Quick Links: Complexity and Building Codes

Posted by base10 on April 7, 2010 under Geek Talk | Be the First to Comment

We’re big fans of keeping complexity to a minimum. But not everything can really be simple. Panic designer Neven Mrgan has a good piece on necessary complexity:

[Dilbert creator Scott] Adams lists four examples of simple things that have been made unusable for him by our modern world’s complexity: service fees on his business checking account, a home video switcher/splitter system, a cellphone upgrade, and consolidating all his insurance policies.

With all due respect to Scott Adams, none of those things is something simple that’s been made complicated. They’re all just complicated.

I’m not arguing that his bank shouldn’t provide frictionless, reasonable service for his business transactions, or that he shouldn’t be able to change his insurance policy; I’m saying that there’s nothing simple about those.

It’s hard enough to keep simple things simple. It’s several orders of magnitude more difficult to keep a difficult thing as easy as possible.

Separately, The Infrastructurist looks at the two recent massive earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and considers why the death tolls were so different:

After a massive 9.5 earthquake hit the country in 1960 (the strongest ever recorded), the Chilean government developed a seismic design code for all new buildings, shown in the image above. According to AIR Worldwide, the country’s building codes were revised again in 1993 to include significant advances over previous versions. And they were wise to do so, given the frequency with which Chile experiences quakes: the country gets hit with a magnitude 7 or higher quake at least once every five years, meaning that the earthquake awareness, both in engineering and building codes, is superior.

There is debate in the comments whether or not the regulations themselves or market interest are the saving grace. One points out that it’s not strictly a black-and-white proposition. There are also geographic differences in the quakes to consider.