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Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show
- belfalas 3y agoRegulation exists for a reason and is not always a bad thing; sadly OceanGate is providing one of those periodic reminders.
- astrodust 3y agoRed tape is red with the blood of our collective lapses.
- derbOac 3y agoFor me this is a complicated example with regard to regulation. I agree it's a reminder of why it can be a good thing but am not sure how I feel about it as an example of the need for regulation. I'm outraged at OceanGate and feel as if the CEO and the company were grossly irresponsible. Any wrongful death lawsuits would be more than appropriate. On the other hand, OceanGate and its CEO were very open about not seeking certification or classing. They didn't try to hide it. Elsewhere on HN now there's a post to an OceanGate blog page arguing about why they didn't seek certification. So why would anyone sign up for anything involving that submersible? If you were going to go on a mission to the bottom of the ocean, wouldn't you do a lot of research? Wouldn't you demand it be third-party certified if that is industry practice? I guess there's regulation and then there's regulation, so it's possible that international regulations could be codified to just formalize what is considered standard practice (that is, classing the vessel by an appropriate third party). But I worry that whenever regulations are drafted, they start to become the sort of monster the OceanGate CEO was falsely suggesting. I'm not sure what I'm saying, because I'm not really even meaning to argue against this as being a good example of where there should maybe regulations. It probably is. But I could also envision this as maybe a case where the reminder is to take risks seriously and be deeply skeptical of persons and institutions not willing to have their work scrutinized by independent bodies. I do have family who work in this specific area professionally; I haven't spoken to them yet about the incident but I suspect they would see this more as a case of gross negligence and irresponsibility rather than as an area in need of heavy regulation, but I could be wrong. As I think of it, from what I know from their professional experiences, there should have been a lot of red flags that I suspect will come to light in the near future. Maybe I'm biased in that regard, because everyone I know doing oceanic and deep sea work have been deeply enmeshed in all things ocean and marine their entire lives, and probably would be aware of all these issues. My guess is this family member would have thought it irresponsible to bring those particular passengers anywhere in the deep sea in the first place, on any vessel. In that regard it would be good to see this turn into some reflection on what it means about society that real world wisdom, expertise, and skills are somehow superceded by monetary net worth. Has it always been this way? I feel as if society is trapped in some hall of mirrors maze, between fake and real expertise, and worthless and essential certifications and regulations. I'm not sure what's worse: OceanGate CEO Rush's dangerous and absurd arguments against certification, or the fact that his arguments resonate enough as truth with ostensibly successful individuals, that they can be conned by them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 908B64B197 3y ago"The OceanGate CEO who is trapped on a 22-foot submersible on an ill-fated voyage to see the Titanic wreck once explained how he didn’t hire “50-year-old white guys” with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t “inspirational.” The CEO, Stockton Rush, added that “expertise was unnecessary” because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller." [0] [0] https://www.outkick.com/trapped-oceangate-ceo-refused-to-hire-50-year-old-white-guys-with-military-experience/ https://www.outkick.com/trapped-oceangate-ceo-refused-to-hir...
- bananashazama 3y ago> Questioning the consensus and exposing the destructive nature of “woke” activism, OutKick is the antidote to the mainstream sports media that often serves an elite, left-leaning minority instead of the American sports fan. Owned by Fox Corporation, OutKick was founded by Clay Travis in 2011 and is based in Nashville. This being the same Clay Travis who claimed, on his right-wing talk radio show, that COVID would kill “a few hundred people”.
- nltuf120 3y agoIs MSN left enough for you to believe it? https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/oceangate-ceo-didn-t-want-to-hire-any-experienced-50-year-old-white-guys-because-they-weren-t-inspirational/vi-AA1cQwVv?ocid=weather-verthp-feeds https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/oceangate-ceo-didn-t-wa...
- the_third_wave 3y agoConcentrate on the message instead of the messenger. Aside from that it should be clear to even the most blind-sided activists that this type of exclusionary policy as advocated by the former CEO is a recipe for disaster; selecting on race, gender and age is not the way to get the most competent u-boat commanders and intentionally excluding those with a proven track record in this field is an even worse policy.
- youngNed 3y agoHey! It looks like you are trying to shoehorn <recent story> into your culture war narrative! Don't you think this is tedious yet?
- playa1 3y agoWhen CEOs make statements like this I assume they know they are lying for sake of the company. What makes this more interesting is that he clearly believed it was safe. So he wasn’t necessarily unethical. It is more that he was a bad engineer and a poor judge of risk.
- mydogcanpurr 3y agoI'd argue it's still unethical to put others at risk due to your own incompetence. I wouldn't offer to rewire someone's home because I'm not an electrician, and their house could burn down if I do it incorrectly.
- scotty79 3y ago> due to your own incompetence. Are you still unethical when you don't know about your incompetence? Can you be unethical if you had no ability to know that what you do is unethical?
- rc5150 3y agoCan you still commit a crime if you don't know that what you're doing is against the law?
- tiedieconderoga 3y agoNot usually, no. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea You can definitely be convicted of one, though!
- gtvwill 3y agoLol thought experiment. Your driving in a new area and don't see a change in speed limit because a large truck blocked your view of the sign as you passed it. You get pulled over a short period later for going 20 above the speed limit. Do you think you can be fined or not? Should you be fined or not?
- erikpukinskis 3y agoI wonder, if his ghost could talk to us now, I’d he would have done anything differently. Maybe that seems like an absurd question to ask because... he’s dead. But his position seems to be: some things can never happen unless someone just risks it. And that math doesn’t really change with the knowledge “he dies”. It’s possible there are some alternative timelines out there where “he risks it and survives” and maybe there are zero timelines where “he plays it safe and makes it to the Titanic” and if that’s the case then maybe he did it exactly as he intended. There are many pursuits like this: mountaineering, car racing, etc, where the choices (at a certain level of aspiration anyway) are: A) risk death or B) don’t do it. I’m certainly not risking death, but I don’t really judge people who do. I do judge that dad who convinced his teenage son to risk his life. That was absolutely evil.
- xwdv 3y agoWe could talk to his ghost in a way. If we could gather up all the text and transcripts of things he wrote and said, we could feed it to an LLM and interrogate it with questions.
- paulcole 3y agobrb applying to the next hn batch w/ this idea gives a whole new meaning to post-mortem
- paddw 3y ago> I do judge that dad who convinced his teenage son to risk his life. That was absolutely evil. Moreso, he was likely foolish in considering the actual extent of the risk, like everyone on the sub.
- SkipperCat 3y agoThe sad thing is he's taking risks for no benefit. It's not like what he's doing is going to increase the body of knowledge or rescue some puppies trapped at the bottom of the sea. He's just taking stupid risks to run an expensive amusement park ride.
- jjulius 3y agoAn excerpt from an email Stockton Rush sent out, according to the article (emphasis mine): >I have grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing market. Since Guillermo and I started OceanGate we have heard the baseless cries of "you are going to kill someone" way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult. Just... wow.
- Nux 3y agoA bet gone wrong.. Many innovations started off in a similar manner, ignoring or challenging the status quo.. That said, it's mighty spectacular and sad the way he was proven wrong. rip.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y agomore to the point, taking safety warnings as a personal insult is a red flag for literally dangerous narcissism
- freedomben 3y ago> taking safety warnings as a personal insult is a red flag for literally dangerous narcissism It certainly can be, but I have worked with people that absolutely use "safety" as a reason not to do anything, or as a reason to shoot down ideas from people they are competing against (different departments, possible promotions, etc). Like most things in life, this is not black or white, it's some shade of gray.
- joelegner 3y agoAre you talking about life safety or some other kind of safety? “Safety” is a word having many different senses. Your mentioning of promotions and competing ideas makes it seem to me you are using safety in a much broader sense than the sense of safety one would have in mind when talking about submarines occupied by humans.
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- nitwit005 3y ago> "We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult." Surrounded by people telling him the right answer, and somehow managed to take it as an insult.
- GoToRO 3y agoPretty much every CEO.
- xyzelement 3y agoNames are important. If your name is Rush (as is the CEOs), you are gonna do stuff too fast and cut corners.
- stasmo 3y agoThis is just simple prejudice.
- xyzelement 3y agoEither nothing is significant or everything is. As a matter of faith I chose the later. You are welcome to chose the former. I wouldn't go a surgeon named Butcher or a financial advisor named Broke, would you?
- Shish2k 3y ago> Either nothing is significant or everything is Alternatively: some things are significant and other things aren’t? As a matter of living in reality, I choose that middle option :P
- binkHN 3y agoThese emails and related will be used for the upcoming wrongful death lawsuits to show negligence.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- joeythedolphin 3y agoI agree with the CEO generally but taking a submarine to the bottom of the ocean is not the right domain for this message.
- jeffbee 3y agoClearly nobody stopped this guy, so what was he whining about? It sounds like he was opposed to some completely illusory regulation.
- the-printer 3y agoI think that you’re on to something. There is a certain angst that it seems like he possessed, not so much as hubris. If I may adjust my metaphorical armchair and say that I’m patiently waiting for the feature piece on his life to be published in the next few months to a year or so, that will uncover something to the tune of anxiety, self-doubt, estranged familial ties or an addiction to an obscure pharmaceutical commonly used on narcoleptic koala bears.
- chasing 3y agoMove fast and catastrophically implode things.
- SkipperCat 3y agoToo bad he never read the stories of the De Havilland Comet which crashed due to metal fatigue. Its OK to take risks, but stupid to ignore facts. Science would have told him that multiple trips would sooner or later make the vessel fail.
- iJohnDoe 3y agoI wonder if Rush had a death wish or other motive for potentially dying while on a dive. Or this is really an extreme example of past successes fueling further trips. However, it seems like basic knowledge Rush should have known is to inspect the vessel after each dive. Since people have said it’s extremely difficult and expensive to inspect carbon fiber, then maybe Rush/Oceangate couldn’t afford it. Maybe do enough trips until they could afford and build a new vessel. Who knows, but it seems like deeper internal decisions were being made here.
- nuker 3y agoJames Cameron was saying years ago that carbon composite is bad: "you're going to get killed in that thing." https://youtu.be/5XIyin68vEE?t=559 https://youtu.be/5XIyin68vEE?t=559