[proggy]

It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. If they had encountered a program-destroying but non-catastrophic failure earlier on, it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to.

Looking at the accounts reported to date, the OceanGate engineering culture was basically non-existent. Their test program was extremely lightweight to say the least, and the results that came back from what little hull testing they did do were ignored, resulting in the dismissal of an internal whistleblower [1]. We also learned that there were flammable materials within the pressure vessel, no practical contingency plan to speak of, no emergency beacon fitted, the list goes on. The whole thing was just cobbled together, not fully thought out or vetted, and yet the intent was to journey to one of the most unforgiving environments imaginable.

But getting back to the account of the reversed motor above -- it is one of the purest examples I can now think of where life imitates art. Piloting a stolen (but seaworthy) deep-sea submersible to the wreckage of the Titanic -- that was only able to make right-hand turns due to a "sub club" anti-theft device -- was a major plot point in the pilot episode of the TV series "Pinky and the Brain". Narf.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-face...

[javajosh]

>It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard.

As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to the bottom. It's a very big world, filled with mostly ocean, and plenty of thrill-seekers who will attempt anything half-way reasonable. Even 10% reasonable. You can't stop that, and personally, I don't think its a good idea. To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand.

[csb6]

> You can't stop that, and personally, I don't think its a good idea. To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand.

Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s safety. I seriously doubt the passengers onboard were aware of OceanGate’s whistleblower lawsuit or the claim that the viewport is not rated for the depth it is used at. When interviewed by the BBC, the company represented their submersible as very safe, certainly not as something likely to kill its passengers.

How is it a “nanny state” or “snooping” to require businesses to be honest about their service? This isn’t even necessarily an action a government would have to perform - it could be carried out by classification societies [0]. Do whatever you like with your own experimental sub, but don’t misrepresent it as a safe sightseeing trip for tourists.

> It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand.

It’s even easier to imagine scenarios where a business is allowed to sell trips on a vessel with critical safety issues that the company knew of but did not disclose or address.

We have remedies for these real scenarios - they are called laws and regulations.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_classification_society

[zarzavat]

The founder is likely dead and paid the ultimate price for his negligence. There’s simply not much you can do about people who are willing to die and take other people with them, whether intentionally or negligently. You can’t put a dead person on trial.

I believe that the GP’s point is that there’s no omniscient agency that can preemptively stop people from doing stupid things. There’s not enough resources to watch everything that everybody is doing all the time.

[csb6]

> I believe that the GP’s point is that there’s no omniscient agency that can preemptively stop people from doing stupid things. There’s not enough resources to watch everything that everybody is doing all the time.

I didn’t suggest that this is necessary. It seems like there should be enough resources to look into the construction standards of a tourism company based in the U.S. that has received international press coverage for several years. It is possible to stop a tourism company from operating. This wasn’t a secret deep sea dive that no one could halt - it was the latest in a series of commercial voyages that were covered in the press (a BBC reporter went on one a few years ago, and there is a video tour of the vehicle). This dive was publicly announced.

No one needs to be surveilled 24/7 for regulations to work.

[bboygravity]

> There’s not enough resources to watch everything that everybody is doing all the time.

Have you ever heard of the name "Edward Snowden"?

What everybody is doing is already literally being watched all the time and it has been that way or at least decades and has gotten worse with technological evolution.

[vanviegen]

Indexing people's online activity (in order to search for specific kinds of activiy) is a far cry from watching everything everybody is doing, let alone acting on all that information.

[gmerc]

Wait until LLMs meet that data

[balder1991]

It definitely hasn’t worked then. How’s that approach any efficient?

[xpe]

When many people make the claim “it hasn’t worked” wrt some intervention they often miss the point: the key question is change relative to the counterfactual; i.e. having done nothing.

So, to evaluate action at t=0, we compare some metric at the real t=1 against the counterfactual at t=1.

It is logically invalid to evaluate the efficacy of an action by only comparing the metric at t=0 and t=1. That kind of reasoning error is incredibly common.

[slushh]

>it could be carried out by classification societies

So everything already worked as intended. The tourists didn't bother to check the classification or if they did, were willing to dive anyways.

The 737 MAX shows that government involvement is not enough. Likewise doping shows that a legal framework is not enough to prevent advanced cheating.

>Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s safety. I seriously doubt the passengers onboard were aware of OceanGate’s whistleblower lawsuit

Wouldn't it be better to establish a verification culture? There are always businesses that lie. The law only works retroactively while the tourists would be alive if they had checked.

[csb6]

> The tourists didn't bother to check the classification or if they did, were willing to dive anyways.

My comment was suggesting that the U.S. government require that a business has a certification from an approved classification society in order to conduct a submersible tourism business. This does not seem to be the law currently since OceanGate is allowed to operate without any.

> The 737 MAX shows that government involvement is not enough.

No regulations will prevent all accidents, but I would say the rarity of fatal air accidents in the U.S. in recent decades is partly due to the high standards enforced by the FAA.

> Wouldn't it be better to establish a verification culture?

That sounds good too. That doesn’t contradict that regulations should also be in place so these conventions are required.

> The law only works retroactively while the tourists would be alive if they had checked.

Laws and regulations definitely do not only work retroactively. The FAA can ground unsafe planes, food inspectors can shutdown production before rotten food is shipped out, health inspectors can shutdown a restaurant.

Laws can’t protect these passengers, but they should be made to protect all future passengers.

[grepfru_it]

>No regulations will prevent all accidents, but I would say the rarity of fatal air accidents in the U.S. in recent decades is partly due to the high standards enforced by the FAA.

Because the FAA has reporting requirements for any abnormal flight behavior which causes deviation. They literally prevent future accidents by analyzing past behavior.

[EricDeb]

And there might be more planes that would go down and more cheaters without any regulation. Just because you can't stop everything doesn't mean you shouldn't regulate anything

[xpe]

> Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s safety.

IANAL. This isn't just your personal opinion. In Common Law jurisdictions, see also: negligence, false advertising, deception, fraud, and misrepresentation. Civil Law jurisdictions have concepts that are comparable.

[vanviegen]

> Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s safety

Of course it is. But I think GP was just saying that there are no agencies to check rare venture like this. At least not before an incident happens.

[csb6]

I agree that there doesn’t currently seem to be regulations governing what OceanGate is doing. My point is that there should be some in the future so this kind of thing doesn’t keep happening.

> But I think GP was just saying that there are no agencies to check rare venture like this.

I think they were making a stronger claim: that there is not only no agency currently doing this, but that it is pointless and impossible to try and regulate this area, which I don’t agree with.

[miracle2k]

It would of course be possible to regulate OceanGate out of business, and I sympathize with the desire to make sure people are sufficiently informed about the risks, which is hard.

But I agree with GP: there is something off about the calls for regulation here. Fundamentally, people should have the right to risk their lives in crazy expeditions to the bottom of the sea or the top of a mountain, and charging someone else money to be taken along does not change that.

[xpe]

> But I think GP was just saying that there are no agencies to check rare venture like this. At least not before an incident happens.

No. That poster was not just making positive claims. They also made normative and prescriptive claims, which I am pushing back on.

[jacurtis]

As I have moved through my career and been in charge of larger and larger companies, I continue to be surprised how much of what you would expect is critical infrastructure that affects many people is being "cobbled" together.

I've worked at some companies that manage huge systems that affects tens of millions of people, which cause extremely severe problems if they break, and they are "cobbled" together with a surprising amount of metaphorical bubble gum and duct tape.

Every time I go somewhere new, I assume they have their shit together and I am surprised every time.

So no, it doesn't surprise me that an operation like this was cobbled together in the same fashion.

[antonvs]

The difference is that the cobbling together at a large org has generally been battle-tested over time, at scale. The bits that were going to break have already broken and been replaced with something better. While it may seem horrible aesthetically from a developer's perspective, it's nevertheless functional and reliable for its purpose.

But when you use that approach on a new, one-off device with life-threatening consequences for failure, sooner or later you're going to find out that "testing in production" may not always be appropriate.

[phs318u]

Can anyone downvoting antonvs please explain why? I think it’s a valid opinion to hold and point to make irrespective of whether you agree.

[rcme]

I didn’t downvote him, but I think it’s a bit dismissive of the original point and kind of falls prey to the no true Scotsman fallacy. antonvs’ point can be summarized as essentially “even though you have firsthand experience running companies with cobbled together critical infrastructure, that’s not actually cobbled together infrastructure.”

[antonvs]

I don't agree with your summary. I specifically talked about "the cobbling together at a large org", I didn't say it wasn't actually cobbled together.

The point is just that any system that's being used successfully in production at scale has already been tested, has already broken in myriad ways both in testing and in production, and those issues have been addressed somehow - quite possibly by more cobbling together.

This doesn't somehow make the system "not actually cobbled together" - as I said, the implementation may still seem horrible to engineers. It just means that the points of failure that have actually arisen, whether in testing or production, have been addressed somehow, so that the system is able to function at scale.

A key point in all this is that factors like survivor bias are at play: you're not looking at an org that failed because of their cobbled-together system, you're looking at one that succeeded. Large orgs are also more likely to have more testing to help catch the issues with their cobbled-together systems.

This all means that if you try to use this approach on your experimental submarine that you're selling tickets for, you're trading off the almost certain loss of life of some of your passengers against the short-term time and cost savings achieved by poor engineering practices.

To quote Lord Farquaad, "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."

[friendzis]

What antonovs tries to say that larger, older companies will tend to have a collection of modules/components that over the years have been relatively well tested and hardened. While a system may be cobbled together with the metaphorical duct tape, at least the components are sane-ish themselves.

Look at e.g. Kubernetes. You can cobble something together on kubernetes and once you get it limping, the system will be running surprisingly well for being cobbled together, compared to e.g. a system cobbled together from one off bash scripts.

[sriram_malhar]

I think that the term 'cobbled together' does injustice to something that's been running in production and is quite stable. It isn't a demo that's been cobbled together at short notice. The former isn't elegant because it doesn't have the clean lines of the original design, and age takes its toll.

[imkehno]

Have to share the sentiment. I remember the expectation of great systems engineering I had when I was at the beginning of my career. You know, ”These things must’ve been done well, as thousands/millions people use these daily”. I was enlightened pretty fast by the first couple of years as a consultant.

Nowadays I expect something clumsy and mediocre, regardless of the organization, with very apparent problems and _maybe_ some bright spots somewhere in the system architecture.

[devoutsalsa]

Some of the cobbling are illegible she’ll scripts written by “my friend”.

[wpietri]

It's wild to me that you write "As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive." And then go on to say some breathtakingly naive things.

A lot of ocean activity is thoroughly regulated. For example: https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/International...

Moreover, It's not like they're getting paid in sand dollars or doubloons from the bottom of the sea. The passengers are signing contracts and paying large fees in landlubber currencies. There's a company involved here, a legal entity. The company is based in Washington State.

If this was really not covered by any law in any country with a plausible claim on it, you can bet that people will soon be clamoring for one. Remember that air travel was once entirely unregulated. Now it's one of the most highly controlled activities. A lot of regulation like that happens in response to notable disasters; the regulations are, as they say, "written in blood."

[TheDudeMan]

So you're saying there is an agency/organization that would review and approve such endeavors? What is it, in this case?

[wpietri]

I did not in fact say that. I'm addressing the broader false claim that the ocean is some sort of essentially unregulateable space. Indeed, I think the final paragraph makes clear that I think it's possible that no agency currently has unambiguous authority, but that won't stop people from creating one if enough people die like this.

I also suspect that people with broad authority may investigate this and consider/recommend prosecutions if appropriate. E.g., the Washington State Attorney General, the US Coast Guard, and the Canadian Coast Guard.

[barrysteve]

Pushing regulation back to the point where someone dies, causes these problems in the first place.

It's not hard to certify vehicles before use. We do it with cars on a daily basis.

Measuring the necessity for regulation "in blood" is unbelievably cruel.

[wpietri]

It's actually really hard to certify vehicles before use when they're novel vehicles. Try reading vehicle safety standards if you want proof of how complex it gets.

Good regulation balances the need for innovation vs the need for public health and safety. We can argue about the right balancing point all day, and people certainly will. But there's no simple solution on either side.

[barrysteve]

I agree there is no simple solution. But I'd prefer not to die, to prove to you that experimental submarines need regulation.

How is this a deniable point?

We are conscious enough as humans to not require death to change beliefs.

[reaperman]

There’s a difference between Jacques Cousteau building a janky submarine rig for himself vs. Creating a business model of selling tickets to random strangers on that janky submarine.

[brutusborn]

There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking.

If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment.

[phs318u]

A “risk assessment” by customers is typically based on attestations to safety made by the company. If the company is hiding or misrepresenting pertinent information then the customers have been denied the opportunity to make a reasonable assessment. At best it’s a case of gaining money by deception. At worst the company principals will be liable for deaths the deaths of those customers.

[aksss]

Let’s not rob the clients of their agency.

Remember the proposition: you’re going to dive 2.4 miles underwater, in the middle of the Atlantic.

On a nuclear sub with the best collision avoidance and mapping data available, with highly regimented procedure, this is still a riskier proposition than most people appreciate.

But you’re going to do it in a carbon fiber hull. This is at the very minimum an adventure, with a very high risk of turning into a disaster. You sign the liability waiver and have the balls to get on board the boat, and have the further commitment to board the submersible day-of.

I’m not saying this to blame them or extol their courage. It just is what it is, and sometimes - oftentimes - with adventure sports and tourism, we don’t need to search for bad guys and villains. It’s risky living and this is what it looks like sometimes.

[brutusborn]

I completely agree that if the company lied they should be liable. Truth is essential.

[rdtsc]

It's one thing for them to take the risk for themselves, but it's a whole other level selling to others. For example, if someone wants to drink a refreshing glass of strychnine soda, it's hard to stop them. But opening a stand and selling at the street corner is a bit different.

[brutusborn]

The distinction is artificial, both parties paid for either the materials or the final product. Financial gain doesn’t fundamentally change who is responsible, that it just you applying your personal values to the situation.

[afiori]

As an hypothetical would you say that someone should be allowed to sell "mystery drinks" where the customer is told that the ingredients are a secret but the seller knows that it is heavily poisonous?

[ikekkdcjkfke]

A kid walks up and wants one

[bluepod4]

You must be a huge Ayn Rand fan.

LMAO.

[stOneskull]

the CEO is drinking one with them

[rdtsc]

Indeed. He put his life on the line. I don't know the circumstance that lead to this and I hope everyone gets rescued, though it's looking quite desperate. But, yeah, that's pretty convincing from a marketing point of view.

[rgmerk]

That’s not how regulation of transportation works.

You can build your own plane and fly it with relatively few restrictions, but as soon as you a) manufacture a plane for sale to someone else, or b) get paid for transporting someone in it, the regulators become much much stricter.

[xpe]

>> There’s a difference between Jacques Cousteau building a janky submarine rig for himself vs. Creating a business model of selling tickets to random strangers on that janky submarine.

> There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking.

I'm unconvinced. The phrase "philosophically speaking" is very vague. Which philosoph(y/ies)?

> If people want to take huge risks, then so be it.

You didn't say who is affected by said risks. Only the person taking the huge risk? What about externalities? "Huge" risks would include an existential threat to an individual and thus anyone who knows or depends on them.

> Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment.

Sounds like we're in the domains of legal and/or moral philosophy. The phrase "up to them" suggests a responsibility, a kind of normative claim. Perhaps a responsibility to make wise decisions? Perhaps a responsibility that cannot be transferred or delegated?

Using the phrase "philosophically speaking" invites these kinds of questions, particularly when the underlying philosophy is unsaid and its reasoning unclear.

[brutusborn]

I admit I didn’t put much effort into that comment. I meant ‘philosophically’ as opposed to legally.

Fundamentally every risky decision is up to the individual. Even trusting the regulator is a decision (I don’t trust some regulators in my country because they have a bad record for competence, so I avoid/minimise using things that they regulate). Therefore the final ‘responsibility’ for your safety is always personal, unless you were forced on board, or lied to about the construction.

Legally it’s anyone’s guess who is responsible, that depends on the polity involved and the political philosophy it uses (libertarianism or authoritarianism being the 2 extremes).

I think we should protect those who truly cannot judge (children and mentally handicapped) but in this case it was grown men taking a risk for the chance of a reward. I hope they are found alive and well but I think they had every right to go aboard.

[xpe]

> Fundamentally every risky decision is up to the individual. Even trusting the regulator is a decision (...). Therefore the final ‘responsibility’ for your safety is always personal, unless you were forced on board, or lied to about the construction.

It seems you are trying to say something along the lines of:

A. In cases where an individual has the freedom to make decisions (i.e. not coerced or manipulated)

B. The individual bears moral responsibility for the consequences of those decisions

To what degree did I convey what you were hoping to convey?

This is an flawed argument for at least two reasons:

1. The consequences flow from many people's actions. Figuring out credit and blame is a hard project in philosophy, even theoretically. In practice, it can often be impossible.

2. Humans have imperfect abilities to predict consequences

Point A does not always hold -- not even most of the time. Individual conscious awareness and volitional control is limited. We are largely driven by subconscious and non-volitional parts of our brains. Not to mention by environmental constraints.

[branko_d]

Were the customers aware of the risks?

There is a difference between somebody selling me poison and somebody selling me “lemonade” that’s actually poison.

[fasthands9]

This is not really how the government operates. If this was operating at scale the government would absolutely be involved. You can't just run cruise ship operations and advertising without government involvement.

I dont see how this is any different. Perhaps you personally have a "so be it" libertarian view but thats not the view the government takes.

[Osiris]

It’s international waters. What “government” are you referring to?

[greiskul]

Any ship needs to fly the flag of a country. They do so by registering with a country, following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. By doing so, the ship has to follow the laws of the registered country.

If a ship or submarine does not register to any country, I think most coast guards will assume it to be pirates or drug smugglers. And they will probably surrender and arrest anyone on board or sink you if it comes to that.

[pohl]

Does the first sentence here help narrow it down?

https://oceangate.com/about.html

[fasthands9]

A cruise ship is on international water but there are still strict laws about what cruise ships can operate at US ports or can advertise to US consumers.

[yxhuvud]

Assumedly the sale of the service didn't also happen on international waters.

[strawhatguy]

Oh government likes to step in alright. Doesn't mean they should, or that it helps as much for 'safety' as people would like to believe. Just as often rules can cause safety issues as not. But always more expense.

[pryce]

Libertarian students have a notoriously difficult time in philosophy departments because of these kinds of eager statements.

The question of whether or not organisations, businesses, states, armed forces, educational institutions, self-declared medical providers, and other entities incur some obligation to preserve peoples lives - and if so in which ways and to what extents - are far from settled questions. It helps no one to adopt a hard-libertarian position, omit the framework being employed, and imply the matter is settled.

A fair number of regulatory efforts trace their roots to a groundswell of public distress in the aftermath of preventable deaths; and questions such as "should I, a computer programmer, be undertaking my own untrained risk assessment of the particular type of cladding used in Grenfell tower" are perfectly fair objections to a libertarian free-for-all position.

[brutusborn]

As you say, these kinds of questions are not ‘settled’ so it’s somewhat up to personal opinion. I think the best policy is to enforce rules only when there are obvious benefits. In the same way that theories should be simple, regulations should be too: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler”

I’m not a hard line libertarian, I think regulations are good in many cases. But not in the case of high risk adventuring. If you want to climb Everest, visit the titanic or the stratosphere, then that’s up to you: the state need not hold your hand, the risks are obvious to anyone with eyes.

The fact that libertarians have a difficult time just goes to show how close minded and dogmatic universities are. If all flavours of opinions were respected enough for discussion then I think you would end up with less extremists online and in general.

I think the demarcation problem applies just as well to politics as to science. What is good policy? Impossible to know absolutely, so we must rely on heuristics, judgement and intuition. Claims to truly objective knowledge just don’t hold up. Regulators often fail, and in many cases no regulation is preferable. I can’t prove that, but critics can’t prove otherwise, so we discuss and learn and change our opinions as we go.

The Grenfell tower is good example of failure of regulation. And I think the fundamental problem _is_ over regulation. When regulations become bloated beyond the capacity to enforce them, most of them are ignored and the most obvious ones are the only ones enforced. If the regulation was simpler it would be easier to enforce because you would only focus on _critical_ aspects. Instead of simplifying, people campaign for more regulation, forgetting second order effects that make things less safe.

[peterashford]

I totally think it matters, philosophically. Clearly there's a moral difference between risking your own life and profiting off risking other people's lives.

[throwawaylinux]

Is it really a good use of our tax money to have (usually equally incompetent) government bureaucrats chasing rich "eccentrics" around and policing how they hurt themselves? Department heads, and chiefs, and comptrollers and TPS reports and meetings to decide the meeting to define the committee to oversee efficiency standards, to go tell millionaires they can't ride in shonky submarines? Not using that on say schools or roads or reducing taxes or paying down government debt or anything?

Seems like a worse deal than the war on drugs. At least you don't get many people breaking into houses or neglecting their children to pay for their next trip to the Titanic.

Let them go nuts. Tax it like you would a commoner with a loaf of bread, bill them in full for any rescue efforts, and let nature take its course.

[peterashford]

I think the issue is less eccentrics hurting themselves as it is them profiting off endangering others

[throwawaylinux]

The thing is loaded with millionaires and billionaires. Pretty sure they can afford the time and money to do basic due diligence, it's not like they're struggling the buy food and need the government to prevent desperation exploiting an asymmetric power relationship.

[antonvs]

The war on submarines isn't going to win itself. Oh wait, maybe it will.

[bluepod4]

Exactly (besides the “random” strangers part).

[craftsman]

As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that every individual would review and approve every detail of every endeavor that they personally undertake. But that's just not how the world works. There are plenty of everyday people who want to attempt very reasonable and achievably safe things. You can stop people from taking advantage of others, and if there's any constant in history, it is that there are plenty of profit-seekers who will attempt to rip off other people, and we can eliminate a good number of these circumstances, and I think this is a good idea. To get it you need a reasonable society in which checks and balances exist, and it's a society which largely already exists in large parts of the world and has not gotten out of hand.

[strawhatguy]

Must be fairly young yet.

[lagolinguini]

My concern with some of these endavours is the opportunity cost to rescue services. Obviously, there is no question that if anyone is in danger in a remote location we should try our best to rescue them, but the corollary is that as a responsible citizen you should avoid putting yourself in situations where others have to go to great lengths to rescue you if it can be avoided.

[peterashford]

Yep. Any rescue attempt here will endanger others at great cost.

[andrewflnr]

FWIW I read that statement as "I can't believe they didn't flame out before they got this far". Which is also, well, I won't call it naive, but it's wrong for trickier reasons. You can get lucky for a long time before it runs out in a bad situation.

[nraynaud]

There is a bit of a giant ominous nanny: insurance companies create a lot of the procedures that are practiced around us. And in a world of passing the buck, a lot of people want to insure their civil liabilities, so now our world is directed by people in suits working in high rises.

[strawhatguy]

Yes, 100% agree. What I find unbelievable is how many people casually throw around the idea of approval process to prevent bad thing X that just happened, that few even knew existed.

We have laborious and very expensive approval processes for airplanes, ask the 737 MAX inspector from the FAA how well that guarded against bad engineering.

If even the bad engineering is at fault here (unknown as of writing this).

[midoridensha]

>We have laborious and very expensive approval processes for airplanes, ask the 737 MAX inspector from the FAA how well that guarded against bad engineering.

Those approval processes don't work when the government regulators allow the company being regulated to "self-regulate". There was no real FAA approval process for the 737MAX: FAA just let Boeing do it themselves. Of course that's going to lead to bad engineering when the sales team and executives make engineering decisions, and no one outside the company knows anything about it.

[strawhatguy]

that’s my point; approval processes are always gamed around because of the cost such processes impose. You can’t just say oh the rules ought to be perfect and perfectly implemented for it to work. That’s not a world in which we live in. In fact, the more thorough the process, the more to gain in working around it.

In the meantime such processes add much to the expense such that only larger well-funded and well-connected people can participate. The ones most likely to game it, btw.

It’s a reason planes basically look the same for many decades too; newer stuff is harder to get through. Also part of why Boeing thought it best to revise an existing design once more, besides designing a new one. The process led to bad design decisions quite directly, though of course everyone blames Boeing (rightly) but not the process the FAA imposed.

[midoridensha]

>It’s a reason planes basically look the same for many decades too; newer stuff is harder to get through.

Not true. The reason planes look the same is because that's simply the optimal shape and layout, aerodynamically, for carrying passengers in the most fuel-efficient manner. Ask any aerospace engineer.

But there's been some big differences if you look more closely. Engine nacelles are a lot larger than they were 50 years ago, since bigger high-bypass turbofans are more efficient. And winglets are basically standard now. Under the skin there's huge differences: fly-by-wire, composite wings, etc.

>Also part of why Boeing thought it best to revise an existing design once more

Wrong. It's because some customers (cough Southwest cough) would only fly 737s, and because the FAA's broken rules allowed anything called a "737" with a 737 airframe to be flown by any pilot rated for that aircraft, even if they've only flown one from 1969, even though there's big differences between the generations, and because the FAA didn't mandate a more thorough process for this loophole. Boeing was afraid that these 737 users would buy the A320neo instead of a different Boeing plane, if forced into a choice of something new. In reality, the 737 airframe is old and obsolete, and should have been retired ages ago, but is only kept alive because of bad FAA regulations.

>The process led to bad design decisions quite directly, though of course everyone blames Boeing (rightly) but not the process the FAA imposed.

This is correct. The FAA is the root of the problem here. But the problem isn't that "processes can be gamed around", the problem is that this particular regulatory agency was corrupt and failed in its primary duty. Of course regulations can be gamed around; that's why the regulators are supposed to stay on top of that, and continually revise regulations to deal with this. It's a cat-and-mouse game, but here the cat just gave up and let the mouse tell it how to do its job as a cat. The answer to this problem isn't to get rid of cats; it's to euthanize this particular cat and get a better cat.

[strawhatguy]

> the problem is that this particular regulatory agency was corrupt and failed in its primary duty.

What regulatory agency isn't captured?

If you make a regulatory body, you want to staff it with those who 'know' about the subject. That's going to come from the most well-known groups at the time. These are people, and they had lives and friends before in the groups they came from. So, naturally, a lighter touch will be given to some from the same groups, but not to others who are unknown; and that's best case.

Also, I have seen no evidence that any regulatory body has done much to help safety, and they will definitely discourage risk-taking. Planes for instance, were getting better and safer before the FAA arrived. Concern for the environment grew before the EPA, workplace safety increased before OSHA, and so on. All these agencies (because they are staffed again by people, who want to keep their jobs - ask a doctor, he'll say you need a doctor, etc.) will point to the improvements after their inception, and say, "look at the good job we do!". It does not hold though, that these improvements would not have occurred without the agency, and it could very well be the case that improvements come sooner.

For instance, the current basic airframe might be best, but few try other designs, like a lift body, or a flying wing, which might be more efficient. I know the B-2 bomber was based on a flying wing design and does need sophisticated computer control of the control surfaces though, to work without a tail, and that's costly enough to get right. Add the FAA rules on top, and, as has happened, that idea dies early on the vine. You might say that's a good thing, and maybe in this case it was, but it also clearly wasn't tried for very long either, and the attempts would draw greater scrutiny from the FAA.

And that's a shame.

[asddubs]

Oh I'm sure the approval processes stopped many bad ideas in the airplane industry

[rurp]

It's one thing for people to go out on their own and take risks, but a company selling a catered experience for a lot of money without basic safety practices is very different.

I think the former is totally fine and there's no need for governments to get involved, while the latter is pretty bad and very possible to regulate.

[prawn]

And I can see how patrons might look at their $250k fee (or whatever it was) and assume that price signals an absolutely premium and safe product, where really the bulk of it just signals that it's a difficult, risky, remote and rare expedition.

[elzbardico]

For this kind of thing? I would suspect 250k is too cheap to be good.

[prawn]

I'm not sure the average person is in a brilliant position to judge. The explorers would be driven by adventure to overlook some risk, researchers might figure "I get a $250k experience for nothing" and business people tagging along might consider "Well, if the other guys are going along, it must be OK. And what else am I going to do with this money?"

[Aeolun]

You’d expect companies that sell these kinds of tours for 250k a pop to be vetted though?

If it’s uncle bob in his garage I’d be fine with lack of regulation, but when he starts commercially selling his trips he’d need to pass safety standards.

[brutusborn]

No, you’d only expect that if you have authoritarian values.

In a truly free world, people are allowed to make dumb, risky decisions.

[sn41]

In such a truly free world, you might have to check every piece of chicken for salmonella contamination. You might have to stop your truck at every turn to see if people are racing from the opposite direction. You might not be very sure that your alcohol is not actually methanol....

Regulations do make our life smooth, even if there is a tendency to go overboard.

[brutusborn]

The difference is scale and ability to measure risk. We know how to make chicken safe and a lot of people eat it, so regulation works well.

For subs, it is a tiny number of people and risks are nearly impossible to assess.

[sn41]

Yeah, I agree to that. It is a bit avant garde, so people signing up must know that it is more miss than hit, so buyer beware.

[Aeolun]

> risks are nearly impossible to assess

We have subs that have been touring the oceans for several decades, so we have a pretty good idea of what is unsafe and what works.

[ClumsyPilot]

> risks are nearly impossible to assess

this is total fabrication, we have submarines for 200 years. WW1 german u-boats were safer than this piece of crap

[ikekkdcjkfke]

It's a "can't have nice things" situation. Some or multiple idiots does something stupid that hurts a bunch of people and the thing gets regulated, like a whole town burning down or a high rise collapsing

[toss1]

No, it is not authoritarian to regulate things like safety for the general public.

It is a necessary component of a complex society.

The main distinction between a self-determined vs authoritarian govt is the independence or lack thereof of all of the govt and society's institutions, including he legislative, executive, & judicial branches of govt, and in general society the press, industry, academy, religious orgs, social orgs, sports, etc. In self-determined societies, these are all quite independent and have a balance of power. In an authoritarian society, the branches of govt and institutions of society are coerced to serve the executive(s) (dictator or oligarchs).

A little bit of regulation does not make a government authoritarian.

[brutusborn]

This is not the general public, this is a few adventurers. Very different.

Also, desiring to give up power to an authority is authoritarianism (at least according to Oxford): “ the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.”

[toss1]

>>strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom

And that goal cannot be achieved as long as there is 1) rule of law and 2) broadly independent branches of govt and societal institutions. A wannabe autocrat cannot successfully infringe on personal freedoms if (s)he cannot get the legislature, judiciary, press, etc. to go along with it.

And I totally get adventurism, having been an internal-level alpine ski racer, rock climbing instructor, champion sportscar racer, etc.

The key here is how much these "adventurers" are putting the rest of society at risk. Because, right this minute, you (if you are a US or Canadian resident) and I are paying $$millions for the rescue/recovery of the asshat CEO and his four sucker customers.

I think a better regulatory solution may be to require putting up a bond covering the cost of rescue and/or cleanup if something goes awry, or sign-off that there would be no rescue attempt whatsoever (and a bond to cover cleanup of a historic site). But it is not authoritarian to say that "No, we won't allow such adventures without meeting sound safety and systems standards."

These clowns didn't even want to pay to qualify the window in the sub past 1/3 of the planned operating depth, they had not even an emergency signal buoy, or some way of making/emitting a unique sound so they could be quickly located (Canadian sonobuoys detected some clanging sounds yesterday, but they are still not found).

If society really wants any dolt to fabricate any contraption and expect the rest of society to pay to rescue them, that is a societal decision. But it is also totally ok to say NO to that, or put on some basic requirements.

These are neither slippery slopes nor authoritarianism, and it is wrong to cry "authoritarianism" at any rule you might not like; it can be legitimately discussed without catastrophizing.

[antonvs]

Authoritarianism as a political system, as opposed to an abstract concept, is a bit more specific than that. E.g. in Cerutti’s “Conceptualizing Politics: An Introduction to Political Philosophy”, he summarizes common aspects of various definitions as follows:

> “It seems that its main features are the non-acceptance of conflict and plurality as normal elements of politics, the will to preserve the status quo and prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power, and lastly, the erosion of the rule of law, the division of powers, and democratic voting procedures.”

Western democracies are not examples of authoritarianism, no matter how much they might interfere with the desire of rich people to prove they’re special.

[anamexis]

Supporting fairly basic safety regulations for commercial endeavors does not equal strict obedience to authority.

[wpietri]

It's not different. "OceanGate intends to make underwater exploration cheaper and accessible to private citizens", says Wikipedia. And the people on it look, aside from their wealth, like members of the general public to me. They have no particular knowledge or skill, so I don't think they have an expert's ability to evaluate the risks.

[peterashford]

Having rules does not make you authoritarian.

[detourdog]

He is not selling the trips they are paying to be crew. This is such a needless story.

[jacurtis]

This is an important distinction which I believe was made to thread some legal loopholes. They all signed paperwork that they were participating in the "mission" as a crew member of an experimental vessel.

So literally, it is like, "the four of you's job is to look out this window, make sure it doesn't fog up, my job is to do everything else, alright let's dive"

[sn41]

That doesn't absolve them of negligence. A crew hardly signs up to be killed.

[vkou]

Recklessly killing your workers is even worse.

[detourdog]

Many jobs are dangerous and regulated but killing customers is different. somehow it is the insurance companies that are the first line of defense when some conjures up a novel scheme.

[vkou]

Dangerous jobs still require the employer to try really hard to make them as safe as possible.

It doesn't sound like that was the case here.

[marmakoide]

Even Uncle Bumblefuck alone in his garage need some regulation. Imagine him deciding to build a solid fuel rocket, he might send shrapnel all around the block.

[mozman]

> To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety"

This is exactly why we need less government and be slower to call for laws. Human nature cannot be changed despite our belief that it can be.

The same lazy decisions that led to this potential event can also be used to destroy lives.

At the end of the day we are all accountable for our selves.

[marmakoide]

I have a hard time to let people throwing themselves into danger with a "I don't need a nanny" attitude, and then see a state-run, massive and costly rescue effort when things go wrong.

[sanderjd]

Yes. Thank you. I live in Colorado and people do dumb stuff in the mountains all the time, which ends up being expensive for everyone, not just themselves. And it doesn't work to just not rescue people.

[kodah]

> To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand.

A nanny state is telling you how to live your life. An example is when NYC banned large soft drinks or when we listed marijuana as a schedule 1 drug. Registration of a mode of transportation is hardly a nanny state activity because vehicles inherently pose a risk to others whether as a passenger or someone sharing proximity with you.

You can certainly build your own car and register it. They're often called salvage titles; this is true for airplane kits too, but you also have to be able to prove the worthiness of the machine. We have lots of process and administration to take care of this, but for whatever reason it didn't work here.

[elzbardico]

I don't even think at those levels the government should bother. It is not we are selling a car for thousands of people that we know it occasionally leaks fuel in the engine bay.

People who pay for that kind of trip know the dangers and have money enough to do their own due diligence.

[rich_sasha]

You can't stop this and likely shouldn't as you say, but still, this anecdote, if true, means:

- they didn't do a test dive first with no humans on board

- they didn't do a test dive with just staff, no paying customers

- the first "test" was to the full depth where the craft would be basically unrecoverable

- they didn't seem to even test these things ashore... Because you'd find out if the damn motor was on backwards!

If true, this strikes me as beyond amateurish and outright insane.

[peterashford]

So corporations doing whatever they want with no oversight regardless of the consequences is just fine and dandy? Obviously there's a middle ground between 'nanny state' and 'corporate anarchy' - reality is not so black and white and imagining it to be so is a naive sentiment.

[xpe]

> It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard.

Yes, my impression is that this feels naive, especially if reflects a more general viewpoint of surprise when organizations do negligent things. The law of large numbers combined with human nature seems to statistically all-but guarantee such failures over a few decades.

> ... The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors.

No. You made that tacit assumption, not the commenter before you. This assumption makes it easy to setup a straw man.

> But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to the bottom. It's a very big world, filled with mostly ocean, and plenty of thrill-seekers who will attempt anything half-way reasonable. Even 10% reasonable. You can't stop that...

This is a false dichotomy. A more apropos question is how to reduce undesirable outcomes.

> ... To get it you'd need a nanny state ...

"Nanny state" is loaded language, "... rhetoric used to influence an audience by using words and phrases with strong connotations. This type of language is very often made vague to more effectively invoke an emotional response and/or exploit stereotypes." - Wikipedia

> ... that snoops on everyone ...

More loaded language.

> and steps in to stop you "for your own safety".

More loaded language.

> It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand.

Are you using the slippery slope fallacy? I'm not quite sure.

Regardless, wise public policy is not exclusively based on such an approach of imagining things getting out of hand. There are better ways. To name just one, scenario planning is a powerful way of combining probabilistic decision-making across potential scenarios.

You aren't explicitly stating your political philosophy, but I'd bet it underlies your thinking here. I just hope that you are open to hypothesis-testing and avoiding dogma.

## Useful Responses

There is a wide menu of public responses and/or policy instruments available to reduce undesirable outcomes and promote desirable ones.

It is an interesting question, I think, not one that should be quickly dismissed. Legally, jurisdiction seems to be a good place to start. Culturally and economically, what motivates such negligent underwater attempts? Maybe it isn't the top problem in the world to solve, but I think too many tech people have a huge blind spots and pretend to know more than they actually do. This example is newsworthy, fun, tragic, and not particularly politically charged, best I can tell. So why not use some good reasoning here and discuss it?

[2muchcoffeeman]

The lack of emergency beacon is the real WTF. Not even an inflatable buoy. Using a game pad is probably OK. But no emergency method to mark their last location or even surface?

[jibe]

They did have multiple emergency methods to surface. Neither those, nor a beacon help if it imploded under pressure.

[simonblack]

Seeing that everything stopped at once, I'd bet that is exactly what happened.

Shades of the Thresher disaster. No doubt we'll hear a few months down the track that the Navy's sound receivers did actually pick up the implosion noise.

[asddubs]

or someone makes a startup offering submarine exploration of the titanic tours crash site

[speed_spread]

Recursive Ventures

[ghostpepper]

There was some speculation that any sort of implosion would've been detected by military sonar, and it hasn't been yet. I do not know if that's accurate -- just repeating what I've heard.

[lyu07282]

doesn't necessarily mean they ever tell anyone about it, it would just reveal capabilities.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Ah, I didn’t see that they had emergency resurfacing methods. I don’t have much hope for these guys.

[jaclaz]

Honest question, how would an inflatable something work at those depths?

4,000 meters should mean 400 bars of pressure from the water, would the thing need to be inflated at more than 400 bar?

[saalweachter]

Can you buy off the shelf emergency beacons that can surface from 400 ATM or broadcast through 13000 ft of water?

[ClumsyPilot]

why does it need to be off the shelf, their submarine is not off the shelf. If off the shelf stuff odbly does 200 ATM, then limit your depth or mame custom ones.

[dmix]

So basically like when a Russia technician installed a sensor upside-down destroying an entire $200 million Proton-M spacecraft https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLnNc_0TnXA

Except there's not whole teams of engineers and checklists to prevent that sort of thing. Nor humans aboard.

[bpp]

I haven't thought about that episode of "Pinky and the Brain" in years, thanks for a chuckle.

[dheera]

I wonder how much of this has to do with investors giving them only 18 months of runway and "launch or die" mentality. That mentality is okay for software but this ecosystem is NOT okay when lives are in question. When investors are bickering about shitty terms and being stingy with their aerospace and nautical investments, people die.

There needs to be a system by which any company can ALWAYS be guaranteed some $X for 0% equity if it is going to be used and documented for life safety improvements and tests. That $X can even come from taxes, I'm okay with that.

[acqq]

3:54

Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate: "so the pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all because that's where we work with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail: your thrusters can go, your lights can go, you're still going to be safe"

https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o?t=219

[erik_seaberg]

This explains the “one button” and hokey controls. Only dropping ballast to surface is life-critical.

[acqq]

"The experts wrote in their letter to Mr. Rush that they had “unanimous concern” about the way the Titan had been developed,"

"Mr. Kohnen said that Mr. Rush called him after reading the letter and told him that industry standards were stifling innovation."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/oceangate-titanic-miss...

[kevin_thibedeau]

> it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to.

The pressure vessel was a titanium hemisphere bonded to a carbon fiber cylinder. It was destined to fail with such a fundamentally compromised design like that.

[tylerchr]

I don’t know that much about materials science. Why is a “titanium hemisphere bonded to a carbon fiber cylinder” “such a fundamentally compromised design” in this application?

I imagine maybe carbon fiber would be better in tension (e.g. airframes) than in compression (this), perhaps. Or do carbon fiber and titanium not get along somehow?

(EDIT: Had tension and compression backwards.)

[gshulegaard]

I mean, it wasn't too long ago we had auto pilot software from a major aerospace engineering company that would literally pitch planes into nosedives when only one of two redundant angle-of-attack sensors misbehaved/failed.

Also there seem to be quite a few train derailments as of late.

Oh and what about that apartment building that just...collapsed in Ohio?

Seems like there have been quite a few cases of safety regulatory failure in recent memory.

[MagicMoonlight]

I am so glad the CEO is on board. Normally they’d just be able to get away scott free with billions and tell everyone how sorry they are.

[xdavidliu]

> Narf.

<in an Obi-Wan Kenobi voice> Now that is a word I have not heard in a long, long time.

[pillefitz]

Come on, it's not reddit here..

[xdavidliu]

you're right, I'll do better

[bandrami]

> there were flammable materials within the pressure vessel

Whut