YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian Potter

lines on the record: 160
first: 2022-10-27
most recent: 2022-10-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, I do some work for the Institute for Progress, which is a think tank designed to advance industrial progress and progress studies ideas more generally. So you should check them out as well.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that's a good question. There's a lot of, yeah, I think there's a lot of startups that are doing really interesting stuff. Not just in software, but like a lot of interest in building technology stuff, a lot of, you know, there's a lot of green building stuff that has worked that has worked out that is being developed, folks working on like low carbon concrete. There's like low carbon steels. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff doing like construction robotics, a lot of like prefab stuff. Startup world is really kind of trying to start to eat the construction world and there's like a lot of opportunities there. I do very broadly I would say I see a lot of innovation happening. So I think that's a good place to sort of look and see what's going on.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Caltech, and then you had an internship that's Skidmore, Owen Merrill, or whatever. That's going to open quite a few doors for you. Amazingly happy with that answer, I do think that it is true. Yeah, another way would be just to be to try to come in from a more oblique angle, focus on software and stuff like that, and then work at one of the, you know, because there's so many new more startups and stuff that are now tackling the construction space. They're increasingly need of software developers and stuff like that. That would be probably a lower risk way to do it because it's probably, you know, you don't need to necessarily go to a fancy school to be a software developer. And then if it doesn't work out, you can just go get a job at a fan company and make $600,000 a year. Yeah, look and see how the startups in the space are changing and growing. I think by the time some folks got out, the build-in space might be.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel sort of gross giving this answer because in general, go to a good engineering school perpetuating the college industrial complex. But people do really care about that, especially like in sort of the fields of building engineering that I'm more familiar with. They do care about that quite a bit. I went to a reasonably good engineering school and that probably opened doors for me that it would not have otherwise so yeah go to a good engineering school go to like a lot of like the status indicators that are like very obvious like go to a good engineering school and go to like a you know a top tier firm or whatever that does kind of matter uh people do pay attention to those things i don't you know matter quote unquote uh it matters in the sense that people pay attention to those things in like the building development world and then if you you know if you went to mit”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a good question. I don't have a super good answer to that. I fell into it very much on accident. I spent the very large chunk of my career just doing pretty standard work a day engineering type stuff. And then I sort of fell ass backwards into a job at a construction startup. And then that has sort of led me to other places. I guess, yeah, if you're an engineer, like go to a good”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But perhaps that's part of the story. It's like a fragment or whatever. But I think it would be very easy to over index. And I think there's a lot of ways that's not true.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's probably something to that in like where you go to architecture school and architecture school is like adjacent to art school right and you learn like you know how design buildings or whatever but you also learn like a specific way of looking and thinking at them about them and that like filters down into like how you design your building something like that but i think architects are you know again they are competing in a marketplace and the vast majority of them who are not star architects are basically having to deliver that buildings that owners like and like and are happy with and if they don't do that they're gonna go out of business i think i think most architects you will talk to will basically say yeah if i don't give the owner like a building that he's happy with i am not doing my job correctly and they're definitely you know they're being hired for like there's among many other things their like sense of taste right”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of a sudden, you had technology that could like. Easily duplicate or make any sort of art possible, right? Did that usher in a new era of way better 2D aesthetics? I don't necessarily think that it did, right? So I think if you could all of a sudden build any sort of shape that you want cheaply and easily, it's not obvious to me that all of a sudden, okay, now we can get our like really cool things. I'm sure you would see a lot of interesting experiments on the margin or whatever, but it's not obvious to me that the standard way of building, in some ways it might become even less interesting, right?”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Technology they could like usurp the sort of standard palette we have, you know, unless it's like a dramatic development, it's like material science or whatever where somebody finds some way of building something that's way cheaper and gives you like a way more options than you add before like that's what like steel and then like concrete you right all of a sudden you could build things in ways that you couldn't do it before steel because you could use so much less structure to build iron concrete because it was like liquid so you could make it you could all of a sudden make any shape that you want and that's when you get all these like really cool interesting shells and you know really ornate concrete domes and stuff like that which of course we also don't build anymore so I don't see like an obvious like technology to kind of replace that and then I guess you know the other thing is like did the you know did the when”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a good question. There's a lot of enthusiasm. Some of it is like architecture, and so we'll see how well it actually gets adapted. But for more timber, large tall buildings made a heavy timber element. I don't know if that will get partially it's like an aesthetic thing, partially it's the carbon from a carbon perspective, right? It's using a lot of timber versus steel or concrete is like way, way better on that calculus. And it does kind of look nice. A lot of these tech companies are building these ornate timber offices and stuff like that. That's like one trend. And then kind of, yeah, I kind of, there's not like an obvious.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In general, you want your building to shed water and direct it away from the house as possible. If you have a lot of little nooks and crannies and ornamentation stuff for water to collect, that's pretty bad from a durability perspective. I would be careful not to index over index on that because obviously you can build you can and people did build like extremely durable beautiful masonry brick buildings, right? It's not like that makes it impossible, but it is something to like consider that it does on the margin probably make your maintenance costs go up.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ornamentation all over your house or whatever. On the inside, there's just lots and lots of stuff to like dust and keep clean or whatever, which again comes back to cause disease. If you have servants to do that for you, it's fine. But if you don't have servants, it creates a lot of extra work for you. Same on the exterior, but then also there is the issue that”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I mean What kind of makes me think of? And I think I read some of the comments on this post. And I think one of the people mentioned that. But the Victorian style of house basically came about because of mass production methods, which made really ornate wood decorations to, you know, you could make those really, really cheaply, just like throw just cranked out in some milli machine in a factory somewhere, and then you could just buy the staple to your house or whatever. And so that style is basically a function of technology making that cheaper. And then, of course, you don't, you know, that was in style for a while, not in style anymore. I'm, you know, shifting fans of aesthetics, but also I think part of it is that, and this is, I think more broadly applicable, it's actually kind of a hassle to have all this like.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“called the international style. And you see like early international style skyscrapers, they were actually quite expensive, more expensive than the traditional way of building. But again, the people who were building it really liked the aesthetic. And again, it gave you some other options in terms of light on the inside or whatever. So they decided that it was worth it. So I think, yeah, that's definitely probably part of the story, but again, it's, I think definitely doesn't seem like it can be all of it.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of these things are kind of built in a way that make buildings a lot of this minimalist ale is actually quite expensive to do. A glass curtain wall is actually really expensive to build on a building because it lets in so much, because glass is just expensive by itself and because it lets in so much light and it gets so hot and you need so much more expensive mechanical system to keep it cool. But you've talked to architects like, why do the owners love these glass curtain walls? It seems like, especially for now where everyone is like really concerned about like climate change and greenhouse emissions of your whatever it is you're building people like yeah they you know they just really owners just really love this all glass look and they're willing to sort of pay extra to get it and if you look like the very early this is this sort of style of construction where you just have a big glass facade it's called for like a skyscraper versus”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like 1,300 years or something like that. So it's using like 1,300 year old construction techniques, so like, you know, fast roofs and particular woodworking methods or whatever. And it's now quite difficult for them to find a lot of these skills, right? There's just not that many roof thatchers around anymore. Again, I can imagine that it was some sort of a similar cycle with masonry. I don't think that's the whole story because a lot of these like”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“ornate masonry work in the US is probably really difficult to even find them. I'm sure they exist, but it's probably not trivial. And if you're have your schedule you're trying to meet, it's not super straightforward. An interesting example of this is, I can't remember if we talked about this in Part 1 or not, but the Isijinu Temple in Japan. Is this Tuple complex that they've been like, it gets like torn down and rebuilt every 20 years and they've been doing... They've been doing this for.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely got to be part of the story, right? I mean, construction, as we know, has not really gotten any cheaper, but it also hasn't gotten more expensive, right? Like a lot of this other basically things that are pure labor, like other services, right? Like medical care, education, stuff like that, which has gotten more expensive. And part of that is probably because we've found ways to pull labor out of the process. So construction only rises at the rate of inflation instead of faster than the rate of inflation. And yeah, so like super labor and things of things like masonry, that just, you know, gets done anymore. And there's probably a vicious cycle there where you hire less of it and so there's fewer masons available. And so they get more expensive and the skill gets more scarce. And now it's to hire someone to do like really.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you have to counter a signal by like a very simple clothing. You know, maybe there's something to that, but that's like a different thing than like, why are things ugly in general, right?”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think that's true to like some extent. This is one of the difficulties having a conversation like that, is that there's so many degrees of freedom. It's hard to pin down what specifically you're talking about, what class of things you're specifically talking about. Like if you're talking about, you know, if you look at like an example from fashions, if you look at streetwear or something like that, if you just Google streetwear or something like that, you will find a ton of pictures of like really sort of quite ornate interesting clothing that's not, you know, there will be some stuff that's minimalist, but there will be a lot that's like not necessarily minimalist at all. So, yeah, I guess in some way I disagree with the premise. I mean, if you're talking about some elite counter signaling thing, like, you know, it's so easy and cheap to make like...”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think, again, it comes back to a little bit about a question of aesthetic style and just like, do people want a lot of ornamentation and, you know, fundamental attractiveness? Because again, people do focus a lot on making these spaces attractive. And a lot of times they do that by having big and nice open, a lot of natural light and a cool, you know, glass staircase or whatever that goes from here to there. People like they knew, you know, somebody pointed to the new Google headquarters, not I don't know how new it is, but on the on the newer side, basically it's like, yeah, this big giant, like, you know, dome type thing with a lot of structural detail visible and a lot of, yeah, just lots of light coming into this big giant open space, a lot of like interesting staircases and kind of stuff like that. So in some extent, it's just like a style of less whole ornamentation necessarily than bad.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Space for some given class of market that they're trying to attack, right? They're not in the business of making fancy architecture. Same if you're buying a single family home, right? You come in with blank walls and you put up all your different pictures that you want and different decorations and paint it however you want and add your funky wallpaper or whatever. And then when you move, you can take all that stuff out. The next person can come in and put everything that they want. So it's just, I think to some extent you see like a decoupling of the aesthetic design from the building itself.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, again, good question. I think for the most part, a developer is Very broadly speaking, and again, I'm not an enveloper, so this is, I'm going to muddle my way through as best I can. They're basically building this space to rent out, right? Or to sell to somebody else. So they're going to creating a, a lot of times it's development that's called like Shell and Core, which I think I'm using that correctly, but where they basically don't even finish the inside. It's all just raw studs and everything like that. And some in the tenant comes in and does whatever they want to the space. I see. But they're basically in the business of creating usable.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, basically, if you have a glass, you know, a big glass wall as your exterior building, right? If you don't have air conditioning, that thing is just going to cook whenever it gets hot out, it's going to basically be like a greenhouse. So you basically need air conditioning. Sort of make that habitable. You see this with like single family homes too, where when air conditioning started to become popular and installed by default, all of a sudden they started building these houses with like these big giant picture windows, which they didn't have before, which people like, right? Again, this makes a nice inside space. And if you're going to be inside, that's the part you want to focus on. But again, it basically is predicated on having air conditioning to control the climate.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beautiful at all, or like parking lots and stuff like that. So I think that's probably true on some margin. I would be surprised if it's like, you know, this is the one thing we need to fix to untangle this problem.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I bet that's like it's true. Tension in real estate, right? Is that any property you have has a lot has like a lot of externalities and influence the value of everything around it. So like it's this big game of negotiate any given thing you build is like a big negotiation between you and everything in the immediate area and that's why things like zoning and stuff like that exists in the first place, even if it's not necessarily implemented and especially the way that people think is good. I think it's probably a little bit easy to over index on that. I would it would not surprise me if like you know it's like okay we'll build this in like a really beautiful old building. It's like no, it's still gonna be a giant build and it's still gonna mess up my traffic it's still gonna a bunch of renters that are gonna come in and reduce my property values you know you see a lot of these like historical preservation things want to preserve things like old gas stations and laundry mats and things that are like not”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that to some extent applies a little bit more generally if you look at like, you know, if you look at an HGTV remodel or something like that, everybody wants to create a big giant open concept floor plan or whatever with all the walls blown out and lots of natural light coming in everywhere. So, I mean, to some extent, it's just like the technology, it seems like it's maybe a case of the technology evolved such that you can create this nicer interior space to some extent that perhaps came at the expense of like having a lot of really ornate decoration on the top. On the outside, not on the top, but the outside. And if you're building a building, it makes sense to optimize the inside at the extent of the outside because that's what is actually using.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you go farther back, there was a glass making process invented in the 1950s, 1960s called the float glass process, which made it a lot, you could basically make really high quality glass for like way, way, way cheaper than it was possible to previously. And so that air conditioning and stuff like that, it basically, and then advances in like structural design, increased use of steel, stuff like that. It basically became a lot more possible to just have your building as a big giant slab of glass and have a lot of natural light and a lot of openness on the inside. And that creates kind of a nice experience if you're actually in the building.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one reason that that is true is because it may not be super interesting from the outside, but if you're on like the inside of a building, it actually is, you actually kind of want a whole lot of glass. Like it's really nice to have a large open space to walk through and to have like a lot of natural light that didn't really, that wasn't really, that was very hard to do prior to like, you know, the mid-20th century because for a couple reasons. One is because buildings weren't really air conditioned before that. And another one is like it was really very, very, you know, to have big expanse of glass. It's still expensive, but it was like even more expensive.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I guess to clarify what I was talking about for that, I don't think new buildings necessarily use less material in a sense. I just think it's they have an aesthetic that's more minimalist and streamlined and without a lot of extra decoration. I think the complaint is like, oh, all building is a big cylinder of glass or a rectangle of glass or like that.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I guess my point is that traditional, a lot of interesting impressive spaces were just focus on creating this big indoor, impressive, large span space and using the plane with the light and stuff to do that. And that's been common in people buildings that people think are impressive. And you still see that today. Architects still do that a lot, right? Using big open areas with a lot of glass everywhere is kind of a tool in their tool belt to kind of do that to some extent.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of architecture is kind of focused on. And that's been pretty common throughout history, right? Like cathedrals, it's like they're trying to create these big impressive spaces using, you know, with using light and stuff to create, you know, this impressive space with like the pantheon. It's like the same thing. It's like creating this big, open, impressive space. And so I think it's really, you know, you kind of want to separate out to some extent the question of why is it ugly, which I'm not necessarily agree with and why does it not have so much, why does that have so much less ornamentation, which I think is a little bit more defensible?”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Space is what they're kind of really going for. A good example of this building I think is interesting is if you look at like the new terminal for the Portland Airport which has this big giant mass timber roof which is a way of building these big large span structures but it's really neat and kind of interesting and that's like a lot of what kind of you see these”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“because they're better. That's obviously not what I actually think, but just again a little bit where I'm coming from, you want to like separate out the question a little bit. I think it's more a question of why do modern buildings have less ornamentation, not necessarily that they're like ugly per se. I think there's like a really lot of really beautiful modern architecture and kind of what a lot of what it sort of seems to focus on, and again, an architect would be a better person to ask about this, but I will sort of muddle my way through using like light and space and form to like create these big, interesting open big, impressive, open spaces that create a lot of just interesting shapes and like this big expanse.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly in the shape that it needs to be to resist the forces on it. And so to some extent, it's to me it's like you're asking, you know, why did aesthetics change from worst aesthetics to better aesthetics?”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, I have a few thoughts on this. I don't know if I have an answer to the actual question, but I can sort of add some context, I think. A, I'm not necessarily the best person to ask on this, a better person to ask on it, would A, be an architect who can talk about how the design and taste has evolved over the course of the 20th and 19th century and stuff like that. But also in general, I don't have like a huge amount of opinion on aesthetics and to the extent that I do, I do tend to favor the more simple, minimalist, clean lines. Like one of my favorite pieces of construction is this bridge called Salgamitobil, which is built in, I think, Switzerland. It's the banner that's on my Twitter account. And it's exactly this. It's like this really simple, just really tiny curve of concrete that's like just...”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up front. So it's not surprising to me that it doesn't exist. But I do think that in general teams, people are really very interested in understanding how things work. And if you can explain how something works, even if it seems like a fairy niche topic, you can get quite a bit of attention to doing so. So for anybody who works in manufacturing or like that, I think you would see you would find quite a bit of success if you started writing things about how it functions.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Overly valuable resources. But there's no general source of available information for how any of that works. So yeah, I just think documentation of how the civilization machine functions is just wildly under invested in, which I guess is true for documentation in general, right? Like nobody wants to do that because the payoffs are far in the future and uncertain and the costs are.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“isn't written down anywhere or isn't written down anywhere accessible and you know you see kind of people share like the same small number of resources for how these things work over and over again I asked a few people who I thought would know about it like is there any like book written that actually explains like what it is like to build something get something built in China or like what like building things in China are actually like and they're all like no I don't know any I don't know any source that exists there's a few blogs like describe like their particular experiences which again end up being like”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody really knows how it works and mostly how it works is like completely undocumented and does not exist in written information anywhere and the information that is written down is like maybe in one particular company's shared drive or something like that. Like there's no, the instructions were built in like a Toyota or something don't exist in any way, shape or form. And it might be very hard to kind of recreate that if you needed to. But yeah, just in general, I would like to see somebody do something similar for like manufacturing just in general, especially now because so much of that manufacturing US knowledge has been lost has moved over to China and other places where labor is cheaper. There's just so much technology that's been gone and just how things that get built and manufactured that”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, good question. Yeah, I feel like there's so much about this. I was complaining to study the other day that I think a very underrated problem is just this giant civilizational machine that takes in raw materials and spits out finished goods and services and high quality of life.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I've heard that as well. I'm not an expert in economic history in some drive. Trying to avoid comment things that I know very, very little about. And I guess the other factor is just that now as sort of venture capital expands its tentacles into other industries, you're seeing a lot more effort on developing sort of solutions for the built environment. So to some, you know, you're seeing work venture capital money flow into the space. So perhaps that will counteract to some extent. I don't know”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is sort of a need, and so we developed a lot of labor saving machinery, the American system of manufacturing and things like that. Yeah, I'm a little bit less worried about that, like the scale paper side, but I could see it definitely taking having sort of effects like that on the sort of other sides of the industry.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saw a lot of these people leave the labor force during the Great Recession and then not really come back and people aren't just entering it at the rates that they need to. I think the average age of a construction worker is something we're in the 40s or perhaps 50s. It's like very, very high. And so people are constantly complaining, it's like, ah, I can't get enough labor. There's not enough workers or whatever like that. But of course, this also is just going to push incentivize finding ways to basically get these buildings built using less labor. I'm a little bit less worried about potential negative effects from that. I mean, there's a lot of historical examples of labor constraints developing into labor saving inventions and things like that. The history of the US is like that, right? Where we had like a real not nearly enough labor as they...”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“salaries for engineers that actually kind of risen quite a bit. A similar risk is, and people are in construction are complaining about this constantly, is just the innovat unavailability of skilled labor where, you know, like we talked about, like being able to do a lot of these tasks requires skilled expertise and able to do.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, you know, using WordPref or using Kit of Parts assemblies and things like that. So theoretically, to some extent, it is self-correcting. I guess the risk for that is If you scream off the top 20% of most talented people or whatever, does that just fundamentally handicap what your industry is kind of capable of doing? Or does it just, you know, do your incentives kind of push the other way and you try to even lower your quality even more? I feel like I've heard some people make complaints to this effect with like semiconductor research, how like semiconductor engineering is actually not especially well paid and it is relatively easy for like semiconductor engineers to go get jobs working in software development. And so you see sort of a brain from that. Yeah, interestingly. I think it actually may be correcting to some extent with engineers last time I looked them a little bit out of the engineering game, but”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three or four times as much a fang company instead of doing this like fairly thankless work, frankly. Yeah, so I think it's very likely to be an issue. In some sense, it's theoretically self-correcting, right, to the extent of where if you're, if the labor moves out of the field and it then gets more expensive, the incentives around it change a little bit and you're forced to find ways of building things with less labor requirements or where you can spread your labor development over a larger volume output. So arguably, you know, if the engineers are leaving and engineers are getting more expensive or whatever, you're going to basically find a way like, all right, we need to get more that's going to push you towards figuring out how to spread your engineering effort over a larger construction volume, which would”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, I do think that's almost definitely happening. I mean, this was my constant opinion when I was working as an engineer, especially when I was managing younger engineers, right, who are getting paid comparatively little. And I would always think I was always on the verge of telling them, there's like, why don't you just go learn how to code and go make.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Extra analysis due to risk aversion from these federal agencies, the laws around NEPA actually say that your impact statement should really not be longer than 150 pages except in extreme circumstances. But the average environmental impact statement is now like 660 pages or something like that. So people are already like going more than what the law says they should do just out of risk aversion. So if you don't like fix the incentives that are causing this risk aversion, your solution will not work.”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“period of two weeks in the spring and we didn't have time to, you know, the time period was up before that happens. Then the court, which is a thing that happens in Nepha, apparently is one of the reasons why these take multiple years, because if you're observing some species or whatever, you maybe need an entire year to actually observe it. But if you fail to look at this plant when it was during the flowering season, you don't know if it's actually there. And so you haven't considered the impacts on the potentially endangered species or whatever. And the court would say, yeah, you did not look hard enough at this. So go back and do it again. So you see that mentioned quite a few times that timeline caps could either easily backfire by just increasing the amount of increasing susceptible litigation, which would just make these things take longer than they already do. Already you see a lot of like...”
2022-10-27 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Brian Potter - Future of Construction, Ugly Modernism, & Environmental Review · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source