[jariel]

"Killing 300+ people is broken. And our obligation is to admit that it is broken, and fix that thing."

This is a massive trivilisation of the problem.

This is not 'code' - it's a massively complex system of large companies, various bits of tech, supply chains, varying international standards, considerably amount of legislation and that's before we get into the humane issue of 'acceptable loses' because '0 deaths' may not actually be feasible. Maybe, but maybe not.

"Terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center. The system was broken. We fixed some of it."

Again, this is a misrepresentation. The system was not 'broken' because culturally, people 'didn't do things like that'. The 'fix' for this wouldn't be 'more security' but rather to encourage a civil culture where people don't take over planes and fly them into buildings. And some of the solutions are systematic, i.e. not 'safety checks on planes' but externalities like 'invading countries and destroying places where terrorist plan things' - which isn't so nice.

These are very complicated problems that don't have obvious solutions.

[braythwayt]

They may not have obvious solutions, but we recognize that they are broken and we try to find solutions. We then find places the solutions don't work and we iterate or even replace the solutions with new solutions.

All systemic problems have complex sets of interactions and unexpected consequences. Racism, automobile deaths[1], and yes, air transportation.

We still don't shrug our shoulders and deny that the causes of deaths reflect a broken system, nor do we refuse to attempt to find solutions just because it's damn hard to make progress.

[1]: Sometimes, making the vehicle safer makes drivers more reckless. Making cars safer in practice is not as obvious as it appears in theory.