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Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

bbc.com

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Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#561

Post by ecoquant »

kube-system wrote: post #506

A piece of information in this article which is not in that article: > The family says Barnett's health declined because of the stresses of taking a stand against his longtime employer. > "He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks as a result of being subjected to the hostile work environment at Boeing," they said, "which we believe led to his death."

Then couple that with the stress of testifying. I have none of these issues but testifying like this would be hugely stressful.

I would have to suspect he felt trapped and this was the only way out of testifying.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#562

Post by hayst4ck »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #465
hayst4ck wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a deeply liberal American. MSM is not a far right dog whistle in the US. Words are indirect references to ideas and don't have any meaning without a receiver. All of these words have to be contextualized based on the speaker and receiver. The right are known for lying with the truth which makes a good amount of their rhetoric stick. Washington is a swamp, almost any American will agree no matter which side, that…

> The right are known for lying with the truth which makes a good amount of their rhetoric stick. replace right with humans, the left is also known for lying, which is why both sides are constantly bitching at each other. The extremes of both sides are just as shitty. One side would create harm via religion, the other side via reputation destruction.

> the left is also known for lying,

Democrats are known for lying for sure. Establishment democrats like Pelosi, definitely. If that's what "left" references OK, I don't really disagree. AOC and Bernie, Stewart, and other progressives are not generally known for lying.

> which is why both sides are constantly bitching at each other.

No. This is some weird false equivalency thing that is popular with "enlightened" people. Some of Americas top brass (Mattis and Milley) have nearly explicitly said that republican dogma is to divide and conquer.

  Mattis accused the president of pursuing a divisive strategy. 
  "[he] is the first president in my lifetime who does not
  try to unite the American people— does not even pretend to try.

  "Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences 
  of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the 
  consequences of three years without mature leadership," he said.
If one party explicitly tries to drive division, you are going to get it. It's no different than Ukraine's lack of unity with Russia. Of course there cannot be unity. Of course they are "bitching at each other." One is attempting to dictate to the other how it is going to be.

> reputation destruction

This is a load and a bad faith argument.

For one, it conflates reputation harm with reputation destruction in order to justify actions that should cause reputational harm. Second, when there is "destruction", it usually follows doubling down on the anti-social behavior that caused the reputational harm in the first place.

A world where reputations can be harmed is absolutely a better world. You can argue that sometimes there is non-proportional harm, ok, but that's not the usual argument. "I am against cancelling" is too often equivalent to "I am against consequences."

The very same people against "canceling" will turn around and claim that a store theft or car window smashing should be punished progressively disproportionately until it is a real deterrent to crime including death. Reputational harm until it is a deterrent to the thing that caused the reputational harm is the very same principle.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#563

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #519
wavemode wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about a company that shipped MCAS in its new planes without training pilots on what it was or how it worked, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people. So, an argument that this murder wouldn't be rational, gives me zero confidence that it didn't happen.

Pilots were trained in how to deal with runaway stab trim. There were three MCAS incidents. The first one you never hear about because the crew followed the runaway trim procedure and safely completed the flight. The second one did not and they crashed. The third received an Emergency Airworthiness Directive that reiterated the procedure, apparently forgot about it, and crashed. Yes, the MCAS design was defective. Th…

Like it or not, it's the truth.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#564

Post by whitepaint »

asystole wrote: post #228
aurareturn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine that he would go through all this, and then decide it's not worth it anymore at the very end of his testimony.

People under extreme mental stress tend not to act rationally.

Yet, in this case, aurareturn's comment seems way more plausible than yours.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#565

Post by torstenvl »

idw wrote: post #385
torstenvl wrote: post #4

"Self-inflicted wound"? Obviously the story is still developing but I'm immediately skeptical. EDIT: Also weird that BBC is already memory-holing that it was a gunshot wound. archive.is has the original. https://archive.is/wj0LE

It was a breach of their guidelines to report a method of suicide, so it sounds like they were just fixing that. This is standard in the UK because of evidence showing that reporting methods can be followed by further suicides. https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/harm-an... Suicide, Attempted Suicide, Self-Harm and Eating Disorders 5.3.45 Suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm should be portrayed w…

There's no definition of "responsible reporting" that involves hiding information from the public to support a policy goal.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#566

Post by falsandtru »

dang wrote: post #560
falsandtru wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you start making such belated arguments but the upvotes for that comment indicate that it was much more helpful to the viewer than flagging it to make it unreadable. And it does not avoid any moderation. What moderation was done? Here the flag serves only as censorship. It lacks objectivity and impartiality. Most people can't read what was written, they can only read your argument.

Moderation isn't driven by upvotes; it's there to compensate for the failures of the upvoting system. If HN could operate by upvotes alone, that would be great—it would be so much less work. Unfortunately, it can't. A lot of the things you're complaining about have been established practice on HN for many years. If you want to learn how HN works, I'd be happy to help with that. But it's time that you stopped posting…

So what is the avoided moderation and the failures of the upvoting system? Your rebuttal has too many irrelevant new arguments.

All I am saying here is that if some statements can't be read, others can't read the argument. An argument where others can't read one side's statements is not an equal argument. You must at least be able to make every comment you have conversed with readable. Otherwise it is just your speech.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#567

Post by [deleted] »

falsandtru wrote: post #351
willis936 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jon Stewart has a crusade against MSM for their role in the US-Iraq War. Is he dogwhistling to the far right when he uses the term?

Knowledge alone is enough to say thank you. There would be no need to be so careful in saying a simple thank you.

[deleted]

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#568

Post by mistermann »

mcv wrote: post #548
mistermann wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do "democracy", "functioning", "obviously", "don't", "is/am/are", have precise, useful and non-misinformative meanings in this context? In other important fields (anything involving money for example, or programming ), do we sometimes discuss things accurately , and consider things with respect to what is or may be possible, and (actually, objectively) true (basically: pursue optimality)? Might it be at least plausib…

You can deconstruct language all you want, but it's not going to change basic facts. You're not going to find quality education in North Korea. You will find it in Finland.

You can state your vague opinions as facts all you want, but it doesn't make them facts.

Imagine if we wrote code the way we talk about political matters, where trying to be correct was considered wrong, worthy of punishment or banishment.

Or for a more apt analogy: imagine if the inaccuracy and untruthfulness in threads like this was tried in a thread about technology right here on HN: do you think that would stand unchallenged, and do you think those challenging untruths would be considered to be doing it wrong?

> You're not going to find quality education in North Korea. You will find it in Finland.

Is Finland the absolute pinnacle of what's possible?

And is there some reason the US cannot replicate across the country the quality offered there?

Perhaps I missed the class where we learned we should not think about such things - rather, whatever intuition pops into our minds is correct, necessarily.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#569

Post by salawat »

jjk166 wrote: post #475
pclmulqdq wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been deposed? It's an incredibly stressful process, and he's already going through the hell of being a whistleblower. I'm sure Boeing was ready to depose him more and more in order to try to get him to shift his story.

Have you ever shot yourself? Certainly people have committed suicide in stressful situations, but there is no situation where it makes sense that someone would kill themselves, and countless people get deposed who don't. Continuing to depose someone to get them to shift their story is a reasonable strategy if their story can't be backed up by evidence and you aren't worried about anything coming out in the testimony.…

Thank you. You put it far better than I could. And this man was in the right position to know exactly where they all were.

A Quality Manager's entire job is to investigate and track why everything bad happens, and when they aren't allowed to fix it, who is responsible for the decision to intentionally not fix, and the rationale provided to justify an overrule. Though I've heard in some strange foreign lands (safety critical industries), the Quality Department isn't hamstrung by being worked around by a member of the C-Suite.

Re: Boeing whistleblower found dead in US

#570

Post by throwanem »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #545
throwanem wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of information renders such speculation necessarily vacuous, and it quickly degrades into dueling assertions of worldviews. There are lots of websites where that sort of thing runs unchecked. To the extent this isn't one, that's one of the reasons I prefer this one.

We do have information. the guy is a whistleblower, went to court day 1, missed court day 2, and was found dead in his vehicle of unnatural causes. attaching the adjective vacuous doesn't actually strengthen your point.

Leaving out "self-inflicted" obliterates yours.
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