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Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

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Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#11

Post by inglor_cz »

On a somewhat related note, Egyptian science tends to suffer from a massive scientific misconduct (fraud) problem - see for example this paper by Egyptian authors, which covers the medical field:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.20.23286195v...

Maybe the attitude towards "truth vs. face" is similar in Egyptian governmental institutions.

Egypt in general is a low-trust society, scoring lower than India or Russia, though not much lower than usual in Africa.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/iab8r7/social_trus...

This indicates that lived experience of the Egyptians themselves, when it comes to trusting others, is somewhat bad.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#12

Post by 23B1 »

vkou wrote: post #4
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

When it's not clear whether you should trust someone, you should: * Get the necessary background education to understand the subject * Read what they are saying * Determine the reasons for whether or not it is wholly, partially, or not at all logically and factually consistent What you probably shouldn't do is shrug your shoulders, and cite a platitude like "Well, experts have been wrong before! I have no idea who we…

Your answer is in fact the lazy one. The topics that are often beset with controversy and conspiracy are heavily technical.

"You should do your own research" is fine when we're talking about the fall of Rome or aliens in space. It is dismissive and arrogant to say it when it comes to things like COVID or airline safety - areas where we must trust experts.

Shrugging your shoulders at experts who lie about those sorts of topics is a reasonable thing to do because those experts often use their position to further their own agenda, like government officials did during the pandemic or in this case like the Egyptians likely did in the 804 case.

If you are truly intelligent then your job is to hold other experts accountable to a high ethical standard in order to earn people's trust – not to look down your nose at people.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#13

Post by ngneer »

A rather well-written piece. My takeaway is that the French investigators are pros and the Egyptians are hacks. And that safety culture matters. One must not bend the facts to draw a desired conclusion. One must review the data without bias, or else recuse oneself.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#14

Post by mmooss »

23B1 wrote: post #12
vkou wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's not clear whether you should trust someone, you should: * Get the necessary background education to understand the subject * Read what they are saying * Determine the reasons for whether or not it is wholly, partially, or not at all logically and factually consistent What you probably shouldn't do is shrug your shoulders, and cite a platitude like "Well, experts have been wrong before! I have no idea who we…

Your answer is in fact the lazy one. The topics that are often beset with controversy and conspiracy are heavily technical. "You should do your own research" is fine when we're talking about the fall of Rome or aliens in space. It is dismissive and arrogant to say it when it comes to things like COVID or airline safety - areas where we must trust experts. Shrugging your shoulders at experts who lie about those sorts…

Regarding your point, I mostly agree but I think you can add your own research - not necessarily primary source research - as an input.

> "You should do your own research" is fine when we're talking about the fall of Rome or aliens in space. It is dismissive and arrogant to say it when it comes to things like COVID or airline safety - areas where we must trust experts.

On a tangent ... why are the fall of Rome or intelligent extraterrestrial life less in need of expert input than plane crashes or Covid?

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#17

Post by lazyasciiart »

23B1 wrote: post #12
vkou wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's not clear whether you should trust someone, you should: * Get the necessary background education to understand the subject * Read what they are saying * Determine the reasons for whether or not it is wholly, partially, or not at all logically and factually consistent What you probably shouldn't do is shrug your shoulders, and cite a platitude like "Well, experts have been wrong before! I have no idea who we…

Your answer is in fact the lazy one. The topics that are often beset with controversy and conspiracy are heavily technical. "You should do your own research" is fine when we're talking about the fall of Rome or aliens in space. It is dismissive and arrogant to say it when it comes to things like COVID or airline safety - areas where we must trust experts. Shrugging your shoulders at experts who lie about those sorts…

If you don’t have the background to understand the topic, then you are not an expert and have no obligation to do anything. The fact that the topics are hard to understand does not mean you can skip understanding and go straight to arguing about it.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#19

Post by buildbot »

mmooss wrote: post #15

Does anyone know the author's background? All I see is 'analyzer of plane crashes'.

She is I believe a pilot, and has been doing this for years and years on (originally?) reddit, in great depth and detail. She also has a really fun podcast with two other people called controlled pod into terrain.
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