It's not fair to blame the plane at all unless you're sure the crash was the plane's fault, but that isn't stopping most of the people in this thread from doing it.
Airplanes don't have the right to a trial of their peers with presumption of innocence.
Two crashes within six months is very abnormal. Abnormalities are evidence of problems. Airline regulators are tasked with keeping people from dying, not with protecting manufacturers' feelings.
Those three crashes had one thing in common: terrorism.
These two crashes have one thing in common: brand new planes.
Unless you know of an islamist terror organization that has a grudge against Ethiopian desert wilderness, I don't think terrorism is a more likely common cause than the brand new airframe.
Yes but my point is that people don’t avoid the 767. Look upthread please, this whole sub thread is about whether these incidents will cause consumers to avoid 737 Max planes in the future.
My (apparently very controversial) opinion is that we don’t know enough to predict that now, because we don’t know what caused the Ethiopian Air crash yet.
People never avoided the 767 because it was clear all along that the crashes had noting to do with the plane.
People are avoiding the 737 MAX because given the current information it definitely could be a problem with the plane, in fact the information we already have from the first crash makes it look like it's very likely to be a problem with the plane.
> People are avoiding the 737 MAX because given the current information
Again: the topic here is predicting long-term damage to consumer confidence. I understand what is happening right now.
The entire 787 fleet was grounded not more than a few years ago due to battery issue. How many people actively avoid 787s today? Long-term consumer trust depends not just the root cause of an accident, but also the perception of how it was addressed. As the GP correctly points out, the 767 (and all other planes, and security screening procedures) were redesigned to protect against the type of attack that succeeded on September 11.
> It's not fair to blame the plane at all unless you're sure the crash was the plane's fault
I'd say "unless you have some indication that it was the plane's fault". Otherwise, agreed: 2 crashes per se tell you nothing about the safety of the plane; it could've been a terrorist attack or a suicidal pilot or a missile.
It's two crashes under similar circumstances, with no indication of such an external event, that justify suspecting the plane.
> It's not fair to blame the plane at all unless you're sure the crash was the plane's fault
Since we aren't talking about assigning criminal penalties to the plane (for one, because its fairly well destroyed, and for another because it wasn't the kind of thing subject to such penalties in the first place), the criminal standard of proof ("beyond a reasonable doubt" -- which still falls short of actually being sure) is inapplicable. In fact, given the minimal consequences of blaming the plane in the discussion in this thread, its probably fair to do so if there is any reasonable basis for belief that that the crash was the plane's fault. Its certainly to do so if the preponderance of the evidence as yet reviewed by the person doing the blaming suggests that, even if it is a fairly weak conclusion that a very small amount of additional evidence could reverse.
I don't object to this line of reasoning, I object to the idea that this line of reasoning by itself, as known today, is sufficient to predict that the reputation of the 737 Max is permanently damaged in the eyes of consumers. That's the context of this subthread, starting here:
There is no excuse to not have any documentation. One must always make an attempt to write a reasonable amount of documentation so there isn't a situation where there is no hope to understand anything except read all the source code.
But a lot of people (managerial types especially) expect docs will be "step 1 look here, step 2 look there, step 3 fix with this exact command"
Docs should explain how a system works, and perhaps some important places to look, but it's not a checklist to fix all problems. The consumer must still possess the ability, and will, to investigate and fix problems using their own critical thinking.
For anyone else out there who may be a chess imbecile like myself... it took me a while to figure out why black king doesn't take white rook:
It's because if they do, white has no legal moves, but king isn't in check. This condition, where a player can't move, but the king currently isn't in check, results in a stalemate (which is considered a draw).
Therefore, white's baiting of black into that position by sacrificing pieces is interesting.
I agree. There was a report in December that they had lost $800 million in the previous quarter. It seems like utter insanity that:
1. They'd even bat an eyelash at paying retail for the needed quantity, and
2. They'd think it's even remotely ok to exclude a section of the team completely due to any reason (sex, race, size, whatever)
Yes, it's just a jacket, but this definitely smells of a deep seeded cultural problem due to how ludicrous it is.
One must remember that individual managers have budgets much more stringent than the overall burn. That said, the manager didn't feel it necessary or acceptable to escalate what could clearly become an HR nightmare to ask for an expansion of budget. That such a request would expend enough political favor to make it a nonstarter, is indicative of an institutional problem.
>We could revoke the 13th and 14th Amendments and have slavery again--there is no legal impediment to that.
Actually, I think this is the genius of the amendment system.
You are correct that it could happen. But unlike laws that can be passed or revoked by Congress by political whim, the barrier to creating or overturning Constitutional amendments is much higher and more difficult to pass.
There's a famous story about the logician Kurt Gödel related to this.[1] In preparation for the US citizenship test, despite assurances from his friends Albert Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern that the test was a mere formality, he studied assiduously all sorts of details about local and national government, including the US Constitution.
He quite excitedly told Einstein and Morgenstern that he had found a weakness in the Constitution that would allow the US to become a dictatorship. They were horrified and tried to tell him not to bring up such ideas at the hearing, but the judge happened to note that it was a good thing that in the US, unlike Gödel's native Austria, we were not a dictatorship -- which prompted Gödel to begin explaining his discovery...[2]
Unfortunately, no one ever bothered to write down what
Gödel's idea was! But it has been speculated[3] that it is this: that the Article V provision for constitutional amendments does not exclude that provision itself from amendment -- so it is possible to first pass an amendment making it easier to pass amendments, after which it could be a short trip to dictatorship under the right conditions.
Fanciful, but a fascinating story. Picturing Gödel, Einstein, and Morgenstern hanging out and being playful with each other is a treat.
The Constitution is pretty much only as strong as the institutions that interpret and enforce it. It's all sort of a collective hallucination that the Constitution has any power in and of itself. "Godelian" defects seem a lot less dangerous to me than plain-old human factors.
The UK manages to be a Parliamentary democracy without having a single coherent constitution at all, let alone one free of logical defects- so having a perfectly consistent and "loophole-free" constitution doesn't seem particularly important in practice.
The easiest way to wholly undermine the US Constitution is to just expand the Supreme Court bench and then pack it with your cronies, who will then let you do whatever you want and call it constitutional. No amendment needed!
Sometimes I think there's just as much, if not more, leeway in interpreting the "God Document" that is the constitution, than in not having one and relying on what is essentially "prior art".
Plus the point of our system is to allow both good and bad ideas to be discussed openly so everyone can decide their merits. We haven't seen the likes of Trump since Nixon, and he won't be the last, but we are stronger for giving him room to speak. The bad ideas will hang themselves, even if he becomes president. The US president is not all powerful. There are many limits in place.
I feel like we're more immunized against religious flavors of crazy. Like, Cruz is probably further from mentally balanced than Trump even, but if he became president he probably wouldn't cause the same level of trouble.
Trump's ideas are "new" in that he does say them first. They appeal to many because we all know the old ideas aren't great, from painful experience. Trump's brand of crazy hasn't hurt us in a long time so we don't see it.
As an example: Bush senior said he didn't even think atheists could be considered citizens. But there's 0% chance that he'd try to enact that, or that it'd pass. Trump's ideas have the veneer of "business decisions" and seem more likely to get enacted.
> Trump's ideas have the veneer of "business decisions" and seem more likely to get enacted.
All the more reason to start being active in discussions about his ideas.
The most compelling for me is he is okay with arming Japan with nuclear weapons.
Trump claims China is tipping the balance of power by building tiny islands in the South China Sea. These are relatively close to China and far from the US. He claims this could kick off WW 3 if not properly off set by adding something to the other side of the scale. He says he'd be okay with arming multiple new nation states, including South Korea and Japan, to balance things again.
But arming new nation states with nuclear weapons would severely throw things out of balance. It'd take years for these countries to ramp up the skills necessary to handle nuclear weapons. And during this time, China could build a decent PR campaign in their country encouraging citizens to come together to fight Japan. Japan has still not apologized for all the atrocities they committed in China during WW II, and some Chinese people do not like that. Pour some gasoline on that small fire and it could spread.
Knowing China's feelings towards Japan after WW II, China's population would certainly not accept Japan having nukes. They might come together to fight a war. Even though China is not a democracy, they still need their people to unify around a common cause in order to choose war over revolution.
I doubt many of Trump's supporters would agree that giving Japan nukes is a good idea. They're the one country we used nukes against. So, it's a good point to bring up with potential Trump voters. I'd like to see that idea of his get more attention so people can see just how impractical he is. Giving SK and Japan nukes isn't just a matter of the US President signing a piece of paper. There are international treaties, diverse governments and populations in place, and as far as I know, Trump has not been to any of those places.
Not really fair to blame the plane in that case.