4 ms·

I hope you're right but this reminds me of the very sad saying, "Bike lanes are painted in blood". Why can't we properly value safety over convenience and profi

by slimed 7y ago

I hope you're right but this reminds me of the very sad saying, "Bike lanes are painted in blood". Why can't we properly value safety over convenience and profits before there is a huge accident?

dredmorbius 7y ago
You know the smell of gas? That's the smell of 300 souls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion Pretty much all safety measures are written in blood.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I never knew about that link, thank you for posting this. It's sad that it took that many lives to solve something so simple, it likely wasn't the first such explosion either but the others may not have been serious enough to warrant countermeasures.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I knew natural gas had an additive so we could smell it, but I didn't realize it came on the heals of this disaster. I guess that makes sense though. We have culturally evolved to care more about physical safety today; a good sign that our State worked by being held accountable to people. The stuff that is happening with Boeing is a total regression, and it will be interesting to see how regressions like this can be prevented in the future.
  - slimed 7y ago
    This is why people are so outraged. We were supposedly past the days where something like this can happen in a century old industry like commercial aviation. I understand that ensuring the safety of new airplane designs is more complicated than adding odor to natural gas. But this is not a product where society wants producers to "move fast and break things". We expect a minimum level of safety i.e the plane not falling out of the sky.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    It's a story I'd only stumbled across a few years ago myself. It (and numerous other technological disasters) make for fascinating reading. I very highly recommend Charles Perrow's work, particulary Normal Accidents and The Next Disaster. Perrow himself died just this past November. https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3APerrow%2C+Charles%2C&qt=hot_author https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3APerrow%2C+Charles%2C&... I've been clipping similar stories, under a set of themes which I find related: - Risk - Accidents - Technological Debt - Techology as Debt - Manifestation -- this is the notion of manifest vs. latent phenomena, perceptibility, and awareness. See Robert K. Merton among others. - Denial. Itself one of the stages of grief, which seems more generally a response to a change in worldview and/or an invalidation of previously reliable models. - Motivated asset inflation. The desire to sustain high levels of valuation of extant assets (real property, IP, technological mechansism, rents), often through activities which decrease net social welfare. Bernhard J. Stern's "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", 1937, is fascinating reading in this regard. Stern doesn't quite fully make the case, but he sets the board for the final mate. NIMBYism, Merchants of Doubt, "fake news", and numerous other phenomena can be tied to this. In whole, the narrative, if it is valid and holds, undermines many of the sacred cows of technological optimism and property-based market economics.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    My learning of this, if you're interested, probably traces to about 19 December 2016. Researching the Texas Railroad Commission. Whose name is ... somewhat deceptive. Briefly mentioned, I believe (I need to re-watch it) this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5bWrlA04Q&app=desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5bWrlA04Q&app=desktop I'd mentioned it on G+ on the date, in comments (I've a full archive on my own systems, but at least the post survives at the Internet Archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20190115030822/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/QQvpJUsEvW3 https://web.archive.org/web/20190115030822/https://plus.goog... Brought up as well on this post (also not in a captured comment): https://web.archive.org/web/20190115024757/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/J8ZDAsbRkmt https://web.archive.org/web/20190115024757/https://plus.goog...
lotsofpulp 7y ago
>Why can't we properly value safety over convenience and profits before there is a huge accident? Because consumers will choose the cheaper product. If a politician tries to "value" safety over convenience for a potential problem, voters will vote for the other politician that promises lower taxes and claims there is no safety issue. Of course, there is a balance that needs to be met, taking all of the risk out of life is also excessive and may impede progress or waste resources.
ecolonsmak 7y ago
because humans have a biological imperative to choose short term solutions

by slimed 7y ago

I hope you're right but this reminds me of the very sad saying, "Bike lanes are painted in blood". Why can't we properly value safety over convenience and profits before there is a huge accident?

dredmorbius 7y ago

You know the smell of gas? That's the smell of 300 souls: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion Pretty much all safety measures are written in blood.

jacquesm 7y ago
I never knew about that link, thank you for posting this. It's sad that it took that many lives to solve something so simple, it likely wasn't the first such explosion either but the others may not have been serious enough to warrant countermeasures.
djsumdog 7y ago
I knew natural gas had an additive so we could smell it, but I didn't realize it came on the heals of this disaster. I guess that makes sense though. We have culturally evolved to care more about physical safety today; a good sign that our State worked by being held accountable to people. The stuff that is happening with Boeing is a total regression, and it will be interesting to see how regressions like this can be prevented in the future.
- slimed 7y ago
  This is why people are so outraged. We were supposedly past the days where something like this can happen in a century old industry like commercial aviation. I understand that ensuring the safety of new airplane designs is more complicated than adding odor to natural gas. But this is not a product where society wants producers to "move fast and break things". We expect a minimum level of safety i.e the plane not falling out of the sky.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  It's a story I'd only stumbled across a few years ago myself. It (and numerous other technological disasters) make for fascinating reading. I very highly recommend Charles Perrow's work, particulary Normal Accidents and The Next Disaster. Perrow himself died just this past November. https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3APerrow%2C+Charles%2C&qt=hot_author https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=au%3APerrow%2C+Charles%2C&... I've been clipping similar stories, under a set of themes which I find related: - Risk - Accidents - Technological Debt - Techology as Debt - Manifestation -- this is the notion of manifest vs. latent phenomena, perceptibility, and awareness. See Robert K. Merton among others. - Denial. Itself one of the stages of grief, which seems more generally a response to a change in worldview and/or an invalidation of previously reliable models. - Motivated asset inflation. The desire to sustain high levels of valuation of extant assets (real property, IP, technological mechansism, rents), often through activities which decrease net social welfare. Bernhard J. Stern's "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations", 1937, is fascinating reading in this regard. Stern doesn't quite fully make the case, but he sets the board for the final mate. NIMBYism, Merchants of Doubt, "fake news", and numerous other phenomena can be tied to this. In whole, the narrative, if it is valid and holds, undermines many of the sacred cows of technological optimism and property-based market economics.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  My learning of this, if you're interested, probably traces to about 19 December 2016. Researching the Texas Railroad Commission. Whose name is ... somewhat deceptive. Briefly mentioned, I believe (I need to re-watch it) this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5bWrlA04Q&app=desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5bWrlA04Q&app=desktop I'd mentioned it on G+ on the date, in comments (I've a full archive on my own systems, but at least the post survives at the Internet Archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20190115030822/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/QQvpJUsEvW3 https://web.archive.org/web/20190115030822/https://plus.goog... Brought up as well on this post (also not in a captured comment): https://web.archive.org/web/20190115024757/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/J8ZDAsbRkmt https://web.archive.org/web/20190115024757/https://plus.goog...

lotsofpulp 7y ago

>Why can't we properly value safety over convenience and profits before there is a huge accident? Because consumers will choose the cheaper product. If a politician tries to "value" safety over convenience for a potential problem, voters will vote for the other politician that promises lower taxes and claims there is no safety issue. Of course, there is a balance that needs to be met, taking all of the risk out of life is also excessive and may impede progress or waste resources.

ecolonsmak 7y ago

because humans have a biological imperative to choose short term solutions