3 ms·

Well the concept of efficiency should be represented, financial responsibility, technological innovation, consumer and general public requirements, and then alo

by Closi 4y ago

Well the concept of efficiency should be represented, financial responsibility, technological innovation, consumer and general public requirements, and then alongside this working collaboratively with other agencies to create joined-up policy (which involves balance between the needs of both agencies).

mort96 4y ago
Sure but all of those come after the safety thing, right? We wouldn't want the most cost effective and innovative option to be chosen if it's unsafe?
- ptero 4y ago
  The approach I think you are proposing, safety above all, often leads to very low efficiency and in the end can lower total safety, for example encouraging shift to alternative modes of transport. Or by setting the certification bar so high that companies with new technologies, including those to improve safety, do not even bother to apply. An approach of joint utility, taking into account time, money and risk usually works better.
- gjm11 4y ago
  Safety isn't binary. The only way to achieve total aircraft safety is to have no aircraft. If the FAA literally cared about nothing other than safety they would have everything grounded, so clearly they do to some extent care about other things. Plausibly, a well-designed government would be explicit about the tradeoffs between safety and convenience and cost and so forth. In practice, that might be politically catastrophic. What usually happens, I think, is something like this: the official line is "keep risk down to a negligible level", where "negligible" is usually not quantified, and cost/inconvenience is largely ignored until everyone agrees that the risk has been made negligible, but below that threshold everyone's free to minimize cost/inconvenience. (This might actually end up being a pretty good strategy. Let's measure cost and convenience in dollars, because trading those off against one another isn't so problematic; then maybe a reasonable approximation to what we care about is that 1. each death is like burning $X where X is probably some number of millions, and 2. having any major accident in a given year is like burning $Y where Y is many billions, because if there's a major accident then the hit to public confidence means (a) big loss to the airline industry, (b) more people driving instead of flying, which means more deaths because flying is much safer, and wasting a lot of their time, and probably also more environmental damage. In that case, maybe the effect of #2 is actually not so very different from "big penalty if the risk goes above a negligible level". But it seems like we'd get better decisions overall by being more explicit about what we care about and how much.)
Spooky23 4y ago
So you weigh the importance of Verizon Wireless’s ability to compete with TMobile for midband 5G equally with risk to human life? Give me a break.
- Closi 4y ago
  Not equally (where did I say that?) but put frankly it depends how much risk. Everything is a trade-off, and actually what we usually aim to do as society is to manage acceptable and balanced levels of risk rather than use safety as the single-lens to make decision. As an example, the design of cars would be very different if they were designed only with safety in mind, and if automakers pursued this goal ignoring factors such as speed, comfort and price point (or indeed, competitive pressures). It's also worth noting that the "efficiency" in my post actually came from the stated goals of the FAA.

by Closi 4y ago

mort96 4y ago

Sure but all of those come after the safety thing, right? We wouldn't want the most cost effective and innovative option to be chosen if it's unsafe?

ptero 4y ago
The approach I think you are proposing, safety above all, often leads to very low efficiency and in the end can lower total safety, for example encouraging shift to alternative modes of transport. Or by setting the certification bar so high that companies with new technologies, including those to improve safety, do not even bother to apply. An approach of joint utility, taking into account time, money and risk usually works better.
gjm11 4y ago
Safety isn't binary. The only way to achieve total aircraft safety is to have no aircraft. If the FAA literally cared about nothing other than safety they would have everything grounded, so clearly they do to some extent care about other things. Plausibly, a well-designed government would be explicit about the tradeoffs between safety and convenience and cost and so forth. In practice, that might be politically catastrophic. What usually happens, I think, is something like this: the official line is "keep risk down to a negligible level", where "negligible" is usually not quantified, and cost/inconvenience is largely ignored until everyone agrees that the risk has been made negligible, but below that threshold everyone's free to minimize cost/inconvenience. (This might actually end up being a pretty good strategy. Let's measure cost and convenience in dollars, because trading those off against one another isn't so problematic; then maybe a reasonable approximation to what we care about is that 1. each death is like burning $X where X is probably some number of millions, and 2. having any major accident in a given year is like burning $Y where Y is many billions, because if there's a major accident then the hit to public confidence means (a) big loss to the airline industry, (b) more people driving instead of flying, which means more deaths because flying is much safer, and wasting a lot of their time, and probably also more environmental damage. In that case, maybe the effect of #2 is actually not so very different from "big penalty if the risk goes above a negligible level". But it seems like we'd get better decisions overall by being more explicit about what we care about and how much.)

Spooky23 4y ago

So you weigh the importance of Verizon Wireless’s ability to compete with TMobile for midband 5G equally with risk to human life? Give me a break.

Closi 4y ago
Not equally (where did I say that?) but put frankly it depends how much risk. Everything is a trade-off, and actually what we usually aim to do as society is to manage acceptable and balanced levels of risk rather than use safety as the single-lens to make decision. As an example, the design of cars would be very different if they were designed only with safety in mind, and if automakers pursued this goal ignoring factors such as speed, comfort and price point (or indeed, competitive pressures). It's also worth noting that the "efficiency" in my post actually came from the stated goals of the FAA.