Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 93 posts

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#21

Post by xwdv »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #7

I wonder, if his ghost could talk to us now, I’d he would have done anything differently. Maybe that seems like an absurd question to ask because... he’s dead. But his position seems to be: some things can never happen unless someone just risks it. And that math doesn’t really change with the knowledge “he dies”. It’s possible there are some alternative timelines out there where “he risks it and survives” and maybe t…

We could talk to his ghost in a way. If we could gather up all the text and transcripts of things he wrote and said, we could feed it to an LLM and interrogate it with questions.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#22

Post by paddw »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #7

I wonder, if his ghost could talk to us now, I’d he would have done anything differently. Maybe that seems like an absurd question to ask because... he’s dead. But his position seems to be: some things can never happen unless someone just risks it. And that math doesn’t really change with the knowledge “he dies”. It’s possible there are some alternative timelines out there where “he risks it and survives” and maybe t…

> I do judge that dad who convinced his teenage son to risk his life. That was absolutely evil.

Moreso, he was likely foolish in considering the actual extent of the risk, like everyone on the sub.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#23

Post by GoToRO »

nitwit005 wrote: post #19

> "We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult." Surrounded by people telling him the right answer, and somehow managed to take it as an insult.

Pretty much every CEO.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#24

Post by SoftTalker »

melling wrote: post #8
playa1 wrote: post #5

When CEOs make statements like this I assume they know they are lying for sake of the company. What makes this more interesting is that he clearly believed it was safe. So he wasn’t necessarily unethical. It is more that he was a bad engineer and a poor judge of risk.

Yes, maybe he just suffered from some sort of human bias. What’s the one where people are very good at lying to themselves? Unfortunately, he killed those other people because no one could convince him that he was wrong.

Yeah I think some people with big egos get so wrapped up in their goals that they just dismiss anything or anyone that is trying to point out problems or concerns. They would deny they are lying and I'm sure genuinely believe they are right. After all he got into the contraption and it killed him. He would not have done that if he didn't believe it was safe.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#25

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

playa1 wrote: post #5

When CEOs make statements like this I assume they know they are lying for sake of the company. What makes this more interesting is that he clearly believed it was safe. So he wasn’t necessarily unethical. It is more that he was a bad engineer and a poor judge of risk.

Not really.

He thought it was safer than it was.

But I don't think he thought it was close to a 0% chance of death.

It's clear that he knew it was somewhat risky.

It failed after like 25 dives which means around a ~4% failure rate.

I'd hope he thought it had less than a 1% failure rate.

Who knows what the true failure rate is. Maybe they got really lucky, and it actually had a higher failure rate. Maybe they got extra unlucky. Who knows.

I just can't fathom people would pay $250k for a miserable time and a decent shot at death.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#26

Post by n-exploit »

scotty79 wrote: post #9
mydogcanpurr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's still unethical to put others at risk due to your own incompetence. I wouldn't offer to rewire someone's home because I'm not an electrician, and their house could burn down if I do it incorrectly.

> due to your own incompetence. Are you still unethical when you don't know about your incompetence? Can you be unethical if you had no ability to know that what you do is unethical?

This is called criminal negligence

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#27

Post by paulcole »

mydogcanpurr wrote: post #6
playa1 wrote: post #5

When CEOs make statements like this I assume they know they are lying for sake of the company. What makes this more interesting is that he clearly believed it was safe. So he wasn’t necessarily unethical. It is more that he was a bad engineer and a poor judge of risk.

I'd argue it's still unethical to put others at risk due to your own incompetence. I wouldn't offer to rewire someone's home because I'm not an electrician, and their house could burn down if I do it incorrectly.

Is it unethical if you don't know you're incompetent?

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#28

Post by paulcole »

xwdv wrote: post #21
erikpukinskis wrote: post #7

I wonder, if his ghost could talk to us now, I’d he would have done anything differently. Maybe that seems like an absurd question to ask because... he’s dead. But his position seems to be: some things can never happen unless someone just risks it. And that math doesn’t really change with the knowledge “he dies”. It’s possible there are some alternative timelines out there where “he risks it and survives” and maybe t…

We could talk to his ghost in a way. If we could gather up all the text and transcripts of things he wrote and said, we could feed it to an LLM and interrogate it with questions.

brb applying to the next hn batch w/ this idea

gives a whole new meaning to post-mortem

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#30

Post by SoftTalker »

n-exploit wrote: post #26
scotty79 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> due to your own incompetence. Are you still unethical when you don't know about your incompetence? Can you be unethical if you had no ability to know that what you do is unethical?

This is called criminal negligence

It's why the standard for negligence is "known or should have known" i.e. the person has enough experience or education to have known better. It's probably harder to prove than it sounds.
Post reply on HN