Re: [tlug] silicon cash eater

[Benjamin Kowarsch <trijezdci@example.com>]

The German language has an interesting terminology for the phenomenon we are witnessing here:

voraus-eilender gehorsam.

Literally it means rushing-ahead obedience.

It refers to an attitude where one makes whatever excuses necessary to confirm the status quo for the sole purpose of conformance. In other words, artificially rationalising ones pro-establishment bias.

But the proof is in the pudding. Both the Three Mile Island and the Fukushima incidents were preceded by engineers issuing warnings and submitting reports about shortcomings that would later become fatal during the incident. In both cases these warnings and reports were ignored and swept under the carpet.

And since somebody mentioned it, the very same was the case with the Challenger explosion.


> On Jul 3, 2017, at 15:27, Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com> wrote:
> 
> On 2017-06-29 21:33 +0900 (Thu), Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
> 
>> And Fukushima is a good example of cost cutting without any concern
>> for safety whatsoever.
>> 
>> Which f***ing idiot would have been so f***ing stupid to put a
>> backup diesel generator for emergency cooling on the ground between
>> the beach and the plant?
> 
> I'm not buying this. My understanding is that the size of the tsunami
> wave exceeded their design parameters. Thus you can't call them idiots
> for a design that appears to have been adequate to handle the given
> design parameters; you can only claim that they were wrong to go with
> those design parameters.

I do not accept any of your premises at all.

Once you say "those are the design parameters" and take them as gospel, then you are already in cloud cuckoo land.

When so much is at stake, you need to think out of the box and ask "What if we are wrong with our assumptions?" and then "Can we use an entirely different approach that allows us to make fewer assumptions?"

And many engineers are trained to do just that. And their warnings and reports are all too often ignored by management. As happened at TEPCO and Three Mile Island.


>> Very evidently, they were more concerned about saving 50.000 to
>> 100.000 USD and not concerned with safety at all.
> 
> Wrong on two counts. They clearly had some concern about safety; that
> they had backup generators at all shows that.

They had concern for getting their regulatory clearance with the absolute bare minimum of expenditure.

regards
benjamin