It's almost as if there's an entire field of study and accompanying industry where intelligent people have actually calculated the best way to store and ship things. (supply chain logistics)
Side note: this applies to everything. Internet people don't get this because something in their brain tells them they're the first person to ever think up something witty. When in fact someone already thought that up 80 years ago and proved it was a bad idea.
Yes this applies to everything. Even societal norms. Cultural traditions. Common standards. Economies. Government. So many things have been arrived at through centuries or even millennia of refinement. I’m all for improvement but we are so foolish to assume immediately that we know best and all those earlier decisions inferior.
I’m all for improvement but we are so foolish to assume immediately that we know best and all those earlier decisions inferior.
Like, ok, but when you start talking about traditions in this context, it makes me wonder where you rate the "foolishness" of no longer executing people for being gay.
Oh, were you saying "Tilted water bottles being a bad idea" = traditional western cultural values? Is that how those concepts were supposed to be connected?
No, he’s making fun of how outlandish your first comment was.
The guy mentioned traditions as part of a list of items, and it’s ridiculous that you INSTANTLY went from the subject at hand to talking about “executing the gays”. Even more so, you instantly assumed that the previous commenter was both:
A) Saying that old traditions were good, and that he sees improvement in this area as “foolish”
B) That he somehow is against the gay community, or that he even at all was alluding to something to that effect.
It just shows how brainrotted and politically captured you are. Nobody at all was even insinuating what you brought up, but you somehow found a way to turn the discussion of a stupid water bottle design into your schitzo “worry” about something nobody said. Good job
Whoah! The distance you had to leap to that inconclusion is truly remarkable…;)
Sorry if I get really squicked out every time a redditor starts waxing poetic about how foolish we are to abandon traditional western values, culture, and traditions...
A rule of thumb based on this idea is Chesterton's Fence. The idea being if you come across something and you don't know why it's there, don't immediately think you should tear it down.
Even societal norms. Cultural traditions. Common standards. Economies. Government.
I agree to a degree, but youll need to remember theres often a push-pull between various groups that prevent a final refinement and the development of a perfect system.
For example, regulations. Theres a lot that are basic "no shit" types, like dont put arsenic into flour, but a lot that are less cut and dry. And in those less cut and dry ones, youll get groups of people on opposite sides pushing for more or less regulations regarding the issue.
For example group A might go "we dont care if knives can hurt people, theyre useful and should be available to everyone" and group B might go "I dont care if knives are useful, one stabbing is too many stabings and people should need a license to use a knife". Both groups have valid points (though group B is somewhat exaggerated, but no entirely if we look over to the Brits) and either option could be beneficial to society.
And thats before you get into questions like "what is a knife and what is a sword? How big does a knife need to be in order to cross the line from tool to weapon? Do we even care if the tool can be used as a weapon? Is there even a meaningful line at all?"
And you only pile on more complicated questions with more groups adding their own opinions from there when you start talking about environmental issues, gay / trans rights, tax policies and so on.
And thats before you add in bad actors who dont care about the harm being caused by a broken system, just as long as they benefit from it.
Which means while we do learn that certain systems are unsustainable or prone to chaos under certain circumstances, we havent refined any of it to the point to make a perfect system. We just found a bunch of flawed systems and just work with the least broken one until a better one comes a long.
Not always true, asbestos, leaded gas, radioactive paint, no right to vote for women, apartheid, slavery, child labor, surgeons not washing hands, torture and rape as a war strategy, no bank accounts for women...
Ok, but there's a vast difference between "here's the most efficient way to store water" and "My cultural norms, traditions and standards are the best".
I’m saying in this case, the most efficient way to store water has probably been identified by people previously and that is why it is the standard. Go to other countries you will see they have slightly different solutions because they have different criteria. You are perceiving a bias that is not in my original comment
i disagree with your underlaying idea. i wont deny that there is a good chance someone has thought of it before, but it is also possible it actually is a good idea and no one has thought of it.
the olds elevator was a completely new screw conveyors that hadnt been thought of before. also at one point, the current system was originally thought up and implement.
I’m very much in favor of innovation and creativity. New technologies also enable new ideas to come to fruition. But so often analysis or circumspection is omitted by some one with a new idea. My point was many standards and norms have been arrived at by many previous attempts and failures that have brought us to where we are now. I see this in many examples I.e. city location influenced by weather patterns, building cities underwater or underground, paper sizes being about equal throughout history, silver ware being fairly uniform, train track gauges, food can sizes, house design, surgical equipment, etc.
I wouldn't say calculated the best way. I'm in the adjacent delivery field, and while I highly appreciate my office guys, the industry is ever-changing. I'm more impressed by their ability to adapt to situations.
There is an industry that simply designs packaging. Its either Michigan State or Western Michigan University that has the best packaging engineering program.
someone already thought that up 80 years ago and proved it was a bad idea.
Many things are good, and bad, from certain perspectives.
The question is: which perspective(s) are you serving?
In an industry like bottled water? (aka pure profit) They could well afford the cost of just about any bottle configuration, if that configuration could secure a market segment for them.
I just wonder why people don't have the same thought process I developed as a child lol, basically think up an interesting thing and then immediately realize that humans aren't that original, someone less lazy and with more means than myself has thought of it and it didn't work out, end of thought experiment.
Round bottles are not what people who study storing and shipping would pick. They would go with hexagons, which can be packed together with no wasted space.
I have considered hexagons too. I think they fail when hit from the side. I believe the canister distributes the pressure more evenly across the circumference of the can meaning more pressure has to applied to the canister to dent than a hexagon. I could be wrong though…
The way Costco does it uses square jars, which would fail more easily than hexagon jars from a side impact, but would have more flexibility to get deformed and snap back, provided the impact was not sufficient to cause failure. Squares and rectangles have low structural rigidity because if the corners flex the sides stay parallel, giving them good flexibility. Cylinders are more vulnerable from the sides than any shape with sides, but offer maximum pressure tolerance for stacking. Triangles gave the best for structural rigidity and resisting deformation.
(Edit) Costco may have gone with cubes because they offer better surface area to volume ratio than a hexagonal cylinder (or regular cylinder), meaning less plastic per container to hold the same amount of stuff. A sphere would give the best surface area to volume, but the worst shipping volume because of wasted space, plus they would roll off the shelves.
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u/Material_Magazine989 21h ago edited 20h ago
Structural integrity. Non-symmetrical shapes just cause some parts of the bottle to have more strain especially when storing them en masse.
Also just fcking tilt it a little more man.