Brian Potter: belief

Transcript context

…ldings that look prettier than modern buildings, but are also more maintainable or at least as maintainable? Or is it basically going to be steel and glass towers for the time for the upcoming future? Yeah, that's a good question. There's a lot of enthusiasm. Some of it is architecture. So we'll see how well it actually gets adopted. But for timber and large tall buildings made out of heavy timber elements, I don't know if that’s partially it's an aesthetic thing. If you look at it from a carbon perspective, it's using a lot of timber versus steel or concrete which is way better on that calculus. And it does kind of look nice. A lot of these tech companies are building these ornate timber offices. So that's one trend. Then yeah, there's not an obvious technology that could usurp the sort of standard we have unless it's like a dramatic development in material science or whatever, where somebody finds some way of building something that's way cheaper and gives you way more options than you had before. That’s what steel and then concrete gave you, right? All of a sudden, you could build things in ways that you couldn't do before steel, and you could use so much less structure to build fine concrete, because it was like liquid. All of a sudden, you could make any shape that you want. That's when you get all these really cool interesting shells and really ornate concrete domes, which of course, we also don't build anymore. So I don't see an obvious technology that could replace that. I guess, you know, the other thing is like, when all of a sudden you had technology that could like easily duplicate or make any sort of art possible, did that usher in a new era of way better art or 2D aesthetics? I don't necessarily think that it did, right? So I think if you could all of a sudden build any sort of shape that you want cheaply and easily, it's not obvious to me that we would get really cool things. I'm sure you would see a lot of interesting experiments on the margin or whatever, but it's not obvious to me that the standard way of building in some ways might become even less interesting. Dwarkesh Patel Right. So there is the question of why we haven't seen better aesthetics in these other fields. So given how much you can do with the traditional art today, why do these paintings that are selling for millions of dollars have the common perception and stereotype that they're very simple and ugly? So to apply that to architecture and engineering, there's this idea that Scott Alexander kind of talked about this a lot in his post about a cabal of modernist architects in these guilds who are just very obsessed with building these buildings that the public doesn't like to look at. Do you think it’s true that the architects just have a completely different sense of aesthetics than the average public? obsessed with building these buildings that the public doesn't like to look at. Do you think it’s true that the architects just have a completely different sense of aesthetics than the average public? I think there's probably something to that where you go to architecture school and architecture school is adjacent to art school in the way that you learn how to design buildings, but you also learn a specific way of looking and thinking about them. That filters down into how you design your building, but I think architects are competing in a marketplace, and the vast majority of them who are not star architects are basically trying to deliver buildings that owners are happy with. If they don't do that, they're going to go out of business. I think most architects you will talk to will basically say, “Yeah, if I don't give the owner a building that he's happy with, I am not doing my job correctly.” They're definitely being hired for other things adjacent to a sense of taste. But perhaps that's, part of the story, and it's like a fragment or whatever, but I think it would be very easy to over-index. I think there's a lot of ways that's just not true. So I'm really glad we got a chance to cover this topic and I appreciate all those explanations, but actually, there’s another question that I forgot to ask you the last time that I'm curious about. Let's say somebody listens to the conversation or they've been a follower of your blog and this has got them interested in engineering. Somebody may be in high school or maybe early in college. For them to be able to do cool things in these fields in the future, what kind of training and career advice would you give them so they could pursue and be able to get involved and innovate in these fields?…

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