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Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

nytimes.com

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Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#171

Post by onetimeusename »

xkqd wrote: post #163
onetimeusename wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed road traffic safety since 2020 closely (and have submitted and posted about it here) and traffic fatalities is slowly coming down since 2020. My hypothesis about it was that the empty roads in 2020 caused drivers to degenerate in terms of road manners. For example, deaths per mile actually increased in 2020 despite people driving fewer miles which suggests people drove less safely. On the other hand this a…

My pet theory has been that extended lockdowns caused regressions in people’s ability to drive safety, whether it was the actual skills to operate a vehicle, or people’s risk assessment skills. Operating a vehicle is a skill like any other, and if you’re not performing reps you’ll regress like any other activity. Empty roads might even permit crappier driving.

ya that makes sense. we'll probably never know what happened :|

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#172

Post by jimbob45 »

mcphage wrote: post #121
throwme_123 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point. You should not know and should not take it in consideration but in the USA this is part of the application. I understand the whole point is to make sure diverse candidate are not discriminated against (and of course that would be a ridiculous thing to do), but it seems to have been perverted into caricaturical discrimination _for_, even favoring a diverse incompetent candidate over a non-diverse com…

> You should not know and should not take it in consideration Then how do you suppose we ended up with fields where nearly everyone was a white male, if race was never taken into consideration?

Because whites were 85% of the US population for a long time and being a SAHM used to be a viable strategy.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#175

Post by fifteenforty »

xkqd wrote: post #163
onetimeusename wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed road traffic safety since 2020 closely (and have submitted and posted about it here) and traffic fatalities is slowly coming down since 2020. My hypothesis about it was that the empty roads in 2020 caused drivers to degenerate in terms of road manners. For example, deaths per mile actually increased in 2020 despite people driving fewer miles which suggests people drove less safely. On the other hand this a…

My pet theory has been that extended lockdowns caused regressions in people’s ability to drive safety, whether it was the actual skills to operate a vehicle, or people’s risk assessment skills. Operating a vehicle is a skill like any other, and if you’re not performing reps you’ll regress like any other activity. Empty roads might even permit crappier driving.

Perhaps, maybe, mass infection by a virus that affects the brain and vascular system has consequences for society.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#176

Post by withinboredom »

xkqd wrote: post #163
onetimeusename wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed road traffic safety since 2020 closely (and have submitted and posted about it here) and traffic fatalities is slowly coming down since 2020. My hypothesis about it was that the empty roads in 2020 caused drivers to degenerate in terms of road manners. For example, deaths per mile actually increased in 2020 despite people driving fewer miles which suggests people drove less safely. On the other hand this a…

My pet theory has been that extended lockdowns caused regressions in people’s ability to drive safety, whether it was the actual skills to operate a vehicle, or people’s risk assessment skills. Operating a vehicle is a skill like any other, and if you’re not performing reps you’ll regress like any other activity. Empty roads might even permit crappier driving.

I disagree. However, I'm used to going long stretches without driving and then suddenly driving hundreds of km/miles. I suspect, based on my wife's behavior and her driving, that before 2020, people were used to and happy with simply listening to music, a podcast, or something. After/during 2020, many people were no longer satisfied with that. They turned to listening to YouTube, movies, or even face-to-face calls while driving (hell, even my mom does this one), and holding the phone while trying to operate the vehicle.

It's almost like people forgot the most important part of driving: minimizing distractions. If I'm in a high-stress part of a drive (unfamiliar roads, high density, etc), I always turn off all media and ask all passengers to be quiet for a bit because I need all my senses. I don't know how many times I've been saved by hearing a car that I can't see yet.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#177

Post by stringsandchars »

ghodith wrote: post #53
astrostl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACT test scores have plummeted too. Combined with what we know about the physical brain changes that can be observed after a single mild infection, it all paints a potentially concerning relationship with COVID.

Could also be the consequences of schooling during a lockdown.

> Could also be the consequences of schooling during a lockdown.

Luckily we have the control-group of Sweden, that spent a large part of the pandemic proclaiming that not closing schools was going to have a fantastic positive effect on children's learning.

The actual result: Sweden's PISA results declined much more steeply than countries who used distance-learning during the pandemic.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#178

Post by stringsandchars »

gpt5 wrote: post #55
astrostl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACT test scores have plummeted too. Combined with what we know about the physical brain changes that can be observed after a single mild infection, it all paints a potentially concerning relationship with COVID.

Or maybe ACT test scores have plummeted because these students have experienced 1-2 years of remote teaching, which might have been less effective than in-person school?

> Or maybe ACT test scores have plummeted because these students have experienced 1-2 years of remote teaching, which might have been less effective than in-person school?

As I mentioned in another post, you can check this theory against the pandemic control-group that kept schools open:

https://www.thelocal.se/20231205/swedish-students-maths-and-...

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#179

Post by withinboredom »

saghm wrote: post #120
Brybry wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The preference is regional. [1] When I took the ACT, many years ago, it was the test the university I was applying to listed first in their requirements. And that's still true. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAT-ACT-Preference-Map....

When I was in high school (graduated 2012), my school recommended we take both, since not only do certain schools prefer one to another, but if you happened to score relatively well on one versus the other, you could choose to only send that one instead.

> if you happened to score relatively well on one versus the other

This should be reasonable proof that the test doesn't test things very well, IMHO, because there are so many factors that go into getting a good score.

I was one of these people -- I got one point below perfect on ACT, but the morning of my SAT, I got into an argument with my mom and got a below-average score.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#180

Post by lostlogin »

dangus wrote: post #132
woodruffw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the comment thread, this doesn't have perfect explanatory power: drivers and ATC have also recorded statistically significant declines over the same time period. In other words: remote schooling may have had a negative effect on ACT scores, but all evidence points to it not being the only (or even primary) effect.

Regarding this thread, I really want to caution on the desire to automatically assign worse car crash rates to covid-19 infections, or any other specific cause. Car crashes and ATC mistakes are two different sets of data. Just because they are going up or down at the same time and you can overlay some other event on top of it means absolutely nothing on its own. There are a lot more reasons that car crash rates can b…

> Regarding this thread, I really want to caution on the desire to automatically assign worse car crash rates to covid-19 infections, or any other specific cause.

People’s tolerance levels and general concern for other humans plummeted in the post covid times. The warning signs about acceptable behaviour in supermarkets, medical practices and restaurants proliferated. I don’t know how you measure that effect though.

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