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U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

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Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#141

Post by atomicfiredoll »

userbinator wrote: post #33
drjolly wrote: post #16

I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again. Yeah, dump in the rivers, dump in the woods, just drive around in circles dumping in an empty lot. You don’t need masks- give everyone cancer and blow some shit up, maybe get some acid burns. Super-fund sites? When was the last one we had anyway- we need more of ‘em- lot…

[flagged]

My understanding from folks outside the U.S. is that they desire U.S. products because they trust the safety more. I'm not sure everyone quite understands that by gutting [regulations], they trash part of their international advantage.

I'm no expert, but even if they somehow managed to get manufacturing back, slashing your competitive advantages and just taking the market position of "China 2: This time it's more expensive" doesn't strike me as a winner for exports.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#142

Post by throwaway173738 »

mulmen wrote: post #73
rectang wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think it's ideologically consistent with insulating companies from externalities. Without official investigations, companies can assert their own interpretations of events. Boeing did this with the NTSB recently: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/boeing-punished-by-ntsb-fo...

Ok but the NTSB's response was to refer to DOJ because NTSB has no teeth.

In a hazard investigation you don’t want the investigators to have teeth. It’s not about finding wrongdoing it’s about determining what happened and how to avoid it in the future. If a company takes negligent actions referring to DOJ should be enough.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#143

Post by fallingknife »

andrewflnr wrote: post #96
fallingknife wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do profits, and the stock market, continue going up then? I've heard this nonsense about corporate short termism for decades, and the long term just never seems to arrive.

The stock market tracks short term profits; most stock buyers are also short-termers. Profits that could have been had but were not, due to shortsighted decisions, are hard to measure and don't usually make the news. Similar for companies that slowly hollow out, or get killed by newer companies still in their market-building phases before they start turning the screws.

It's not just hard to measure, it's unfalsifiable nonsense.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#144

Post by mulmen »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #142
mulmen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but the NTSB's response was to refer to DOJ because NTSB has no teeth.

In a hazard investigation you don’t want the investigators to have teeth. It’s not about finding wrongdoing it’s about determining what happened and how to avoid it in the future. If a company takes negligent actions referring to DOJ should be enough.

> In a hazard investigation you don’t want the investigators to have teeth.

Did I say I want the NTSB to have teeth?

> Without official investigations, companies can assert their own interpretations of events.

They can do this with investigations too. Just as Boeing did. NTSB can't do anything about it. The "punishment" was a referral to DOJ who can.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#145

Post by esseph »

ordu wrote: post #132
esseph wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are living in a post-truth world, and more specifically, a post truth country in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-truth_politics https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/informed-societies/post... https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=14214

Oh, it is all about dumb people who cannot navigate the current informational landscape. Or about people who relies on informational processing disabilities of others. It doesn't mean that smart people should reject the notions of truth and false.

Brilliant people make absolutely stupid decisions all the time - thinking you're not going to is the trap. It's not possible you could get caught in bullshit you _want_ to believe and _know_ is right, yeah?

You and everybody else buddy.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#146

Post by monkeyelite »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #121
monkeyelite wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting conservative take. Why change or try anything new? Everything must have been made for some reason.

Randomly knocking out bricks of your house so you can sell them for 50c each to help pay the mortgage is not innovation.

Saying this thing is here so it must be important is not governance or wisdom.

Just say why it’s a good idea.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#147

Post by EvanAnderson »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #138
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily think that goes against what the parent commenter is saying. The CSB does apparently do investigations and root cause analysis of chemical accidents and spills - in my mind they sound analogous to the NTSB and how they investigate aviation accidents. So, by that analogy, I think the NTSB is amazing and has done crucial, instrumental work that makes flying safer (as the saying goes, aviation regula…

To be honest, I’d never heard of them until now. Industry runs on Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), which are privately produced. The thing is, the hazards for chemicals at least are highly standardized. The nature of e.g. ammonium perchlorate doesn’t change much depending on where it comes from. No one needs to write their own MSDS. Safety operationally is regulated by OSHA, based on the MSDS among other things. I…

I learned about the CSB listening to the Causality podcast[0]. The various chemical plant mishaps described there make me think there's ample need for the CSB.

[0] https://engineered.network/causality/

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#148

Post by monkeyelite »

intermerda wrote: post #129
monkeyelite wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is some overtly unbiased information source, in opposition to the information sourced from the company which has obvious incentives. Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. > you are (possibly inadvertently) claiming that the company is also providing a different source of truth Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased…

> Yes I don’t believe in unbiased sources. I believe in multiple perspectives revealing aspects of the truth. Do you believe in priors? Or do you evaluate each perspective at its face value? > Correct. And I don’t buy the dichotomy you are framing of biased companies vs unbiased government. That's not the dichotomy here. It's a biased government acting on behalf of biased companies. > The term “objective truth” was j…

> Sounds like you are intentionally giving benefit of doubt to well-known bad faith actors.

Sounds like you are reasoning with emotional labels and not information.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#149

Post by monkeyelite »

ordu wrote: post #127
monkeyelite wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and will resolutely resist any interpretation of events which harms their narrow self-interest. I don’t know any group who intentionally acts against their interests.

Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism. Moreover it altruism is not just something that people do, because they are culturally programmed to believe, that altruism exists. Examples of altruistic behavior are known for many species, including those, that cannot pass complex concepts from one generation to the next by telling fairy tales to their offspring. Economics ten…

> Don't you think that economics biased you toward egoism?

Yes. Economists and critics often do not recognize intangible rewards and incentives.

> Altruism is very real thing, with very real examples of behavior influenced by altruism.

Now do second order reasoning. I didn’t say nobody ever does anything for anybody else. I said organizations do not generally act and support information which is not in their interests.

Re: U.S. Chemical Safety Board could be eliminated

#150

Post by monkeyelite »

ordu wrote: post #114
monkeyelite wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an objective source of truth An alternative source with different incentives and culture, not an objective one.

Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge. Going this way we'll risk to end up in a world, where there is no truth and no falsehoods. All we'll have is something in between. It would take just one small step to say that any two opinions are equal in their utility. You know, it is like Kremlin pr…

> Going this way we should ban the word "objective", because no knowledge can be objective, because you need a thinking subject to process raw data to create knowledge.

That’s a good observation. Generally when talking about humans in a political context and organizations in general it’s a misnomer.

There are other contexts where it’s not.

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