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BBC reports the co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the Alps intentionally locked the pilot out of the cabin and initiated the flight's descent into the ground:
The co-pilot of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps, named as Andreas Lubitz, appeared to want to "destroy the plane", officials said.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin, citing information from the "black box" voice recorder, said the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit.
He intentionally started a descent while the pilot was locked out.
Mr Robin said there was "absolute silence in the cockpit" as the pilot fought to re-enter it.
Air traffic controllers made repeated attempts to contact the aircraft, but to no avail, he said.
The story seems SN-worthy because it is an object lesson in the consequences for our lives when we put complex machines and systems into the hands of others. In this case it was a trained pilot who killed a plane full of people who were powerless to stop him. Another example could be engineers who sabotage a dam and wipe out entire communities downstream. We mostly don't think about stuff like this because there is an invisible web of trust, sometimes called a "social contract," that leads people to get on a plane, or go to work, or take their kids to school without giving it a second thought. But when that social contract unravels, all bets are off...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:37PM
... we'd never get anything done. If you couldn't trust people to generally stay on their side of the road you wouldn't drive. If you couldn't trust your food wasn't poisoned you'd never eat what you couldn't farm. If you couldn't trust your building to be built reasonably well you'd be skittish inside a single-story building and fleet in terror from a skyscraper.
Honestly, if you worried about every way everything can go wrong when interacting with people and the things they make and do, you'd either become a hermit, go nuts, or both.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:42PM
Oblig: https://xkcd.com/898/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2015, @04:46PM
Tell that to HR, the people in charge of never getting anything done while skilled workers who are willing and able to work remain unemployed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by kaszz on Thursday March 26 2015, @06:02PM
Skilled people should start their own thing and block HR people from ever being involved.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday March 29 2015, @09:32PM
Sorry but that's not only completely wrong but also an insane argument if you think it through; people are far more discerning than that. Context and experience matters. Society and culture matters.
Much of what “we get done” is directly aimed at doing exactly what you think creates hermits or nuts.
Let's take your driving example. Have you ever driven a car or truck at all? The reason you're supposed to be driving rather than distracted by all other kinds of nonsense is precisely that you cannot “trust” or assume that everyone and everything around you will avoid all kinds of potential accidents. That doesn't mean that you only drive when you're the only car on the road or that drivers must be “insane”: instead it means you learn how to drive and pay attention and that if you don't then you have no business being on the road. The people who don't do that sufficiently risks killing themselves and whoever doesn't manage to stay away from them. It's why you don't have to kill someone to lose your license.
Even though there are plenty of people who kill other people on the road and even though most people are and ought to be aware of that we still get plenty of successful road transportation.
For just about everything in a society similar explanations apply. Food? You don't have food labs tasked with investigating and reporting on food quality in your society? You don't have health inspectors “raiding” restaurants and/or closing them down immediately if they're unhygienic? You don't have livestock inspections? You don't have medical feedback routines for food-borne or food-triggered diseases? That's just a few of the more obvious things.
Trust is bullshit.
Which is why all of these things are supposed to have internal routines for review which are controlled by other official instances which in turn are under political control which you in turn vote on and fucking throw out if the job is being done poorly. And if you don't live in a democracy you either remove them forcefully or ignore them altogether replacing their functions with your own approximations (this is how one ends up with religious commandments against pork and other such half measures: those things are just ancient symptoms of a non-existing civil society i.e. barbarism).
If you instead primarily vote based on ideology then you're actively destroying your society. There's no shortage of such people either and unfortunately it can take decades for people to get a clue even when it ought to be painfully obvious. Letting someone else take charge is the only sane option.
Skittish in buildings? If you suspect your building (of any size) is going to collapse you god damn move out and report it, you don't assume everything is all right. If the acoustics suddenly change you bring it up to someone relevant who can give a more experienced opinion. Otherwise people are just insane fools unaware of the world they live in. Yes there is a lot of such people and no one can know everything but damned few decide on purpose to be completely at the mercy of others in every way. You don't “trust” building codes: they're empirically based and change over time as knowledge and requirements change. You don't “trust” contractors: you sue them (or worse) if they can't follow specifications. You don't “trust” the integrity of a building: you keep up with renovations and controls.
No matter if someone is directly involved or not none of these things happen automagically.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday March 30 2015, @03:17PM
> The reason you're supposed to be driving rather than distracted by all other kinds of nonsense is precisely that you cannot “trust” or assume that everyone and everything around you will avoid all kinds of potential accidents.
So you swerve to avoid every single car in the opposing lane because they might jump into your lane at the last second? No, you trust that people by and large aren't that suicidal even though your entire experience of the person's character is seeing them for three seconds at 50-100 km/h. You trust that they can drive because they were tested. You trust that the driving instructors and testers are doing their job. You trust the courts to pull licences of bad drivers. You trust the police are stopping people who drive without licenses.
> You don't have food labs tasked with investigating and reporting on food quality in your society? You don't have health inspectors “raiding” restaurants and/or closing them down immediately if they're unhygienic?
How do you know they're doing their job? Do you check up on the health inspectors and food labs? No, you trust the frameworks that society has built to be reasonably good at what they do. You trust that the building inspector or architect or judge or examiner or whatever can do his job because you have no way of checking up on him and even if it did you don't know enough about his job to have an opinion about how well he's doing it.
> And if you don't live in a democracy you either remove them forcefully or ignore them altogether replacing their functions with your own approximations
I've yet to see a vote or revolution hang on the quality of building inspections.
> You don't “trust” building codes: they're empirically based and change over time as knowledge and requirements change.
The use of "empirically" almost sounds something out of a religious debate; there's a difference between "trust" and "faith".
trust:
to have trust or confidence in; rely or depend on.
to believe.
to expect confidently.
to commit or consign with trust or confidence.
to permit to remain or go somewhere or to do something without fear of consequences.
You do some of this stuff. You have to. Even the most diehard cynic relies on or expects others to behave in a certain way and NOT behave in a certain way.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday March 30 2015, @06:20PM
I probably would have more or less agreed with you a year ago so I'm disagreeing with myself if you will. If I could be wrong a year ago then I can be wrong now as well ;)
However even if what you say is right (which I don't think it is) is that trust? If something is amiss aren't you ready to react? And instantly if appropriate? There's not much trust left in that: you already know something might happen and you're more or less ready for it. There's no psycho-analysis involved in keeping track of the movement of objects. If you notice common denominators to places serving food being shut down do you seek out the remaining places that remind you of them? Or if it was a place you frequented do you go back afterwards? I don't. If some department or institution says something you think is completely bonkers do you trust them to be right? And do you trust yourself to be right or is there room for doubt and reappraisal? If one thinks the police has adopted a gang mentality for personal gain then why would one assume they're also doing what they're supposed to do? If laws are poorly written or ill conceived why would one assume the relevant politicians are competent according to the intention of their position rather than for example as criminals?
I don't deny that many don't seem to care at all about any of that until it hurts them directly but that's not trust, that's indifference and apathy or possibly a severe lack of awareness, maybe also estrangement, hopelessness, and/or exhaustion.
Granted there are no revolutions based only on building codes alone (but it would sort of be magnificent if there was :D) but there are plenty of revolutions on the aggregate of “missing society”, most likely most of them qualify on that account. There are also plenty (but not enough) examples of power shifts due to civic “scandals”. Maybe people would say that ‘trust was broken’ but such “trust” usually disappeared instantaneously the moment people became aware of a problem and shouldn't be considered as trust: it's far too vapid for that and that's a good thing.
As it applies to you do you not seek to remove any flaws you come across? Not anally but according to the importance you perceive they have? Often that simply means changing ones behavior slightly but sometimes it means more. If you've experienced some sort of severe loss don't you raise a stink about it if you think it might help and would you not find your reaction entirely natural and devoid of trust?
I'm pretty sure you check what you can as you deem fit and I wouldn't call that trust nor should it be, and that is my point: all the systems and structures and society were not built on trust at all; instead they were and are built on a distinct lack of trust and that lack of trust is what keeps them going and improves them when possible. If this is right it would seem a lack of trust is actually a good thing in the long run, maybe one ought to embrace mistrust to the extent that seems practical, at the very least this would raise awareness of issues.
Empirical has nothing to do with either trust or faith as it means physically measurable, thus falsifiable, something which you can scrutinize and challenge. It doesn't trap you in some reiterative loop of measurements but it means that if you or others want to or deem it appropriate or are required to or are employed to then it can be checked.
Just because one cannot or doesn't want to continuously challenge everything does not mean that one implicitly trusts something and I'm arguing that the cores of all western civilizations (and some others as well, maybe all) are built around the very fact that one has no reason to trust and every reason to be suspicious.
This feels a little like if I was an atheist (I'm not) arguing that atheism is not a religion while others point out atheistic dogma which they associate with religion, or maybe the roles are reversed which makes no difference to me. So I apologize if all of this is or seems to be linguistic but I don't think it is; I think we genuinely see things differently and that's it's not about definitions or interpretations.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday April 01 2015, @06:25PM
I once put it this way:
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You trust your fellow man. In fact, you trust him with your very life.
Don't think so? You drive on two-lane roads, don't you??
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It may not be the exactly correct way to express it, but it's certainly true for all practical purposes.
Or as the old joke goes:
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In the high school gym, all the girls in the class were lined up against one wall, and all the boys against the opposite wall. Then every ten seconds, they walked toward each other until they were half the previous distance apart.
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were asked, "When will the girls and boys meet?"
The mathematician said: "Never."
The physicist said: "In an infinite amount of time."
The engineer said: "Well... in about two minutes, they'll be close enough for all practical purposes."
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Most of us are engineers in Everyday Life.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.