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by sohex 945 days ago
I think you could make fundamentally the same argument for a great number of the issues in the world today. It's a huge web of banal evils. That doesn't mean that it excuses the behavior of any given cog in that machine though. If we allow blame to be passed on indefinitely because everything is broken then nothing will ever be fixed.
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JumpCrisscross 945 days ago
> If we allow blame to be passed on indefinitely because everything is broken then nothing will ever be fixed

Or we can skip scapegoating and fix the system. This is a fundamental lesson from aviation crash analysis: the goal should be a better system, not assigning blame.

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ceejayoz 945 days ago
I suspect the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash investigation assigns some blame to someone. There's a difference between accidents and deliberate action by motivated actors.
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JumpCrisscross 945 days ago
> suspect the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash investigation assigns some blame to someone

Read the synopsis [1].

Blaming the co-pilot would be fruitless. He's dead. There's no chance for retributive justice. And if he's the problem, the problem's solved: he's dead. Nothing more to do. Except, of course, there is. Blaming him is simply an unproductive emotional comfort.

Instead, the report examines the crash's root causes. The "co-pilot’s probable fear of losing his right to fly as a professional pilot if he had reported his decrease in medical fitness to an AME." The "financial consequences generated by the lack of specific insurance covering the risks of loss of income in case of unfitness to fly." The "lack of clear guidelines" on when conditions need to be reported.

Addressing these factors helps prevent the next problem. Blaming the co-pilot actually does the opposite.

[1] https://bea.aero/uploads/tx_elydbrapports/BEA2015-0125.en-LR...

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ceejayoz 944 days ago
3.2 Causes blames the copilot in its first sentence. They absolutely tackle other failings of the systems and processes for it to get to this point, but there’s blame here, for a deliberate malicious act.
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JumpCrisscross 944 days ago
On page 96 of a 110-page report.

Of course the co-pilot is to blame. But that isn’t where the report starts nor ends. It’s incidental to fixing the problem. Those who choose to focus on blame are indeed propagating the root problems that led to the crash. Same in most other circumstances.

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