In the section "Questioning the Foundations of Traditional Safety Engineering":
Old Assumption
Most accidents are caused by operator error. Rewarding safe behaviour and punishing unsafe behaviours will eliminate or reduce accidents significantly.
New Assumption
Operator error is a product of the environment in which it occurs. To reduce operator "error" we must change the environment in which the operator works.
Old Assumption
Major accidents occur from the chance simultaneous occurrence of random events.
New Assumption
Systems will tend to migrate toward states of higher risk. Such migration is predictable and can be prevented by appropriate system design or detected during operations using leading indicators of increasing risk.
[0] Open Access PDF: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-safer-world
"Old Assumption
- Most accidents are caused by operator error. Rewarding safe behaviour and punishing unsafe behaviours will eliminate or reduce accidents significantly.
New Assumption
- Operator error is a product of the environment in which it occurs. To reduce operator "error" we must change the environment in which the operator works.
---
Old Assumption
- Major accidents occur from the chance simultaneous occurrence of random events.
New Assumption
- Systems will tend to migrate toward states of higher risk. Such migration is predictable and can be prevented by appropriate system design or detected during operations using leading indicators of increasing risk."
Just a day ago, user Gibbon1 also posted a link to a talk by the author of that book:
"Operator error is a symptom, not a cause."
Ms. Leveson's book "Engineering a Safer World" has a free PDF download at http://sunnyday.mit.edu/safer-world.pdf
... reducing crew workload enough that the crew have a chance to figure out why the plane is trying to kill them? Nice move.
This is the "shareholder value" theory, modern economists successfully brainwashed the population with. It became popular during the 1980s, "greed is good" times. It's just an ideology disguised as a science. The purpose and structure of modern corporation hasn't changed in the last hundred years or so. In 1950s and 1960s the public good, among others, role of corporations was wildly accepted. What changed is the ideologues who became more vicious and took complete control of the narrative.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=money+stuff+matt+levine+%22everyth...
This is what people are referring to when they say "shareholder value" -- diving up the value of the stock.
As much as we would love to having Boeing stock plummet, it will impact most people even if they're not aware that they own it.
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...
Holy crap, should I be on the lookout for black helicopters?
For someone having the same problem: https://web.archive.org/web/20190402011933/https://www.warre...
But that's not how this whole show goes. CEOs are like robots that only act happy or serious. Go into a press conference and act all remorseful for the public, but don't ever offer a genuine apology or own up to the company's actions. Then when all the legal dust clears, the CEO can give a later update about how he is "shocked and appalled" that a verdict could possibly blame Boeing. What a joke.
That said, it's also true that Boeing is in a boatload of trouble. This is gonna get ugly. Likely not for the CEO. I'm pretty sure his signature is not on any of the relevant paperwork. But now that this report has been released, it might be prudent for people who do have their signatures on the relevant paperwork just to consult with some legal counsel. I suspect Boeing, as a company, wouldn't hesitate to throw them under the bus.
Sorry, but that's bull. Owning the mistake - and yes, that includes paying the families of the victims - and offering a serious apology combined with "that's what we will do to make sure it never happens again" would have been the best way to guarantee that Boeing as the current company will continue to exist. Right now they risk the 737 MAX being scrapped and governments around the work taking actions against the obvious regulatory shortcomings - the corruption that obviously happened, to have a plane being able to run itself into the ground based on one sensor system without any redundancies or other securities.
Now they need the US to protect them with further illegal subventions and government influence because they are too important for that country to fail. That's in no way the ideal way to follow "fiduciary obligations".
With all due respect, that's Bullshit, and anyone who cares to look into the provenance of the modern concept of a corporation can see that.
A corporation is a mechanism by which people pool resources and distribute risk such that endeavors unachievable by any individual of that collective group. This privileged collective vehicle, however, was based on the principle that the existence of the corporation was providing a service or good to the benefit of the society enabling the incorporation.
As a sibling poster mentioned, the Reagan/Thatcher years ushered in "the death of Society" and the birth of the "shareholder value" meme.
A corporation does not exist without the societal framework in which it is implemented. If corporations don't take this into account moving forward, the system that put them in a position to do what they are doing may find itself under attack from without by legislators, and within by an increasingly marginalized millennial demographic.
Point being, you can't sit here and say that the only obligation executives have is to their shareholders when the entire arrangement that makes that possible is dependent on the goodwill of everyone else who isn't a shareholder.
I acknowledge my arguments may not convince a hard core "shareholder value" believer, but I'm willing to put my money in the long run on the state of corporatism in America sidling up to a line after which there isn't going to be much they have to lean on once people start realizing that shareholder/not shareholder is becoming the new social division point. Either we're all countrymen, or we're not. If corporate America pounds the "not" drum hard enough, I have no delusions enough people won't get together to bring the entire house of cards to the ground.
Corporations and government have hands in each others' pockets. They are protected by court systems designed in their favor, weapons which could wipe out populations in an instant, and complete control of the technology we all use to communicate.
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
Capitalism, baby!
I know what you are saying and fully agree but would like to put a finer point on it: the problem is with unfettered capitalism, especially after 100 years or more of the lawyers writing the laws for the wealthy, who own the vast majority of the corps.
What we need is a balance between the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism and governments that enforce corporate responsibility to its human workers and our communal environment. The corps have very effectively massaged the legal systems of the world into removing almost all notions of corporate responsibility. And here we are.
Sure, but then I'd like for people to also realize that the problem is with authoritarian communism. Sadly, only capitalism seems to get a break.
I don't expect him to kill himself, but honesty seems the least we should expect in its place. Dishonesty is what caused it, and dishonesty continues dragging it out.
He should be pelted with rotten fruit whenever he show his face in public until he comes clean.
I'd be very surprised if it did happen. "Lucky" for Boeing, it was mostly brown people in a third world country that died. Had it instead been two American planes that went down, Boeing and their executives would be in significantly deeper shit.
Back to the topic - I am not surprised by this kind of empty bullshit talks from CEO, what else to expect from massive PR team? Each word was carefully considered together with big team of lawyers too. For me the outcomes are clear:
- be very suspicious about anything coming from Boeing, their reputation is properly damaged (Airbus doesn't get a free pass, but their products didn't kill 300 people recently and they didn't try to shift blame everywhere else but themselves although things are crystal clear now)
- FAA lost any credibility, period. Globally no other national agency should trust its evaluations, since its obviously susceptible to external pressures and failed at its core mission, directly in the media spotlights, globally, just few weeks ago. Gaining back the trust would be a lengthy process of measurable changes that led to their failure to act, and monitoring the results of this for quite some time.
They should do it anyway. After the Challenger and Columbia disasters, there were major public changes at NASA. If there are none at Boeing now, we have a huge problem (since the number of deaths is an order of magnitude larger!).
Ewww. Not here, please.
He admits that MCAS "activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information" but doesn't admit that this alone directly resulted in the crashes. Rather, he implies that this sets off a chain of events which the pilots are unable to deal with ("pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS function can add to what is already a high workload environment") which puts undue blame on the pilots rather than the system.
If you'll excuse the analogy, it's as if they installed a new griddle in a restaurant kitchen which randomly gets ten times more hot than it ought to be, with no warning. The cook doesn't know it's too hot until the eggs start burning. Now the manager is saying that since the kitchen is so busy, the cook can't flip the eggs fast enough in response to these randomly fluctuating high temperature events. We're being told it's the cooks' fault.
I don't like being bullshitted and find this sort of dodgy language completely inappropriate when 300 people died.