Table of Contents
A. The Unfortunate News
Recently the commercial extreme-tourism submersible Titan imploded killing 5 onboarded passangers, including 3 biilioneres and the CEO of OceanGate company Stockton Rush.
OceanGate is the manufacturer of the experimental submersible Titan, that took three tourists at $250,000 ticket to the wreckage site of Titanic.
B. Learn the fine prints and apply it to your life
1. Wrong Purpose:- Rush wanted to be an astronaut, but couldn’t fulfill his dreams due to poor eyesight. So he chooses the ocean.
a) Learning:-
Whenever someone does something for the purpose of proving himself/herself, and/or to compensate for a failed goal, it is about him/her, not about the people. Anything that is not about the people would meet the same fate.
b) Applications:-
i. Jobs:- If you are worried about your salary, your promotion, and your future, your career is doomed.
ii. Personal Life:- If you are trying to fulfill the unmet goals and dreams of your parents then you are doomed.
iii. Business:- If you are starting a business just to be your own boss, you are doomed.
2. Cheap Composites:– Rush built the vehicle from scratch by combining cheap materials and parts from different sources.
a) Learning:
The vehicle is the first of its kind in human history and is made out of multiple materials, one being composite carbon, Titan, and acrolyte. In 4000m under the sea, pressure is like one Kutub Miner/sq inch. Each material and its joints get different loads. Composites fail under pressure.
b)Applications:-
i. Software: Don’t make a project by combing GitHub codes. Write as much of your own libraries as you can.
ii. Personal Life:- Don’t mix your parents in your marriage, under pressure marriage will collapse.
iii. Business:- Focus on the singularity of the core.
3. Lack of Fail:– Titan had few successful dives including many that carried Rush. It didn’t fail until the accidents.
a) Learnings:– A system becomes better and more robust through Fail-Test. This is one of the greatest contributions of engineering to humanity.
b) Applications:-
i. Personal Life: Marriage without past relationships:- will likely fail today.
ii. Product:- If a product appears too perfect, then it is not robust. ctrl+alt+del and task manager made Windows attractive. Windows failed more than Linux.
SpaceX failed in the first 7 launches.
iii. Job:- If you are successful in getting a job, and then getting a hike, then getting more offers, then it is going the Titan way.
4. The typical startup of today: Build fast, scale faster, fool the riches
Rush built the vehicle in 3 years and went for commercialization. It takes an average of 10 years for any meaningful technology to be robust.
Learning: Speed kills.
Applications:-
i. Startup:- If a startup scales fast, rush away from investing in it.
ii. Personal Life: If anyone proposes to you 6 months since you met, that relationship will fail.
C. Sillicon Valley Poison that is slowly infecting the other parts of the real world
In 120 years of deep-sea exploration history, for the first time, deep-sea exploration lives were killed, because humanity has never produced as many bad engineers, complacent, arrogant entrepreneurs in rush as ever.
i) Bigger Fools: Thee billionaires invested their money, and eventually life into a half-baked startup.
ii) Bad engineering as “Innovation”: Engineering is done through hours of iterations, fails, simulations, tests, corrections, and measurements. Just look at generative AI!
iii) Story Tellers: We are in a world where storytellers like Jobs are glorified and herofied over the great brains such as Wozniak. All stories!
iv) Make something that people want: Rich has an affinity to kiss death for adrenaline. Extreme tourism is built on this concept. Exploration is for science, not for adrenaline “Rush.”
v) Celebration of Initial Success: Just look at Juck in Threads signup and fundraising glorification by the media.
vi) Fame over Legacy: Einstein took 40 years to prove his theory of relativity. And youth today rush to glory. Don’t leave behind something for the race, get headlines.
Nothing has changed from the fall of Rome to the sinking of the Titanic to the internet Bubble, to Titan to startups. Genes don’t change.
D. How Narrative and Fake Confidence is Used as a substitution for Philosophy and Competance?
“Fail fast and scale faster” ideology is spread with such toxic vigor, that people have lost the sense of reality.
Once a narrative is built and repeated, people forget to ask basic questions about the narrative. Over a period of time, the narrative appears to be real, and yet some times later, the narrative itself appears as the only truth.
For instance, if we correlate Das Capital with Neitszhe, then we understand that both talks about morality, and the first principle of morality, that is everyone has the equal right to live the full potential of their lives.
However, the lazy brains shortened it has “equal rights” “everyone is equal,” “potential is a full life,” “everyone must live equal lives” and so on. Today having money is equal to having experience, and having experience is equal to having ability, having ability is equal to execution, and execution is equal to product, and the product is equal to problem solution, and solution is equal to profit, which is equal to scaling, which is equal to success.
Today Gandhis and Bose and Abraham Lincoln are not leaders, rather every manager is a leader.
Narrative=Truth.
Privillage=License.
E. Conclusion
James Cameron, the Titanic director spent 7 years in designing his vehicle with an Australian engineer. That was tested 100 times. Finite element, simulations, testings, and dived several times to the site. He shoot an entire movie and took crew without any mishaps. And yet he refused to commercialize a tour and risk human lives. He, and most of the who-is-who of the small engineering fraternity had warned against Titan and OceanGate’s methods.
When you don’t develop a discipline of learning from others’ failures, and live in your bubble of opinions and beliefs, camouflaging your fears and worries with fake confidence, then you suffer.
Great products and technologies are built over decades, that is just the nature of engineering. More so when lives are at stake.
The way a mixed veg curry is created today out of insurance, healthcare, B2B, diagnostics, 2-minute hear symptom-write-medicine-refer to surgery healthcare, leaves a lot of questions behind.
All the fake narratives in social media of that courage, move first, leadership BS, chase your dreams, win the world, you can achieve any goal you set and so on are so toxic that even cyanide appears sweet. And yet people don’t learn!
RIP Rush and RIP Rushing!
