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The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

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Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#121

Post by bigfudge »

bionsystem wrote: post #79
cies wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is pretty low on civ casualties. Look at Gaza, or the Iraq/Vietnam invasions compare numbers (civ casualties AND time it took) and then draw conclusions on the use of the word genocide. I also would abstain from using "russians" (or USAers, or Israelis) when referring to actions of the respective govts. Keeps the discussion cleaner of generalizations wrt people that may totally not suppor…

Hamas is using civilians as human shields pretty much literally. They set this war up so that there is as much civilian casualties as possible on their side to claim it's a genocide. In this particular case, Hamas has a written constitution claiming the destruction of Israel and the jewish people ; Hamas ARE the genociders, despite being the weak army in this war. Ukraine is NOT using its population as human shields.…

To open: I am not apologising for what Hamas has done at all. I think their actions are revolting. Whatever your view of the history of the region, the aim to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state is unrealistic, extreme and counterproductive.

Nonetheless, I do find the claim they are using human shields as interesting. Whatever you think of Hamas' aims and methods (and I strongly disapprove of both), Palestinians engaged in conflict are by necessity fighting a guerrilla war against an occupying power. No, Israel is not in direct control of Gaza -- but it does have the capacity to use overwhelming force against any part of it, so it might as well be for the purposes of fighting a war.

Let's assume we are not pacifists and we think armed struggle is _sometimes_ justified (as do both the US and Israel). From the perspective of someone who viewed the establishment of Israel as illegitimate, and the occupation of Gaza unlawful, and Israel's action in Gaza and the West Bank as immoral, what would be the right course of action here?

From that perspective it might seem reasonable to plan and carry out sabotage against Israeli forces (I know that is not all Hamas have done -- they have also murdered civilians, but this is irrelevant to this argument).

There were many resistance movements in the 20th century that are now approved-of by Israel and allies. Was it illegitimate for French resistance fighters (for example) to plan attacks from civilian villages and hide weapons in farmhouses etc? This accusation of using human shields (which predates the current conflict) sometimes strikes me is part of a process to 'other' the Palestinian cause and render it a priori illegitimate, which does't help anyone.

Edit: I recognise this post could upset some people at the moment. It's really not my intention. It's posed as a genuine question and something for us all to reflect on. I might be wrong/misguided but interested to discuss.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#122

Post by ben0x539 »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #22
mattszaszko wrote: post #3

I'm so conflicted reading this story. On one hand, yes, there were choices made during the design of the system that directly contributed to this tragedy. And a lot of innocent lives were lost, so saying that's "shit happens, it's an edge case" rings very hollow. On the other hand, this was a very peculiar set of circumstances, very much an edge case. Is it reasonable to expect designers of combat systems to triple c…

There was no war.

Wikipedia says "The attack occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, which had been continuing for nearly eight years." I guess it wasn't supposed to be a war that the US was involved in directly? But they were apparently getting their helicopter shot at and were doing things in Iranian territorial waters, so I guess they weren't just hanging out.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#123

Post by seb1204 »

IanHalbwachs wrote: post #103
m463 wrote: post #94

I wonder when a tesla will show up in a courtroom with a situation like this. I'm not talking about autopilot. I'm talking about the continuous (past ridiculous) removal of physical controls from their vehicles. For example, the original model S/X had dedicated controls for lots of functions - turn signals, gear shift, wipers, autopilot, steering wheel tilt, etc. On the steering wheel, there were two buttons and a sc…

Thanks, you've just cured me of my Tesla envy entirely

I test drove a Hyundai ionic 6. All the levers and dials that had no use because they were set to 'Auto' made me appreciate my model 3 even more.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#124

Post by dav_Oz »

m463 wrote: post #94

I wonder when a tesla will show up in a courtroom with a situation like this. I'm not talking about autopilot. I'm talking about the continuous (past ridiculous) removal of physical controls from their vehicles. For example, the original model S/X had dedicated controls for lots of functions - turn signals, gear shift, wipers, autopilot, steering wheel tilt, etc. On the steering wheel, there were two buttons and a sc…

In the near future we will ask ourselves how people back then were doing this virtuoso thing called "driving" and be deeply grateful for the autopilot technology which Tesla was pioneering.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#125

Post by CrzyLngPwd »

meeuwer wrote: post #84
chiefalchemist wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're on the subject of "under-counting", there is no official count of the number of civilians killed during the US Gov's invasion of Iraq. No sense counting what you don't want to know and don't want to be accounted for? US voters / citizens certainly don't care. Independent sources put it at 100,000+. I've randomly read 2x to 3x that but 100k+ is bad enough. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/ci…

Whatever the number, it was “worth it”. https://youtu.be/RM0uvgHKZe8

Ugh, she was vile.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#126

Post by vkaku »

jansan wrote: post #61
vkaku wrote: post #46

I first thought this was a post about flat design, then went and read the whole toot. Man, who'd expect UI to be bad enough for life and death operations. Someone should post more details about the actually confusing UI that lead to this event. Would be a good lesson to most of us. It also appears that Lockheed won a contract for using this system in 2023 [1]. Can someone share if they actually fixed the UI issues wi…

I thought it was about Chrome's new sidebar by just reading the title.

I actually had to Google what that looked like. It's been a while.

Haha.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#127

Post by Ma8ee »

scotty79 wrote: post #104
nojvek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Isreal has been trying to keep their morals for decades using defensive measures. They constructed probaby best in the world air defense systems to protect their civilians daily. They could just send one rocket for one they were targetted by instead and Gaza would be inhabitable decades ago. So when they were rewarded for their restraint on 7 Oct with savagery I'm not really surprised that huge part of the world give…

Missing from your narrative is the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli settlers. The settlers are harassing and seizing land from Palestinians. Those settlers are protected by the Israeli Defense Forces. All of this is well documented and are repeatedly criticised by many well reputable human rights organisations.

So, no, it's not restrain that is rewarded by these savage attacks.

And while I condemn the terrorist attacks on innocent civilians by Hamas, we should not pretend they came out of a vacuum, or that the state of Israel is a pure peace loving innocent victim in all this.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#128

Post by ben0x539 »

mattszaszko wrote: post #3

I'm so conflicted reading this story. On one hand, yes, there were choices made during the design of the system that directly contributed to this tragedy. And a lot of innocent lives were lost, so saying that's "shit happens, it's an edge case" rings very hollow. On the other hand, this was a very peculiar set of circumstances, very much an edge case. Is it reasonable to expect designers of combat systems to triple c…

I think a highly volatile and chaotic use case is exactly where I'd expect them to design a perfect, or at least orders of magnitude less susceptible to operator error, system.

Of course it's hard for me, a spoiled millennial who got into programming via online games, to imagine what war computers were capable of in 1988, but as described in the thread, this scenario sounds so utterly routine that I am surprised that it basically involved a game of telephone to confirm basic facts about a plane.

"A tracked entity gets confused with another tracked entity" or "an entity's status of hostile-or-not gets lost" sounds like exactly the cases that should be impossible to get wrong as a fundamental goal of this kind of operation.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#129

Post by ben0x539 »

gifvenut wrote: post #80
cies wrote: post #59

Very impactful mistake, but apparently not a mistake worth apologizing for. From Wikipedia: "the U.S. government did not admit legal liability or formally apologize to Iran" Pinnacle arrogance/exceptionalism. Disgusting. Oh, and the US back then supported Iraq in its horrific attack on Iran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...

You forgot to mention that Ronald Reagan apologized to the Iranian government and the US paid $60 Mil in compensation to the families.

After having become an expert on the incident from having skimmed half of the wikipedia article, I note that it mentions both Reagan considering his letter an apology and the US government not having made a formal apology, so I imagine there is some clever political distinction between the two.

Re: The 1988 shooting down of Flight 655 as a user interface disaster

#130

Post by toyg »

scotty79 wrote: post #104
nojvek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Isreal has been trying to keep their morals for decades using defensive measures. They constructed probaby best in the world air defense systems to protect their civilians daily. They could just send one rocket for one they were targetted by instead and Gaza would be inhabitable decades ago. So when they were rewarded for their restraint on 7 Oct with savagery I'm not really surprised that huge part of the world give…

> They could just send one rocket

Putin could do the same to half of Europe, eh. The fact that he doesn't, doesn't mean his actions are justified. Not applying overwhelming force doesn't mean that applying any other type of force is justified.

> Isreal has been trying to keep their morals for decades

There are no morals left, in that conflict, since the 1982 mass murder of thousands of Lebanese civilians in Beirut at the very least - if not earlier. Both sides have happily displayed the worst in human nature, multiple times, over the last 70 years.

> what Putin did to Ukrainie softened the morals of people to "it's ok if it's for the right reasons".

Again, that's hardly new. From Vietnam to Desert Storm to Afghanistan, significant chunks of any public opinion will determine it's ok to apply violence. That doesn't mean it's morally justified - morals are determined in ways that go beyond counting how many individuals are pro or against something.

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