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>It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. As I get older, I see this sentiment

>It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to the bottom. It's a very big world, filled with mostly ocean, and plenty of thrill-seekers who will attempt anything half-way reasonable. Even 10% reasonable. You can't stop that, and personally, I don't think its a good idea. To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand.

reaperman 3y ago
There’s a difference between Jacques Cousteau building a janky submarine rig for himself vs. Creating a business model of selling tickets to random strangers on that janky submarine.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking. If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment.
  - fasthands9 3y ago
    This is not really how the government operates. If this was operating at scale the government would absolutely be involved. You can't just run cruise ship operations and advertising without government involvement. I dont see how this is any different. Perhaps you personally have a "so be it" libertarian view but thats not the view the government takes.
    - Osiris 3y ago
      It’s international waters. What “government” are you referring to?
      - pohl 3y ago
        Does the first sentence here help narrow it down? https://oceangate.com/about.html https://oceangate.com/about.html
      - greiskul 3y ago
        Any ship needs to fly the flag of a country. They do so by registering with a country, following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. By doing so, the ship has to follow the laws of the registered country. If a ship or submarine does not register to any country, I think most coast guards will assume it to be pirates or drug smugglers. And they will probably surrender and arrest anyone on board or sink you if it comes to that.
        mwint 3y ago
        Yeah, and there will always be a country willing to let you do anything short of actual piracy under their flag, maybe for a fee. There’s no world government, thank goodness.
      - yxhuvud 3y ago
        Assumedly the sale of the service didn't also happen on international waters.
      - fasthands9 3y ago
        A cruise ship is on international water but there are still strict laws about what cruise ships can operate at US ports or can advertise to US consumers.
    - strawhatguy 3y ago
      Oh government likes to step in alright. Doesn't mean they should, or that it helps as much for 'safety' as people would like to believe. Just as often rules can cause safety issues as not. But always more expense.
  - rdtsc 3y ago
    It's one thing for them to take the risk for themselves, but it's a whole other level selling to others. For example, if someone wants to drink a refreshing glass of strychnine soda, it's hard to stop them. But opening a stand and selling at the street corner is a bit different.
    - brutusborn 3y ago
      The distinction is artificial, both parties paid for either the materials or the final product. Financial gain doesn’t fundamentally change who is responsible, that it just you applying your personal values to the situation.
      - bluepod4 3y ago
        You must be a huge Ayn Rand fan. LMAO.
      - afiori 3y ago
        As an hypothetical would you say that someone should be allowed to sell "mystery drinks" where the customer is told that the ingredients are a secret but the seller knows that it is heavily poisonous?
      - ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
        A kid walks up and wants one
    - stOneskull 3y ago
      the CEO is drinking one with them
      - rdtsc 3y ago
        Indeed. He put his life on the line. I don't know the circumstance that lead to this and I hope everyone gets rescued, though it's looking quite desperate. But, yeah, that's pretty convincing from a marketing point of view.
  - phs318u 3y ago
    A “risk assessment” by customers is typically based on attestations to safety made by the company. If the company is hiding or misrepresenting pertinent information then the customers have been denied the opportunity to make a reasonable assessment. At best it’s a case of gaining money by deception. At worst the company principals will be liable for deaths the deaths of those customers.
    - brutusborn 3y ago
      I completely agree that if the company lied they should be liable. Truth is essential.
    - aksss 3y ago
      Let’s not rob the clients of their agency. Remember the proposition: you’re going to dive 2.4 miles underwater, in the middle of the Atlantic. On a nuclear sub with the best collision avoidance and mapping data available, with highly regimented procedure, this is still a riskier proposition than most people appreciate. But you’re going to do it in a carbon fiber hull. This is at the very minimum an adventure, with a very high risk of turning into a disaster. You sign the liability waiver and have the balls to get on board the boat, and have the further commitment to board the submersible day-of. I’m not saying this to blame them or extol their courage. It just is what it is, and sometimes - oftentimes - with adventure sports and tourism, we don’t need to search for bad guys and villains. It’s risky living and this is what it looks like sometimes.
  - peterashford 3y ago
    I totally think it matters, philosophically. Clearly there's a moral difference between risking your own life and profiting off risking other people's lives.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - xpe 3y ago
    >> There’s a difference between Jacques Cousteau building a janky submarine rig for himself vs. Creating a business model of selling tickets to random strangers on that janky submarine. > There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking. I'm unconvinced. The phrase "philosophically speaking" is very vague. Which philosoph(y/ies)? > If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. You didn't say who is affected by said risks. Only the person taking the huge risk? What about externalities? "Huge" risks would include an existential threat to an individual and thus anyone who knows or depends on them. > Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment. Sounds like we're in the domains of legal and/or moral philosophy. The phrase "up to them" suggests a responsibility, a kind of normative claim. Perhaps a responsibility to make wise decisions? Perhaps a responsibility that cannot be transferred or delegated? Using the phrase "philosophically speaking" invites these kinds of questions, particularly when the underlying philosophy is unsaid and its reasoning unclear.
    - brutusborn 3y ago
      I admit I didn’t put much effort into that comment. I meant ‘philosophically’ as opposed to legally. Fundamentally every risky decision is up to the individual. Even trusting the regulator is a decision (I don’t trust some regulators in my country because they have a bad record for competence, so I avoid/minimise using things that they regulate). Therefore the final ‘responsibility’ for your safety is always personal, unless you were forced on board, or lied to about the construction. Legally it’s anyone’s guess who is responsible, that depends on the polity involved and the political philosophy it uses (libertarianism or authoritarianism being the 2 extremes). I think we should protect those who truly cannot judge (children and mentally handicapped) but in this case it was grown men taking a risk for the chance of a reward. I hope they are found alive and well but I think they had every right to go aboard.
      - xpe 3y ago
        > Fundamentally every risky decision is up to the individual. Even trusting the regulator is a decision (...). Therefore the final ‘responsibility’ for your safety is always personal, unless you were forced on board, or lied to about the construction. It seems you are trying to say something along the lines of: A. In cases where an individual has the freedom to make decisions (i.e. not coerced or manipulated) B. The individual bears moral responsibility for the consequences of those decisions To what degree did I convey what you were hoping to convey? This is an flawed argument for at least two reasons: 1. The consequences flow from many people's actions. Figuring out credit and blame is a hard project in philosophy, even theoretically. In practice, it can often be impossible. 2. Humans have imperfect abilities to predict consequences Point A does not always hold -- not even most of the time. Individual conscious awareness and volitional control is limited. We are largely driven by subconscious and non-volitional parts of our brains. Not to mention by environmental constraints.
  - branko_d 3y ago
    Were the customers aware of the risks? There is a difference between somebody selling me poison and somebody selling me “lemonade” that’s actually poison.
  - rgmerk 3y ago
    That’s not how regulation of transportation works. You can build your own plane and fly it with relatively few restrictions, but as soon as you a) manufacture a plane for sale to someone else, or b) get paid for transporting someone in it, the regulators become much much stricter.
  - pryce 3y ago
    Libertarian students have a notoriously difficult time in philosophy departments because of these kinds of eager statements. The question of whether or not organisations, businesses, states, armed forces, educational institutions, self-declared medical providers, and other entities incur some obligation to preserve peoples lives - and if so in which ways and to what extents - are far from settled questions. It helps no one to adopt a hard-libertarian position, omit the framework being employed, and imply the matter is settled. A fair number of regulatory efforts trace their roots to a groundswell of public distress in the aftermath of preventable deaths; and questions such as "should I, a computer programmer, be undertaking my own untrained risk assessment of the particular type of cladding used in Grenfell tower" are perfectly fair objections to a libertarian free-for-all position.
    - brutusborn 3y ago
      As you say, these kinds of questions are not ‘settled’ so it’s somewhat up to personal opinion. I think the best policy is to enforce rules only when there are obvious benefits. In the same way that theories should be simple, regulations should be too: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler” I’m not a hard line libertarian, I think regulations are good in many cases. But not in the case of high risk adventuring. If you want to climb Everest, visit the titanic or the stratosphere, then that’s up to you: the state need not hold your hand, the risks are obvious to anyone with eyes. The fact that libertarians have a difficult time just goes to show how close minded and dogmatic universities are. If all flavours of opinions were respected enough for discussion then I think you would end up with less extremists online and in general. I think the demarcation problem applies just as well to politics as to science. What is good policy? Impossible to know absolutely, so we must rely on heuristics, judgement and intuition. Claims to truly objective knowledge just don’t hold up. Regulators often fail, and in many cases no regulation is preferable. I can’t prove that, but critics can’t prove otherwise, so we discuss and learn and change our opinions as we go. The Grenfell tower is good example of failure of regulation. And I think the fundamental problem _is_ over regulation. When regulations become bloated beyond the capacity to enforce them, most of them are ignored and the most obvious ones are the only ones enforced. If the regulation was simpler it would be easier to enforce because you would only focus on _critical_ aspects. Instead of simplifying, people campaign for more regulation, forgetting second order effects that make things less safe.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  Is it really a good use of our tax money to have (usually equally incompetent) government bureaucrats chasing rich "eccentrics" around and policing how they hurt themselves? Department heads, and chiefs, and comptrollers and TPS reports and meetings to decide the meeting to define the committee to oversee efficiency standards, to go tell millionaires they can't ride in shonky submarines? Not using that on say schools or roads or reducing taxes or paying down government debt or anything? Seems like a worse deal than the war on drugs. At least you don't get many people breaking into houses or neglecting their children to pay for their next trip to the Titanic. Let them go nuts. Tax it like you would a commoner with a loaf of bread, bill them in full for any rescue efforts, and let nature take its course.
  - antonvs 3y ago
    The war on submarines isn't going to win itself. Oh wait, maybe it will.
  - peterashford 3y ago
    I think the issue is less eccentrics hurting themselves as it is them profiting off endangering others
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      The thing is loaded with millionaires and billionaires. Pretty sure they can afford the time and money to do basic due diligence, it's not like they're struggling the buy food and need the government to prevent desperation exploiting an asymmetric power relationship.
- bluepod4 3y ago
  Exactly (besides the “random” strangers part).
Aeolun 3y ago
You’d expect companies that sell these kinds of tours for 250k a pop to be vetted though? If it’s uncle bob in his garage I’d be fine with lack of regulation, but when he starts commercially selling his trips he’d need to pass safety standards.
- detourdog 3y ago
  He is not selling the trips they are paying to be crew. This is such a needless story.
  - jacurtis 3y ago
    This is an important distinction which I believe was made to thread some legal loopholes. They all signed paperwork that they were participating in the "mission" as a crew member of an experimental vessel. So literally, it is like, "the four of you's job is to look out this window, make sure it doesn't fog up, my job is to do everything else, alright let's dive"
  - sn41 3y ago
    That doesn't absolve them of negligence. A crew hardly signs up to be killed.
  - vkou 3y ago
    Recklessly killing your workers is even worse.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      Many jobs are dangerous and regulated but killing customers is different. somehow it is the insurance companies that are the first line of defense when some conjures up a novel scheme.
      - vkou 3y ago
        Dangerous jobs still require the employer to try really hard to make them as safe as possible. It doesn't sound like that was the case here.
andrewflnr 3y ago
FWIW I read that statement as "I can't believe they didn't flame out before they got this far". Which is also, well, I won't call it naive, but it's wrong for trickier reasons. You can get lucky for a long time before it runs out in a bad situation.
nraynaud 3y ago
There is a bit of a giant ominous nanny: insurance companies create a lot of the procedures that are practiced around us. And in a world of passing the buck, a lot of people want to insure their civil liabilities, so now our world is directed by people in suits working in high rises.
craftsman 3y ago
As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that every individual would review and approve every detail of every endeavor that they personally undertake. But that's just not how the world works. There are plenty of everyday people who want to attempt very reasonable and achievably safe things. You can stop people from taking advantage of others, and if there's any constant in history, it is that there are plenty of profit-seekers who will attempt to rip off other people, and we can eliminate a good number of these circumstances, and I think this is a good idea. To get it you need a reasonable society in which checks and balances exist, and it's a society which largely already exists in large parts of the world and has not gotten out of hand.
- strawhatguy 3y ago
  Must be fairly young yet.
xpe 3y ago
> It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. Yes, my impression is that this feels naive, especially if reflects a more general viewpoint of surprise when organizations do negligent things. The law of large numbers combined with human nature seems to statistically all-but guarantee such failures over a few decades. > ... The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. No. You made that tacit assumption, not the commenter before you. This assumption makes it easy to setup a straw man. > But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to the bottom. It's a very big world, filled with mostly ocean, and plenty of thrill-seekers who will attempt anything half-way reasonable. Even 10% reasonable. You can't stop that... This is a false dichotomy. A more apropos question is how to reduce undesirable outcomes. > ... To get it you'd need a nanny state ... "Nanny state" is loaded language, "... rhetoric used to influence an audience by using words and phrases with strong connotations. This type of language is very often made vague to more effectively invoke an emotional response and/or exploit stereotypes." - Wikipedia > ... that snoops on everyone ... More loaded language. > and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". More loaded language. > It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. Are you using the slippery slope fallacy? I'm not quite sure. Regardless, wise public policy is not exclusively based on such an approach of imagining things getting out of hand. There are better ways. To name just one, scenario planning is a powerful way of combining probabilistic decision-making across potential scenarios. You aren't explicitly stating your political philosophy, but I'd bet it underlies your thinking here. I just hope that you are open to hypothesis-testing and avoiding dogma. ## Useful Responses There is a wide menu of public responses and/or policy instruments available to reduce undesirable outcomes and promote desirable ones. It is an interesting question, I think, not one that should be quickly dismissed. Legally, jurisdiction seems to be a good place to start. Culturally and economically, what motivates such negligent underwater attempts? Maybe it isn't the top problem in the world to solve, but I think too many tech people have a huge blind spots and pretend to know more than they actually do. This example is newsworthy, fun, tragic, and not particularly politically charged, best I can tell. So why not use some good reasoning here and discuss it?
jacurtis 3y ago
As I have moved through my career and been in charge of larger and larger companies, I continue to be surprised how much of what you would expect is critical infrastructure that affects many people is being "cobbled" together. I've worked at some companies that manage huge systems that affects tens of millions of people, which cause extremely severe problems if they break, and they are "cobbled" together with a surprising amount of metaphorical bubble gum and duct tape. Every time I go somewhere new, I assume they have their shit together and I am surprised every time. So no, it doesn't surprise me that an operation like this was cobbled together in the same fashion.
- antonvs 3y ago
  The difference is that the cobbling together at a large org has generally been battle-tested over time, at scale. The bits that were going to break have already broken and been replaced with something better. While it may seem horrible aesthetically from a developer's perspective, it's nevertheless functional and reliable for its purpose. But when you use that approach on a new, one-off device with life-threatening consequences for failure, sooner or later you're going to find out that "testing in production" may not always be appropriate.
  - phs318u 3y ago
    Can anyone downvoting antonvs please explain why? I think it’s a valid opinion to hold and point to make irrespective of whether you agree.
    - rcme 3y ago
      I didn’t downvote him, but I think it’s a bit dismissive of the original point and kind of falls prey to the no true Scotsman fallacy. antonvs’ point can be summarized as essentially “even though you have firsthand experience running companies with cobbled together critical infrastructure, that’s not actually cobbled together infrastructure.”
      - sriram_malhar 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
strawhatguy 3y ago
Yes, 100% agree. What I find unbelievable is how many people casually throw around the idea of approval process to prevent bad thing X that just happened, that few even knew existed. We have laborious and very expensive approval processes for airplanes, ask the 737 MAX inspector from the FAA how well that guarded against bad engineering. If even the bad engineering is at fault here (unknown as of writing this).
- asddubs 3y ago
  Oh I'm sure the approval processes stopped many bad ideas in the airplane industry
- midoridensha 3y ago
  >We have laborious and very expensive approval processes for airplanes, ask the 737 MAX inspector from the FAA how well that guarded against bad engineering. Those approval processes don't work when the government regulators allow the company being regulated to "self-regulate". There was no real FAA approval process for the 737MAX: FAA just let Boeing do it themselves. Of course that's going to lead to bad engineering when the sales team and executives make engineering decisions, and no one outside the company knows anything about it.
  - strawhatguy 3y ago
    that’s my point; approval processes are always gamed around because of the cost such processes impose. You can’t just say oh the rules ought to be perfect and perfectly implemented for it to work. That’s not a world in which we live in. In fact, the more thorough the process, the more to gain in working around it. In the meantime such processes add much to the expense such that only larger well-funded and well-connected people can participate. The ones most likely to game it, btw. It’s a reason planes basically look the same for many decades too; newer stuff is harder to get through. Also part of why Boeing thought it best to revise an existing design once more, besides designing a new one. The process led to bad design decisions quite directly, though of course everyone blames Boeing (rightly) but not the process the FAA imposed.
prawn 3y ago
And I can see how patrons might look at their $250k fee (or whatever it was) and assume that price signals an absolutely premium and safe product, where really the bulk of it just signals that it's a difficult, risky, remote and rare expedition.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  For this kind of thing? I would suspect 250k is too cheap to be good.
  - prawn 3y ago
    I'm not sure the average person is in a brilliant position to judge. The explorers would be driven by adventure to overlook some risk, researchers might figure "I get a $250k experience for nothing" and business people tagging along might consider "Well, if the other guys are going along, it must be OK. And what else am I going to do with this money?"
lagolinguini 3y ago
My concern with some of these endavours is the opportunity cost to rescue services. Obviously, there is no question that if anyone is in danger in a remote location we should try our best to rescue them, but the corollary is that as a responsible citizen you should avoid putting yourself in situations where others have to go to great lengths to rescue you if it can be avoided.
- peterashford 3y ago
  Yep. Any rescue attempt here will endanger others at great cost.
rurp 3y ago
It's one thing for people to go out on their own and take risks, but a company selling a catered experience for a lot of money without basic safety practices is very different. I think the former is totally fine and there's no need for governments to get involved, while the latter is pretty bad and very possible to regulate.
wpietri 3y ago
It's wild to me that you write "As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive." And then go on to say some breathtakingly naive things. A lot of ocean activity is thoroughly regulated. For example: https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International-Convention-for-the-Safety-of-Life-at-Sea-(SOLAS),-1974.aspx https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International... Moreover, It's not like they're getting paid in sand dollars or doubloons from the bottom of the sea. The passengers are signing contracts and paying large fees in landlubber currencies. There's a company involved here, a legal entity. The company is based in Washington State. If this was really not covered by any law in any country with a plausible claim on it, you can bet that people will soon be clamoring for one. Remember that air travel was once entirely unregulated. Now it's one of the most highly controlled activities. A lot of regulation like that happens in response to notable disasters; the regulations are, as they say, "written in blood."
- TheDudeMan 3y ago
  So you're saying there is an agency/organization that would review and approve such endeavors? What is it, in this case?
  - wpietri 3y ago
    I did not in fact say that. I'm addressing the broader false claim that the ocean is some sort of essentially unregulateable space. Indeed, I think the final paragraph makes clear that I think it's possible that no agency currently has unambiguous authority, but that won't stop people from creating one if enough people die like this. I also suspect that people with broad authority may investigate this and consider/recommend prosecutions if appropriate. E.g., the Washington State Attorney General, the US Coast Guard, and the Canadian Coast Guard.
- barrysteve 3y ago
  Pushing regulation back to the point where someone dies, causes these problems in the first place. It's not hard to certify vehicles before use. We do it with cars on a daily basis. Measuring the necessity for regulation "in blood" is unbelievably cruel.
peterashford 3y ago
So corporations doing whatever they want with no oversight regardless of the consequences is just fine and dandy? Obviously there's a middle ground between 'nanny state' and 'corporate anarchy' - reality is not so black and white and imagining it to be so is a naive sentiment.
elzbardico 3y ago
I don't even think at those levels the government should bother. It is not we are selling a car for thousands of people that we know it occasionally leaks fuel in the engine bay. People who pay for that kind of trip know the dangers and have money enough to do their own due diligence.
csb6 3y ago
> You can't stop that, and personally, I don't think its a good idea. To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s safety. I seriously doubt the passengers onboard were aware of OceanGate’s whistleblower lawsuit or the claim that the viewport is not rated for the depth it is used at. When interviewed by the BBC, the company represented their submersible as very safe, certainly not as something likely to kill its passengers. How is it a “nanny state” or “snooping” to require businesses to be honest about their service? This isn’t even necessarily an action a government would have to perform - it could be carried out by classification societies [0]. Do whatever you like with your own experimental sub, but don’t misrepresent it as a safe sightseeing trip for tourists. > It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. It’s even easier to imagine scenarios where a business is allowed to sell trips on a vessel with critical safety issues that the company knew of but did not disclose or address. We have remedies for these real scenarios - they are called laws and regulations. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_classification_society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_classification_society
- zarzavat 3y ago
  The founder is likely dead and paid the ultimate price for his negligence. There’s simply not much you can do about people who are willing to die and take other people with them, whether intentionally or negligently. You can’t put a dead person on trial. I believe that the GP’s point is that there’s no omniscient agency that can preemptively stop people from doing stupid things. There’s not enough resources to watch everything that everybody is doing all the time.
  - bboygravity 3y ago
    > There’s not enough resources to watch everything that everybody is doing all the time. Have you ever heard of the name "Edward Snowden"? What everybody is doing is already literally being watched all the time and it has been that way or at least decades and has gotten worse with technological evolution.
mozman 3y ago
> To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety" This is exactly why we need less government and be slower to call for laws. Human nature cannot be changed despite our belief that it can be. The same lazy decisions that led to this potential event can also be used to destroy lives. At the end of the day we are all accountable for our selves.
kodah 3y ago
> To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. A nanny state is telling you how to live your life. An example is when NYC banned large soft drinks or when we listed marijuana as a schedule 1 drug. Registration of a mode of transportation is hardly a nanny state activity because vehicles inherently pose a risk to others whether as a passenger or someone sharing proximity with you. You can certainly build your own car and register it. They're often called salvage titles; this is true for airplane kits too, but you also have to be able to prove the worthiness of the machine. We have lots of process and administration to take care of this, but for whatever reason it didn't work here.
marmakoide 3y ago
I have a hard time to let people throwing themselves into danger with a "I don't need a nanny" attitude, and then see a state-run, massive and costly rescue effort when things go wrong.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yes. Thank you. I live in Colorado and people do dumb stuff in the mountains all the time, which ends up being expensive for everyone, not just themselves. And it doesn't work to just not rescue people.
rich_sasha 3y ago
You can't stop this and likely shouldn't as you say, but still, this anecdote, if true, means: - they didn't do a test dive first with no humans on board - they didn't do a test dive with just staff, no paying customers - the first "test" was to the full depth where the craft would be basically unrecoverable - they didn't seem to even test these things ashore... Because you'd find out if the damn motor was on backwards! If true, this strikes me as beyond amateurish and outright insane.

reaperman 3y ago

There’s a difference between Jacques Cousteau building a janky submarine rig for himself vs. Creating a business model of selling tickets to random strangers on that janky submarine.

brutusborn 3y ago
There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking. If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  This is not really how the government operates. If this was operating at scale the government would absolutely be involved. You can't just run cruise ship operations and advertising without government involvement. I dont see how this is any different. Perhaps you personally have a "so be it" libertarian view but thats not the view the government takes.
  - Osiris 3y ago
    It’s international waters. What “government” are you referring to?
    - pohl 3y ago
      Does the first sentence here help narrow it down? https://oceangate.com/about.html https://oceangate.com/about.html
    - greiskul 3y ago
      Any ship needs to fly the flag of a country. They do so by registering with a country, following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. By doing so, the ship has to follow the laws of the registered country. If a ship or submarine does not register to any country, I think most coast guards will assume it to be pirates or drug smugglers. And they will probably surrender and arrest anyone on board or sink you if it comes to that.
      - mwint 3y ago
        Yeah, and there will always be a country willing to let you do anything short of actual piracy under their flag, maybe for a fee. There’s no world government, thank goodness.
    - yxhuvud 3y ago
      Assumedly the sale of the service didn't also happen on international waters.
    - fasthands9 3y ago
      A cruise ship is on international water but there are still strict laws about what cruise ships can operate at US ports or can advertise to US consumers.
  - strawhatguy 3y ago
    Oh government likes to step in alright. Doesn't mean they should, or that it helps as much for 'safety' as people would like to believe. Just as often rules can cause safety issues as not. But always more expense.
- rdtsc 3y ago
  It's one thing for them to take the risk for themselves, but it's a whole other level selling to others. For example, if someone wants to drink a refreshing glass of strychnine soda, it's hard to stop them. But opening a stand and selling at the street corner is a bit different.
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    The distinction is artificial, both parties paid for either the materials or the final product. Financial gain doesn’t fundamentally change who is responsible, that it just you applying your personal values to the situation.
    - bluepod4 3y ago
      You must be a huge Ayn Rand fan. LMAO.
    - afiori 3y ago
      As an hypothetical would you say that someone should be allowed to sell "mystery drinks" where the customer is told that the ingredients are a secret but the seller knows that it is heavily poisonous?
    - ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
      A kid walks up and wants one
  - stOneskull 3y ago
    the CEO is drinking one with them
    - rdtsc 3y ago
      Indeed. He put his life on the line. I don't know the circumstance that lead to this and I hope everyone gets rescued, though it's looking quite desperate. But, yeah, that's pretty convincing from a marketing point of view.
- phs318u 3y ago
  A “risk assessment” by customers is typically based on attestations to safety made by the company. If the company is hiding or misrepresenting pertinent information then the customers have been denied the opportunity to make a reasonable assessment. At best it’s a case of gaining money by deception. At worst the company principals will be liable for deaths the deaths of those customers.
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    I completely agree that if the company lied they should be liable. Truth is essential.
  - aksss 3y ago
    Let’s not rob the clients of their agency. Remember the proposition: you’re going to dive 2.4 miles underwater, in the middle of the Atlantic. On a nuclear sub with the best collision avoidance and mapping data available, with highly regimented procedure, this is still a riskier proposition than most people appreciate. But you’re going to do it in a carbon fiber hull. This is at the very minimum an adventure, with a very high risk of turning into a disaster. You sign the liability waiver and have the balls to get on board the boat, and have the further commitment to board the submersible day-of. I’m not saying this to blame them or extol their courage. It just is what it is, and sometimes - oftentimes - with adventure sports and tourism, we don’t need to search for bad guys and villains. It’s risky living and this is what it looks like sometimes.
- peterashford 3y ago
  I totally think it matters, philosophically. Clearly there's a moral difference between risking your own life and profiting off risking other people's lives.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- xpe 3y ago
  >> There’s a difference between Jacques Cousteau building a janky submarine rig for himself vs. Creating a business model of selling tickets to random strangers on that janky submarine. > There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking. I'm unconvinced. The phrase "philosophically speaking" is very vague. Which philosoph(y/ies)? > If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. You didn't say who is affected by said risks. Only the person taking the huge risk? What about externalities? "Huge" risks would include an existential threat to an individual and thus anyone who knows or depends on them. > Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment. Sounds like we're in the domains of legal and/or moral philosophy. The phrase "up to them" suggests a responsibility, a kind of normative claim. Perhaps a responsibility to make wise decisions? Perhaps a responsibility that cannot be transferred or delegated? Using the phrase "philosophically speaking" invites these kinds of questions, particularly when the underlying philosophy is unsaid and its reasoning unclear.
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    I admit I didn’t put much effort into that comment. I meant ‘philosophically’ as opposed to legally. Fundamentally every risky decision is up to the individual. Even trusting the regulator is a decision (I don’t trust some regulators in my country because they have a bad record for competence, so I avoid/minimise using things that they regulate). Therefore the final ‘responsibility’ for your safety is always personal, unless you were forced on board, or lied to about the construction. Legally it’s anyone’s guess who is responsible, that depends on the polity involved and the political philosophy it uses (libertarianism or authoritarianism being the 2 extremes). I think we should protect those who truly cannot judge (children and mentally handicapped) but in this case it was grown men taking a risk for the chance of a reward. I hope they are found alive and well but I think they had every right to go aboard.
    - xpe 3y ago
      > Fundamentally every risky decision is up to the individual. Even trusting the regulator is a decision (...). Therefore the final ‘responsibility’ for your safety is always personal, unless you were forced on board, or lied to about the construction. It seems you are trying to say something along the lines of: A. In cases where an individual has the freedom to make decisions (i.e. not coerced or manipulated) B. The individual bears moral responsibility for the consequences of those decisions To what degree did I convey what you were hoping to convey? This is an flawed argument for at least two reasons: 1. The consequences flow from many people's actions. Figuring out credit and blame is a hard project in philosophy, even theoretically. In practice, it can often be impossible. 2. Humans have imperfect abilities to predict consequences Point A does not always hold -- not even most of the time. Individual conscious awareness and volitional control is limited. We are largely driven by subconscious and non-volitional parts of our brains. Not to mention by environmental constraints.
- branko_d 3y ago
  Were the customers aware of the risks? There is a difference between somebody selling me poison and somebody selling me “lemonade” that’s actually poison.
- rgmerk 3y ago
  That’s not how regulation of transportation works. You can build your own plane and fly it with relatively few restrictions, but as soon as you a) manufacture a plane for sale to someone else, or b) get paid for transporting someone in it, the regulators become much much stricter.
- pryce 3y ago
  Libertarian students have a notoriously difficult time in philosophy departments because of these kinds of eager statements. The question of whether or not organisations, businesses, states, armed forces, educational institutions, self-declared medical providers, and other entities incur some obligation to preserve peoples lives - and if so in which ways and to what extents - are far from settled questions. It helps no one to adopt a hard-libertarian position, omit the framework being employed, and imply the matter is settled. A fair number of regulatory efforts trace their roots to a groundswell of public distress in the aftermath of preventable deaths; and questions such as "should I, a computer programmer, be undertaking my own untrained risk assessment of the particular type of cladding used in Grenfell tower" are perfectly fair objections to a libertarian free-for-all position.
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    As you say, these kinds of questions are not ‘settled’ so it’s somewhat up to personal opinion. I think the best policy is to enforce rules only when there are obvious benefits. In the same way that theories should be simple, regulations should be too: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler” I’m not a hard line libertarian, I think regulations are good in many cases. But not in the case of high risk adventuring. If you want to climb Everest, visit the titanic or the stratosphere, then that’s up to you: the state need not hold your hand, the risks are obvious to anyone with eyes. The fact that libertarians have a difficult time just goes to show how close minded and dogmatic universities are. If all flavours of opinions were respected enough for discussion then I think you would end up with less extremists online and in general. I think the demarcation problem applies just as well to politics as to science. What is good policy? Impossible to know absolutely, so we must rely on heuristics, judgement and intuition. Claims to truly objective knowledge just don’t hold up. Regulators often fail, and in many cases no regulation is preferable. I can’t prove that, but critics can’t prove otherwise, so we discuss and learn and change our opinions as we go. The Grenfell tower is good example of failure of regulation. And I think the fundamental problem _is_ over regulation. When regulations become bloated beyond the capacity to enforce them, most of them are ignored and the most obvious ones are the only ones enforced. If the regulation was simpler it would be easier to enforce because you would only focus on _critical_ aspects. Instead of simplifying, people campaign for more regulation, forgetting second order effects that make things less safe.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
Is it really a good use of our tax money to have (usually equally incompetent) government bureaucrats chasing rich "eccentrics" around and policing how they hurt themselves? Department heads, and chiefs, and comptrollers and TPS reports and meetings to decide the meeting to define the committee to oversee efficiency standards, to go tell millionaires they can't ride in shonky submarines? Not using that on say schools or roads or reducing taxes or paying down government debt or anything? Seems like a worse deal than the war on drugs. At least you don't get many people breaking into houses or neglecting their children to pay for their next trip to the Titanic. Let them go nuts. Tax it like you would a commoner with a loaf of bread, bill them in full for any rescue efforts, and let nature take its course.
- antonvs 3y ago
  The war on submarines isn't going to win itself. Oh wait, maybe it will.
- peterashford 3y ago
  I think the issue is less eccentrics hurting themselves as it is them profiting off endangering others
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    The thing is loaded with millionaires and billionaires. Pretty sure they can afford the time and money to do basic due diligence, it's not like they're struggling the buy food and need the government to prevent desperation exploiting an asymmetric power relationship.
bluepod4 3y ago
Exactly (besides the “random” strangers part).

Aeolun 3y ago

You’d expect companies that sell these kinds of tours for 250k a pop to be vetted though? If it’s uncle bob in his garage I’d be fine with lack of regulation, but when he starts commercially selling his trips he’d need to pass safety standards.

detourdog 3y ago
He is not selling the trips they are paying to be crew. This is such a needless story.
- jacurtis 3y ago
  This is an important distinction which I believe was made to thread some legal loopholes. They all signed paperwork that they were participating in the "mission" as a crew member of an experimental vessel. So literally, it is like, "the four of you's job is to look out this window, make sure it doesn't fog up, my job is to do everything else, alright let's dive"
- sn41 3y ago
  That doesn't absolve them of negligence. A crew hardly signs up to be killed.
- vkou 3y ago
  Recklessly killing your workers is even worse.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    Many jobs are dangerous and regulated but killing customers is different. somehow it is the insurance companies that are the first line of defense when some conjures up a novel scheme.
    - vkou 3y ago
      Dangerous jobs still require the employer to try really hard to make them as safe as possible. It doesn't sound like that was the case here.

andrewflnr 3y ago

FWIW I read that statement as "I can't believe they didn't flame out before they got this far". Which is also, well, I won't call it naive, but it's wrong for trickier reasons. You can get lucky for a long time before it runs out in a bad situation.

nraynaud 3y ago

There is a bit of a giant ominous nanny: insurance companies create a lot of the procedures that are practiced around us. And in a world of passing the buck, a lot of people want to insure their civil liabilities, so now our world is directed by people in suits working in high rises.

craftsman 3y ago

As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that every individual would review and approve every detail of every endeavor that they personally undertake. But that's just not how the world works. There are plenty of everyday people who want to attempt very reasonable and achievably safe things. You can stop people from taking advantage of others, and if there's any constant in history, it is that there are plenty of profit-seekers who will attempt to rip off other people, and we can eliminate a good number of these circumstances, and I think this is a good idea. To get it you need a reasonable society in which checks and balances exist, and it's a society which largely already exists in large parts of the world and has not gotten out of hand.

strawhatguy 3y ago
Must be fairly young yet.

xpe 3y ago

> It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. Yes, my impression is that this feels naive, especially if reflects a more general viewpoint of surprise when organizations do negligent things. The law of large numbers combined with human nature seems to statistically all-but guarantee such failures over a few decades. > ... The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. No. You made that tacit assumption, not the commenter before you. This assumption makes it easy to setup a straw man. > But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to the bottom. It's a very big world, filled with mostly ocean, and plenty of thrill-seekers who will attempt anything half-way reasonable. Even 10% reasonable. You can't stop that... This is a false dichotomy. A more apropos question is how to reduce undesirable outcomes. > ... To get it you'd need a nanny state ... "Nanny state" is loaded language, "... rhetoric used to influence an audience by using words and phrases with strong connotations. This type of language is very often made vague to more effectively invoke an emotional response and/or exploit stereotypes." - Wikipedia > ... that snoops on everyone ... More loaded language. > and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". More loaded language. > It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. Are you using the slippery slope fallacy? I'm not quite sure. Regardless, wise public policy is not exclusively based on such an approach of imagining things getting out of hand. There are better ways. To name just one, scenario planning is a powerful way of combining probabilistic decision-making across potential scenarios. You aren't explicitly stating your political philosophy, but I'd bet it underlies your thinking here. I just hope that you are open to hypothesis-testing and avoiding dogma. ## Useful Responses There is a wide menu of public responses and/or policy instruments available to reduce undesirable outcomes and promote desirable ones. It is an interesting question, I think, not one that should be quickly dismissed. Legally, jurisdiction seems to be a good place to start. Culturally and economically, what motivates such negligent underwater attempts? Maybe it isn't the top problem in the world to solve, but I think too many tech people have a huge blind spots and pretend to know more than they actually do. This example is newsworthy, fun, tragic, and not particularly politically charged, best I can tell. So why not use some good reasoning here and discuss it?

jacurtis 3y ago

As I have moved through my career and been in charge of larger and larger companies, I continue to be surprised how much of what you would expect is critical infrastructure that affects many people is being "cobbled" together. I've worked at some companies that manage huge systems that affects tens of millions of people, which cause extremely severe problems if they break, and they are "cobbled" together with a surprising amount of metaphorical bubble gum and duct tape. Every time I go somewhere new, I assume they have their shit together and I am surprised every time. So no, it doesn't surprise me that an operation like this was cobbled together in the same fashion.

antonvs 3y ago
The difference is that the cobbling together at a large org has generally been battle-tested over time, at scale. The bits that were going to break have already broken and been replaced with something better. While it may seem horrible aesthetically from a developer's perspective, it's nevertheless functional and reliable for its purpose. But when you use that approach on a new, one-off device with life-threatening consequences for failure, sooner or later you're going to find out that "testing in production" may not always be appropriate.
- phs318u 3y ago
  Can anyone downvoting antonvs please explain why? I think it’s a valid opinion to hold and point to make irrespective of whether you agree.
  - rcme 3y ago
    I didn’t downvote him, but I think it’s a bit dismissive of the original point and kind of falls prey to the no true Scotsman fallacy. antonvs’ point can be summarized as essentially “even though you have firsthand experience running companies with cobbled together critical infrastructure, that’s not actually cobbled together infrastructure.”
    - sriram_malhar 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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strawhatguy 3y ago

Yes, 100% agree. What I find unbelievable is how many people casually throw around the idea of approval process to prevent bad thing X that just happened, that few even knew existed. We have laborious and very expensive approval processes for airplanes, ask the 737 MAX inspector from the FAA how well that guarded against bad engineering. If even the bad engineering is at fault here (unknown as of writing this).

asddubs 3y ago
Oh I'm sure the approval processes stopped many bad ideas in the airplane industry
midoridensha 3y ago
>We have laborious and very expensive approval processes for airplanes, ask the 737 MAX inspector from the FAA how well that guarded against bad engineering. Those approval processes don't work when the government regulators allow the company being regulated to "self-regulate". There was no real FAA approval process for the 737MAX: FAA just let Boeing do it themselves. Of course that's going to lead to bad engineering when the sales team and executives make engineering decisions, and no one outside the company knows anything about it.
- strawhatguy 3y ago
  that’s my point; approval processes are always gamed around because of the cost such processes impose. You can’t just say oh the rules ought to be perfect and perfectly implemented for it to work. That’s not a world in which we live in. In fact, the more thorough the process, the more to gain in working around it. In the meantime such processes add much to the expense such that only larger well-funded and well-connected people can participate. The ones most likely to game it, btw. It’s a reason planes basically look the same for many decades too; newer stuff is harder to get through. Also part of why Boeing thought it best to revise an existing design once more, besides designing a new one. The process led to bad design decisions quite directly, though of course everyone blames Boeing (rightly) but not the process the FAA imposed.

prawn 3y ago

And I can see how patrons might look at their $250k fee (or whatever it was) and assume that price signals an absolutely premium and safe product, where really the bulk of it just signals that it's a difficult, risky, remote and rare expedition.

elzbardico 3y ago
For this kind of thing? I would suspect 250k is too cheap to be good.
- prawn 3y ago
  I'm not sure the average person is in a brilliant position to judge. The explorers would be driven by adventure to overlook some risk, researchers might figure "I get a $250k experience for nothing" and business people tagging along might consider "Well, if the other guys are going along, it must be OK. And what else am I going to do with this money?"

lagolinguini 3y ago

My concern with some of these endavours is the opportunity cost to rescue services. Obviously, there is no question that if anyone is in danger in a remote location we should try our best to rescue them, but the corollary is that as a responsible citizen you should avoid putting yourself in situations where others have to go to great lengths to rescue you if it can be avoided.

peterashford 3y ago
Yep. Any rescue attempt here will endanger others at great cost.

rurp 3y ago

It's one thing for people to go out on their own and take risks, but a company selling a catered experience for a lot of money without basic safety practices is very different. I think the former is totally fine and there's no need for governments to get involved, while the latter is pretty bad and very possible to regulate.

wpietri 3y ago

It's wild to me that you write "As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive." And then go on to say some breathtakingly naive things. A lot of ocean activity is thoroughly regulated. For example: https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International-Convention-for-the-Safety-of-Life-at-Sea-(SOLAS),-1974.aspx https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International... Moreover, It's not like they're getting paid in sand dollars or doubloons from the bottom of the sea. The passengers are signing contracts and paying large fees in landlubber currencies. There's a company involved here, a legal entity. The company is based in Washington State. If this was really not covered by any law in any country with a plausible claim on it, you can bet that people will soon be clamoring for one. Remember that air travel was once entirely unregulated. Now it's one of the most highly controlled activities. A lot of regulation like that happens in response to notable disasters; the regulations are, as they say, "written in blood."

TheDudeMan 3y ago
So you're saying there is an agency/organization that would review and approve such endeavors? What is it, in this case?
- wpietri 3y ago
  I did not in fact say that. I'm addressing the broader false claim that the ocean is some sort of essentially unregulateable space. Indeed, I think the final paragraph makes clear that I think it's possible that no agency currently has unambiguous authority, but that won't stop people from creating one if enough people die like this. I also suspect that people with broad authority may investigate this and consider/recommend prosecutions if appropriate. E.g., the Washington State Attorney General, the US Coast Guard, and the Canadian Coast Guard.
barrysteve 3y ago
Pushing regulation back to the point where someone dies, causes these problems in the first place. It's not hard to certify vehicles before use. We do it with cars on a daily basis. Measuring the necessity for regulation "in blood" is unbelievably cruel.

peterashford 3y ago

So corporations doing whatever they want with no oversight regardless of the consequences is just fine and dandy? Obviously there's a middle ground between 'nanny state' and 'corporate anarchy' - reality is not so black and white and imagining it to be so is a naive sentiment.

elzbardico 3y ago

I don't even think at those levels the government should bother. It is not we are selling a car for thousands of people that we know it occasionally leaks fuel in the engine bay. People who pay for that kind of trip know the dangers and have money enough to do their own due diligence.

csb6 3y ago

> You can't stop that, and personally, I don't think its a good idea. To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s safety. I seriously doubt the passengers onboard were aware of OceanGate’s whistleblower lawsuit or the claim that the viewport is not rated for the depth it is used at. When interviewed by the BBC, the company represented their submersible as very safe, certainly not as something likely to kill its passengers. How is it a “nanny state” or “snooping” to require businesses to be honest about their service? This isn’t even necessarily an action a government would have to perform - it could be carried out by classification societies [0]. Do whatever you like with your own experimental sub, but don’t misrepresent it as a safe sightseeing trip for tourists. > It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. It’s even easier to imagine scenarios where a business is allowed to sell trips on a vessel with critical safety issues that the company knew of but did not disclose or address. We have remedies for these real scenarios - they are called laws and regulations. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_classification_society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_classification_society

zarzavat 3y ago
The founder is likely dead and paid the ultimate price for his negligence. There’s simply not much you can do about people who are willing to die and take other people with them, whether intentionally or negligently. You can’t put a dead person on trial. I believe that the GP’s point is that there’s no omniscient agency that can preemptively stop people from doing stupid things. There’s not enough resources to watch everything that everybody is doing all the time.
- bboygravity 3y ago
  > There’s not enough resources to watch everything that everybody is doing all the time. Have you ever heard of the name "Edward Snowden"? What everybody is doing is already literally being watched all the time and it has been that way or at least decades and has gotten worse with technological evolution.

mozman 3y ago

> To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety" This is exactly why we need less government and be slower to call for laws. Human nature cannot be changed despite our belief that it can be. The same lazy decisions that led to this potential event can also be used to destroy lives. At the end of the day we are all accountable for our selves.

kodah 3y ago

> To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand. A nanny state is telling you how to live your life. An example is when NYC banned large soft drinks or when we listed marijuana as a schedule 1 drug. Registration of a mode of transportation is hardly a nanny state activity because vehicles inherently pose a risk to others whether as a passenger or someone sharing proximity with you. You can certainly build your own car and register it. They're often called salvage titles; this is true for airplane kits too, but you also have to be able to prove the worthiness of the machine. We have lots of process and administration to take care of this, but for whatever reason it didn't work here.

marmakoide 3y ago

I have a hard time to let people throwing themselves into danger with a "I don't need a nanny" attitude, and then see a state-run, massive and costly rescue effort when things go wrong.

sanderjd 3y ago
Yes. Thank you. I live in Colorado and people do dumb stuff in the mountains all the time, which ends up being expensive for everyone, not just themselves. And it doesn't work to just not rescue people.

rich_sasha 3y ago

You can't stop this and likely shouldn't as you say, but still, this anecdote, if true, means: - they didn't do a test dive first with no humans on board - they didn't do a test dive with just staff, no paying customers - the first "test" was to the full depth where the craft would be basically unrecoverable - they didn't seem to even test these things ashore... Because you'd find out if the damn motor was on backwards! If true, this strikes me as beyond amateurish and outright insane.