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It perplexes me that there are HN'ers who do not understand the risks involved. I can understand that the passengers involved do not have an alternative that en

It perplexes me that there are HN'ers who do not understand the risks involved. I can understand that the passengers involved do not have an alternative that ensures their short term livelihood and may not be aware of the risks. But seeing some of the HN'ers, who one would assume have a high school understanding of physics, have the same careless attitude is surprising.

rwc 10y ago
They're just hacking rigid and outdated laws about transportation. Pakistan International is the Uber of the skies!
- FabHK 10y ago
  nice one :-)
alkonaut 10y ago
It makes a very unlikely event (crash) slightly more likely, and it makes the consequences of slightly less rare events (heavy turbulence, diversion, emergency landing...) worse. There is very high chance that it makes no difference to anyone at all. That's why it's seen as a "no big deal". I when something is VERY unlikely making it even ten times more likely doesn't matter to people's perception of risk.
- alexvoda 10y ago
  It is hard to say how unlikely it is. A plane crash may be unlikely globally but may be more likely among the planes of an airline that considers this acceptable. Likewise, a drunk driver is more likely to cause an accident than the average driver. And as I was saying, I understand this attitude from the passengers. For them the risk of a crash may be severe but highly unlikely and in comparison to the risk of loosing their job acceptable. But I would have expected the average HN commenter to recognize the just like the risk is different for different types of drivers (and their cars due to maintenance) , the same applies to planes. So those less rare events may be more likely than the average. So making some events (and their consequences), that may already be more likely than the average for them, a number of times more likely is bad. Than again the average is just as uninformative a statistical indicator for HN commenters as it is for drivers and planes. This makes me think, when someone talks about something they perceive as the average of something do they perceive the median, the mode or actually indeed the mean(average)? There is a case to made that we actually perceive the mode (value that appears most often) instead of the mean.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    I agree, and what would worry me about seeing passengers in the aisle wouldn't be the risk of people bouncing around or fuel running low, but the worry of "what other things are seen as not very imortant by the airline I'm flying?". Being sloppy with crew rest, sobriety, maintenance schedules, would make me much more nervous - and the people in the aisle might indicate a bad attitude.
mozumder 10y ago
> It perplexes me that there are HN'ers who do not understand the risks involved. I don't think you understand that "risk" doesn't mean "damage"?
- alexvoda 10y ago
  Of course it doesn't. Risk (of an event) is an aggregate of the severity (of said event) and the probability (of that event happening). The damage is just the severity. It is actually irrelevant in this case how risk is actually calculated from these two because almost no one actually calculates it before a plane ride. (Though it is probably calculated for heads of state/royalty/CEOs/etc..)

rwc 10y ago

They're just hacking rigid and outdated laws about transportation. Pakistan International is the Uber of the skies!

FabHK 10y ago
nice one :-)

alkonaut 10y ago

It makes a very unlikely event (crash) slightly more likely, and it makes the consequences of slightly less rare events (heavy turbulence, diversion, emergency landing...) worse. There is very high chance that it makes no difference to anyone at all. That's why it's seen as a "no big deal". I when something is VERY unlikely making it even ten times more likely doesn't matter to people's perception of risk.

alexvoda 10y ago
It is hard to say how unlikely it is. A plane crash may be unlikely globally but may be more likely among the planes of an airline that considers this acceptable. Likewise, a drunk driver is more likely to cause an accident than the average driver. And as I was saying, I understand this attitude from the passengers. For them the risk of a crash may be severe but highly unlikely and in comparison to the risk of loosing their job acceptable. But I would have expected the average HN commenter to recognize the just like the risk is different for different types of drivers (and their cars due to maintenance) , the same applies to planes. So those less rare events may be more likely than the average. So making some events (and their consequences), that may already be more likely than the average for them, a number of times more likely is bad. Than again the average is just as uninformative a statistical indicator for HN commenters as it is for drivers and planes. This makes me think, when someone talks about something they perceive as the average of something do they perceive the median, the mode or actually indeed the mean(average)? There is a case to made that we actually perceive the mode (value that appears most often) instead of the mean.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  I agree, and what would worry me about seeing passengers in the aisle wouldn't be the risk of people bouncing around or fuel running low, but the worry of "what other things are seen as not very imortant by the airline I'm flying?". Being sloppy with crew rest, sobriety, maintenance schedules, would make me much more nervous - and the people in the aisle might indicate a bad attitude.

mozumder 10y ago

> It perplexes me that there are HN'ers who do not understand the risks involved. I don't think you understand that "risk" doesn't mean "damage"?

alexvoda 10y ago
Of course it doesn't. Risk (of an event) is an aggregate of the severity (of said event) and the probability (of that event happening). The damage is just the severity. It is actually irrelevant in this case how risk is actually calculated from these two because almost no one actually calculates it before a plane ride. (Though it is probably calculated for heads of state/royalty/CEOs/etc..)