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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34937 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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But if our ancestors could kill Byng, a man who really did nothing wrong other than failing to provide a superhuman performance whilst set up to fail by his superiors...

If you want to talk about the incentives this creates, consider how many people will try to avoid jobs where they have any real responsibility, lest they be executed because someone somewhere suspects that they didn't do everything perfectly. A plane crashes and it cannot be determined conclusively whose fault it was? There go the thousands of engineers who worked on it, every technician who inspected or serviced it, and the entire management of the airline.

We can kill officials who completely drop the ball and totally fail to provide rational advice, wasting enormous amounts of time with nonsense like spraying surfaces as opposed to useful recommendations.

I think it's reasonable to assume that they were doing their best and their mistakes can be attributed to the need for a fast response in a complicated and novel situation. In other words, no one could have (realistically) done better.

We can kill the reckless and highly suspicious Ecohealth people, who look like they have megadeaths on their hands from negligent gain-of-function coronavirus/furin-cleavage-site insertion. Even if they weren't responsible, it would certainly encourage other researchers not to tempt fate and court death, a valuable boon.

Outside of internet conspiracy theories, is there any indication they actually did anything wrong?

If you want to talk about the incentives this creates, consider how many people will try to avoid jobs where they have any real responsibility, lest they be executed because someone somewhere suspects that they didn't do everything perfectly.

I specifically stated I wasn't calling for Stalinist style mass purge. The whole point of 'responsibility' as a concept is that it incentivizes people to do a good job. That's why it exists, it balances the wealth and status that these people get.

If you sell someone an aircraft that thinks it's a Stuka and sometimes automatically nose-dives and hundreds of people die, you deserve severe punishment. $20 billion in fines is not enough, it's not like executives are paying from their own pockets. They need a stronger incentive to balance the enormous wealth they receive from the company, an incentive that has them actively pursue a culture of precision and care.

In November 2018, after the Lion Air accident, Boeing instructed pilots to take corrective action in case of a malfunction, when the airplane would enter a series of automated nosedives. Boeing avoided revealing MCAS until pilots requested further explanation. In December 2018, the FAA privately predicted that MCAS could cause 15 crashes over 30 years. In April 2019, the Ethiopian preliminary report stated that the crew had attempted the recovery procedure, and Boeing confirmed that MCAS had activated in both accidents.

At any rate, this disastrous error would only cause a few thousand deaths over thirty years, it's a nothingburger compared to COVID. A prison sentence for the one who oversaw the 737 MAX project would be appropriate.

Outside of internet conspiracy theories, is there any indication they actually did anything wrong?

There's a tonne of evidence. These people (Daszak and Ecohealth) were asking for money to put furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses, they were importing them from Laos, they were training them on humanized mice. Lo and behold we get a bat coronavirus with a furin cleavage site whose closest known biological predecessor is from a bat in Laos, well adapted to human biology.

And then Daszak has the temerity to go rally together some scientists to publish a Lancet paper accusing everyone of publishing dangerous conspiracy theories unless they accept that some unknown sick bat from Laos got to Wuhan, infected a pangolin and then a human - where none of these animals have been found. By far the most parsimonious explanation is that of gain-of-function research and a lab leak. But of course the medical establishment is going to drag this out as long as possible lest they be smeared with the blame for the disaster they negligently caused. Donald Trump would never find Donald Trump to be criminally negligent and responsible for the greatest disaster of the century thus far - why would we expect anyone else to admit responsibility even if it's clearly their fault? They can find specious technical arguments against a lab-leak and hide behind their status as experts. Daszak delenda est.

I think it's reasonable to assume that they were doing their best and their mistakes can be attributed to the need for a fast response in a complicated and novel situation. In other words, no one could have (realistically) done better.

I could have done better. From the Diamond Princess and Ruby Princess onwards I was confident that it was spread primarily by air, cleaning surfaces was a waste of time. I wouldn't have gone for the 'oh masks don't work' angle either and then backflip - it's obvious that masks work. That's why doctors wear them! They took months and years to fix these stupid, inexplicable errors, it's not a snap decision like those of the battlefield. They created doubt in their own wisdom and effectiveness - then they complained that people weren't trusting them sufficiently. Why would you trust anyone who gets away scott-free for lying to you, wasting immense amounts of time and creating the crisis in the first place?

I think it's reasonable to assume that they were doing their best and their mistakes can be attributed to the need for a fast response in a complicated and novel situation.

Which, to be fair, was a completely valid assumption... and then they started supporting the protestors/rioters intentionally violating their rules because they support a political cause they favor while simultaneously prosecuting everyone else for the same kinds of gatherings.

consider how many people will try to avoid jobs where they have any real responsibility, lest they be executed because someone somewhere suspects that they didn't do everything perfectly

The deadliest job in history is "politician" for a very, very good reason; not only do they get summarily executed from time to time (be it partisan action or not), but hilariously there are even some countries that actively encourage their citizens to retain the capacity to do this. The only crime they need commit is "fail to be seen to have done the utmost", and that definition is not only pretty vague, but can be retroactively defined to mean just about anything that any person or group with the resources to impose it wants it to.

And honestly, that's probably OK; not only do they know the price of hilariously gross failure, but the rewards (though they need not be completely monetary nor immediate) are generally enough that it's worth taking the risk.

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