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> Two things can be true at the same time Heck, three things can be true at the same time. For example, in the Uber self-driving car death: - uber's safety sy
by umvi 6y ago
> Two things can be true at the same time
Heck, three things can be true at the same time. For example, in the Uber self-driving car death:
- uber's safety systems failed to recognize a human in the road
- the backup human driver failed to pay attention
- the woman in the middle of the street failed to pay attention
There can be N failures that all contributed to a given disaster, and it's important to consider all points of failure which can be mitigated in the future, not just the most controversial point of failure.
- pooper 6y ago> There can be N failures that all contributed to a given disaster, and it's important to consider all points of failure which can be mitigated in the future, not just the most controversial point of failure. For the Uber thing, what incentive does the management have to do the right thing?
- nickff 6y agoMoney damages, potential criminal lawsuits, and reputational harm which is real and costly (though I know HN is skeptical of it).
- pintxo 6y agoFunny that being ethical and prioritizing to not do harm is not on the list.
- nickff 6y ago'Prioritizing to not do harm' is an ethical consideration, and ethics are subjective, so I didn't consider them 'incentives'. If the question had been about 'motives' or 'considerations', I would have included 'potential ethical beliefs'.
- warent 6y agoThe reason why is that presenting facts and concrete logic is more compatible with a greater array of people, whereas ethics and morals are subjective. Using a moral argument is not going to be as persuasive in business (particularly if, generally speaking, leadership is largely comprised of sociopaths, which is just a reality of this world)
- pintxo 6y agoThats pretty much what I meant with "funny".
- Twirrim 6y ago> reputational harm which is real and costly (though I know HN is skeptical of it). Largely because the world keeps demonstrating that reputational harm just doesn't happen to large companies. Uber included in this particular case. Here's the Uber trips per quarter (in millions) since Q2 2017 (source https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics) Q2 2017 889 Q3 2017 985 Q4 2017 1,088 Q1 2018 1,136 Q2 2018 1,242 Q3 2018 1,348 Q4 2018 1,493 Q1 2019 1,550 Q2 2019 1,677 Q3 2019 1,770 Q4 2019 1,907 Q1 2020 1,658 The probable reason for the Q1 dip was the pandemic. The number of riders just keeps on rising. You can see the same with Target etc. Large breaches happen, major negative incidents, and at best you might see a blip. The large majority of people just don't give a shit, so companies are given permission to not give a shit either.
- senderista 6y agoI believe there's still another failure: Uber's systems didn't ensure that the backup driver was paying attention, when it was highly foreseeable that their attention would lapse (although granted watching a show on your phone is more than a lapse of attention).
- tolbish 6y agoWhy stop at three? What about Arizona's lawmakers for allowing this in the first place, or not demanding that certain safety measures are met?
- kolbe 6y agoCareful. If you think about this too much, you might end up realizing how absurd “justice” systems everywhere are. Maybe say everything has one cause: the initial conditions on the differential equation that governs all existence.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- patrickthebold 6y agoOr even the voters for voting for said lawmakers.
- CryptoPunk 6y agoThat assumes that the state has a responsibility to micro-manage every activity, with prohibitions on activity that doesn't follow the prescribed regiment, to prevent negligence. The individuals involved in an activity are the only ones responsible for avoiding negligent behavior in a society based on the liberal democratic principles of individual rights and responsibilities. However, to give due credit to your musing, the Uber situation is somewhat different in being on public roads, which lawmakers do have some responsibility to govern an individual's use of, for the safety of others who share public roads with the individual.
- tolbish 6y agoWe allow the state to micromanage the activities of individuals all the time, such as with drug, prostitution, and porn laws.
- acrefoot 6y agoI learned recently this is sometimes visualized by something called the "Swiss Cheese Model": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model Regarding self driving cars: I was once told that a big reason for the safety of fly-by-wire systems (when planes first moved from directly attached controls) is that the engineers who built those systems had to take the first flights, so they made sure their systems were good. That is probably the case for self-driving cars too, but falling out of the sky feels more viscerally unsafe than driving on a highway, and the gradual nature of the changeover probably isn't helping either.
- devonkim 6y agoThis is the reason for “root cause analysis” being obsolete and against best practices for complex systems. The practice seems to be something that less sophisticated management wants for a political scapegoat rather than to actually solve problems.