10 ms·

Culturalism, Gladwell, and Airplane Crashes

84 points by jpatokal 13y ago

danso 13y ago
The title of the OP makes it sound like a ripoff of The Onion, but it's an incredibly indepth criticism of Malcolm Gladwell's much-cited essay on cultural causes airplane crashes...a case study of how a well-regarded author can be very misleading with the facts. edit: Here's a key rebuttal: > "Gladwell also notes that Korean manner of speaking is indirect and suggestive, requiring the listener to be engaged and applying proper context to understand the true meaning...And the transcript reveals a striking fact that Gladwell never mentions: 90 percent of the conversation among the three pilots is in English. In fact, the only part of the conversation that happens in Korea is idle banter, talking about how the company does not pay them enough or how Guam's airport must be staffed by former U.S. soldiers who were stationed in Korea." If the premise of Malcolm's chapter is how culture/ethnicity can be related to operational catastrophes, particularly in language, then the power of the assertion is significantly undermined if language wasn't much of a factor in the actual incident.
- jmngomes 13y ago
  I think Gladwell arguments about the "manner of speaking", not the language used. Some countries/cultures are way more deferent than others and view "powerful" people as someone to (almost) worship. Feeling confortable about saying "no" or disagreeing with those above you is tied to your cultural background, not the particular language you use.
- briandon 13y ago
  The linked article is indeed long but I'm not sure how much merit there is in the poster's arguments. He contends that 90% of the conversation between the pilots was conducted in English and then, a bit later, quotes a multi-line dialogue between the captain and first officer that was completely in Korean and which he had to translate. In making the case that the rigidly hierarchical nature of Korean society wasn't a factor in a crash, he describes multiple, conflicting axes-of-respect (age, experience, training) that would've existed and weighed on the crew members' thoughts and actions. At another point, he seems to be saying that an airline isn't accident-prone if some (not all) of its crashed/destroyed planes were downed because the crew flew them off course and into hostile territory. How many other passenger planes were downed by the Soviets during the same period? Apparently none: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents#1970s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci... I'm no fan of Gladwell and the "Igon Value" fiasco should have clued people into the fact that they should be wary of science popularizers, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Especially if it's just repeating aspects of what other clocks have been saying.
  - danso 13y ago
    Well, I would argue that the OP is not contradicting himself, but tackling the instances (since at least 10% of the dialogue is in Korean) in which the dialogue is Korean. And he is directly challenging a passage from Gladwell (I can't recall off-hand how many Korean dialogue examples Gladwell actually sites, so it may be that the OP is cherry picking). Anyway, the OP's intent is to show that in these Korean passages, Gladwell apparently cherry-picks and edits the otherwise innocuous dialogue in a misleading way: ----- There is the sound of a man shifting in his seat. A minute passes. 0121:13 CAPTAIN: Eh... really... sleepy. [unintelligible words]. FIRST OFFICER: Of course. Then comes one of the most critical moments in the flight. The first officer decides to speak up: FIRST OFFICER: Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here? The first officer must have thought long and hard before making that comment . . . [W]hen the first officer says: "Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here?" we know what he means by that: Captain. You have committed us to visual approach, with no backup plan, and the weather outside is terrible. You think we will break out of the clouds in time to see the runway. But what if we don't? It's pitch-black outside and pouring rain and the glide scope is down. There is no nice way of saying this: this portion of Gladwell's writing is ridiculous in several ways. First, the way in which Gladwell quoted the transcript is severely misleading. This is the full transcript, which goes from pp. 185 to 187 of the NTSB report: CAPTAIN: 어... 정말로... 졸려서... (불분명) [eh... really... sleepy... (unintelligible words)] FIRST OFFICER: 그럼요 [Of course] FIRST OFFICER: 괌이 안 좋네요 기장님 [Captain, Guam condition is no good]FIRST OFFICER: Two nine eighty-six CAPTAIN: 야! 비가 많이 온다 [Uh, it rains a lot]CAPTAIN: (unintelligible words) CAPTAIN: 가다가 이쯤에서 한 20 마일 요청해 [Request twenty miles deviation later on] FIRST OFFICER: 네 [yes] CAPTAIN: ... 내려가면서 좌측으로 [... to the left as we are descending] (UNCLEAR SPEAKER): (chuckling, unintelligible words) FIRST OFFICER: 더 오는 것같죠? 이 안에. [Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here?] (emphases mine) Note the difference between the full transcript, and the way Gladwell presented the transcript. Gladwell only quoted the first two lines and the last line of this sequence, omitting many critical lines in the process. In doing so, Gladwell wants to create an impression that the first officer underwent some period of silent contemplation, and decided to warn the captain of the poor weather conditions in an indirect, suggestive manner. The full transcript reveals that this is clearly not the case. The first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." It is difficult to imagine how a person could be more direct about the poor weather condition. Further, there was no silent contemplation by the first officer. Nearly three minutes elapse during this sequence, during the captain and the first officer chatted constantly. And it is the captain who first brings up the fact that it is raining a great deal: "Uh, it rains a lot." In this context, it is clear that the first officer is engaged in some friendly banter about the rain, not some indirect, ominous warning about the flight conditions.
ghshephard 13y ago
The entire premise, re: Great Golf Players, is off. The vast majority of golf players make bad shots most of the time, and, are a function of individual performance. Landing a Plane is not like a golf tournament. Every trained and qualified pilot should be expected to safely land the plane. While not a trivial task, and one requiring significant experience and training, it is not so inordinately difficult that only a very few people alive can perform the task. With Airplane pilots, Crashes are so exceedingly rare, and the backups, both mechanical, human, and training so well designed to prevent them, that the issues associated with a crash are typically systemic, and little to do with an individual. Also, the korean culturalism developed when the overly formal/seniority centric cockpit of Korean Airlines was identified as a key contributor to a poor safety record with some korean airlines. I completely agree with the OP that it's absolutely premature to be making any conclusions regarding impact of culture on the Asiana airlines crash, but, the nature of the crash, in great weather, suggests that there will be some systemic failure (Training, Over-reliance on Automation, poor maintenance, overly complex modal-auto-throttle) that turns out to be the cause of it.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  The vast majority of golf players make bad shots most of the time, and, are a function of individual performance. Sure, but if you took an untrained, unskilled person and had him flying a trans-Pacific jet, you'd see more crashes. This isn't done, for obvious reasons. A terrible golfer who shoots a 173 just annoys people who have to wait behind him. With an unskilled pilot, the stakes are higher and great efforts are made to prevent one from flying a passenger jet. Good golfers, on the other hand, don't make terrible shots most of the time (although horrible shots are more common than plane crashes). Also, the korean culturalism developed when the overly formal/seniority centric cockpit of Korean Airlines was identified as a key contributor to a poor safety record with some korean airlines. OP's argument is that this isn't specifically a Korean or East Asian problem, and I agree. Most people are-- except when they perceive a life-threatening crisis (and that point of perception may be too late)-- deferential to authority. It's not limited to one culture.
- algorias 13y ago
  > Also, the korean culturalism developed when the overly formal/seniority centric cockpit of Korean Airlines was identified as a key contributor to a poor safety record with some korean airlines. identified by whom? with what credibility? The whole point of the article is refuting that hypothesis. You've done nothing but restate that thought, without adding any more weight to it.
Gigablah 13y ago
I've also noticed increased scrutiny in the media of the behaviour of the passengers who carried their cabin luggage with them as they evacuated the plane. Much emphasis was placed upon their race -- the majority of the passengers were Chinese. It feels really tasteless how rapidly the discourse shifted towards criticism of the victims.
- briandon 13y ago
  Cultural differences do exist, even though discussing differences that have negative consequences or are viewed negatively tend to make many of us uncomfortable. "The Pedometer Test: Americans Take Fewer Steps" http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-americans-take-fewer-steps/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-... Does reading that article or even its title make you angry? Would you disagree with the results of the study on which it was based? If so, on what grounds? Do you believe that it is wrong in some way to even conduct such a study?
- rmah 13y ago
  The behavior of grabbing their bags has been observed on numerous occasions in commercial aircraft evacs across many cultures, including western ones. It is a real problem and a concern. But it's one that no airline or regulatory body has really done anything about for 50 years.
- barry-cotter 13y ago
  I highly recommend living abroad to anybody who does not find the above amusing[0]. People from different cultures really are different. [0] No, your semester abroad during college does not count.
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    I highly recommend living abroad I agree with the overall suggestion. Where have you lived abroad?
    - barry-cotter 13y ago
waylandsmithers 13y ago
Well, that does it for me as far as non-fiction goes. Is it so much to ask to just be able to be a LITTLE bit lazy and believe something I read, without having to stay on the lookout for a complete tear down from an expert in the subject matter? Maybe I'm just being naive, but I honestly feel betrayed by how badly one of my (perhaps now former) favorite writers twisted or conveniently ignored facts to make one of his essays more interesting.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  Ah, welcome to the world of "Gladwell Deconstruction" - It's a pretty well known meme on HN - Calling out just how badly Gladwell distorts everything he writes just to make an interesting story/theme. He does it so well, though, that he's still one of my favorite writers. And, much like Wikipedia has taught us to realize that anything written down could be something totally bogus thrown up by a vandal, and therefore we should challenge (and look for citations) for everything, everywhere - Gladwell has taught us that just because something sounds good - doesn't really mean it actually is accurate/truthy.
- minikites 13y ago
  Don't worry, there is a single study on literally this that confirms that everything is actually okay. Just blink for 10,000 hours and it will solve all your problems. I agree with Merlin Mann's thoughts on Gladwell: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/205874392/surprise-surprise http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/205874392/surprise-surprise
- Robin_Message 13y ago
  Personally, I despise Gladwell for making me look like an idiot whenever I have quoted him. I came here just to find a place to post my standard Gladwell disclaimer: I can not anti-recommend Gladwell enough. He is anti-knowledge, convincing you that you know something when you actually understand it less well after reading than before.
dobbsbob 13y ago
Korean/asiana airlines pilots were banned for 12 mos by the airport authority where i worked over a decade ago pending pilot training and english review due to numerous incidents of pilot error and communications problems. Those two airlines managed to ram the jetway 3 times, and even rammed the maint hanger causing millions in damage. One pilot tried to take off with the fuel truck still attached, one pilot had poor english ordering fuel be halfed instead of extra fuel and had to fly back because the pilot only noticed 1hr after takeoff, and two (yes, two) Korean reg'd AC tried to land on the highway instead of the runway. Another Korean air flight misunderstood the tower and tried to land at the same time as an another plane almost causing a crash, which was only noticed by the other pilot who got out of there. I was there when they asked the pilot about it who was completely clueless he had almost killed everybody on both flights. I dont know whats up with Korean pilot training but talk to anybody who has worked in a tower and they will tell you horror stories. Theres also the 911 incident where they broadcasted a hijack code for some reason and were almost shot down over the Yukon.
- EliRivers 13y ago
  It's my understanding that Korean pilots did deservedly have a bad reputation in the late nineties, but got their act together and in 2008 came top of the ICAO league in aviation safety (including pilot training).
  - dobbsbob 13y ago
    I thought they fixed all these problems too then SFO happens, which is yet another training mistake no other pilots would make even on a flight simulator.
    - EliRivers 13y ago
      See, now I really do think you're making it up. A training mistake no other pilot would ever make, even in a simulator? Surely the whole point of putting a pilot under training in a simulator is because they will make mistakes, they're expected to make mistakes, learning from mistakes is a part of learning, and they're doing it in a simulator because they need to learn. If we have a supply of pilots who don't make mistakes as they learn, why do we bother training them at all? Surely we can put these magic trainees straight into the cockpit.
sheri 13y ago
Patrick Smith (a former pilot and now author) also criticized Gladwell here:http://www.salon.com/2008/12/05/askthepilot301/ http://www.salon.com/2008/12/05/askthepilot301/
lnanek2 13y ago
I don't know, gave up when the article claimed you can't learn from the plane that wandered off into Russian territory and got shot. It's exactly the same situation that needs to be addressed. Senior Korean pilots don't have to legitimately pass training and aren't told by the people they work with when they make mistakes. Wandering off course is the same as forgetting your auto-throttle disables at a certain altitude in this regard. It's something easily caught by a second pair of eyes who, in a more functional culture, could tell the pilot. I don't think the article is even trying to see the argument. I had a Korean CEO like this once at Noom. The guy constantly fucked up. Forgot to pay employees, paid the wrong amount, forgot to pay gym memberships for months which was supposed to be a benefit, promised to update addresses for immigration paperwork and never got around to it, etc.. Even the CTO admitted numbers were not the CEOs strong point and he was just there to make friendly deals with other business people. If you called the guy out on anything, or setup a meeting to try to address things together, he took you away from his desk where things could be fixed to a meeting room to lecture you for an hour on how you had to respect him.
- bjourne 13y ago
  Come on! You can't seriously try and connect "Korean culture" with the douchebag slacker CEO you are describing.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    I'm not sure that's functionally any different than what Gladwell did here.
- candybar 13y ago
  Your second paragraph is, quite unintentionally, a great anecdote for why culturalism is a problem. You've somehow managed to blame your boss's quite idiosyncratic issues on his Korean-ness and connect it to another, completely unrelated incident where Korean-ness was being blamed for failure. There are legitimate and complex ways in which culture can influence individual behavior, but in practice, most such arguments come down to just laziness, personal biases or in some extreme cases, a socially more acceptable way to express racial prejudice.
ojbyrne 13y ago
Actually, as a Canadian and a golfer, there is a factor in why Canada has fewer good golfers - you can't play year round in Canada.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  Following your logic then, you should have more good hockey players because you have longer winters.
  - thebooktocome 13y ago
    And indeed, they do have more good hockey players, per capita.
  - gdilla 13y ago
    Annnd, we do. No doubt. But that's cultural too. We love hockey. It's in our bones. You'd think siberia would have the best players by your logic.
    - ghshephard 13y ago
      If the logic is consistent, then Siberia should have, per capita, more good hockey player than golf players, as compared to the a more moderate climate, like South Africa.
      - rdouble 13y ago
        They do, don't they?
        ghshephard 13y ago
        Presumably, yes. With a bit more meditation on this thread, I think my general conclusion then is that while culture can shape behavior, it's possible that things like weather can shape culture. And, to bring it all home, this feels like the topic of a Gladwell Book (or at least a chapter)
crazygringo 13y ago
Putting aside Gladwell for a moment... By the end of the article, you realize that the whole point is about the negatives of "culturalism". He says: > Like racism, culturalism distracts away from asking more meaningful questions, and obscures pertinent facts. > Like racism, culturalism puts a large group of people beyond rational understanding. > like racism, culturalism destroys individual agency. > Culturalism causes real harm. It obfuscates the truth. But he hasn't backed this up at all, except for a single lengthy anecdote about Gladwell's chapter. Speaking as someone who has lived in in several different countries besides the US (including 8 years in one), cultural attitudes are extremely important everywhere you go and can explain lots of important things. Just look at Geert Hofstede's "Cultures and Organizations" if you want empirical data for it. Seeking cultural explanations for things is no different from seeking any other kind of explanation. Even if it winds up not being true, it's perfectly valid to wonder if cultural things are at work. Looking for cultural explanations is not a distraction, and it does not put anyone "beyond rational understanding" -- to the contrary, it tries to explain things rationally. I understand that the author is bothered by speculation about Korean culture, but honestly, that's just silly. It's not emblematic of some kind of anti-Korean attitudes in US media or anything, and the author's done nothing to show that it is.
- dll 13y ago
  I totally agree with you here. Culture != race, and to ignore culture means that you are not seeing the whole picture. Anybody who works internationally and ignores cultural issues is going to have a bad time. Acknowledging cultural differences does not have to be negative, and it certainly does not make someone racist.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Citing of cultural differences is often (I'd even say usually) code for citing racial stereotypes as if they were common sense. I'd say that it's worth discussion that the cultural differences cited by Gladwell about Korea are the same as 150 year old stereotypes of Chinese culture.
- kokey 13y ago
ivix 13y ago
The entire article is undermined by this sentence: " If you think that a Korean person in a professional setting would show any disrespect to a person who is 14 years older just because he slightly outranks the other, you know absolutely nothing about Korean culture." Therefore confirming that cultural issues DO have an impact on people's behaviour.
- josephers 13y ago
  Of course they do, but that's not the entire article. For much of the article, the author is saying that Gladwell's hypothesis is a big stretch and it displays the Igon Value Problem.
tokenadult 13y ago
I have a good friend who is an American who has lived all over the world as an airline industry consultant. He spoke Chinese well when I first met him in the early 1980s (I hired him as a reporter for a trade magazine that published English-language articles based on Chinese-language interviews with sources) and he has since learned a lot of Japanese, at least. One of his lines of airline consulting business over the years was cockpit resources management (CRM) training for airline crews to ensure better communication among pilots in commercial passenger airlines. His statement about his business experience is that cockpit resource management training was most needed among the airlines operating in Korea. AFTER EDIT: Anyway, the fine submitted article here is an extended rant about Malcolm Gladwell's essays that later get collected into Gladwell's books, but it has too little to say about the latest airline accident with pilots trained by an airline operating in Korea, the FIRST-EVER fatal crash involving the 777 aircraft. When news reports mention that a cockpit command told flight attendants to tell passengers to stay in their seats rather than evacuate the aircraft after it came to rest off the runway, http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23637529/flight-attendants-told-pilots-plane-was-fire http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23637529/flight-atten... http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/asiana-flight-attendant http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/asiana-flight-a... we know that that at least one pilot on that flight was using extremely poor judgment even after the plane slammed into the ground. There was a human factor in the most recent crash, and the investigation will have to find out what that human factor was and reduce risk of recurrence of that human factor in the next several hundred thousand passenger airline flights around the world.
natch 13y ago
Claims to have coined the term "culturalism" decades after it has been in wide use... Says "Culturalism is the unwarranted impulse to explain people's behavior with a "cultural difference", whether real or imagined," while running a blog called "Ask a Korean." Pretends culture has nothing to do with how accidents happen. all credibility lost.
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candybar 13y ago
Most comments seem to be missing the point. Why did Gladwell make such egregious mistakes and resort to lazy, analysis? Why did most readers lazily accept such explanations without asking relevant questions? Why do journalists immediately jump to cultural explanations in lots of cases without having a strong understanding of the facts, the details and/or actual knowledge of the cultures that they are holding accountable? Because culturalism makes us feel informed and superior. It allows us to form a sophisticated-sounding opinion that confirms your own cultural superiority without knowing anything. It allows us to quickly come to a wrong conclusion in a lot of different contexts - it's difficult to get to know a specific person, but it's easy to recall a cultural stereotype. We want to feel like we know what's going on, even when we have no idea. Culturalism gives us that feeling. It's knowledge saccharin. This comes up a lot in technological contexts. for instance, with just programming languages and platforms, we see these (or some politely worded versions thereof) all the time: .NET developers are copy-pasting Microsoft drones who can't solve difficult problems without wizards holding hands, Lisp programmers are non-bathing egotists who can't work with others, Java programmers are cargo-cultists who prefer verbose incantations full of acronym soups and unnecessary hiearchies of meaningless classes to clear code, Perl/Ruby/Javascript programmers can only write short scripts, not maintainable, performant or critical applications. The lesson here is clear - distinguish between actual knowledge of the world and poor, phony substitutes that merely give us the feeling of knowing. It'll make us better at what we do and incidentally also lead to a better society.
- freshfunk 13y ago
  Incredibly insightful comment!
  - candybar 13y ago
    Thanks!
chaostheory 13y ago
Golf is an extremely bad example to compare to flying an commercial airplane. Why? Because it's a single player game and not a team sport. You don't need to work with and communicate with others to win. When you're communicating and working with other people, culture does matter.
pessimizer 13y ago
The flaw in cultural "explanations" is that they are not in any way explanations, but simply associations. Explanations involve cause and effect. Illustration: The causes of ascribed cultural trait X which has a 75% prevalence in Fooistan may be identical to the causes of that same trait X in Baristan, where it has a 5% prevalence, and the difference may be entirely due to random circumstance and network effects. Explaining why a person in a particular incident acted in accordance with trait X with "He's Fooistani and they are often X" is not an explanation, just an observation, and offers no insight into the 25% of Fooistanis who are not X. The equivalent statement in the latter case is "He's Fooistani, and sometimes Fooistanis are not X" and has equal explanatory power: none. As a Baristani, though, it is a very comforting "explanation" if trait X is a worrying trait, because being Fooistani is not something that they have to fear.
bengoodger 13y ago
"Culturalism" aside, the additional CVR transcript the OP gripes about Gladwell omitting does little to support his claim. Gladwell's segment: FO: "Don't you think it rains more? [..]" Omitted: FO: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." Yeah the omitted section is much stronger. But it's wrong to argue that it's direct enough, because it's still not as strong as the FO saying something like: "I think the conditions aren't good enough for VFR. I think we should change our strategy." Some of the pilot interviews after OZ214 have stated many airlines have a "no-fault go-around" policy. If anyone in the cockpit has any discomfort with the approach, the rule is that you go around, and make everyone comfortable, with no fault to anyone. This is an environment in which a pilot could be more confident making a direct statement like the one I suggest above. I don't necessarily believe this is a cultural thing though, just a good idea that airlines should implement.
- josephers 13y ago
  I think Malcolm Gladwell was suggesting that the first officer wanted to tell him something but couldn't because he couldn't be direct. But looking at just the transcript, would you really come to that conclusion? By leaving out most lines, the transcript seems to show a FO with an internal struggle to speak out, but I don't think that was what happened at all.
mcguire 13y ago
Philip Greenspun on Gladwell and "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes": http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety In a slightly more serious note, there is a fair chunk of research on this topic[1], showing cultural differences in Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) behavior[2]. On the third hand, making any positive statements about the causes of this crash is totally premature, very likely spewing horseshit, and a serious disservice to the investigation and anyone involved, including the victims. [1] http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/helmreichlab/publications/publications.html http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/helmreichlab/p... [2] http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/31/3/283.short http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/31/3/283.short
nbn234 13y ago
Cultural explanations when the group of people make up a statistically small portion of the incidents == bad. Cultural explanations when the group of people make up a statistically significant portion of the incidents == good. The question as I see it is : Do Koreans make up a statistically significant portion of near misses and accidents? From what I have read from various aviation professionals, the answer is yes. What have you guys heard?

84 points by jpatokal 13y ago

danso 13y ago

The title of the OP makes it sound like a ripoff of The Onion, but it's an incredibly indepth criticism of Malcolm Gladwell's much-cited essay on cultural causes airplane crashes...a case study of how a well-regarded author can be very misleading with the facts. edit: Here's a key rebuttal: > "Gladwell also notes that Korean manner of speaking is indirect and suggestive, requiring the listener to be engaged and applying proper context to understand the true meaning...And the transcript reveals a striking fact that Gladwell never mentions: 90 percent of the conversation among the three pilots is in English. In fact, the only part of the conversation that happens in Korea is idle banter, talking about how the company does not pay them enough or how Guam's airport must be staffed by former U.S. soldiers who were stationed in Korea." If the premise of Malcolm's chapter is how culture/ethnicity can be related to operational catastrophes, particularly in language, then the power of the assertion is significantly undermined if language wasn't much of a factor in the actual incident.

jmngomes 13y ago
I think Gladwell arguments about the "manner of speaking", not the language used. Some countries/cultures are way more deferent than others and view "powerful" people as someone to (almost) worship. Feeling confortable about saying "no" or disagreeing with those above you is tied to your cultural background, not the particular language you use.
briandon 13y ago
The linked article is indeed long but I'm not sure how much merit there is in the poster's arguments. He contends that 90% of the conversation between the pilots was conducted in English and then, a bit later, quotes a multi-line dialogue between the captain and first officer that was completely in Korean and which he had to translate. In making the case that the rigidly hierarchical nature of Korean society wasn't a factor in a crash, he describes multiple, conflicting axes-of-respect (age, experience, training) that would've existed and weighed on the crew members' thoughts and actions. At another point, he seems to be saying that an airline isn't accident-prone if some (not all) of its crashed/destroyed planes were downed because the crew flew them off course and into hostile territory. How many other passenger planes were downed by the Soviets during the same period? Apparently none: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents#1970s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci... I'm no fan of Gladwell and the "Igon Value" fiasco should have clued people into the fact that they should be wary of science popularizers, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Especially if it's just repeating aspects of what other clocks have been saying.
- danso 13y ago
  Well, I would argue that the OP is not contradicting himself, but tackling the instances (since at least 10% of the dialogue is in Korean) in which the dialogue is Korean. And he is directly challenging a passage from Gladwell (I can't recall off-hand how many Korean dialogue examples Gladwell actually sites, so it may be that the OP is cherry picking). Anyway, the OP's intent is to show that in these Korean passages, Gladwell apparently cherry-picks and edits the otherwise innocuous dialogue in a misleading way: ----- There is the sound of a man shifting in his seat. A minute passes. 0121:13 CAPTAIN: Eh... really... sleepy. [unintelligible words]. FIRST OFFICER: Of course. Then comes one of the most critical moments in the flight. The first officer decides to speak up: FIRST OFFICER: Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here? The first officer must have thought long and hard before making that comment . . . [W]hen the first officer says: "Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here?" we know what he means by that: Captain. You have committed us to visual approach, with no backup plan, and the weather outside is terrible. You think we will break out of the clouds in time to see the runway. But what if we don't? It's pitch-black outside and pouring rain and the glide scope is down. There is no nice way of saying this: this portion of Gladwell's writing is ridiculous in several ways. First, the way in which Gladwell quoted the transcript is severely misleading. This is the full transcript, which goes from pp. 185 to 187 of the NTSB report: CAPTAIN: 어... 정말로... 졸려서... (불분명) [eh... really... sleepy... (unintelligible words)] FIRST OFFICER: 그럼요 [Of course] FIRST OFFICER: 괌이 안 좋네요 기장님 [Captain, Guam condition is no good]FIRST OFFICER: Two nine eighty-six CAPTAIN: 야! 비가 많이 온다 [Uh, it rains a lot]CAPTAIN: (unintelligible words) CAPTAIN: 가다가 이쯤에서 한 20 마일 요청해 [Request twenty miles deviation later on] FIRST OFFICER: 네 [yes] CAPTAIN: ... 내려가면서 좌측으로 [... to the left as we are descending] (UNCLEAR SPEAKER): (chuckling, unintelligible words) FIRST OFFICER: 더 오는 것같죠? 이 안에. [Don't you think it rains more? In this area, here?] (emphases mine) Note the difference between the full transcript, and the way Gladwell presented the transcript. Gladwell only quoted the first two lines and the last line of this sequence, omitting many critical lines in the process. In doing so, Gladwell wants to create an impression that the first officer underwent some period of silent contemplation, and decided to warn the captain of the poor weather conditions in an indirect, suggestive manner. The full transcript reveals that this is clearly not the case. The first officer spoke up directly, clearly, and unmistakably: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." It is difficult to imagine how a person could be more direct about the poor weather condition. Further, there was no silent contemplation by the first officer. Nearly three minutes elapse during this sequence, during the captain and the first officer chatted constantly. And it is the captain who first brings up the fact that it is raining a great deal: "Uh, it rains a lot." In this context, it is clear that the first officer is engaged in some friendly banter about the rain, not some indirect, ominous warning about the flight conditions.

ghshephard 13y ago

The entire premise, re: Great Golf Players, is off. The vast majority of golf players make bad shots most of the time, and, are a function of individual performance. Landing a Plane is not like a golf tournament. Every trained and qualified pilot should be expected to safely land the plane. While not a trivial task, and one requiring significant experience and training, it is not so inordinately difficult that only a very few people alive can perform the task. With Airplane pilots, Crashes are so exceedingly rare, and the backups, both mechanical, human, and training so well designed to prevent them, that the issues associated with a crash are typically systemic, and little to do with an individual. Also, the korean culturalism developed when the overly formal/seniority centric cockpit of Korean Airlines was identified as a key contributor to a poor safety record with some korean airlines. I completely agree with the OP that it's absolutely premature to be making any conclusions regarding impact of culture on the Asiana airlines crash, but, the nature of the crash, in great weather, suggests that there will be some systemic failure (Training, Over-reliance on Automation, poor maintenance, overly complex modal-auto-throttle) that turns out to be the cause of it.

michaelochurch 13y ago
The vast majority of golf players make bad shots most of the time, and, are a function of individual performance. Sure, but if you took an untrained, unskilled person and had him flying a trans-Pacific jet, you'd see more crashes. This isn't done, for obvious reasons. A terrible golfer who shoots a 173 just annoys people who have to wait behind him. With an unskilled pilot, the stakes are higher and great efforts are made to prevent one from flying a passenger jet. Good golfers, on the other hand, don't make terrible shots most of the time (although horrible shots are more common than plane crashes). Also, the korean culturalism developed when the overly formal/seniority centric cockpit of Korean Airlines was identified as a key contributor to a poor safety record with some korean airlines. OP's argument is that this isn't specifically a Korean or East Asian problem, and I agree. Most people are-- except when they perceive a life-threatening crisis (and that point of perception may be too late)-- deferential to authority. It's not limited to one culture.
algorias 13y ago
> Also, the korean culturalism developed when the overly formal/seniority centric cockpit of Korean Airlines was identified as a key contributor to a poor safety record with some korean airlines. identified by whom? with what credibility? The whole point of the article is refuting that hypothesis. You've done nothing but restate that thought, without adding any more weight to it.

Gigablah 13y ago

I've also noticed increased scrutiny in the media of the behaviour of the passengers who carried their cabin luggage with them as they evacuated the plane. Much emphasis was placed upon their race -- the majority of the passengers were Chinese. It feels really tasteless how rapidly the discourse shifted towards criticism of the victims.

briandon 13y ago
Cultural differences do exist, even though discussing differences that have negative consequences or are viewed negatively tend to make many of us uncomfortable. "The Pedometer Test: Americans Take Fewer Steps" http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-americans-take-fewer-steps/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-... Does reading that article or even its title make you angry? Would you disagree with the results of the study on which it was based? If so, on what grounds? Do you believe that it is wrong in some way to even conduct such a study?
rmah 13y ago
The behavior of grabbing their bags has been observed on numerous occasions in commercial aircraft evacs across many cultures, including western ones. It is a real problem and a concern. But it's one that no airline or regulatory body has really done anything about for 50 years.
barry-cotter 13y ago
I highly recommend living abroad to anybody who does not find the above amusing[0]. People from different cultures really are different. [0] No, your semester abroad during college does not count.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  I highly recommend living abroad I agree with the overall suggestion. Where have you lived abroad?
  - barry-cotter 13y ago

waylandsmithers 13y ago

Well, that does it for me as far as non-fiction goes. Is it so much to ask to just be able to be a LITTLE bit lazy and believe something I read, without having to stay on the lookout for a complete tear down from an expert in the subject matter? Maybe I'm just being naive, but I honestly feel betrayed by how badly one of my (perhaps now former) favorite writers twisted or conveniently ignored facts to make one of his essays more interesting.

ghshephard 13y ago
Ah, welcome to the world of "Gladwell Deconstruction" - It's a pretty well known meme on HN - Calling out just how badly Gladwell distorts everything he writes just to make an interesting story/theme. He does it so well, though, that he's still one of my favorite writers. And, much like Wikipedia has taught us to realize that anything written down could be something totally bogus thrown up by a vandal, and therefore we should challenge (and look for citations) for everything, everywhere - Gladwell has taught us that just because something sounds good - doesn't really mean it actually is accurate/truthy.
minikites 13y ago
Don't worry, there is a single study on literally this that confirms that everything is actually okay. Just blink for 10,000 hours and it will solve all your problems. I agree with Merlin Mann's thoughts on Gladwell: http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/205874392/surprise-surprise http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/205874392/surprise-surprise
Robin_Message 13y ago
Personally, I despise Gladwell for making me look like an idiot whenever I have quoted him. I came here just to find a place to post my standard Gladwell disclaimer: I can not anti-recommend Gladwell enough. He is anti-knowledge, convincing you that you know something when you actually understand it less well after reading than before.

dobbsbob 13y ago

Korean/asiana airlines pilots were banned for 12 mos by the airport authority where i worked over a decade ago pending pilot training and english review due to numerous incidents of pilot error and communications problems. Those two airlines managed to ram the jetway 3 times, and even rammed the maint hanger causing millions in damage. One pilot tried to take off with the fuel truck still attached, one pilot had poor english ordering fuel be halfed instead of extra fuel and had to fly back because the pilot only noticed 1hr after takeoff, and two (yes, two) Korean reg'd AC tried to land on the highway instead of the runway. Another Korean air flight misunderstood the tower and tried to land at the same time as an another plane almost causing a crash, which was only noticed by the other pilot who got out of there. I was there when they asked the pilot about it who was completely clueless he had almost killed everybody on both flights. I dont know whats up with Korean pilot training but talk to anybody who has worked in a tower and they will tell you horror stories. Theres also the 911 incident where they broadcasted a hijack code for some reason and were almost shot down over the Yukon.

EliRivers 13y ago
It's my understanding that Korean pilots did deservedly have a bad reputation in the late nineties, but got their act together and in 2008 came top of the ICAO league in aviation safety (including pilot training).
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  I thought they fixed all these problems too then SFO happens, which is yet another training mistake no other pilots would make even on a flight simulator.
  - EliRivers 13y ago
    See, now I really do think you're making it up. A training mistake no other pilot would ever make, even in a simulator? Surely the whole point of putting a pilot under training in a simulator is because they will make mistakes, they're expected to make mistakes, learning from mistakes is a part of learning, and they're doing it in a simulator because they need to learn. If we have a supply of pilots who don't make mistakes as they learn, why do we bother training them at all? Surely we can put these magic trainees straight into the cockpit.

sheri 13y ago

Patrick Smith (a former pilot and now author) also criticized Gladwell here:http://www.salon.com/2008/12/05/askthepilot301/ http://www.salon.com/2008/12/05/askthepilot301/

lnanek2 13y ago

I don't know, gave up when the article claimed you can't learn from the plane that wandered off into Russian territory and got shot. It's exactly the same situation that needs to be addressed. Senior Korean pilots don't have to legitimately pass training and aren't told by the people they work with when they make mistakes. Wandering off course is the same as forgetting your auto-throttle disables at a certain altitude in this regard. It's something easily caught by a second pair of eyes who, in a more functional culture, could tell the pilot. I don't think the article is even trying to see the argument. I had a Korean CEO like this once at Noom. The guy constantly fucked up. Forgot to pay employees, paid the wrong amount, forgot to pay gym memberships for months which was supposed to be a benefit, promised to update addresses for immigration paperwork and never got around to it, etc.. Even the CTO admitted numbers were not the CEOs strong point and he was just there to make friendly deals with other business people. If you called the guy out on anything, or setup a meeting to try to address things together, he took you away from his desk where things could be fixed to a meeting room to lecture you for an hour on how you had to respect him.

bjourne 13y ago
Come on! You can't seriously try and connect "Korean culture" with the douchebag slacker CEO you are describing.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  I'm not sure that's functionally any different than what Gladwell did here.
candybar 13y ago
Your second paragraph is, quite unintentionally, a great anecdote for why culturalism is a problem. You've somehow managed to blame your boss's quite idiosyncratic issues on his Korean-ness and connect it to another, completely unrelated incident where Korean-ness was being blamed for failure. There are legitimate and complex ways in which culture can influence individual behavior, but in practice, most such arguments come down to just laziness, personal biases or in some extreme cases, a socially more acceptable way to express racial prejudice.

ojbyrne 13y ago

Actually, as a Canadian and a golfer, there is a factor in why Canada has fewer good golfers - you can't play year round in Canada.

ghshephard 13y ago
Following your logic then, you should have more good hockey players because you have longer winters.
- thebooktocome 13y ago
  And indeed, they do have more good hockey players, per capita.
- gdilla 13y ago
  Annnd, we do. No doubt. But that's cultural too. We love hockey. It's in our bones. You'd think siberia would have the best players by your logic.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    If the logic is consistent, then Siberia should have, per capita, more good hockey player than golf players, as compared to the a more moderate climate, like South Africa.
    - rdouble 13y ago
      They do, don't they?
      - ghshephard 13y ago
        Presumably, yes. With a bit more meditation on this thread, I think my general conclusion then is that while culture can shape behavior, it's possible that things like weather can shape culture. And, to bring it all home, this feels like the topic of a Gladwell Book (or at least a chapter)

crazygringo 13y ago

Putting aside Gladwell for a moment... By the end of the article, you realize that the whole point is about the negatives of "culturalism". He says: > Like racism, culturalism distracts away from asking more meaningful questions, and obscures pertinent facts. > Like racism, culturalism puts a large group of people beyond rational understanding. > like racism, culturalism destroys individual agency. > Culturalism causes real harm. It obfuscates the truth. But he hasn't backed this up at all, except for a single lengthy anecdote about Gladwell's chapter. Speaking as someone who has lived in in several different countries besides the US (including 8 years in one), cultural attitudes are extremely important everywhere you go and can explain lots of important things. Just look at Geert Hofstede's "Cultures and Organizations" if you want empirical data for it. Seeking cultural explanations for things is no different from seeking any other kind of explanation. Even if it winds up not being true, it's perfectly valid to wonder if cultural things are at work. Looking for cultural explanations is not a distraction, and it does not put anyone "beyond rational understanding" -- to the contrary, it tries to explain things rationally. I understand that the author is bothered by speculation about Korean culture, but honestly, that's just silly. It's not emblematic of some kind of anti-Korean attitudes in US media or anything, and the author's done nothing to show that it is.

dll 13y ago
I totally agree with you here. Culture != race, and to ignore culture means that you are not seeing the whole picture. Anybody who works internationally and ignores cultural issues is going to have a bad time. Acknowledging cultural differences does not have to be negative, and it certainly does not make someone racist.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Citing of cultural differences is often (I'd even say usually) code for citing racial stereotypes as if they were common sense. I'd say that it's worth discussion that the cultural differences cited by Gladwell about Korea are the same as 150 year old stereotypes of Chinese culture.
kokey 13y ago

ivix 13y ago

The entire article is undermined by this sentence: " If you think that a Korean person in a professional setting would show any disrespect to a person who is 14 years older just because he slightly outranks the other, you know absolutely nothing about Korean culture." Therefore confirming that cultural issues DO have an impact on people's behaviour.

josephers 13y ago
Of course they do, but that's not the entire article. For much of the article, the author is saying that Gladwell's hypothesis is a big stretch and it displays the Igon Value Problem.

tokenadult 13y ago

I have a good friend who is an American who has lived all over the world as an airline industry consultant. He spoke Chinese well when I first met him in the early 1980s (I hired him as a reporter for a trade magazine that published English-language articles based on Chinese-language interviews with sources) and he has since learned a lot of Japanese, at least. One of his lines of airline consulting business over the years was cockpit resources management (CRM) training for airline crews to ensure better communication among pilots in commercial passenger airlines. His statement about his business experience is that cockpit resource management training was most needed among the airlines operating in Korea. AFTER EDIT: Anyway, the fine submitted article here is an extended rant about Malcolm Gladwell's essays that later get collected into Gladwell's books, but it has too little to say about the latest airline accident with pilots trained by an airline operating in Korea, the FIRST-EVER fatal crash involving the 777 aircraft. When news reports mention that a cockpit command told flight attendants to tell passengers to stay in their seats rather than evacuate the aircraft after it came to rest off the runway, http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23637529/flight-attendants-told-pilots-plane-was-fire http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23637529/flight-atten... http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/asiana-flight-attendant http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/09/world/asia/asiana-flight-a... we know that that at least one pilot on that flight was using extremely poor judgment even after the plane slammed into the ground. There was a human factor in the most recent crash, and the investigation will have to find out what that human factor was and reduce risk of recurrence of that human factor in the next several hundred thousand passenger airline flights around the world.

natch 13y ago

Claims to have coined the term "culturalism" decades after it has been in wide use... Says "Culturalism is the unwarranted impulse to explain people's behavior with a "cultural difference", whether real or imagined," while running a blog called "Ask a Korean." Pretends culture has nothing to do with how accidents happen. all credibility lost.

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candybar 13y ago

Most comments seem to be missing the point. Why did Gladwell make such egregious mistakes and resort to lazy, analysis? Why did most readers lazily accept such explanations without asking relevant questions? Why do journalists immediately jump to cultural explanations in lots of cases without having a strong understanding of the facts, the details and/or actual knowledge of the cultures that they are holding accountable? Because culturalism makes us feel informed and superior. It allows us to form a sophisticated-sounding opinion that confirms your own cultural superiority without knowing anything. It allows us to quickly come to a wrong conclusion in a lot of different contexts - it's difficult to get to know a specific person, but it's easy to recall a cultural stereotype. We want to feel like we know what's going on, even when we have no idea. Culturalism gives us that feeling. It's knowledge saccharin. This comes up a lot in technological contexts. for instance, with just programming languages and platforms, we see these (or some politely worded versions thereof) all the time: .NET developers are copy-pasting Microsoft drones who can't solve difficult problems without wizards holding hands, Lisp programmers are non-bathing egotists who can't work with others, Java programmers are cargo-cultists who prefer verbose incantations full of acronym soups and unnecessary hiearchies of meaningless classes to clear code, Perl/Ruby/Javascript programmers can only write short scripts, not maintainable, performant or critical applications. The lesson here is clear - distinguish between actual knowledge of the world and poor, phony substitutes that merely give us the feeling of knowing. It'll make us better at what we do and incidentally also lead to a better society.

freshfunk 13y ago
Incredibly insightful comment!
- candybar 13y ago
  Thanks!

chaostheory 13y ago

Golf is an extremely bad example to compare to flying an commercial airplane. Why? Because it's a single player game and not a team sport. You don't need to work with and communicate with others to win. When you're communicating and working with other people, culture does matter.

pessimizer 13y ago

The flaw in cultural "explanations" is that they are not in any way explanations, but simply associations. Explanations involve cause and effect. Illustration: The causes of ascribed cultural trait X which has a 75% prevalence in Fooistan may be identical to the causes of that same trait X in Baristan, where it has a 5% prevalence, and the difference may be entirely due to random circumstance and network effects. Explaining why a person in a particular incident acted in accordance with trait X with "He's Fooistani and they are often X" is not an explanation, just an observation, and offers no insight into the 25% of Fooistanis who are not X. The equivalent statement in the latter case is "He's Fooistani, and sometimes Fooistanis are not X" and has equal explanatory power: none. As a Baristani, though, it is a very comforting "explanation" if trait X is a worrying trait, because being Fooistani is not something that they have to fear.

bengoodger 13y ago

"Culturalism" aside, the additional CVR transcript the OP gripes about Gladwell omitting does little to support his claim. Gladwell's segment: FO: "Don't you think it rains more? [..]" Omitted: FO: "Captain, Guam condition is no good." Yeah the omitted section is much stronger. But it's wrong to argue that it's direct enough, because it's still not as strong as the FO saying something like: "I think the conditions aren't good enough for VFR. I think we should change our strategy." Some of the pilot interviews after OZ214 have stated many airlines have a "no-fault go-around" policy. If anyone in the cockpit has any discomfort with the approach, the rule is that you go around, and make everyone comfortable, with no fault to anyone. This is an environment in which a pilot could be more confident making a direct statement like the one I suggest above. I don't necessarily believe this is a cultural thing though, just a good idea that airlines should implement.

josephers 13y ago
I think Malcolm Gladwell was suggesting that the first officer wanted to tell him something but couldn't because he couldn't be direct. But looking at just the transcript, would you really come to that conclusion? By leaving out most lines, the transcript seems to show a FO with an internal struggle to speak out, but I don't think that was what happened at all.

mcguire 13y ago

Philip Greenspun on Gladwell and "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes": http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/foreign-airline-safety In a slightly more serious note, there is a fair chunk of research on this topic[1], showing cultural differences in Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) behavior[2]. On the third hand, making any positive statements about the causes of this crash is totally premature, very likely spewing horseshit, and a serious disservice to the investigation and anyone involved, including the victims. [1] http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/helmreichlab/publications/publications.html http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/helmreichlab/p... [2] http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/31/3/283.short http://jcc.sagepub.com/content/31/3/283.short

nbn234 13y ago

Cultural explanations when the group of people make up a statistically small portion of the incidents == bad. Cultural explanations when the group of people make up a statistically significant portion of the incidents == good. The question as I see it is : Do Koreans make up a statistically significant portion of near misses and accidents? From what I have read from various aviation professionals, the answer is yes. What have you guys heard?