8 ms·

So flying in a plane you built yourself is in fact safer than flying commercial because the motivations line up. Got it.

mindslight 10mo ago
Flying in a plane you built yourself is likely safer than flying in the same model of plane built by a company that assembled it for you using lowest-bid labor while making you sign a twenty page lawyer barf disclaiming liability.
- amrocha 10mo ago
  You can’t honestly believe that or you wouldn’t be able to function in society.
  - mindslight 10mo ago
    My comment rests on the fact that the types of planes you can build yourself are completely different models than the fully assembled models from the likes of Boeing etc. I do agree that a kit 737, if such a thing existed, would be less safe than one off the line.
    - amrocha 10mo ago
      I would still trust a cessna way more than any plane built or modified by a single person.
      - jacquesm 10mo ago
        I think the Beechcraft Bonanza deserves special mention here. I'm sure all the people that worked on it were experts too! The big problem with this analogy is that it conflates three very important things: - GA is more dangerous, period. Doesn't matter whether you build the plane yourself or if you bought it ready made (hopefully new, hopefully very well maintained if second hand) - GA craft tend to have less experienced pilots than airliners, but even airliner pilots tend to do worse as GA pilots than when they're at work. The reason for that is simple: the processes are what keeps commercial aviation (mostly) safe. - GA craft tend to kill the pilots, because they are more often than not the only person on the plane. - GA craft have malfunctions like larger aircraft, there is nothing special about them in that sense. But there is something that they don't have that larger aircraft do have: redundancy. In electronics systems, in the design of the mechanical bits, and finally in the people. - GA craft that are designed and built by their operators are experimental class for a reason: they are untested and so more likely to fail than the ones that are certified. The design processes for commercial aircraft are nothing compared to the design processes employed by what we'll call hobbyists to distinguish them. - And finally, even though it is a fun analogy I only meant it from a skin-in-the-game point of view, a GA hobbyist is still going to do his level best to make sure that he's not going to get killed. Boeing executives only care about the bottom line, safety is a distant second. And based on my experience with the difference between the guts of various bits and pieces of avionics and the software that they run on compared to my experience looking at medical devices, their guts and the software that they run on I would be more than happy to bet that the loop hackers know as much more more about the failure modes of these devices as the manufacturers do. Cleanroom manufacturing under sterile conditions is the main differentiator here, and that just applies to the hardware, and it is an art that the medical industry understands very well. Electronics is already at a lower level of competence and their software knowledge tends to be terrible, not to mention the QA processes on said software. Programmers working for corporations don't necessarily suddenly grow an extra quality brain when they do their work.
        TylerE 10mo ago
        Now look at something like the Bede BD-5 and see how many of it's amatuer builders IT killed. Death rate on the first flight alone was something like 10%. PS: AIrcraft aren't assembled in cleanrooms. Frankly, you don't have a damn clue on and are getting basically everything wrong in the process
  - array_key_first 10mo ago
    You can believe it and simultaneously function in society. We aren't all building our own planes because it's worse, but because it's time consuming. I don't have 20,000 hours to burn learning about how planes work to make my own. If we magically beamed the knowledge straight into people's heads and also had a matter fabricator, I'd imagine yes - everyone would build their own plane. And it might be safer, I don't know. Point is, the ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can believe both and still resolve it internally and with the world
    - habinero 10mo ago
      Not the original poster, but that was snark and not meant literally. Also, building your own plane is absolutely worse, even if you do have expert-level knowledge. That's true for any complex design. Aircraft design, material sourcing, fabrication, assembly and quality control are all very different skill sets, but the real kicker is experience. The reason why commercial aircraft are so safe is a lot of work goes into investigating and understanding the root causes of accidents, and even more work goes into implementing design fixes and crew training.
      - amrocha 10mo ago
        Nope, not snark. You can’t believe that you’re better than everyone else and everyone else is incompetent and still function in society. If you do then you probably have an undiagnosed mental illness.
        mindslight 10mo ago
        The problem is that the system incentivizes incompetence. The mechanics who are paid a skilled wage, take their time, and double check to make sure they are not missing anything show up as big red problems on the beancounters' spreadsheets and get optimized away. The system can make up for this in other ways like repeatability of processes, redundancy, etc. Which is why commercial aviation is safer than general aviation, and also why I specifically worded my comment as being about the same model of plane - ie if instead of building your own experimental-class kit plane, you hired it out to a liability-limiting company hiring minimum-wage workers to follow the directions. I'm guessing such a thing is illegal per FAA regs, but that kind of proves my point. For another example, have you experienced the medical system lately? Doctors are generally smart people, but that intelligence is squandered by having their attention smashed into 10 minute chunks, with the entire rest of the system revolving around blame passing - the end result is a lot of smart and well-meaning people ending up grossly incompetent through emergent effects. I would much rather be able to go to a doctor and trust whatever answers they gave me rather than having to do my own independent research and advocacy to drive the process. But that is not how the system we have works.
- habinero 10mo ago
  Are you really comparing an amateur skillset to designs from paid engineers made on a company assembly line with QC? Why on earth would you think an experimental aircraft made by a hobbyist would be safer?
  - mindslight 10mo ago
    See my other follow up comment ("same model"). Medical device software development feels much closer to homegrown (or worse) than aeronautical engineering.
  - f1shy 10mo ago
    Why do you think a random person, who is VERY passionate about something, as to invest all the free hours in life to do something, is less skilled that one who just does it because is needed to survive? Sorry. I would be much more inclined to have something made by somebody passionate about it, as done by some guy that received hopefully some kind of instruction on how to do things and was then left alone. In this context (GA) we are not comparing Airbus/Boeing with a garage build. We are comparing some small company making 2 seaters with your hangar and maybe 10 certified aircraft mechanics that will help you a lot on the process.
    - AdelaideSimone 10mo ago
      And why do you think pathos arguments are logical? Granted, they didn't cite them, but assuming it is true, empirical studies showing the accident rates are the logical point from which to draw conclusions. What you would like, how you and others feel about it, and what you would expect are meaningless. You're also equivocating. They made it extremely clear they are referring to hobbyist and other such groups with vague or unknown qualifications; whereas, you go in and make stipulated claims about small businesses with certified mechanics, etc. These two are clearly not the same category, making your argument non-responsive. It's also contradictory in terms of discussed liabilities and such, as the small company, and its mechanics, that whoever worked with, would have liability as well, as opposed to the "random git repo".
  - jacquesm 10mo ago
- TylerE 10mo ago
  We have decades of data saying that isn’t true. Homebuilt aircraft have much worse accident rates than factory built aircraft.
AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
You, an engineer at a major aircraft manufacturer that isn't Boeing, have been working after hours with some of your colleagues on a hobby project to add some modern safety features to an older model of small private plane, because you regard it as unsafe even though it still has a government certification and you got into this field because you want to save lives. Your "prototype" is a plane from the original manufacturer with no physical modifications but a software patch to use data from sensors the plane already had to prevent the computer from getting confused under high wind conditions in a way that has already caused two fatal crashes. Now you have to fly somewhere and your options for a plane are the one with the history of fatal crashes or the same one with your modifications, and it's windy today. Which plane are you getting on?
- sarusso 10mo ago
  This example is so right. Including the parallel with what happened with those two aircrafts.
- amrocha 10mo ago
  Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself! Are you kidding me? How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering.
  - AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
    > Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself! Nobody said it was untested. > How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering. Which applies just the same to the people the company hired to do it, and now we're back to "the people with a stronger incentive to get it right are the people who die if it goes wrong".
    - tstrimple 10mo ago
      Tested how? With 100% "unit test" coverage? I can certainly see how a random person on the internet might be highly motivated and actually talented enough to contribute to these sorts of projects. But they don't have the budget and resources that commercial entities have. They don't have the same due diligence requirements. They don't have the same liability. If I use a commercial device unaltered, it's the company's fault if the device fucks up or is defective and causes harm. If I install random internet software on my medical device and it fucks up and causes harm, it's my fault. I say this as someone who might modify my own medical devices because I'm so fucking jaded over the capitalist march towards enshitification and maximizing profit over human lives. There is simply no way random folks on the internet can test these types of systems to any reliable degree. It requires rigorous testing across hundreds to thousands of test cases. They at best can give you the recipe that works well for them and the few people that have voluntarily tried their version. That doesn't scale and certainly isn't any safer than corporate solutions.
replyifuagree 10mo ago
Those people on the boeing flights would have appreciated a little more of the correct motivations. Instead they got McDonnell Douglas'd As it turns out the motivations matter way more than you might think.

mindslight 10mo ago

Flying in a plane you built yourself is likely safer than flying in the same model of plane built by a company that assembled it for you using lowest-bid labor while making you sign a twenty page lawyer barf disclaiming liability.

amrocha 10mo ago
You can’t honestly believe that or you wouldn’t be able to function in society.
- mindslight 10mo ago
  My comment rests on the fact that the types of planes you can build yourself are completely different models than the fully assembled models from the likes of Boeing etc. I do agree that a kit 737, if such a thing existed, would be less safe than one off the line.
  - amrocha 10mo ago
    I would still trust a cessna way more than any plane built or modified by a single person.
    - jacquesm 10mo ago
      I think the Beechcraft Bonanza deserves special mention here. I'm sure all the people that worked on it were experts too! The big problem with this analogy is that it conflates three very important things: - GA is more dangerous, period. Doesn't matter whether you build the plane yourself or if you bought it ready made (hopefully new, hopefully very well maintained if second hand) - GA craft tend to have less experienced pilots than airliners, but even airliner pilots tend to do worse as GA pilots than when they're at work. The reason for that is simple: the processes are what keeps commercial aviation (mostly) safe. - GA craft tend to kill the pilots, because they are more often than not the only person on the plane. - GA craft have malfunctions like larger aircraft, there is nothing special about them in that sense. But there is something that they don't have that larger aircraft do have: redundancy. In electronics systems, in the design of the mechanical bits, and finally in the people. - GA craft that are designed and built by their operators are experimental class for a reason: they are untested and so more likely to fail than the ones that are certified. The design processes for commercial aircraft are nothing compared to the design processes employed by what we'll call hobbyists to distinguish them. - And finally, even though it is a fun analogy I only meant it from a skin-in-the-game point of view, a GA hobbyist is still going to do his level best to make sure that he's not going to get killed. Boeing executives only care about the bottom line, safety is a distant second. And based on my experience with the difference between the guts of various bits and pieces of avionics and the software that they run on compared to my experience looking at medical devices, their guts and the software that they run on I would be more than happy to bet that the loop hackers know as much more more about the failure modes of these devices as the manufacturers do. Cleanroom manufacturing under sterile conditions is the main differentiator here, and that just applies to the hardware, and it is an art that the medical industry understands very well. Electronics is already at a lower level of competence and their software knowledge tends to be terrible, not to mention the QA processes on said software. Programmers working for corporations don't necessarily suddenly grow an extra quality brain when they do their work.
      - TylerE 10mo ago
        Now look at something like the Bede BD-5 and see how many of it's amatuer builders IT killed. Death rate on the first flight alone was something like 10%. PS: AIrcraft aren't assembled in cleanrooms. Frankly, you don't have a damn clue on and are getting basically everything wrong in the process
- array_key_first 10mo ago
  You can believe it and simultaneously function in society. We aren't all building our own planes because it's worse, but because it's time consuming. I don't have 20,000 hours to burn learning about how planes work to make my own. If we magically beamed the knowledge straight into people's heads and also had a matter fabricator, I'd imagine yes - everyone would build their own plane. And it might be safer, I don't know. Point is, the ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can believe both and still resolve it internally and with the world
  - habinero 10mo ago
    Not the original poster, but that was snark and not meant literally. Also, building your own plane is absolutely worse, even if you do have expert-level knowledge. That's true for any complex design. Aircraft design, material sourcing, fabrication, assembly and quality control are all very different skill sets, but the real kicker is experience. The reason why commercial aircraft are so safe is a lot of work goes into investigating and understanding the root causes of accidents, and even more work goes into implementing design fixes and crew training.
    - amrocha 10mo ago
      Nope, not snark. You can’t believe that you’re better than everyone else and everyone else is incompetent and still function in society. If you do then you probably have an undiagnosed mental illness.
      - mindslight 10mo ago
        The problem is that the system incentivizes incompetence. The mechanics who are paid a skilled wage, take their time, and double check to make sure they are not missing anything show up as big red problems on the beancounters' spreadsheets and get optimized away. The system can make up for this in other ways like repeatability of processes, redundancy, etc. Which is why commercial aviation is safer than general aviation, and also why I specifically worded my comment as being about the same model of plane - ie if instead of building your own experimental-class kit plane, you hired it out to a liability-limiting company hiring minimum-wage workers to follow the directions. I'm guessing such a thing is illegal per FAA regs, but that kind of proves my point. For another example, have you experienced the medical system lately? Doctors are generally smart people, but that intelligence is squandered by having their attention smashed into 10 minute chunks, with the entire rest of the system revolving around blame passing - the end result is a lot of smart and well-meaning people ending up grossly incompetent through emergent effects. I would much rather be able to go to a doctor and trust whatever answers they gave me rather than having to do my own independent research and advocacy to drive the process. But that is not how the system we have works.
habinero 10mo ago
Are you really comparing an amateur skillset to designs from paid engineers made on a company assembly line with QC? Why on earth would you think an experimental aircraft made by a hobbyist would be safer?
- mindslight 10mo ago
  See my other follow up comment ("same model"). Medical device software development feels much closer to homegrown (or worse) than aeronautical engineering.
- f1shy 10mo ago
  Why do you think a random person, who is VERY passionate about something, as to invest all the free hours in life to do something, is less skilled that one who just does it because is needed to survive? Sorry. I would be much more inclined to have something made by somebody passionate about it, as done by some guy that received hopefully some kind of instruction on how to do things and was then left alone. In this context (GA) we are not comparing Airbus/Boeing with a garage build. We are comparing some small company making 2 seaters with your hangar and maybe 10 certified aircraft mechanics that will help you a lot on the process.
  - AdelaideSimone 10mo ago
    And why do you think pathos arguments are logical? Granted, they didn't cite them, but assuming it is true, empirical studies showing the accident rates are the logical point from which to draw conclusions. What you would like, how you and others feel about it, and what you would expect are meaningless. You're also equivocating. They made it extremely clear they are referring to hobbyist and other such groups with vague or unknown qualifications; whereas, you go in and make stipulated claims about small businesses with certified mechanics, etc. These two are clearly not the same category, making your argument non-responsive. It's also contradictory in terms of discussed liabilities and such, as the small company, and its mechanics, that whoever worked with, would have liability as well, as opposed to the "random git repo".
- jacquesm 10mo ago
TylerE 10mo ago
We have decades of data saying that isn’t true. Homebuilt aircraft have much worse accident rates than factory built aircraft.

AnthonyMouse 10mo ago

You, an engineer at a major aircraft manufacturer that isn't Boeing, have been working after hours with some of your colleagues on a hobby project to add some modern safety features to an older model of small private plane, because you regard it as unsafe even though it still has a government certification and you got into this field because you want to save lives. Your "prototype" is a plane from the original manufacturer with no physical modifications but a software patch to use data from sensors the plane already had to prevent the computer from getting confused under high wind conditions in a way that has already caused two fatal crashes. Now you have to fly somewhere and your options for a plane are the one with the history of fatal crashes or the same one with your modifications, and it's windy today. Which plane are you getting on?

sarusso 10mo ago
This example is so right. Including the parallel with what happened with those two aircrafts.
amrocha 10mo ago
Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself! Are you kidding me? How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering.
- AnthonyMouse 10mo ago
  > Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself! Nobody said it was untested. > How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering. Which applies just the same to the people the company hired to do it, and now we're back to "the people with a stronger incentive to get it right are the people who die if it goes wrong".
  - tstrimple 10mo ago
    Tested how? With 100% "unit test" coverage? I can certainly see how a random person on the internet might be highly motivated and actually talented enough to contribute to these sorts of projects. But they don't have the budget and resources that commercial entities have. They don't have the same due diligence requirements. They don't have the same liability. If I use a commercial device unaltered, it's the company's fault if the device fucks up or is defective and causes harm. If I install random internet software on my medical device and it fucks up and causes harm, it's my fault. I say this as someone who might modify my own medical devices because I'm so fucking jaded over the capitalist march towards enshitification and maximizing profit over human lives. There is simply no way random folks on the internet can test these types of systems to any reliable degree. It requires rigorous testing across hundreds to thousands of test cases. They at best can give you the recipe that works well for them and the few people that have voluntarily tried their version. That doesn't scale and certainly isn't any safer than corporate solutions.

replyifuagree 10mo ago

Those people on the boeing flights would have appreciated a little more of the correct motivations. Instead they got McDonnell Douglas'd As it turns out the motivations matter way more than you might think.