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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32518 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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I still don't care about coronaviruses or airplane cockpit security; the threats were wildly overblown by a single high-profile incident. We didn't need to respond to covid at all(and indeed, the correct response- both with the information available at the time and with benefit of hindsight- was to just shoot the chicken littles trying to shut down society over it and declare it 'not a big deal') and 9/11 can be safely considered a one off event.

So the real question becomes 'why are tariffs more like mortgage backed securities than covid?'

The cockpit security doors are less obviously insane than most of the anti-Twin-Towers measures. There's a drawback in the whole "pilot suicide" issue, but pilot suicides are a lot less bad than ramming attacks and are in some ways easier to stop.

Yes, the Flight 93 scenario is the norm now which makes it far harder to pull off a lookalike, but some defence in depth isn't crazy.

The cockpit security doors are less obviously insane than most of the anti-Twin-Towers measures.

As far as I know they are the only such security measures to have resulted in the loss of an aircraft Germanwings 9525 with all aboard. Pilot suicides might be less bad than ramming attacks... but it's an open question about whether they are less common, or if the security doors enable more suicides-with-all-aboard than they do mitigate ramming attacks.

Pilot suicides might be less bad than ramming attacks... but it's an open question about whether they are less common, or if the security doors enable more suicides-with-all-aboard than they do mitigate ramming attacks.

They are much more common but the right comparison would be between pilot suicides and ramming attacks if the latter was still possible. But the safety doors don't really matter for pilot suicides, they happened just as much before and logically you don't need a long time to crash a plane. You couldn't do it the way the germanwings guy did it but the SilkAir way would still work.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot#By_pilots_in_control_of_whole_flight

You couldn't do it the way the germanwings guy did it but the SilkAir way would still work.

Was there ever confirmation on how the SilkAir guy did it? I thought he managed to pull the CVR breaker at some point, but the NTSB thought that it was most likely he found some excuse/waited for the FO to leave the flight deck.

It looked to me like all of the incidents on regularly scheduled passenger service since 1997 allow for at least the possibility there were not two people on the flight deck. As I mentioned below, this is not currently allowed in the US. I guess for the 1994 Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 the co-pilot wasn't able to successfully intervene, and in JAL Flight 350 the intervention did not totally prevent the loss of life.

Still seems like the effect of the door is marginal compared to the other measures that have since been taken to limit the risk.

But the safety doors don't really matter for pilot suicides, they happened just as much before and logically you don't need a long time to crash a plane.

Empirically they do matter, since they did matter.

There's a drawback in the whole "pilot suicide" issue, but pilot suicides are a lot less bad than ramming attacks and are in some ways easier to stop.

This doesn't even seem to be that big of a problem in the US. The largest differences from the Germanwings flight being:

  1. There are always two people on the flight deck now. Even when one pilot has to take a relief break a flight attendant steps onto the flight deck. Even if the FA has no idea what is going on, the added sense of shame from committing the act in front of another person is a strong deterrent. I also assume the FA would at least notice when the plane starts calling out "Terrain terrain. Pull-up Pull-up."
  2. Roughly (1,000 + 500) + 1,000 flight hours to fly a 737 or A320 size aircraft. Through a combination of rATP, ATP, and scope clause/regional captain restrictions. There would have been substantially more time to detect the Germanwings pilot unfitness with US airline levels of flight hour requirements. He only had 630 hours at the time. This would barely be enough to fly a clapped out Cessna 172 on pipeline patrol in the US.
  3. The FAA making it practically impossible to hold a first class medical after a severe depressive episode like the Germanwings pilot had. There's some argument for allowing pilots with minor problems to seek help, but not everyone is suited to every job. You've got to draw a line somewhere.

I actually don't follow in terms of how mortgage-backed securities are different than the other two examples here. If anything I think the tariffs are the odd one out here, since my modal expectation is that Trump walks them back and there is approximately zero long-term impact (at least relative to the other three examples). If you had said "4 is different because it's a nothingburger" I would admit you might have a point -- but to say that tariffs are nothingburgers like 9/11 and covid, not real like the GFC... I notice that I am confused.

My original point was just that there is frequently some Event which impacts everyone, and where everyone gains strong opinions about Adjacent Topic where they didn't really have an opinion on Adjacent Topic before Event, and so pointing out that people had no opinion about Adjacent Topic before Event isn't particularly informative.

Mortgage backed securities are different in that they actually had an effect different from people reading too much into them following a high-profile news story. You couldn’t have just ignored sub-prime mortgages in ‘08 the way you could have the virus in 2020.

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