have a point. If we have good theories, we can build pretty big systems from scratch. Gall's law resonates especially strongly with programmers because much of programming doesn't have good theories, and large system-building endeavors fail all the time.
8RolfAndreassen
In addition to NMJablonski's point, it is perhaps arguable just how well the Space Shuttle worked. In hindsight it seems that the same amount of orbital lift capacity could have been done rather more cheaply.
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.