by Fred Steinhauser, OMICRON electronics GmbH, Austria
Adding something to an existing solution is a human reflex. This disposition lures us to favor an additive option when we want to improve or fix a system.
Complexity is insidious, it often creeps in unnoticed. I have already touched upon this when I wrote in this column about the desire for multifunctional devices.
The belief in “more must be better” makes us justify augmentations of existing solutions, up to a level where we eventually call them bloated.
Recently I learned that this behavior belongs to a known psychological pattern called additive bias, a trend embedded in us humans to improve things by adding something to a matter which seems to be not optimal yet.
According to Wikipedia, additive bias is a cognitive urge or tendency of human beings facing problems to add resources instead of taking or subtracting. We do this unconsciously, without questioning it. But once you know this, countless examples for this catch your eye.
It is not always about augmenting something with hardware or software to harvest the often-counterproductive effects of the additive bias. The use of the famous Enigma encryption device was complicated by additional rules for placing the rotors and using the plugboard that did not come from the creators of the machine. One could assume an authoritarian mindset that restrictions will make things better. Bottom line, some of these rules allowed the codebreakers to take shortcuts and enabled faster deciphering of the messages.
A few things remained unmolested by the additive bias because there was no problem to be tackled.
One example is the classical mouse trap. It is highly optimized and only dedicated to one specific purpose. No need to improve or fix it, unless requirements for more ethical ways of removing the pest come up. The term “better mouse trap” is a metaphor for adding things which are not necessary.
For engineers, whose job is to create solutions for problems, it might be most enlightening to look at cases where things became better by leaving something away.
During the pandemic I restored a vintage electronic instrument from the 1970s. It contained several trimming potentiometers to compensate for the tolerance of the adjacent resistors. Most of them had gone bad. Instead of replacing them with new and better trumpets, I eliminated them and used precisely selected resistors instead. Now, the device is better than new, with less parts, and most of all, without those which are most likely to deteriorate over time. Always remember: the best part is no part.
Two examples for defeating the additive bias come from the aviation industry. The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk military jet was designed to be based on aircraft carriers. To save space, carrier capable aircraft typically have foldable wingtips.
Although this is well mastered technique, it adds weight, complexity and risk to the plane. But the A-4 was designed so compactly that foldable wingtips offered no gain, so the construction was significantly simplified by a fixed wing design. Almost 3000 A-4s were built since 1954 and a few of them are still in use today.
When looking at a Boeing 737 airliner in flight from underneath, you can see the wheels of the main landing gear retracted into the fuselage but not covered by landing gear doors. The aerodynamic impact of the exposed wheels is so insignificant that it was not worth adding the efforts for covering them.
The examples mentioned above show that thorough engineering does defeat the additive bias. We should always be aware of our inherent vulnerability for not falling into this trap. So, knowing about this may guide us to create simpler solutions. Less is more.
Biography:
Fred Steinhauser studied Electrical Engineering at the Vienna University of Technology, where he obtained his diploma in 1986 and received a Dr. of Technical Sciences in 1991. He joined OMICRON and worked on several aspects of testing power system protection. Since 2000 he worked as a product manager with a focus on power utility communication. Since 2014 he is active within the Power Utility Communication business of OMICRON, focusing on Digital Substations and serving as an IEC 61850 expert. Fred is a member of WG10 in the TC57 of the IEC and contributes to IEC 61850. He is one of the main authors of the UCA Implementation Guideline for Sampled Values (9-2LE). Within TC95, he contributes to IEC 61850 related topics. As a member of CIGRÉ he is active within the scope of SC D2 and SC B5. He also contributed to the synchrophasor standard IEEE C37.118.
