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That would require more evidence than it sounds like there is. And that's assuming that you subscribe to the motivations put forward in this article. I generall

That would require more evidence than it sounds like there is. And that's assuming that you subscribe to the motivations put forward in this article. I generally follow Hanlon's razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence". I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life. I can easily believe that they didn't take the problem seriously, and that they were biased towards conclusions that weren't their fault.

kartan 8y ago
> I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life. No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue. If your company does not put a lot of resources to make it transparent it is going to be opaque by default. Transparency is hard to achieve when humans are so good reading a superior expression of disapproval. Most people does not need to be told to not bring that problem again, all that we need is a subtle clue. So, to get a cover up you only need to do nothing. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”
- projectileboy 8y ago
  Exactly right - same thing that happened at NASA. There aren’t grand conspiracies - just people acting in their own interests, based on the incentives that have been set up (or evolved) in the organization.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue. Networks and social media extend the reach of these kinds of disdain, and take these mechanisms beyond the walls of the office and organization. In the present day climate, where accusations causing outrage tend more easily to become viral, one need not be someone's manager or even have a close relationship to exercise such power of disdain. The incentive structures in social media can act as a very efficient transmission substrate for these mechanisms. One doesn't have to look far, to see how social media amplified groupthink has short circuited professional judgement -- even in highly visible and public circumstances. In particular, forums, email lists, and social media groups of journalists can be seen to be having such effects. So, to get a cover up you only need to do nothing. With just a modicum of digging, this can be seen quite clearly in 2019, in the mainstream media, which is declining but still trusted by the public. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” This effect is very real and very powerful. This is why we as a society should be wary of the political exclusiveness of entire professions, entire industries, and of academia. If you're surrounded only by people of like minds, you're far less likely to have your idea checked by people highly motivated to find your faults. It's only diversity of opinions which guards against groupthink.
  - Retric 8y ago
    It’s not really social pressure when managers have so much direct power not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking. This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval. Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact which results in less socially accepted statements becoming common.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval. In 2019, there are lots of examples of people being quite sensitive to approval over social media. This differs by individual circumstance. However, in 2019 there are entire fields where people must ascribe to some form of group consensus, or basically become un-personed from it. Media work seems to be particularly sensitive to this. not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking There are examples of journalists consulting and influencing each other in the context of news cycle events. Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact This was once true but now is simply out of date and very wrong. In 2019, there are social networks which have very direct impact, and very large impacts on people's livelihood. There are entire fields where such social networks and online communication can get someone un-personed. These are basically the 2019 version of the "old boy network."
      - Retric 8y ago
        Over 32,000 journalists are working full time in the US, social media focus on a minute fraction of them. Social media can be a near full time job. One many successful people simply don’t have time for. So sure many NYT reporters might post their wedding photos online, but deeper interactions are often limited to people focusing on such things.
        stcredzero 8y ago
        Over 32,000 journalists are working full time in the US, social media focus on a minute fraction of them. You're conflating two entirely different things here. Much of the dysfunction/groupthink occurs through things like legacy media journalists using social media. The point is that networks and social media enables offline channels for groupthink, which then affects other media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA2JII6TG4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA2JII6TG4o So sure many NYT reporters might post their wedding photos online This of course, isn't an issue. (But mistakenly considered as such, it might as well be a strawman.) What is an issue are blue checkmark journalists engaging in toxic groupthink on Twitter. This also happens on email lists and industry insider forums. (This isn't actually a new phenomenon. There are Vietnam era journalists who complained about how some correspondents never left bars in Saigon. The difference is that the groupthink can follow people around in their smartphone and come at them every waking hour.)
lgvln 8y ago
I think you might be missing the point stated in the article: the damage to the reputation of Boeing and possibly US economy is more important than the loss of a few (hundred) lives. You can say they cared about the loss of lives, just not as much as the damage to their company.
wefarrell 8y ago
Hanlon's razor doesn't apply here. No one is implying that anyone at Boeing allowed this to happen due to malice, that would be truly insane. Negligence perpetuated by greed is far more likely and equally as criminal.
- rkangel 8y ago
  In this case I mean it as 'active' vs 'passive'. There is the implication in the article that Boeing purposefully went and stole springs that could be used to diagnose an issue that they were fully aware of. That I would describe as 'active' and I have trouble believing. Didn't put credence, time and effort into reports because they were inconvenient I would describe as 'passive'. Passive is still bad - likely results in the same number of people dying, but a different interpretation of the situation.
droithomme 8y ago
> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence" I don't see that that should be applied as a rule of thumb to investigations involving civil liability and possible criminal liability. We have a situation where there are literally piles of dead bodies, massive civil and possible criminal liability, and key evidence goes missing when in the possession of the party that was in the end found to be at fault, who more than anyone else would have realized that the evidence that disappeared was a smoking gun. It's reasonable to assume that malice might have been a factor in such a scenario and it's a reasonable hypothesis to investigate.
- sitkack 8y ago
  > Never underestimate the power of a cliched thought terminating pithy statement.
mbostleman 8y ago
Agreed. The implications of the story make a good movie script, but it's hard for me to imagine how this could play out practically across so many people and so many years. I mean whole careers started and ended in this saga. I was thinking a more likely explanation is that once the original issue that ultimately was found to be the cause was dismissed, and after more and more fatalities built up, the consequence of admitting the problem may have been perceived as game over for Boeing. As in the financial and legal consequences would be unrecoverable. So basically like the web of lies problem - once they passed a certain point they couldn't go back.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost-benefit_analysis,_the_Pinto_Memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost-benefit_analys... These are companies driven by greed. If they're in any way culpable, they should suffer consequences. There's nothing else to it.
  - mbostleman 8y ago
    The root motivation may very well be greed - I'm not attempting to go that deep. And whether or not they should or shouldn't suffer consequences is also a different issue.
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      It's not a different issue. If they're responsible, there should be consequences.
peteradio 8y ago
> didn't take the problem seriously, and that they were biased towards conclusions that weren't their fault. I think that is malice personally.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I was about to say, then that is a definition you have made for yourself. My understanding of the word malice is to mean "desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another" as Webster defines the word. But I discovered there is a second, legal context for the word which means "intent to commit an unlawful act or cause harm without legal justification or excuse" so I guess in the law, "malice" is just another word for "deliberate." I still think the first definition is what most people are familiar with, and that unless you think the engineers deliberately designed the rudder control system to behave in this way, knowing it would cause crashes and fatalities, the company having a bias after the fact to not blame themselves does not rise to that standard.
- da_chicken 8y ago
  I would call it human nature. Like Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
pfortuny 8y ago
The Volskwagen saga can also be attributed to incomptenence but alas! it was not caused by it but by malice. We are humans after all and money talks. The razor is for non-economical causes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 8y ago
  "The razor" is for credulous morons. "Never attribute"? Yeah that sounds logical we should just stop thinking bad thoughts and being suspicious of people who got rich by destroying our society.
fgonzag 8y ago
I generally follow: never ascribe a reason until you have sufficient evidence to support it, Be it malice or incompetence...
yongjik 8y ago
> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence" That's why we have a term "criminal negligence", because sometimes it's impossible to tell malice from incompetence. So the law basically decided, "Well, fuck this, if you do something as stupid as (putting a faulty brake on a train, for example), then you deserve to go to jail, and we don't care if you were actually thrilled to kill passengers or were simply too stupid to understand what you were doing."
jjoonathan 8y ago
Don't slit your wrists with Hanlon's razor. As a rule, it has high performance, but as a policy, it's trivial to exploit. Children figure out how to play dumb before they figure out how to articulate complete sentences. If you let conmen do it, they'll bleed us all dry.
darkpuma 8y ago
> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence" Clever people deliberately structure their malice to be plausibly explained away as incompetence.
MFLoon 8y ago
I don't think Hanlon's razor should be applied to multi-billion dollar corporate persons. Private individuals, even small to medium sized institutions with limited resources and unproven levels of competence, are fair applicants to Hanlon. But a) Boeing is typically a hyper competent corporate person, having executed massive, multi-decade engineering projects that have been largely successful, and b) regardless of (a), the disappearance of a very specific piece of technical evidence while in the possession of the potentially liable party, while the rest of the evidence is successfully delivered, is not adequately explained by incompetence.

kartan 8y ago

> I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life. No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue. If your company does not put a lot of resources to make it transparent it is going to be opaque by default. Transparency is hard to achieve when humans are so good reading a superior expression of disapproval. Most people does not need to be told to not bring that problem again, all that we need is a subtle clue. So, to get a cover up you only need to do nothing. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

projectileboy 8y ago
Exactly right - same thing that happened at NASA. There aren’t grand conspiracies - just people acting in their own interests, based on the incentives that have been set up (or evolved) in the organization.
stcredzero 8y ago
No orchestration is needed. Managers only need to look with disdain to anyone that brings the issue. Networks and social media extend the reach of these kinds of disdain, and take these mechanisms beyond the walls of the office and organization. In the present day climate, where accusations causing outrage tend more easily to become viral, one need not be someone's manager or even have a close relationship to exercise such power of disdain. The incentive structures in social media can act as a very efficient transmission substrate for these mechanisms. One doesn't have to look far, to see how social media amplified groupthink has short circuited professional judgement -- even in highly visible and public circumstances. In particular, forums, email lists, and social media groups of journalists can be seen to be having such effects. So, to get a cover up you only need to do nothing. With just a modicum of digging, this can be seen quite clearly in 2019, in the mainstream media, which is declining but still trusted by the public. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” This effect is very real and very powerful. This is why we as a society should be wary of the political exclusiveness of entire professions, entire industries, and of academia. If you're surrounded only by people of like minds, you're far less likely to have your idea checked by people highly motivated to find your faults. It's only diversity of opinions which guards against groupthink.
- Retric 8y ago
  It’s not really social pressure when managers have so much direct power not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking. This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval. Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact which results in less socially accepted statements becoming common.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval. In 2019, there are lots of examples of people being quite sensitive to approval over social media. This differs by individual circumstance. However, in 2019 there are entire fields where people must ascribe to some form of group consensus, or basically become un-personed from it. Media work seems to be particularly sensitive to this. not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking There are examples of journalists consulting and influencing each other in the context of news cycle events. Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact This was once true but now is simply out of date and very wrong. In 2019, there are social networks which have very direct impact, and very large impacts on people's livelihood. There are entire fields where such social networks and online communication can get someone un-personed. These are basically the 2019 version of the "old boy network."
    - Retric 8y ago
      Over 32,000 journalists are working full time in the US, social media focus on a minute fraction of them. Social media can be a near full time job. One many successful people simply don’t have time for. So sure many NYT reporters might post their wedding photos online, but deeper interactions are often limited to people focusing on such things.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Over 32,000 journalists are working full time in the US, social media focus on a minute fraction of them. You're conflating two entirely different things here. Much of the dysfunction/groupthink occurs through things like legacy media journalists using social media. The point is that networks and social media enables offline channels for groupthink, which then affects other media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA2JII6TG4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA2JII6TG4o So sure many NYT reporters might post their wedding photos online This of course, isn't an issue. (But mistakenly considered as such, it might as well be a strawman.) What is an issue are blue checkmark journalists engaging in toxic groupthink on Twitter. This also happens on email lists and industry insider forums. (This isn't actually a new phenomenon. There are Vietnam era journalists who complained about how some correspondents never left bars in Saigon. The difference is that the groupthink can follow people around in their smartphone and come at them every waking hour.)

lgvln 8y ago

I think you might be missing the point stated in the article: the damage to the reputation of Boeing and possibly US economy is more important than the loss of a few (hundred) lives. You can say they cared about the loss of lives, just not as much as the damage to their company.

wefarrell 8y ago

Hanlon's razor doesn't apply here. No one is implying that anyone at Boeing allowed this to happen due to malice, that would be truly insane. Negligence perpetuated by greed is far more likely and equally as criminal.

rkangel 8y ago
In this case I mean it as 'active' vs 'passive'. There is the implication in the article that Boeing purposefully went and stole springs that could be used to diagnose an issue that they were fully aware of. That I would describe as 'active' and I have trouble believing. Didn't put credence, time and effort into reports because they were inconvenient I would describe as 'passive'. Passive is still bad - likely results in the same number of people dying, but a different interpretation of the situation.

droithomme 8y ago

> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence" I don't see that that should be applied as a rule of thumb to investigations involving civil liability and possible criminal liability. We have a situation where there are literally piles of dead bodies, massive civil and possible criminal liability, and key evidence goes missing when in the possession of the party that was in the end found to be at fault, who more than anyone else would have realized that the evidence that disappeared was a smoking gun. It's reasonable to assume that malice might have been a factor in such a scenario and it's a reasonable hypothesis to investigate.

sitkack 8y ago
> Never underestimate the power of a cliched thought terminating pithy statement.

mbostleman 8y ago

Agreed. The implications of the story make a good movie script, but it's hard for me to imagine how this could play out practically across so many people and so many years. I mean whole careers started and ended in this saga. I was thinking a more likely explanation is that once the original issue that ultimately was found to be the cause was dismissed, and after more and more fatalities built up, the consequence of admitting the problem may have been perceived as game over for Boeing. As in the financial and legal consequences would be unrecoverable. So basically like the web of lies problem - once they passed a certain point they couldn't go back.

jplayer01 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost-benefit_analysis,_the_Pinto_Memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost-benefit_analys... These are companies driven by greed. If they're in any way culpable, they should suffer consequences. There's nothing else to it.
- mbostleman 8y ago
  The root motivation may very well be greed - I'm not attempting to go that deep. And whether or not they should or shouldn't suffer consequences is also a different issue.
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    It's not a different issue. If they're responsible, there should be consequences.

peteradio 8y ago

> didn't take the problem seriously, and that they were biased towards conclusions that weren't their fault. I think that is malice personally.

ams6110 8y ago
I was about to say, then that is a definition you have made for yourself. My understanding of the word malice is to mean "desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another" as Webster defines the word. But I discovered there is a second, legal context for the word which means "intent to commit an unlawful act or cause harm without legal justification or excuse" so I guess in the law, "malice" is just another word for "deliberate." I still think the first definition is what most people are familiar with, and that unless you think the engineers deliberately designed the rudder control system to behave in this way, knowing it would cause crashes and fatalities, the company having a bias after the fact to not blame themselves does not rise to that standard.
da_chicken 8y ago
I would call it human nature. Like Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

pfortuny 8y ago

The Volskwagen saga can also be attributed to incomptenence but alas! it was not caused by it but by malice. We are humans after all and money talks. The razor is for non-economical causes.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 8y ago
"The razor" is for credulous morons. "Never attribute"? Yeah that sounds logical we should just stop thinking bad thoughts and being suspicious of people who got rich by destroying our society.

fgonzag 8y ago

I generally follow: never ascribe a reason until you have sufficient evidence to support it, Be it malice or incompetence...

yongjik 8y ago

> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence" That's why we have a term "criminal negligence", because sometimes it's impossible to tell malice from incompetence. So the law basically decided, "Well, fuck this, if you do something as stupid as (putting a faulty brake on a train, for example), then you deserve to go to jail, and we don't care if you were actually thrilled to kill passengers or were simply too stupid to understand what you were doing."

jjoonathan 8y ago

Don't slit your wrists with Hanlon's razor. As a rule, it has high performance, but as a policy, it's trivial to exploit. Children figure out how to play dumb before they figure out how to articulate complete sentences. If you let conmen do it, they'll bleed us all dry.

darkpuma 8y ago

> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence" Clever people deliberately structure their malice to be plausibly explained away as incompetence.

MFLoon 8y ago

I don't think Hanlon's razor should be applied to multi-billion dollar corporate persons. Private individuals, even small to medium sized institutions with limited resources and unproven levels of competence, are fair applicants to Hanlon. But a) Boeing is typically a hyper competent corporate person, having executed massive, multi-decade engineering projects that have been largely successful, and b) regardless of (a), the disappearance of a very specific piece of technical evidence while in the possession of the potentially liable party, while the rest of the evidence is successfully delivered, is not adequately explained by incompetence.