The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Allen Baum:

One problem with models as information filters: they usually decide early on as to which effects are first-order effects (that will make a difference to the outcome).

That makes implicit assumptions to ignore second/third order effects as being too small to affect the big picture
(and that they're independent, so that their cumulative effect is not all weighted in the same direction, and sum to something that is neglibile compared to a first-order effect).

Once those assumptions are set in stone, they are rarely re-examined, even if the model is being used in very different circumstances (which might be as simple as used sometime later than the original...) -- and they need to be.

Reardon Steel was a fake name for Steve Pearlman's company while it was in stealth mode - it was a fake name, to throw peole off the track. I worked about a block away at the time.

I should ask him if he's a libertarian.

Steve is best known as founder of WebTV (which he sold to Microsoft for a hefty chunk), but I knew him at Apple before that. He pissed off a lot of people there by doing something they told him was impossible - which made them have to follow through on their promises to manufacture and sell it if he finished it on schedule

RE: dead loads & incidental live loads.
A few years back (well, maybe 20?) when the Golden Gate bridge celebrated its 50th anniversary, they closed the bridge for the celebration & let people walk across on the roadbed.

That stopped when the bridge started visibly (very visibly) sagging, because it was completely packed with people -

The pictures of the sagging are a bit scary. People packed together weigh a lot more than vehicles packed together in teh same area. (Assuming they're not all circus clown vehicles, anyway)

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