Hey stranger,
In this episode, I explain how technical systems evolve towards their ideal state; a simple principle which helped to invent a light bulb that works on the moon.
If you prefer reading, you can find the transcript below.
Welcome to the daily recall show. I'm Vasili, your host. And this is the place where I share complex ideas I have learned and understood well, so that you get to think yourself smarter in just five minutes a day.
In today's episode, I'll be talking about the ideal state law, which is the principle behind how technical systems evolve and grow. It's useful in thinking about the world and thinking about problems.
So I'll kick off this one with a story. One day, a team of scientists had to launch a satellite to Venice. And the problem was that the satellite thing was 20 kilograms in weight. And it was full packed; you could not insert a gram of weight into this thing. And they basically had to insert into the satellite a device which was six kilograms. So that was a really hard problem to solve. And the guy who designed the satellite, he was like, that's impossible, right? How do you do that? Every gram is worth thousands of dollars and we can't get anything out of this thing.
The way they solved this problem is by decomposing the satellite into subparts and thinking, okay, are there any components in the satellite that we can replace with this gadget that we have to put in anyways? So by leveling up to the system level a little bit and outlining all the parts of the sattelite, they actually figured out that there is this thing called the balancing weight. It's like a kettlebell on a rope. And the function of the weight is that when the satellite is landing, it helps to balance it and keep the landing perfectly vertical.
So they actually thought that, wow, we could use this thing this gadget arm to perform this second function, not just the function of the gadget itself, but also to perform the function of the weight. And that's what they did; they actually made the gadget a bit heavier so that it could perform the function of the balancing weight in addition to the original function of the gadget.
And the idea behind this solution is called the ideal state law. It says that all technical systems evolve and transform towards their ideal state. And the ideal state of a technical system, any kind of a technical system, is when the function is being performed flawlessly, but the form itself is absent. That means that the best form actually is the one which is not present.
And it's such a simple idea, because the form that is not present but performs its function really well is the best form, right? Because it doesn't break. It doesn't cost anything. It requires no maintenance. And all these other reasons.
So when thinking about how systems evolve, it's very useful to keep this law of the ideal state in mind, because that's how you can identify the right trajectory to think towards. So that's the ideal state law.
And I will close today's episode with just one more story to give you an example of how to use this thing.
And the story is called the moon light bulb story. So a team of engineers in USSR back in 50s were designing a spaceship to the moon. So we're talking space topic here again. And the problem they faced designing this moon spaceship was that it's gotta have a really, really really powerful light bulb so that the guys who fly that thing could see things around on this dark moon. And all the light bulbs they tested broke because when you land a spaceship there is this overload. And all the light bulbs broke because the glass bulb which surrounds the spiral wasn't able to arm to overcome this kinds of overload.
And then they invited a guy to solve this problem. And the guy's thinking was driven by this ideal state law. So the guy decomposed the light bulb into components, and he started asking, what's in there? What's the purpose of this glass bulb thing that breaks? And the purpose of the glass bang is to keep the vacuum in the light bulb. And when he identified that, it was actually a very easy problem to solve, because then he was like, but why do we have to bring this vacuum to moon, if there is a lot of really good one laying around out there? So, it was such an easy problem to solve once he started asking the right questions which came through the knowledge of this principle; that all the systems developed towards their ideal technical state, which means formulas function when the function is performing with without any form out there.
And what they did, they invented a light bulb that had no glass thing surrounding the spiral. And it didn't work on Earth because our there is no vacuum here. But it wasn't needed here. So it worked and performed flawlessly on the moon.
And that is an example of how to solve problems using the ideal ideal state law of how technical systems develop.
Thank you guys very much for listening and watching and see you tomorrow.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
The Daily Recall #2 - The Ideal State Law