
Why I stopped using the phrase “This is not rocket science.” - pavanlimo
http://anjaligupta.com/2012/07/26/this-is-not-rocket-science/
======
jerf
Rocket science is hard because the slightest error will trash your multi-
billion-dollar mission. See Feynman and the O-Rings, for instance. Ironically,
social science would be easier if it was that rigid. What makes it hard is
that even very bad models seem to sort of explain some things, sometimes, or
make predictions that come true _despite_ the model being blindingly wrong and
stupid, instead of blowing up badly. And a bit more controversially, it
doesn't help that social science's "blowups" can be a lot more subtle, and
frequently actively shuffled under the carpet. Sometimes it seems like a bad
idea in economics or social science can't be discarded until it has completely
destroyed an entire civilization, and even then some of them keep popping
up... of course, there's little agreement on exactly which ideas those are.

~~~
clarkmoody
Add to this the fact that those who champion certain social science theories
at the expense of other theories can never _really_ be proven wrong. Physics,
math, and engineering on the other hand can be proven -- at least insofar as
the airplane flies, the bridge doesn't collapse, etc.

In the most recent American political debate, we had two candidates describing
different political philosophies for the role of government and the future of
this country. Notice that instead of attempting to judge those positions, the
media commentary simply "scored" the candidates on debate points and "gotcha"
moments, assigning a "winner" based upon polls and these imaginary points.

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Jun8
"Rocket science" _was_ esoteric and super-complex, at least to the educated
masses in the 40s and 50s when this phrase seemed to be coined
(<http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/166731?print>). Think secret
German technology, V2s, von Neumann, the space race, etc. Nowadays we tend to
regard the complex Curiosity landing as ordinary.

But the more important point is: It's never pointed in the OP _why_ rocket
science is simpler than social problems, e.g. solving world hunger (didn't
watch the linked TED talk, though). I think that the reason is that most
social problems are "Wicked Problems"
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem>). The most important difference
between a problems such as solving religious extremism and putting a satellite
in orbit (or nuclear fusion or brain surgery) is that in the latter case you
can isolate affecting factors and study them in (relative) isolation and sub-
problems are well-defined and have well-defined answers, at least compared to
social problems.

------
pja
Rockets used to be hard. Really hard: they mostly blew up, especially when the
various agencies were trying all sorts of weird and wonderful fuel / oxidiser
combinations in the search for the best possible specific impulse. See the
book "Ignition!" by John D.Clark for some of the details.

Interestingly, poking Google's ngram search suggests that whilst the phrase
"rocket science" saw a little use around 1900 (I've no idea why: HG Wells?)
and some use around the 1940s and 1960s, the phrase "not rocket science" is a
far more recent coinage & only appears in the text corpus from the 90s
onwards:

[http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=not+rocket+scie...](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=not+rocket+science%2C+rocket+science&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=2)

~~~
DennisP
That's the second time recently I've seen that book mentioned. The first was
in a couple reddit comments, with high praise.

I wish the cheapest price on amazon wasn't $229.97.

~~~
pja
Ridiculous isn't it? A little searching will lead you to a pdf if you're
willing to channel your inner pirate.

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DennisP
The rocket always lands as predicted? He didn't pay much attention to the
Space Shuttle accidents, did he?

Perhaps he's referring to ballistics. Rocket science generally refers to
designing the rockets, which to this day sometimes blow up, lose engines,
spiral off course, and suffer various other catastrophes.

~~~
tomrod
* blog refers to husband--should it be a "she"?

~~~
cryptoz
Men can have husbands, too, you know.

~~~
tomrod
Percentages are small, and the name was not male. See further comments.

------
xradionut
I believe the author of the article misses the mark on many situations where
the expression is used.

In the technical domain, when my colleagues or I use the phrase, it's usually
in disdainful reference to an inane request or situation where someone can't
accomplish or learn a very basic task that they should know due to their lack
of effort or attitude.

Example 1: "The project manager needs help in formatting worksheets in Excel.
It's not rocket science."

Example 2: "The client's network admin can't figure out how to open a file
with a .zip extension. It's not rocket science."

------
StavrosK
It's odd to me that everyone comments on the phrase "rocket science", when
hindsight bias is a much meatier subject to discuss. I've learnt (by reading
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality[1]) that hindsight bias is
pervasive, yet easy to get rid of.

Whenever you find that something is common sense, reverse the outcome and see
if it's still common sense or not. If you find both cases equally (very)
likely, then you've just fallen prey to hindsight bias. Here's an excellent
post about it: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/>

Something can't be common sense both ways. If one solution is obviously
extremely likely, all the others must be equally unlikely.

[1] <http://hpmor.com/> It's a fantastic Harry Potter fanfiction novel, around
1500 pages and just amazing. If you've liked the original series, you'll love
this. I read this before reading Harry Potter, and now the latter seems
childish. Definitely recommended.

------
jj00nathan
I disagree with OP. I think the phrase "rocket science" is still valid as a
stand-in for the performance of a complicated task with high accuracy. In
terms of the effort required to create a useful prediction, I agree that many
things are more complicated than rocket science (often by virtue of being
intractable). However, in almost all of these things success is not as highly
correlated with the performance of some mental/engineering feat. If a rocket
correctly performs a non-trivial task (i.e. gets to a specific
orbit/planet/location), we know with certainty that the rocket scientist
created a valid physical model and performed difficult calculations on it with
high accuracy (ditto for other parts of the engineering). Testing rockets is
expensive and the likelihood of making one that works by trial-and-error is
zero (I'm referring to rockets on the scale that put satellites into orbit,
launch probes thorough the solar system, etc). In comparison, common wisdom
holds that startups usually launch with poor product/market fit and pivot
until they find something that works. Eventual success doesn't correspond
nearly as well to the performance of mental acrobatics.

Don't get me wrong, both tasks are difficult, require "guts", and so on. But I
think a direct comparison of the difficulty is disingenuous. To me, "This
isn't rocket science" doesn't mean "this is easy", it means "we should be able
to eventually succeed by trial&error".

@pja: your observation that "not rocket science" only became popular in the
90s jibes well with associating "rocket science" with "low margin for error",
as challenger exploded in 1986.

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arctangent
I've always preferred to use "rocket surgery".

ThinkGeek have a relevant t-shirt: <http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ea8c/>

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lorenzfx
I never understood this idiom; to me, 'rocket science' seems to be a fairly
well understood issue compared to i.e. the (human) brain.

~~~
Jtsummers
There are similar idioms about brain surgery and brain surgeons. It's been
around for a while, since the time when rockets did blow up with a bit more
regularity. Now it's just a thing people say without considering whether it's
an accurate expression or not.

~~~
jacquesm
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I>

------
SODaniel
I have personally always found that the phrase "It's not rocket surgery" gives
a deeper and more wide-spanning explanation of the issue.

~~~
oinksoft
I place "it's not rocket surgery" in the same class as "redonkulous" ...
mildly clever the first time or two I heard it.

~~~
SODaniel
That's redonkulous, rocket surgery is timeless.

------
JimmaDaRustla
I like saying "We're not landing a rover on Mars."

------
nhebb
And I never use the Edmund Burke quote, _"Those who don't know history are
destined to repeat it"_. I've never liked that phrase because it's overly
simplistic. The vagaries of human nature and the shear number of variables
that influence world events are much to complex to model as a simple _"speedy
thing goes in, speedy thing comes out"_ equation.

------
TeMPOraL
I never liked this phrase; my friend & I (as probably many other HN'ers) were
building small solid-state fuel rockets at the age of 15. There's nothing
inherently difficult in the _basics_ of rocket science and rocket engineering.
Frankly, I find cooking more difficult than making a solid rocket motor land
at my neighbour's backyard.

~~~
jacquesm
You can't compare toy rockets with real rockets any more than you can compare
toy trains with real trains.

~~~
TeMPOraL
No, but I think people see rockets as magic they aren't.

I think toy trains and real trains scale differently than "toy rockets". A
home-made SRM is a more powerful version of fireworks SRMs, and then there's a
thin line between home-made SRM design and things you could stack on car or
helicopter to fire at things. Not every rocket is a space rocket, and
depending on size and cost tradeoffs required, you get more and more
complicated designs, creating a spectrum from a home-made 1km rocket to Falcon
9 & stuff.

I'd say that the real problem with rockets is not that they're inherently
magical/difficult, but dangerous and costly to develop. We can say a lot about
great engineering that went into things like fuel, nozzles, fins, etc. etd.
but the same if not more engineering went into internal combustion engines,
and I don't see people saying "it's combustion engine science".

------
delinka
Because it trivializes the current problem. Some everyday things are as
important as getting your rocket built correctly. Like driving.

Baking isn't rocket science, but knowing about food allergies and proper
preparation and substitutes can save someone's life.

Also: "It's not rocket science. You just have to... Actually, I guess it is
rocket science. No fuel rods, Sheen."

------
denzil_correa
Duncan Watts has a book titled __Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the
Answer __Very good and interesting read.

[http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Is-Obvious-Once-
Answer/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Is-Obvious-Once-
Answer/dp/0385531680)

------
tomrod
As an economist, I salute this post. While common sense will get a person far
in life, strategic decision making is a hard process to model.

~~~
exolab
That is probably the reason new models are en vogue every other decade.

~~~
tomrod
Not quite. Models advance as their conclusions are shown to not hold in
reality.

You may be thinking about macroeconomics, in the which there seems to be a fad
cycle of models, and a hyped up difference of assumptions. I assure you
macroeconomics doesn't actually have a fad cycle.

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tehwalrus
this article includes the phrase "it turns out common sense is [often] wrong."

when people collectively understand this sentence, politics will stop being
such a hard problem. I'm not sure this will ever happen, sadly.

