"Why don't they just...?"

[randomness]

tb recently shared with me a rant about people who start a sentence with "Why don't they just...?" I don't want to misquote her and I very much want to hear her in own words if she's willing to share them here. But I did find a post about this very phrase in a very different context that I thought was worth a repost.

From Why don't they just...?":

It seems every time I come across a story about the Mars Curiosity rover there will be many people commenting on the technology used starting with "Why don't they just..?" and usually pointing out things like: the processor in their smart phone is way faster than the one of Mars, or they have way more memory on their iPad, or their digital camera is way better than the one sending back pictures. These "Why don't they just..?" questions are both annoying and to be expected.

Annoying because the underlying thought is "Those NASA/JPL guys are so dumb LOL" and to be expected and encouraged because we wouldn't make any progress without asking questions and, in particular, asking why.

But it doesn't take much research to find the answer. (Even though I'm tempted to answer: "Because it's on friggin' Mars, doofus!")

Ultimately after listing some of the reasons why the situation isn't as simple as the askers think it is, he adds an excellent suggestion:

But rather than explaining all this stuff, I think there's a better way: build, land and operate a rover here on Earth.

It's too bad that sort of suggestion isn't a possibility in many of the other situations where people ask, "Why don't they just...?"

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention Elon Musk. Here is a fine bit of writing about the whole "people who are smart in one area and they think they know everything about everything" idea:

There is a belief within American media that a successful person can succeed at anything. He (and it’s invariably he) is omnicompetent, and people who question him and laugh at his outlandish ideas will invariably fail and end up working for him. If he cares about something, it’s important; if he says something can be done, it can. The people who are already doing the same thing are peons and their opinions are to be discounted, since they are biased and he never is. He doesn’t need to provide references or evidence – even supposedly scientific science fiction falls into this trope, in which the hero gets ideas from his gut, is always right, and never needs to do experiments.

...

I write this to point out that, in the US, people will treat any crank seriously if he has enough money or enough prowess in another field. A sufficiently rich person is surrounded by sycophants and stenographers who won’t check his numbers against anything.

...

The thinking is that he’s rich, so he must always have something interesting to say; he can’t be a huckster when venturing outside his field. It would be unthinkable to treat people as professionals in their own fields, who take years to make a successful sideways move and who need to be extremely careful not to make elementary mistakes. The superheros of American media coverage would instantly collapse, relegated to a specialized role while mere mortals take over most functions

The whole post is a takedown in exhaustive detail of Musk's hyperloop idea, which to be fair is really napkinware more than anything else. But the post in particular and the blog in general are both worth reading.