It seems difficult for emotionally healthy people to understand how unhealthy people are thinking and acting. I suspect he had some latent genetic triggers and whatever happened in life slowly chipped away at the human part that guards against going code red. If you think about it, I, being a person without covid (hopefully) don't have any clue what it's like to be on my deathbed with covid. If I did, I'd probably act differently.
What scares me about it some is that this kind of inability to understand is what leads to conspiracy theories. Stephen Paddock couldn't have just been a narcissistic vengeful loner that did what he did because he was that depraved. No, there must be a bigger more complex, more ridiculous explanation. Paddock was actually making an arms deal with the Saudis, Of course, being ex-FBI (or whatever) himself, when that deal went wrong to "cover" his tracks he shot up a concert. I mean it is absurd on its face but when you get this dynamic of not understanding how other people behave, you get these almost supernatural explanations.
Of course, you're not doing any of that, just throwing out my 2 cents.
Then we have the Malaysian government, not wanting to admit to the embarrassment that one of their most experienced, thought-to-be-solid pilots could do something like this, and that they all missed any possible signs that it could happen. As much as we're consciously skeptical of the Malaysian government's report and claims, I bet their words do have a subconscious effect, adding doubt to the murder-suicide theory.
> the human part that guards against going code red
What?
> What scares me about it some is that this kind of inability to understand is what leads to conspiracy theories.
Sorry but this is exactly the sort of speculative leap that you proceed to deride in the rest of the paragraph.
I'm not citing dozens of resources here but I feel really safe in saying that most medical literature on various mental disorders have a large faction of researchers (academic, medical, non-quack, quack) that will say that these mental disorders have a huge genetic as well as environmental compoenent. Please tell me and show me otherwise.
Sorry but this is exactly the sort of speculative leap that you proceed to deride in the rest of the paragraph.
Yes, you're right, but it is also informed by the academic literature on conspiracy theories which is readily available and everyone has access to. Here's a literature review:
Understanding Conspiracy Theories - Douglas - 2019
Sorry to hear it; OCD sucks.
> One of the things you learn through medical treatment by qualified physicians is the general belief that a disorder like OCD has genetic factors.
To say that a human phenomenon "has genetic factors", or that something has "huge genetic as well as environmental component[s]" is nearly meaningless, as there's little about our species' functioning that wouldn't have anything to do, somewhere in the causal chain, with some genetic code being expressed or/and some environmental thing being tripped too. Not to mention that for about 50 years, nearly everything human beings do or say or fart out has been called "genetic" at some point. One needs to say more than that. Or at least, here's a stranger on the internet trying to ask you to do so.
The issue, with OCD and with every other mental disorder, is that we can't really say that much more. Hence my "what?". There are many reasons for this, beginning with the fact that after a lot of money and effort and time, we're nowhere close to being able to define any of these conditions beyond groupings of behaviors that, in someone's eyes, sometimes appear together. In other words, we have no known underlying pathophysiology to refer to, no "lesion" or disease entity we can verify outside of the perception of the sufferer or the observer (friend, coworker, physician). Note that this is not to say that the phenomena aren't real -- they're very real, and people suffer horribly -- it's just to say that the way we talk about constructs like OCD or depression is, in a way, overly confident, whether we're saying they're environmental or asserting their genetic basis on some web forum. We talk about these things as if we know as much about them as we know about the flu, or cancer, or Covid-19, and we simply don't.
Here's a good summation of the state of things from 2013 (it hasn't changed since). And before you shout "quack", know that this comes from the highest levels of "official", mainstream medicine - the kind your doctor listens to. Here's Tom Insel, former head of the NIMH:
> "Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, [mental disorder] diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever."
[At the time he said that, around 2013, Insel began scaring a lot of the bigwigs in his field because he started mouthing off about this and other skeletons in the mental health closet. Here's another one:
> “I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on the neuroscience and genetics of mental disorders, and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded at getting lots of really cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large costs—I think $20 billion—I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness.”]
There's a bigger reason we can't say much, however: the entire project of "genes for mental disorders / mental health / psychiatry" has been a monumental failure. I'd cite a bunch on the matter, but I've written enough to bore everyone here to tears, so I'll just give you what I think is the seminal gloss on this [x], which I highly recommend.
So with mental disorders and genetics, the absence of proof is in the absence of pudding, as it were. This is how I know that you weren't given a blood test, or a genetic test, or a brain scan to confirm your physician's OCD diagnosis - because one doesn't exist. I'm a mental health professional (non-physician), in clinical practice for a decade, and I can't order such a test! (And brother I'm fuckin' dying to!) There isn't any test because we don't know what the thing is beyond "the nature of chest pain", in Insel's words. We have things like this [y], but they don't say that much (see [x] for why), and in that paper's case the authors couldn't even find any good twin studies on OCD to include, leading them to say find only "mixed support for the familial aggregation of OCD" (1573).
What I'm belaboring the point to try and say is (sorry for that) that if we don't know what the thing is - if, in mental health, we're using constructs with extremely little scientific validity - it's very, very hard to say anything concrete about genetic factors, or latent cases, or triggering. Not in the case of OCD, and much, much less so in the case of a very vague "inability to understand", as you put it earlier.
> most medical literature on various mental disorders have a large faction of researchers
We're appealing to "most" and to "general belief" here as a measure of truth? On HN? Come onnnnn
> Yes, you're right, but it is also informed by the academic literature on conspiracy theories which is readily available and everyone has access to. Here's a literature review:
Sorry to say this, but "informed by the academic literature" creates the impression that something very specific has been shown or said on some matter, when in fact what you've shown is pretty vague. They're weasel words.
First, how is what you've said informed by the source you cite? The source you cite sorta says everything and nothing: it's a review, right?, so the authors aren't coming out and making a claim -- they're just telling the reader their view of the state of field w/r/t conspiracy theories, psychology, and politics. And the field seems to say ... well, a bit of everything, if you read the review. All the way from ...
> "Goertzel proposed that conspiracy beliefs comprise part of a monological belief system where these beliefs comprise a self-sealing and expanding network of ideas that mutually support each other"
to ...
> "It is important for scholars to define what they mean by “conspiracy theorist” and “conspiracy theory” because—by signalling irrationality—these terms can neutralize valid concerns and delegitimize people."
In fact, the authors devote a great deal to points of view like this latter quote, making me wonder if the review is making the point you think it's making.
Second, sure, what you've cited is indeed a "review", but no one in political science, psychology, or elsewhere puts much stock in reviews as a category as reliable evidence of anything, at least not sight-unseen. They're a great format, and they're even better for the author (because you learn a shit ton), but they're basically book reports. There are some highly impactful ones in every field, but they're diamonds in the rough. There's a way to do reviews highly rigorously [z], but this isn't doing that. Also, not that impact factors are the be-all and end-all, but this journal isn't at the top of its niche. In fact, this niche ("political psychology") isn't exactly overflowing with Nobel laureates, and it's hard to tell what it's contributed in terms of major, lasting, replicated findings. And that's to say nothing of the major evidentiary crisis in psychology and psychological research in the last ten years concerning replication and scientific rigor -- and that's only research psychology, not even "mental health" or "psychiatry", which are in much worse shape, as I outlined earlier.
[x] Joseph and Ratner, "The Fruitless Search for Genes in Psychiatry and Psychology: Time to Reexamine a Paradigm" in "Genetic Explanations: Sense and Nonsense", Harvard University Press, 2013. The book is here - https://www.amazon.com/Genetic-Explanations-Nonsense-Sheldon... - and you can find it for, uh, cheaper, in your favorite, uh, website. For books. You know the ones I mean.
[y] https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.1...
It's not wrong but it's very pedantic and not considerijng that the reason I didn't spell it all out and cite a bunch of sources is because the entire subthread is besides my main point. That shit is exhausting.
Not to make an argument from authority but having dealt with OCD and a lot of caregivers over a decade and having been in graduate level academia for a decade I know a little more about scientific research and how it ideally works than the poster gives any credit for. It's just very rude and not half as smart as it thinks it is.
Yes, I know what a literature review is. I mean, in their words, come onnn.
Perhaps apply the principle of charity and avoid attributing a negative/dismissive/argumentative tone when maybe there wasn't one?
Jumping off a bridge seems quite difficult in the moment. Whereas it may be much easier to simply do what you always do, being distracted a bit by the need to execute details (that may feel emotionally innocuous) until you gradually slip across a point of no return and the decision is out of your hands. You could even work on controlling the plane all the way to the water, just as you were trained to until, of course, there was nothing further you could do.
I do imagine that some passengers and crew must have noticed something weird about the in flight maps. Almost the entire flight path is out of phone range though so unless there was satellite internet there would have been nothing any crew could have done. Cockpit doors are armored these days.
This doesn't contradict my vague scenario, but I wrote it after having read the posted article (about the clever ham radio hack) but before reading Langweiche's article which was mentioned in another comment.
There are a few theories floating around about how this happened that suggest a possible narrative that explains this. Essentially: by the time the in-flight maps would have shown anything weird, it was too late, and shortly after that, everyone outside the cockpit would have died. My paraphrased version:
Right before Zaharie made his first (unscheduled) turn, he could have gotten the first officer to leave the cockpit, probably by telling him that one of the cabin crew needed to see him in person about something (the first officer was a young rising star in the airline, and likely would have followed his superior's instructions without question). He'd then lock the cockpit door, put on an oxygen mask, and depressurized the cabin, maybe even cutting power to the cabin lights to make things more confusing.
Before anyone could react, he'd start the first turn. Based on simulations done, it was a pretty violent turn, pushing the plane to its limits; the first officer and many/all of the cabin crew would have been on their feet, and would have been knocked around to the point that they may not have been able to get oxygen masks on in time to prevent unconsciousness. Even if any of them, including the first officer, could get a mask on, there's not much they could do. They would assume there was an emergency, but the first officer would be unable to get to the cockpit (locked, plus the need to be tethered to an oxygen mask's supply), and the cabin crew would generally not try to get into the cockpit in that situation, but would attempt to secure the cabin and do their best to manage the passengers.
Most passengers would probably be able to get their masks on (if they were already belted into their seats), but the oxygen in those masks runs out in some surprisingly-small number of minutes: in the event of depressurization the masks are a stopgap measure to keep everyone conscious/alive while the pilot descends to an altitude where the masks aren't necessary, but in this case the pilot intentionally did not do that. Most, if not all, passengers would follow the steps drilled into them by the safety video: put their oxygen masks on, help anyone next to them, and stay belted into their seats. They'd assume that there was a legitimate issue with the plane, not that the pilot was trying to kill them.
Even if anyone noticed the in-flight maps during that time, they wouldn't have much time to puzzle over it, and would likely assume that the weird course was a result of whatever emergency was going on in the cockpit.
Perhaps there should be a device capable of sending a distress signal accessible from the cabin by flight-attendants?
A similar solution could also be applicable to other means of transport. E.g. A similar solution would have been extremely useful for the indonesian submarine lost weeks ago.
Which is one of the elements of MH370 that suggests a deliberate act: it did go almost entirely dark, but for the hourly satellite pings. If the flight recorders are ever found then it may be learned if this was so, and whether it was malfeasance or part of a lost fight against malfunctions/fire.
I think "crew" is the key part here, right? I understand a system like this would be designed in such a way a single crew member could not make a plane go dark -- or make it stay dark after disabling the safety systems. For example, a rogue pilot can manage to turn the beacons off, but any other from the cabin crew can just turn it on again while the pilot is in the cockpit, etc.
I still need to find out which changes this even brought to the entire airline ecosystem.
Giving a flight attendant a backdoor code would make them more susceptible to a hostage situation.. It's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations I guess. There is no perfect answer in the situation where the most trusted person is compromised without compromising security in all the other scenarios.
Not sure though.
Many people have done things like that in history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herostratus), but that's also hard to reconcile with disguising one's role and responsibility and preventing proof of either from being established, isn't it?
I'm sure there is an insurance payout at play as well.
If he thought he could make it look like an accident, it looks "better" (to some people) to die in a freak plane crash than it does to kill themselves (which looks "weak").
The insurance money is probably a better explanation but I think the above psychology would apply to quite a few people who wouldn't want to saddle their family with the perceived embarrassment of committing suicide.
It’s happened before unfortunately :(
I still can't imagine how sick a person can be to do this. If he wanted to kill himself he should just have jumped off a bridge.
I'm kinda still hoping it's wrong and there was a proper reason behind this. But either way I hope the families will het some kind of closure.