194. Load Path Analysis | THUNK

Why don't you want your snow shovel's handle to be long and springy? Why do you push on someone's back to help them swing, rather than on the swing supports? Engineers & architects have an answer: load paths!

- Links for the Curious -

[adityajain]

why doesnt this guy have more subscribers

[batuhantekmen]

To apply load path analysis-like thinking model, do there have to be some x which is transferred? In the building example this x was force, in the food example this x was energy. Maybe it could applied to information, emotion, story, light or teamwork. But could it be something which is not transferred?

[_Aarius_]

Note squad~

on topic: I often find that something similar to load path analysis is useful in software, increasing stability and decreasing number of independent components in the system for the most heavily stressed parts of the program to reduce chances of failure, and can account for the most likely failures in a more predictable manner.

(i wrote that before you got to the software part, too)

[veo_]

I'm more of a technocratic social engineer than any other type, but load paths apply to soft skill endeavours as well. On enterprise scales it's optimizing infrastructure process to accept all possible inputs (load) and output useful products, or if something is amiss, meaningful failure modes which gracefully act as inputs to self-correcting processes without any extra steps. The process substrate is variable, could be local-space, info-space, or even meat-space. The least wobbly path while ensuring continuity is desirable.

Zooming all the way to the other end of the spectrum, it's the same sort of planning needed to successfully achieve a wildly unpredictable group objective.

Say you're writing the operational plan for your Burning Man theme camp's 20th annual deep-playa Space Disco Pajama Jam & Sunrise Ambient Waffle Nunnery. The social environment is inherently wobbly, even amongst the truly-committed so in this this case the load path works better as one-step-task-oriented rather than process-oriented, where non-specific autonomous agents can self-assign/re-assign micro-loads in real-time. All that's required at showtime is a very few single-task gatekeepers, required resources, and a critical number of self-identified automutanous agents. The load as defined by the organized tasklist, which might macroscopically be quite complex, is completed bit by self-redundant bit, and self-organizing social gestalt. *Teamwork makes the dreamwork!*

Obviously a different application, but the same path-analysis is required for success.

[Bethfitness]

This will seem really random. So I apologize up front, but I am looking for a way to explain load path to future fitness instructors so that they can design effective exercises on their own without copying mistakes that they find on the net. For example, in order to work our pectoralis major with dumbells we have to position ourselves to take full advantage of gravity and cannot simply stand tall and push our weights out in front of us as if we were lying on our backs ( bench press). Do have a video that addresses this because I have not been able to find anything to date..I am looking for an video explaining how to weight train properly as opposed to people just memorizing movements, I want them to understand what is happening. Hope this makes sense. Thanks.

[nicholashughes]

There is a potentially huge metaphor lurking in this video but i am having trouble getting my head around it.

[threethrushes]

In the field of peri-anal surgery, load path analysis is a common conceptual tool to describe the effect of removing tissue from, or around, the anus and the effect it will have on nervous/hormonal modulation of sphinctral control.

Typically, we encourage patients to relax their anus, in order to reduce sphinctral load.

[passingthetorch]

Ah ... this is one of the reasons a market economy is so much better than a planned economy. If one could solve the calculation problem, it's possible to imagine that a command/centrally controlled economy might be more efficient in some ways. However, the market economy allows dynamic and overlapping "load paths" which can be quickly adapted to failures in other areas. Aluminium isn't available? Use steel or plastic or wood. The market economy responds even better than this, it responds to the "weight" of a thing in the market, namely its price.

By responding to price signals, agents in the market are actually "balancing" the weight as well as they can. A farmer who doesn't sell his grain now, at a low price, might be called greedy when he sells it later at a high price. But by doing so, he helps to reduce fluctuations in price (less grain in a glut means prices don't fall quite as far, more grain when prices are high keeps prices from rising even more). He is helping the market allocate the grain to more urgent needs, cattle feed during the glut versus food for humans during the price rise ... and may be saving people's lives.

A command economy cannot respond as quickly and, besides being less efficient on average, is also less robust.

[Infantry]

knowing how one failure can enable the next failure and so on can help develop mitigations and response plans. From this video, sounds like the same approach helps with physical forces as well. Really anything that has multiple components that affect each other in cause-and-effect, particularly if that effect can cascade in any way. Illustrating trees and matrices of these systems of cause and effect (and as you pointed out, flattening some of these out) is probably a good idea for many practices, and for many upsides.

[alexixeno]

Mmmm burrito... Sorry yes, load paths.

[Xob_Driesestig]

Is it the job of someone who solved ethics to explain why other philosophers didn't? Wouldn't that be the job of psychologist or historians or something? I agree it would be a nice bonus, but I don't think it's strictly necessary for an argument to work. It seems like a lot of the time when I read a good philosophical argument (e.g Popper) I find it baffling that no one had thought of that before, but that doesn't really detract from the convincingness of it.
Maybe it's a nice pre-selection tool: "Hey man here are 100 new philosophy papers that all claim to be revolutionary. You only have so many hours in the day so you better pick the ones that also claim they can explain why no-one thought of that before."

[joaomiranda]

THUNK what do you think is there to solve in ethics?

[TheGemsbok]

Don't you live on the west coast now? Mate, your video publish timing is wack.