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I disagree that it's a knee-jerk reaction, drop of the hat, or whatever you want to name it. We are talking about hundreds of human lives. We are talking about

I disagree that it's a knee-jerk reaction, drop of the hat, or whatever you want to name it. We are talking about hundreds of human lives. We are talking about an industry that consistently chooses safety above all else, regardless of profits and minor inconveniences. And for some reason that just doesn't seem to be the case here. > Unfortunately it's impossible to have an adult discussion about that kind of thing on the internet. So unless everyone agrees with you it isn't an adult conversation? Entire countries are grounding these planes. The evidence is pretty clear that folks are worried and aren't interesting in risking the loss of a few hundred more lives because a bit of money may be on the line, or there may be a minor travel disruption. Edit: I see the original poster has since removed the bit about not being able to have an adult conversation on the internet. I quoted and responded to that before it was removed.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
The idea that at some point the additional cost of trying to save lives is more than the value of the life being saved is incompatible with the beliefs of many people. Yet that reality and trade-offs like that are all around us. For example, OSHA could decide that overhead lifting now requires a safety factor of 15 on everything (IIRC it's 5 but it's been awhile). That would probably save a couple lives because by starting off at 15 you could still have a safety factor >1 with totally clapped out equipment. Would that be worth it? This is the kind of dilemma that gets discussed in the "engineering ethics" course that most of the college graduates here had to take and I'm not going to expand on it because there's plenty of other people who have but the takeaway should be that there exists a point where the return on investment of trying to prevent life lost is negative depending on which externalities you count and how you count them. Personally I agree with the airlines grounding the aircraft because the air-frame failure rate is too high IMO so clearly something is up with them. I fully disagree with the "every life is precious" + "OMG we have no idea what's going on" sentiment being used to justify that. That's now how you're supposed to make these kind of decisions, especially when the recorders from the second crash are in hand and we will soon have a good idea of the cause. Based on what we know at present, the first crash would likely have been prevented had the pilots been made aware of the new possible failure mode of MCAS, recognized it and disabled the system, the steps for which are the same they've always been. Any 737 pilot not living under a rock is very aware of that new possible failure mode now. While crashing aircraft and publicity like this might not be as good as retraining it has likely accomplished a similar end so if the cause of these accidents is what we currently think it is then the press it's receiving will go a long way toward solving that albeit at unfortunately high cost. FWIW I removed that sentence from my comment because I didn't want a self fulfilling prophesy but I've added it back to my comment because it mostly came true. No "I disagree because X" (where X is not an appeal to emotion). Just people mashing the "bury this" button and appeals to emotion. Basically Reddit sans the sarcasm. You know as well as I that any discussion about trade-offs involving human life (or any other emotional topic) eventually just get drowned out by name calling and general bullshit and an adult discussion isn't really possible.
- saiya-jin 8y ago
  You're making discussion about 350 lives lost potentially due to design failures into discussion about statistics. Such a cold-hearted approach won't find you much support anywhere. Clearly most people react very differently to this topic compared to you, even purely for-profit companies start to do so.
- SolaceQuantum 8y ago
  Your comments imply that the aircraft industry functions in a manner that allows for human life to be calculated as a tradeoff. This shows an ignorance on how aircraft is expected to function and the industry standards for aircraft development and engineering. Given that loss of life of paying clients is the worst-case-scenario of an aircraft it makes total sense for it to be treated with severity, entirely without bringing virtue into the discussion.
  - shawnz 8y ago
    > Your comments imply that the aircraft industry functions in a manner that allows for human life to be calculated as a tradeoff. It's true though, just like in any engineering discipline. If loss of life was 100% unacceptable then the only resolution would be to not fly any aircrafts. The fact that we still use flight technology is a tradeoff in itself.
    - close04 8y ago
      Unpreventable loss of life may not be 100% unacceptable. But ignoring signs and allowing preventable loss of life is. Not taking action after having reasonable reason to do so is actually criminal negligence [0] in some cases. > failure to foresee and so allow otherwise avoidable dangers to manifest. In some cases this failure can rise to the level of willful blindness, where the individual intentionally avoids adverting to the reality of a situation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence
      - shawnz 8y ago
js2 8y ago
> We are talking about an industry that consistently chooses safety above all else, regardless of profits and minor inconveniences. And for some reason that just doesn't seem to be the case here. Or maybe it is the case here. We all seem to think it's obvious Boeing should ground this plane and yet they aren't. I hope Boeing aren't idiots and are making their decisions based on engineering factors we don't have.
- joekrill 8y ago
  But if they have information that leads them to a completely different conclusion, why aren't they sharing it? I'm having a hard time coming up with a scenario where they have more confident data, but can't share it (or if not what, at least share that they have it).

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

The idea that at some point the additional cost of trying to save lives is more than the value of the life being saved is incompatible with the beliefs of many people. Yet that reality and trade-offs like that are all around us. For example, OSHA could decide that overhead lifting now requires a safety factor of 15 on everything (IIRC it's 5 but it's been awhile). That would probably save a couple lives because by starting off at 15 you could still have a safety factor >1 with totally clapped out equipment. Would that be worth it? This is the kind of dilemma that gets discussed in the "engineering ethics" course that most of the college graduates here had to take and I'm not going to expand on it because there's plenty of other people who have but the takeaway should be that there exists a point where the return on investment of trying to prevent life lost is negative depending on which externalities you count and how you count them. Personally I agree with the airlines grounding the aircraft because the air-frame failure rate is too high IMO so clearly something is up with them. I fully disagree with the "every life is precious" + "OMG we have no idea what's going on" sentiment being used to justify that. That's now how you're supposed to make these kind of decisions, especially when the recorders from the second crash are in hand and we will soon have a good idea of the cause. Based on what we know at present, the first crash would likely have been prevented had the pilots been made aware of the new possible failure mode of MCAS, recognized it and disabled the system, the steps for which are the same they've always been. Any 737 pilot not living under a rock is very aware of that new possible failure mode now. While crashing aircraft and publicity like this might not be as good as retraining it has likely accomplished a similar end so if the cause of these accidents is what we currently think it is then the press it's receiving will go a long way toward solving that albeit at unfortunately high cost. FWIW I removed that sentence from my comment because I didn't want a self fulfilling prophesy but I've added it back to my comment because it mostly came true. No "I disagree because X" (where X is not an appeal to emotion). Just people mashing the "bury this" button and appeals to emotion. Basically Reddit sans the sarcasm. You know as well as I that any discussion about trade-offs involving human life (or any other emotional topic) eventually just get drowned out by name calling and general bullshit and an adult discussion isn't really possible.

saiya-jin 8y ago
You're making discussion about 350 lives lost potentially due to design failures into discussion about statistics. Such a cold-hearted approach won't find you much support anywhere. Clearly most people react very differently to this topic compared to you, even purely for-profit companies start to do so.
SolaceQuantum 8y ago
Your comments imply that the aircraft industry functions in a manner that allows for human life to be calculated as a tradeoff. This shows an ignorance on how aircraft is expected to function and the industry standards for aircraft development and engineering. Given that loss of life of paying clients is the worst-case-scenario of an aircraft it makes total sense for it to be treated with severity, entirely without bringing virtue into the discussion.
- shawnz 8y ago
  > Your comments imply that the aircraft industry functions in a manner that allows for human life to be calculated as a tradeoff. It's true though, just like in any engineering discipline. If loss of life was 100% unacceptable then the only resolution would be to not fly any aircrafts. The fact that we still use flight technology is a tradeoff in itself.
  - close04 8y ago
    Unpreventable loss of life may not be 100% unacceptable. But ignoring signs and allowing preventable loss of life is. Not taking action after having reasonable reason to do so is actually criminal negligence [0] in some cases. > failure to foresee and so allow otherwise avoidable dangers to manifest. In some cases this failure can rise to the level of willful blindness, where the individual intentionally avoids adverting to the reality of a situation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_negligence
    - shawnz 8y ago

js2 8y ago

> We are talking about an industry that consistently chooses safety above all else, regardless of profits and minor inconveniences. And for some reason that just doesn't seem to be the case here. Or maybe it is the case here. We all seem to think it's obvious Boeing should ground this plane and yet they aren't. I hope Boeing aren't idiots and are making their decisions based on engineering factors we don't have.

joekrill 8y ago
But if they have information that leads them to a completely different conclusion, why aren't they sharing it? I'm having a hard time coming up with a scenario where they have more confident data, but can't share it (or if not what, at least share that they have it).