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How factories were made safe

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Re: How factories were made safe

#81

Post by ClumsyPilot »

gruez wrote: post #57
sanxiyn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't? I opined web browser "manufacturers" should be liable, like airplane manufacturers. That seems certain to me. Whether automatic liability makes sense, as argued in OP about workplace safety, is less certain, but probably yes. Many zero days are triggered by just clicking a link. For such cases, it is hard to argue one is operating it wrong.

Computers can't be compared to airplanes because computers operate in an adversarial environment whereas airplanes don't. A computer crashing because of a specially crafted malicious request isn't really comparable to a plane dropping out of the sky. Consider another product that operate in an adversarial environment: locks. Should lock manufacturers be liable if their locks were pickable?

Being struck by lightning and hail sound plenty adversarial to me.

Meanwhile equifax and co just leave your data unprotected, no adversary required

Re: How factories were made safe

#82

Post by gruez »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #81
gruez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers can't be compared to airplanes because computers operate in an adversarial environment whereas airplanes don't. A computer crashing because of a specially crafted malicious request isn't really comparable to a plane dropping out of the sky. Consider another product that operate in an adversarial environment: locks. Should lock manufacturers be liable if their locks were pickable?

Being struck by lightning and hail sound plenty adversarial to me. Meanwhile equifax and co just leave your data unprotected, no adversary required

> Being struck by lightning and hail sound plenty adversarial to me.

Not really. lightning and hail behave predictably. Attackers don't. Adversarial hail would be a hailstorm where the hail magically heat-seeked to the engine.

>Meanwhile equifax and co just leave your data unprotected, no adversary required

The parent poster argued for a much stronger statement than this, which includes only negligence.

Re: How factories were made safe

#83

Post by ModernMech »

bluGill wrote: post #75
dr_dshiv wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having safe, stable shelter would seem to be a prerequisite to helping people deal with drug addiction and mental illness. Baxter, A. J., Tweed, E. J., Katikireddi, S. V., & Thomson, H. (2019). Effects of Housing First approaches on health and well-being of adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. J Epidemiol Community Health, 73(5), 379-…

That is one factor, but it isn't everything, there are still other factors so don't overstate it

As someone with experience with severe mental illness (BP1) I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of a stable environment when dealing with an acute mental health crisis.

Re: How factories were made safe

#84

Post by wyager »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #78
wyager wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an essentially inevitable result of technological development. If the 40 hour workweek people had protested 30 years earlier, nothing would have happened, and if they hadn’t protested at all it probably would have been achieved with less effort a few years down the line. You need occasional shocks to remove entrenched procedural traditions like work schedules, but the magnitude of the shock required decreases a…

"It is an essentially inevitable result of technological development" So its been over a century, why are we still stuck at 40 hours?

We'll probably see a big shift soon. The environment is ripe for it. Various factors have suppressed the probability of such a transition occurring (e.g. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com), but it's becoming overwhelmingly likely.

Already, many white-collar jobs (especially in tech) have large numbers of people working fewer than 40 hours a week.

Re: How factories were made safe

#85

Post by wyager »

noselasd wrote: post #59
wyager wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an essentially inevitable result of technological development. If the 40 hour workweek people had protested 30 years earlier, nothing would have happened, and if they hadn’t protested at all it probably would have been achieved with less effort a few years down the line. You need occasional shocks to remove entrenched procedural traditions like work schedules, but the magnitude of the shock required decreases a…

There are plenty of countries where this is not achieved, and it's unlikely to change without some kind of pressure, either from the workers or from the government

Which countries? I can think of some but the reason is usually something like elite overproduction or poverty.

Re: How factories were made safe

#86

Post by TheCoelacanth »

adolph wrote: post #16
goodcanadian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why automatic defined liability for the leak might be the solution to the problem.

If an info leak occurs in a data center and no one is harmed, does it make any liability?

Having your personal information leaked is harm. Difficult to quantify harm, but harm none the less.

Re: How factories were made safe

#87

Post by rtkwe »

InitialLastName wrote: post #49
rtkwe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of crazy how fast American politics went off the rails. Really seems like it really kicks off with Reagan but I’m not versed enough to be sure if he’s the cause or just one of the symptoms (most likely both really in the end) but it’s always wild to see just how many of the ‘big government run amok’ agencies came out of the Nixon admin.

I've seen the idea float around that in order for democracy to function, the people need to see the political leadership as a) competent and b) acting in good faith. For the group of people who were coming into political adulthood in the 70s-80s (mostly born circa 1945-1965), those sentiments were deeply undermined by the Iran-Contra affair/hostage crisis and Watergate respectively. That cohort have now been the moda…

Personally I think it's partially an (mis)information issue. With the explosion of information sources starting with cable and then exploding again with the internet and social media we've gone from a relatively uniform media environment and a drought of information to a fractured media environment with an absolute deluge. So now you can live in a completely different factual world than someone doors down from you and still have more supporting sources of information than you could consume even if you spent all your time awake.

Re: How factories were made safe

#88

Post by TheCoelacanth »

bsder wrote: post #72
donjoe wrote: post #67

> The lack of systems thinking We managed to make factories safe but kill 1.3 M people/year in traffic instead [1] I wonder: will we ever manage to apply systems thinking in traffic as well? [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

The key for workman's comp was no-fault--you pay for your own accidents. That had to be enshrined in law to work. Several US states HAD No-Fault insurance laws--ie your own insurance company pays for your own accidents. The insurance companies lobbied like crazy to get those removed. They're all gone now. If you got those No-Fault insurance laws back, the required systems thinking would ensue.

Wouldn't it be more analogous to if the state or the Department of Transportation paid for all accidents since they are the ones controlling the system? Insurance companies don't have any power to change road designs or traffic laws.

Re: How factories were made safe

#89

Post by tdeck »

bsder wrote: post #72
donjoe wrote: post #67

> The lack of systems thinking We managed to make factories safe but kill 1.3 M people/year in traffic instead [1] I wonder: will we ever manage to apply systems thinking in traffic as well? [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

The key for workman's comp was no-fault--you pay for your own accidents. That had to be enshrined in law to work. Several US states HAD No-Fault insurance laws--ie your own insurance company pays for your own accidents. The insurance companies lobbied like crazy to get those removed. They're all gone now. If you got those No-Fault insurance laws back, the required systems thinking would ensue.

Pennsylvania at least has no-fault auto insurance.

Re: How factories were made safe

#90

Post by maxwell »

helen___keller wrote: post #21
maxwell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have specific examples of "massive" progress and improvements to efficiency since, say, the late '60s? I tend to agree with Neal Stephenson that "the threat now has become not too much innovation, but not enough". [1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM&t=333s

I wasn't alive in the late 60s but most things I spend all day doing were literally not possible for consumers until the 90s-aughts

Listening to music? Looking at television screens? Pushing typewriter keys? Playing videogames? Programming computers? Video calls?

While more expensive when adjusted for inflation, all were commercially available in the '60s. You could make video calls in Grand Central in 1964, even if you could only call DC or Chicago and it cost $5 a minute.

The future was already here, as Gibson observed. The internet seems like the last thing humanity invented. Every meaningful (commercially available) "invention" since then has been an internet application or appliance (or has by now been beaten in the marketplace by an internet application or appliance).

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