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There was amazing amount of fear and ass covering after the accident. NASA engineers gave information about O-ring only to Sally Ride (a member of Rogers comm

by nabla9 6y ago

There was amazing amount of fear and ass covering after the accident. NASA engineers gave information about O-ring only to Sally Ride (a member of Rogers commission). Sally Ride then gave the information to her friend General Donald Kutyna (an another member of Rogers commission) who she trusted to not to implicate her or the engineers. Then Kutyna found way to inform Feynman so that Feynman could "discover it independently" without the risk of revealing the real source.

iudqnolq 6y ago
The article tells a different story, with Alan McDonald blowing the whistle to congress.
- nabla9 6y ago
  They are part of the same story. Alan McDonald spoke up in the first closed meeting as the article says and told that they have suggested not launching. Focus of the commission started to change but it didn't happen overnight. He didn't "blow whistle to congress".
vlovich123 6y ago
That’s not amazing to me. This is how many/most people behave when confronted with real consequences.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  This is how many/most people behave when confronted with real consequences. No, I don't think it is, and it's the pervasive belief that they do that gives the few who do license to continue doing so.
  - BalinKing 6y ago
    Personally, I assume that these kinds of people, by and large, do get away with it (although I guess that's just a way of restating the original assumption).
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    I mean you are free to believe whatever you want, but, unless you also believe that it’s a large secret conspiracy to fill the important positions with incompetence just in time for a crisis (or to create a crisis down the road), you’re going to have a tough time explaining similar disasters that show similar behavior from your fellow man. At most you can say that greed causes leaders to promote and hire this kind of person, but that’s a tenuous argument in my opinion. The real world observation of WW2, the Milford experiments, Stanford prisoner experiments, Asch conformity experiments, and so many cases of corporate malfeasance, at least to me, show pretty directly that people like Allan McDonald are the exception. The reason also makes sense to me. Social conformity, if you’re in the “in” group yields a lot of benefits and being in the “out” group has a lot of costs. You’re talking not just about societal conformance pressures through things like being a pariah at work or being passed over for promotion. This can be personal pressures where you suddenly have financial pressures you didn’t have before because no one is willing to give you a break. You’ve got your family either putting pressure on you to ease their lives or your own guilt that your family is paying a price for your actions. To withstand that is a minority of people, like those who have strong support from family and trusted friends for whom the societal bonds aren’t as important.
    - cmeacham98 6y ago
      To be fair, situations were the objector is listened to are non-events the public will never know of, so it is hard to know the true ratio. I do agree that ethics seems to take a saddeningly low priority in most powerful leaders in the world, but there are some areas in society where this isn't the case: I remember reading a thread a little while ago here on HN about how seriously safety is taken in nuclear power and how anyone involved in the process can object.
      - vlovich123 6y ago
        I think we’re in agreement. All I’m saying is that that’s the default behavior for most people - no one wants to be left holding the bag. If you actually strive to create a different culture you can have different results. I don’t think this is a lack of ethics in the political class per se. It’s really hard to build this kind of structure, there’s no credit involved (since you’re preventing hypothetical future catastrophes), and politically difficult to defend to constituencies that don’t agree with your caution (“repeal regulations”). You might also be wrong and your opponents could be right so you’re taking a gamble on something that has little to no upside and lots of risk. That being said, (and as a person with a pro-nuclear bias) I will note though that Fukushima had engineers raising dissent about it and warning/begging/pleading with the bureaucracy to harden the defenses against a tsunami. Admittedly maybe you’re talking about Western policies.
- pdonis 6y ago
  I don't think this is true as an unqualified statement. But I think it is true that many/most people who are making technical decisions without the proper technical understanding behave. The technical experts in all of the organizations involved were doing the right thing, raising alarms and recommending against flying the Shuttle under risky conditions. But the managers over them were not listening or overruling them, because the managers did not understand the actual impact of the technical decisions they were making until after the disaster occurred.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by nabla9 6y ago

iudqnolq 6y ago

The article tells a different story, with Alan McDonald blowing the whistle to congress.

nabla9 6y ago
They are part of the same story. Alan McDonald spoke up in the first closed meeting as the article says and told that they have suggested not launching. Focus of the commission started to change but it didn't happen overnight. He didn't "blow whistle to congress".

vlovich123 6y ago

That’s not amazing to me. This is how many/most people behave when confronted with real consequences.

nitrogen 6y ago
This is how many/most people behave when confronted with real consequences. No, I don't think it is, and it's the pervasive belief that they do that gives the few who do license to continue doing so.
- BalinKing 6y ago
  Personally, I assume that these kinds of people, by and large, do get away with it (although I guess that's just a way of restating the original assumption).
- vlovich123 6y ago
  I mean you are free to believe whatever you want, but, unless you also believe that it’s a large secret conspiracy to fill the important positions with incompetence just in time for a crisis (or to create a crisis down the road), you’re going to have a tough time explaining similar disasters that show similar behavior from your fellow man. At most you can say that greed causes leaders to promote and hire this kind of person, but that’s a tenuous argument in my opinion. The real world observation of WW2, the Milford experiments, Stanford prisoner experiments, Asch conformity experiments, and so many cases of corporate malfeasance, at least to me, show pretty directly that people like Allan McDonald are the exception. The reason also makes sense to me. Social conformity, if you’re in the “in” group yields a lot of benefits and being in the “out” group has a lot of costs. You’re talking not just about societal conformance pressures through things like being a pariah at work or being passed over for promotion. This can be personal pressures where you suddenly have financial pressures you didn’t have before because no one is willing to give you a break. You’ve got your family either putting pressure on you to ease their lives or your own guilt that your family is paying a price for your actions. To withstand that is a minority of people, like those who have strong support from family and trusted friends for whom the societal bonds aren’t as important.
  - cmeacham98 6y ago
    To be fair, situations were the objector is listened to are non-events the public will never know of, so it is hard to know the true ratio. I do agree that ethics seems to take a saddeningly low priority in most powerful leaders in the world, but there are some areas in society where this isn't the case: I remember reading a thread a little while ago here on HN about how seriously safety is taken in nuclear power and how anyone involved in the process can object.
    - vlovich123 6y ago
      I think we’re in agreement. All I’m saying is that that’s the default behavior for most people - no one wants to be left holding the bag. If you actually strive to create a different culture you can have different results. I don’t think this is a lack of ethics in the political class per se. It’s really hard to build this kind of structure, there’s no credit involved (since you’re preventing hypothetical future catastrophes), and politically difficult to defend to constituencies that don’t agree with your caution (“repeal regulations”). You might also be wrong and your opponents could be right so you’re taking a gamble on something that has little to no upside and lots of risk. That being said, (and as a person with a pro-nuclear bias) I will note though that Fukushima had engineers raising dissent about it and warning/begging/pleading with the bureaucracy to harden the defenses against a tsunami. Admittedly maybe you’re talking about Western policies.
pdonis 6y ago
I don't think this is true as an unqualified statement. But I think it is true that many/most people who are making technical decisions without the proper technical understanding behave. The technical experts in all of the organizations involved were doing the right thing, raising alarms and recommending against flying the Shuttle under risky conditions. But the managers over them were not listening or overruling them, because the managers did not understand the actual impact of the technical decisions they were making until after the disaster occurred.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]