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Authors: Christian Cantrell
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built and deployed the ISS II (which this time looked like a proper space station with segments that rotated to create centrifugal gravity and large windowed observation decks), and even completed several manned missions to Mars. With a success rate of 99%, with unprecedented public support, and with mankind riding the biggest wave of economic, scientific, and cultural prosperity in history, the human race had earned the right to expand into the rest of the solar system.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Water Pressure
T he day before Arik started work at the Life Pod, he got an audio message from one of his former teachers. Her voice was characteristically dignified and elegant with its usual undertone of assertiveness.
"Hello, Arik. Rosemary Grace here. I just heard about your assignment to the Life Pod. Congratulations. As much as I was hoping we'd get you, I knew that wasn't possible. All the best talent must go in to solving the air problem right now, as you know. For now, that's our top priority.
"I know you're preoccupied with beginning your new career, but I want you to do something for me. I'd like you to stop by my office tomorrow morning on your way into work. I have a couple of things I'd like to discuss with you. It'll only take a few minutes. Consider it your final homework assignment. See you soon."
Rosemary worked for Arik's father in the Water Treatment Department. She was an environmental and hydraulic engineer by trade, but she taught Gen V about much more than just computational fluid mechanics, flow dynamics, and particle image velocimetry. Those were things that computers were good at, she told them. The next generation of scientists and engineers needed to get better at the things computers weren't good at: creativity, intuition, resourcefulness, and perhaps most importantly, curiosity. Half of each lesson was hard science, but the other half was not so much about learning anything in particular as it was about learning
how
to learn — how to think both critically and creatively in order to solve seemingly impossible problems. Her lessons were some of the most inspiring, engaging, and challenging material Arik had ever encountered.
Early on, she had taught them the real meaning of Occam's razor. Developed by an English logician in the fourteenth century, Occam's razor was usually understood to mean that all things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the correct one. In Rosemary's view, this was, ironically, an oversimplification of the principle, and not an accurate or even useful interpretation. Nothing was simple, she maintained, and there's certainly nothing about a simple solution that makes it inherently more valid than a complex one. In fact, in her experience, the more variables, subtleties, vagaries, and contingencies that a system took into account, the more useful and reliable and realistic it was. Our penchant for simplicity — our need to reduce everything to good or bad, black or white, on or off — could rarely be imposed on the universe, no matter how hard we tried. If something seemed simple, you probably just weren't looking at it hard enough or peeling away enough layers to see what's really beneath.
The real meaning of Occam's razor, Rosemary believed, was that explanations and solutions should be free from elements which have no real bearing on the system in question — that solving problems isn't so much about simplifying them as it is about properly and realistically reducing them to only what's relevant. And one of the best ways to reduce a problem to only what's relevant is to throw away most of your assumptions about it. Nothing has misled researchers and impeded scientific progress more throughout history than incorrect and inappropriate assumptions and preconceptions.
Rosemary's personal aphorism, which she tirelessly worked to instill in her students, was "Question Everything."
----
The smell of the chemicals used in the water treatment process reminded Arik of his
CHAPTER SEVEN
Water Pressure
T he day before Arik started work at the Life Pod, he got an audio message from one of his former teachers. Her voice was characteristically dignified and elegant with its usual undertone of assertiveness.
"Hello, Arik. Rosemary Grace here. I just heard about your assignment to the Life Pod. Congratulations. As much as I was hoping we'd get you, I knew that wasn't possible. All the best talent must go in to solving the air problem right now, as you know. For now, that's our top priority.
"I know you're preoccupied with beginning your new career, but I want you to do something for me. I'd like you to stop by my office tomorrow morning on your way into work. I have a couple of things I'd like to discuss with you. It'll only take a few minutes. Consider it your final homework assignment. See you soon."
Rosemary worked for Arik's father in the Water Treatment Department. She was an environmental and hydraulic engineer by trade, but she taught Gen V about much more than just computational fluid mechanics, flow dynamics, and particle image velocimetry. Those were things that computers were good at, she told them. The next generation of scientists and engineers needed to get better at the things computers weren't good at: creativity, intuition, resourcefulness, and perhaps most importantly, curiosity. Half of each lesson was hard science, but the other half was not so much about learning anything in particular as it was about learning
how
to learn — how to think both critically and creatively in order to solve seemingly impossible problems. Her lessons were some of the most inspiring, engaging, and challenging material Arik had ever encountered.
Early on, she had taught them the real meaning of Occam's razor. Developed by an English logician in the fourteenth century, Occam's razor was usually understood to mean that all things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the correct one. In Rosemary's view, this was, ironically, an oversimplification of the principle, and not an accurate or even useful interpretation. Nothing was simple, she maintained, and there's certainly nothing about a simple solution that makes it inherently more valid than a complex one. In fact, in her experience, the more variables, subtleties, vagaries, and contingencies that a system took into account, the more useful and reliable and realistic it was. Our penchant for simplicity — our need to reduce everything to good or bad, black or white, on or off — could rarely be imposed on the universe, no matter how hard we tried. If something seemed simple, you probably just weren't looking at it hard enough or peeling away enough layers to see what's really beneath.
The real meaning of Occam's razor, Rosemary believed, was that explanations and solutions should be free from elements which have no real bearing on the system in question — that solving problems isn't so much about simplifying them as it is about properly and realistically reducing them to only what's relevant. And one of the best ways to reduce a problem to only what's relevant is to throw away most of your assumptions about it. Nothing has misled researchers and impeded scientific progress more throughout history than incorrect and inappropriate assumptions and preconceptions.
Rosemary's personal aphorism, which she tirelessly worked to instill in her students, was "Question Everything."
----
The smell of the chemicals used in the water treatment process reminded Arik of his
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