Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
For once, there's nothing political or divisive. There's no one to be mad at. It's not "us or them".
The world's top experts came together, volunteered for a dangerous mission, sacrificed, and pulled it off. Ra! Ra! Humanity! Feels like a brief moment of redemption.
Except at the soccer coach who thought it was a good idea to endanger 12 children by going into a cave during monsoon season which also led to the death of an innocent person?
(Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein)
Just check the wiki page, he wrote it himself (under Major Themes, Militarism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
That's militarism.
I'm curious as to what would make you think otherwise?
Sources: https://sites.google.com/a/newmyths.com/nmwebsite/non_fictio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
“Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.” - Startship troopers [1]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2534973-starship-troop...
And since the only people who would be voting would be the ones who were or had done the dying, it's likely a very strong anti-war book, as one would presume only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought.
Pacifists happen to join armies less.
But also, Nazi leadership was on the shit end of the stick when it comes to WWI. That did not prevented them to start WWII. Instead, the experience normalized the violence for them and shaped their believes. On the other side, Stalin was fighter in particularly cruel war too in his formative years. Was not peaceful either.
Lastly and less importantly, people who had done dying don't vote, they are dead. Only people who survived previous war vote. And survivors often internalized values that are help to survive the war. They sometimes have hard time to adjust to peaceful life afterwards. Your presumption that "only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought" has no basis in reality.
Also, your theory assumes that enlisted soldiers actions are motivated primary by self-preservation and will vote on that. Some are, but many are not. Others are motivated by duty, career progression, pride, social status, honor, professionalism, tradition, salary, wish to prove themselves or simply by liking to be in the army structure. In case of your hypothetical army, many men will join for career in politics and social status reasons. People motivated primary by self preservation wont join your hypothetical army.
This may not have been what Heinlein intended to convey. But I tend not to find an author's advocacy relevant when reading fiction. I see the author as giving me rope to hang myself if I choose, rather than considering that they advocate anything at all. As I read it, militarism so permeated that society that the only possible contrarian point of view would come from the reader. And I thought that was the whole point of the book. It doesn't matter whether that's Heinlein's intent.
If it's true Heinlein just didn't convey the vast majority of Federal Service was non-military, and yet all we have to go on is the exclusively militaristic bent as written, that deficiency might make the book all the better just to have the ensuing ideological battles and discussions that resulted. And this book generated quite a lot of them at the time, and I see it as overwhelmingly beneficial.
A likely metaphor to the non-citizens of Starship Troopers are those who of their own volition do not enter into military service, do not vote, do not participate in government - exist in large numbers in the U.S. Most Americans now do not vote, they're simply along for the ride, and in effect aren't citizens in any meaningful way (other than perhaps they can't be deported - but in Starship Troopers it was a world government so there's no concept of deportation anyway).
We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad society found a way to save them, I just wish we took the every day threats to human life more seriously.
Because for better or worse, that’s not how most money is redistributed.
What do Thai Navy divers do? If there's no war on, they're probably training. What better training than a live rescue mission? I.e. the wages for those highly skilled Thai teams have probably been paid down already.
Similarly international forces benefit from co-operation because it's something they would want to do anyway: good will, training in co-operation, skills training.
As for volunteers their time is hardly a cost in the same way. But if you're a cave diving medic, the expected utility of using your time to save people in a cave is probably better than working and donating to a charity.
Failing to save these kids is the case you want to think about - that would be sending the message to the public that if your kid gets lost in the mountains we're not going to save them. Sure this particular "insurance claim" (in this impromptu parlance) was an expensive one, but most of the others aren't, and the thing about insurance is that it is there particularly when the costs are catastrophic.
These are different disasters. The cave impacted 13 random children. Hunger impacts millions of poor children. One is random, the other more predictable.
There are utilitarian arguments for numbing oneself to tragedy which predictably strikes those without resources while defending those visited by random misfortune. (Note: I am not arguing for this utilitarian calculus. Just describing it.)
Coarsely, what happened to these kids could happen to ours. Starvation, less likely. In-group selection is built into our natures, and that is on display here.
Practically, saving these kids takes a short burst of effort. Their families will pick up the slack thereafter because they have—on average—the resources to do so. Saving children from hunger takes long stretches of coördination, together with efforts to ensure their education (to prevent the problem from repeating in the next generation).
It is cruel, and there is probably a solution. But the analogy between these problems is flawed. With minimal assistance, the cave children will become self-sustaining again. That is not true for the chronically hungry.
We don't want to be humanly. We want to be praised for being humanly.
I need to coin a term for this concept, I see it on every Hacker News thread once it reaches a certain size. It is the attribution of the topic to some nefarious intention of a dude in marketing. Once you start noticing it you can't unsee.
Intel fires their CEO? It's a PR stunt.
Startup abandons Europe due to GDPR? PR STUNT!
AlphaZero beats professionals at Dota 2? You guessed it, it's just PR for oligarchy parent Alphabet.
I see this so often now it's becoming humorous. As if some how this being all about PR explains everything. It doesn't explain anything! Although I'm sure Bill over in marketing loves that he has subsumed the historical role of deity in explaining the unknown.
It's simply under-developed and has not become industrialized. When American or European children were dying at higher rates it wasn't because their parents were selfish. It reflected the rate of development of the continent.
Hunger was an issue after World War II in most of Europe, and the US came to their aid. The hunger there was not due to parents being selfish either.
http://www.newsweek.com/now-good-news-poor-are-getting-riche...
So they are probably (well, not probably)... they ARE going to have more kids whether you like it or not.
The question becomes how do we (Western society, which has more resources than we know what to do with) address the issue and try to do good in the world.
Be involved in how your governments and MNC's behave in these countries. These entities are more likely to pay attention when you, as a voter or customer with more disposable income, say something compared to the citizens of poorer countries who have less of a voice.
It's a natural response to the hardship. If the chance that the kid make it is 10%, then make 10 times more kids. That way you have around 100% chance that your lineage makes it through life.
In other words: In a society where 90% of children die and women have 10 births, one third of the mothers will lose all. All assuming the deaths are independent of course.
In poor countries children are your retirement savings, so at an individual level having more children is a rational decision. In many cases they aren't having more kids than they can afford--they can't afford not to have more kids. Even at a national level it's not clear that lowering birth rates without additional changes would help a country economically.
We shouldn't turn to ideals in an effort to ignore or abdicate responsibility in dealing with the reality we are given.
I'm only 25 so I don't know how I'll feel in 10-20 years, but right now this is part of my consideration when thinking about long-term goals and whether I'd want to have kids at some point. I might, so for that eventuality, plan B is to adopt. Plan C is to have one (and only one) kid, which already turns two parents into one descendant, so that's better than nothing.
The only thing I'm worried about is that smart families will do this and the stupid ones produce six. It's in the education and not in the genes... but it's also in the upbringing, and if they're brought up with the mentality of the kind of people who currently get six kids...
Now off to the Gulag!
Bill Gates and tens of thousands of aid workers globally. The Chinese Communist Party and businessmen who outsource labor from the overfed first world to the underfed third world are by far the biggest help. Also your aunt who volunteers at the soup kitchen. Often these efforts funded by donations or aid grants (tax money, paid by you and me) from our democratically elected governments.
>We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
Most of us can comprehend two (or more!) things at once. People are extremely mobilized about ending hunger and we have made strides against this in the last century: https://slides.ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-food-provision/
A few hundred people showed up to the cave for a few weeks. Tens of thousands show up to fight hunger every day.
If there is no food to spare, then all the money in the world won't solve the problem. If there is food to spare and people let children starve to death, then people are evil. (edit: there technically exists a third potential that there is absolutely no means of delivering food, but at that point, any discussion is pointless)
EDIT: I suppose this idea makes people uncomfortable because it implies that those same people might be evil even though they don't see themselves as evil. We all want the world to be a better place, but we don't want to be inconvenienced. Rather than do something, we give a few dollars in hopes of absolution. Writing posts about starving kids is easy. Moving 100LB bags of food 12 hours a day in Sudan is much harder. "Be the change you want to see in the world"
Do they die of malnutrition or governmental corruption? I thought it was proven in the 1980's that the problem isn't a lack of food, it's the degenerate political systems blocking aid from reaching those who are dying. At least that's the prevailing narrative on reddit.
When a million people died in the Irish potato famine, it wasn't just because the United Kingdom prevented foreign aid from reaching Ireland. Ireland was the breadbasket of the empire - throughout that entire time, it was a net exporter of food.
1. Food is free for the starving in many places around the world.
2. Where it isn't free, a meal of rice and beans is usually within reach of even the poorest.
3. Where it is out of reach of the poor, it may be due to corruption; ie North Korea redirecting food supplies to the army instead of the public, and withholding it from prison camps.
Don't fixate on the price or you'll miss the forest for the trees.
It is the handiwork of the rapists that beget these children.
When you try to get a kid out of a cave there is at least some hope of lasting success.
Billionaires like Bill Gates. Countless volunteer aid workers with organizations such as MSF.
Fact #1: Since 1960, child deaths have plummeted from 20 million a year to 6 million a year. [1] This was posted quite recently here on HN. Perhaps you missed it.
At the end of the day, the problem of child poverty and the death and suffering it causes is an enormous one but we are making progress on it. Could we do better? Yes. Could we do worse? Oh yes, way way worse.
[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Max-Roser-three-facts...
... without forgetting the holocaust a year that is still happening.
It’s so easy to forget how nasty Spanish flu, small pox and polio was. My grandfather has stories where they would burn people’s houses/huts with the people alive inside if they had contracted the disease. It was brutal. A curse that would wipe an entire enpire.
We can help the 13 because government is not the cause and there is nothing to undo, we cannot help the 3.1 as easily because it would take either removing the government in power to putting the 3.1 in further jeopardy trying to fix it. So the real question becomes, when will the world recognize that some small countries need outside governance to see to the needs of their people. Right now sovereignty is absolute unless the nation in question threatens a neighboring country.
When you have a small group dying of hunger because of a drought, it is easy to perceive what to do and your ability to realize it. So people are more likely to speak up.
If a drought affects an entire nation, you're at least aware this must be a complicated task. So you're more reluctant to criticize inaction.
That behavior is especially problematic when the solutions are abstract or long-term.
https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/obesity-a-bigger-problem-t...
There is plenty of money and resources out there to save all kids dying from easily preventable diarrheal diseases. There is no political will to do that.
I'd argue that this kind of belief is extremely valuable for a country's economics as a whole. In order for the populace to be economically productive (and save 50000 kids from dying of diarrheal diseas) you need to create a safe, reliable, and predictable environment. Governments insuring against events like kids getting lost in caves is the way that they get that.
My thinking is that we're a long way from that point -- there are numerous other, small, sacrifices that can be made.
I do have a respectful question though - are you, personally, acting to save those 50,000 kids? Is there an effective organization out there that accepts donations for this kind of thing, and if so, are you giving to them?
(The Martian by Andy Weir)
(Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card)
That book is fiction, fun to read but still made up.
https://www.everyonegoeshome.com/16-initiatives/
This is related to firefighting, but it's interesting to see what some of the things we are trying to fix are in terms of saving lives, and little is around technology, and much in the way of culture, safety.
His dead is bad news not good news. Everybody would be better off if this man survived. Him dying while trying to save others does not make it less tragic.
Let's not minimize his death by saying (as sibling comment did) that his dead somehow matters less or is less important because he was rescuer and thus different. His life had same value.
That said, the book is great read. Especially if you're into diving. It's just that it should not be read as a role model for anything but reckless regard of ones life.
Not to drift completely off-topic, here is a link to a long thread about Thailand cave rescue from the cave diving forums[1].
[1] http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php/35242-Football...
“Oh it’s a lovely day outside” “easy for you to say but don’t you know it’s raining at someone’s wedding in Omaha”
First, the first time I fasted I was quited stressed about it, and it was in controlled, cozy environment.
Second, they didn't know if anybody would come. Not even if somebody could come. For 9 days without eating and living in their own shit in the dark, they wondered.
I'm awaiting for the unavoidable book/movie, hoping they don't try to make it epic and get into real details about this.
Hollywood producers are already on the ground http://www.newsweek.com/hollywood-producers-head-thai-cave-r...
I would actually pay to see this.
Elon Musk is ahead of you - he has his government villain already: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785/phot...
Not to mention the cold.
There's a hero-story about the coach that's yet to be told I reckon.
He shared what little rations they had, and his condition was visibly worse than the children by the time they were found.
He also helped them by teaching them meditation, so as not to focus on their hunger.
Learning meditation is hard. Learning meditation when you are scared, hungry and in such a bad situation is extra hard.
So if the guy pulled it off with 12 terrorized famished kids for 9 days, he deserves his own temple.
Unfortunately it's why we are able to wage war. Was watching a documentary on the Vietnam war the other day and one guy was describing how he felt like an automaton that was focusing only on survival, which kept him from going insane, while another guy was describing how he felt no pain from his bullet injuries while trying to stay alive alone in the jungle for 3 days, only feeling pain after he was rescued.
But yeah, this coach is a hero for sure, I'm so glad they made it out.
Watched that episode with the South Vietnam veteran recalling that episode where he was left for dead (literally, by his own allies AND adversaries), crawled through the jungle for 3 days and only then felt the pain and smelled the nasty odor of the rotting flesh.
The coach probably didn't even take a wrong decision based on the information available at the time (it isn't rain season yet).
If you plan to enter deep into a huge cave, you check the weather forecast. Rainy season or not. And you don't enter if you see a chance of rain.
He failed on this one, and a man is dead because of it.
Now I'm don't think he should be blamed for it. It would be very unproductive.
But we certainly should make it a cautionary tale.
Sat in the dark, with no night and day, the bodies internal clock gets shot to pieces. They would have had no idea whether they had been there 3 days or 30
Water of course is a different story..I believe after 48 hours severe dehydration sets in...after 3 days...kaput.
It's not a physiological problem. It's a psychological one. When you ate everyday all your life, not eating is scary.
> I believe after 48 hours severe dehydration sets in...after 3 days...kaput.
You can live more than 3 days without water. Either with training, of because the conditions help (you don't move much, temperature and humidity are favorable, you don't eat, etc).
There are cases were human lived for 9 days without water.
But they had water near them so that was out of the equation.
You can go a few weeks without food. The cave is likely at a consistent enough temperature that you're not going to freeze to death (sweating is more likely to be your real issue), so the only real constraint is potable water.
It's also been commented that the children had no idea they were trapped for as long as 9 days. Quite likely, without any source of natural light, they lost track of time, which certainly would help ease some of the panic.
"At least 155 people have died in floods and landslides triggered by torrential rain in western Japan, says the government.
It is the highest death toll caused by rainfall that Japan has seen in more than three decades.
Rescuers are now digging through mud and rubble in a race to find survivors, as dozens are still missing.
About two million people have been evacuated from the region after rivers burst their banks."
(BBC, "Japan floods: 155 killed after torrential rain and landslides", 10 Jul 2018)
How do we save a dozen kids trapped in a cave? If we put together some resources we can save all their lives within a week or so.
Also, starving kids have traditionally motivated enormous outpourings of effort, so your hypothetical straw man comparison isn't very accurate.
Hopefully it will go as a +1 in our ledger if the fate of our species is ever decided
Highlight:
> "This man...drove more than 200 km just to give ice-cream to the rescue team"
While this level of selflessness and generosity can be found almost anywhere, the Thais are truly some of the most gracious people you'll meet. That country is a gem.
The society is currently torn apart politically (similar, but different, to the polarization in the US) so good to see something unite the nation. And with such a happy ending, too.
What are your thoughts on how technology advancement in the next 30 years would change the way of this kind of rescue mission? Say in 2040, can a group of robots finish the mission in one day with ease? That will be awesome, people can be rescued from bad situations much sooner.
Remember even as of today AI can compete on a high level of huge video games, face recognition, natural language processing, playing Go/Chess game, etc. Imagine in 30 years, all the robots, armed with AI and made of materials a few times stronger than whatever we have today, should be able to scan, learn, adapt and go. Another minor point, the robots can probably carry some heavy machines (or laser guns) and just pound hard on the cave's narrow sections to make the passage wider. Etc.
By that time even poor kids in rural Thailand will be carrying smartphones on them at all times.
Those, combined with location-based awareness will warn them just as they're about to enter the cave "uh, are you sure you want to do that? Look at the current weather forecast....".
The weekend before they found them my wife told me that a monk who was praying for them at the cave said that a ghost[1] was hiding them from the eyes of the divers until Monday[2]. They shouldn't be worried about the children and their coach as the ghost would take care of them. To my surprise they found them on that Monday.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/06/27/world/asia/ap-as... [2] I don't have a source as my wife was just scrolling through her Facebook feed
Cost or donation, can we expect the same for every child in need?
Helping every child in poverty requires a long term paced effort rather than a one time heroic one. As inspiring as this rescue was, it doesn't scale.
[0] http://www.humanosphere.org/world-politics/2014/10/united-st...
For me it seems as some sort of artefact of human cognition. (Mercilessly used by "last minute" opportunities by salesmen... and journalist.)
We're much better at dealing with time-bounded, localizable problems.
Stalin's quote about tragedies and statistics comes to mind.
There as Quote Investigator article on it, it is again a much older quote. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/
If this quality is order of magnitude lower than other less exciting solutions (e.g. access to medicine and education for kids from poor families), then we should be aware that what we pay for is not lives saved, but an emotional entertainment show.
Someone asked him why he didn't instead pour that energy into helping homeless people. His response was something to the effect that there were plenty of others helping people; his passion was the dogs. I believe he also turned the question around: what are you doing to help the homeless?
A few dozen cave divers can't do much to help the millions of impoverished children, but they used their skills to perform heroic and deadly feats to help 12 children and their coach, and inspired many around the world to ask themselves these types of questions.
Reducing that to a cost-benefit analysis vs some vague "but can't we spend that effort on the other lost kids?" question is both impossible and missing the point.
I love how the global diving community came together to rescue them, it's unfortunate that Petty Officer Saman Gunan died after doing a run of oxygen tanks to the caves though.
I even liked how Musk came out of left field "grab that tube, we're making a rescue pod!" and then hopped on a plane with it when it was tested and ready. While it didn't really matter I like that sort of thinking outside of the box and how he just dropped everything he was doing and set people to work on it and then took it over anyway in the event it will ever been needed in the future, I really wish more people had that go-the-extra-mile attitude.
This was egoism at its finest, taking public credit for 'helping' with a rescue he wasn't invited or asked to help with. And the media ate it up hook, line and sinker.
A good idea now would be to send money to the family of the driver who died. That would be helpful.
Even if he did, he didn't interfere or impede rescue efforts and gave them a tool they could possible use in the future. It's cool and a nice thing to do, and doesn't really seem like a big deal.
And yeah, he probably doesn't have all the domain knowledge needed, but I reckon he had some help. Example; the 6 or so people seen on the video when they tested the tube.
I really can't see why people are bashing him. Yes, he was public about it, but he also created something that seems to work, and if it's a prototype, that prototype can be used for further development. It feels like nothing speeds up R&D like a crisis.
His idea was stupid and useless anyway. It just came off as if he wanted to play the hero and build a Batsub in his mansion to deploy it and rescue the stranded children.
It was a good alternative to telling them to hold their breath and dragging them through dark and claustrophobic submerged spaces...
They tested it to make sure it was water-tight and easy to maneuver. Worst case you throw an oxygen tank in it and put a full-face regulator on each kid in the event it would have filled with water (which I'm imagining they did in the water anyway). Much easier to control a panicking child in a tube where he can't get at your hoses or slam his head into a rock.
I don't really understand how the more claustrophobic "submarine" capsule would be an improvement on this.
Also much easier to get said child into a state of panic by sticking them in a claustrophobia-inducing tube. Also, whatever manoeuvrability characteristics the sub might have had, it was still a rigid tube bigger than the child inside. They were navigating caves, where some of the tunnels were hard to navigate by a single (flexible) adult. I _really_ wouldn't want to even chance getting the sub stuck on a tunnel.
You can't say that?! Those SEALs train ALL the time so they have training to fall back on when things happen. You can't introduce something like this and expect them to use it. They would have no training to fall back on.
I know there is a huge anti-Musk sentiment lately. Whatever you think of the guy, I think it's commendable that he used what resources he had to attempt to help.
People can blast him all they want for his 'egoism', but sitting behind the keyboard mocking him is even less helpful than what you accuse him of doing.
Musk injected himself into this situation as only a narcissist can and decided to PR the hell out of it.
Yeah, there's just a bit of anti-Musk sentiment lately, but he brings it on himself.
[0] I don't think they should. I think businesses should stay out of it. Even the ones helping would do themselves a favor and play down their involvement. It's the respectful thing to do.
Because this wasn't Tesla or SpaceX taking out an ad and saying 'look at all the good we can do!' this was a human using resources in his means to help a situation. In the end it was futile, but it's pretty amazing that they were able to prototype something in days and offer support in the way they know.
Sure, you can argue he's a narcissist, but the public made him that way. His entire legacy and fortune was built on PR, which we gave him on a silver platter. Now all of a sudden it's become bad taste to support him, and everyone flips and expects him to slink away into the shadows.
There was literally 0 net negative from his move. Sure he got his name thrown around headlines, but it didn't take away from the hundreds of people who contributed.
Why is being critical of someone so much more important than acknowledging an act of kindness?
How can people be so blind to think he did this solely out of kindness? Pfffffffftttt!!
The public can't make someone a narcissist.
Granted, Musk probably is thinking he's providing relevant skills, but the concept has several potentially problematic things (most notably, the fact that you're basically doing an underground canoe portage and the fact that spending extended periods of time in a claustrophobic space is likely to be panic-inducing for the children). It doesn't sound like he fielded the advice of anyone who had actually had experience doing cave diving or caving rescue to figure out what problems are likely to come up. Indeed, from the response of the Thai coordinators, it sounds like the general sentiment on their end was a politely-worded "go away, you're not helping."
So while the sentiment of trying to help can be positive, this attempt does feel like it crossed a tad too far into counterproductive territory.
From what I understand, he got involved while rescuers were still considering their options.
There is also a tragedy going on in Japan right now with a lot of people actually with us no more. But a few million people with flooded homes is a 'statistic' whereas a few boys in a cave is a 'tragedy' to paraphrase Stalin.
I think that there is a time for offering assistance in a big public way, there is also the 'George Michael' approach. He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought. When he passed away a lot of people then learned how many people he had extended his hand of friendship to.
The office of Thailand’s prime minister has thanked the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk for his offers of help. Officials praised his mini-submarine but said it was not needed. Musk praised the "outstanding rescue team" but questioned the expertise of the official who turned down his submarine.
He inserts himself into the event (but contributed nothing), requiring the Prime Minister to kiss his ass (again, when he contributed nothing), then criticizes the people who saved the kids for not using his idea.
I know talking about voting is generally forbidden, but there is no reason for the parent to be flagged. It's not my favorite post ever on HN, but criticizing Musk isn't a violation of HN rules. Several other posts that criticizes him are also flagged (though some of them are pretty useless comments).
Okay, you are cynical.
But in all seriousness given the domain knowledge that Musk has at his disposal he was perfectly entitled to get involved.
Tweeting his thoughts is pretty much how he rolls ...
But it's conceivable that his expertise could have been useful.
Did any other organisations offer subterranean expertise? Genuine question, e.g. mining companies, drilling, or was it just that Musk made the most noise about it?
There is no evidence presented that Musk, nor any of his companies, has any of this kind of useful expertise.
[1] Emphasis here on vertical shafts. There is a world of difference between a tunnel-boring machine that tends to remain within a single geological stratum and a vertical shaft that is constantly cutting through several strata of different kinds of rock (that require different cutting techniques).
> There is no evidence presented that Musk, nor any of his companies, has any of this kind of useful expertise
https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/
> There is a world of difference between a tunnel-boring machine
Yeah it wasn't the machine he was offering but the expertise.
I get it, you've got it in for Musk. Fair enough, and I'm not out to hero worship him but lets be fair here - he did offer to help, and did so in good faith.
My contention isn't that Musk didn't make a good-faith offer to help, it's that Musk didn't have anything useful to offer. The end result is that would come across as something like this: https://xkcd.com/793/.
There is also a tragedy going on in Japan right now with a lot of people actually with us no more. But a few million people with flooded homes is a 'statistic' whereas a few boys in a cave is a 'tragedy' to paraphrase Stalin.
I think that there is a time for offering assistance in a big public way, there is also the 'George Michael' approach. He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought. When he passed away a lot of people then learned how many people he had extended his hand of friendship to.
This is true, and a tragedy, but I think it's natural for "12 kids in great jeopardy" to draw more interest than 100+ people who are already gone due to a flood and perhaps couldn't have been saved.
To be honest had the kids been found dead in the cave, it would have been a relative blip on Western media like the flood deaths in Japan or the 41 dead in the sinking of the Phuket tourist boat.
"He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought"
In this case, talking about it on Twitter was probably an easy way to get in touch with the relevant authorities at the rescue site.
Similarly, when he offered PowerWall batteries to help Puerto Rico, perhaps that made it easy for people who knew where they were needed to get in touch with him.
There was talk about having the kids wait in there until as late as November, or maybe a long process of drilling an escape hole.
If the rescue had begun a week or two later, perhaps Musk's gadget would have been used. As it is, the divers already had a plan that, by the time Musk arrived, appeared to be working well.
But yeah, he tweets a lot about his projects, and no doubt has some thought toward self-promotion.
He appears to follow through, so I can't be too cynical about his apparent opportunism.
But he did also send 700 or so PowerWall batteries to Puerto Rico for hospitals and whatnot.
The cave was too narrow in sections for a diver to pass through still wearing his cylinders. How exactly was a sub supposed to get in?
The problem may have been more that it would be too long to navigate some bends in the caves.
It also occurs to me that, being made of aluminum, the tube would act like a giant heatsink in the cold water, chilling whoever was inside.
But with more time before the rescue, and by consulting with divers familiar with the caves, the problems might have been worked out.
So, yeah, taking the tube to Thailand was kind of pointless, but I guess at least shows that it wasn't just empty tweeting. There was an effort.
I got the feeling that he just jumped in on that, without further thinking (which at least to me seems sympathetic). Got the feeling that it rather hurt their PR as people were quick to call it a PR stunt, which is foreseeable if you mainly think about PR.
Seriously though, there's a strong cult of personality at play and HN readers frequently downvote any comment that is even slightly negative about Musk or Tesla or SpaceX.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/07/10/tesla-c...
Seriously, I can't wrap my head around it. The kids were stranded 2.5 miles inside the cave. All anyone knew was that the kids didn't return form their hike. How does that lead to "Hey, let's dive into the cave and maybe we'll find live children"?
I guess they were expecting the worst, but still.
One of their class mates knew they'd gone to the cave, apparently as an initiation to the team, writing their names in the wall. Their bags were found outside the entrance
They only went into the entrance of the cave but sudden monsoon rains blocked it and forced them further in as the water rose, all the way to 2.5km in to an elevated section
- “A ranger of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation alerted authorities to the missing group after seeing their unclaimed belongings at the cave entrance.”
- “Volanthen was placing guidelines in the cave to later assist others in navigation. He ran out of line, which led him to swim to the surface—there, he found the missing team and its coach.”
I've talked to cavers that say they need to set alarm clocks otherwise they will be inside the cave for days without noticing (thinking it's hours), which can be quite dangerous if you're not getting hydrated.
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=8WrmCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA154&l...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9dG5KSD-8J4
>footage ... showing the moment the ship's cook was rescued from an air bubble on the ship, two days after the ship capsized
> Volanthen is a computer engineer who runs marathons in his spare time and lives in Bristol.
These guys are basically superheroes.
Would be interesting to know if at some point they were separated and if not, how they kept together in the dark.
It doesn't really add up as it's been told. The death of the expert diver too seems very strange.
An expert diver who was delivering spare oxygen (or was it air), with a buddy, in a system in which a static line had been placed, and in which presumably a dive leader was managing operations and wouldn't allow a diver to return without a suitable amount of air .. in that situation they simply ran out of air? It seems so unlikely.
I just assumed that he got trapped, or carried by a current, or died in what might be perceived as a "stupid" way and they didn't want to mention it as it might hinder the rescue or sully the man's memory.
Maybe it's denial on my part.
Imagine you are in pitch black darkness, with limited visibility even with torches. The water is moving, there isn’t a GPS equivalent, it’s real hard to keep track of position other than markers on a rope.
There can be castrophobicially small tunnels that you need to crawl through. Add bulky gear to the scenario. There can be sharp edges that can tear through skin or gear. Worse, there can be stones in the water stream shooting at you.
There is so much that is an element of luck.
This is one of the reasons that interest me so much in robotics. Imagine being able to send 10’s of robots that can map the entire cave in parallel and send the accurate position of the kids. Not only that, but they can autonomously deliver important gear like food, oxygen, heat blankets e.t.c while human divers prepare for rescue. The man-machine patnership can potentially save so many lives.
I strongly believe the future of exploration/rescue is all about how smart + cheap we can make our robots. It’s so much cheaper sending robots than humans to dangerous missions.
The other possibility is that the various elevation diagrams published by the media may well be wrong. The only proper survey I have seen by cavers is the plan view (for example here: https://www.caverescue.org.uk/luang-nang-non-cave-rescue-tha... ). It looks like the produced diagrams have been... "estimated" from reports of what the rescuers were experiencing. The cave may have filled up from the entrance first and chased the team up the cave.
Or maybe the water level fell after that first rain stopped.
1. Current events.
2. Sports tournaments.
The information entropy level is quite high, with basically no ads, extremely good formatting (relevant tables, charts etc.), and relatively unbiased.
This doesn't even mention the benefit of getting simple background information on the subjects with just a simple click (or even a hover these days)
It's really a treasure.
Actually, isn't it the * best * first website to learn about anything?
This is the natural result for a website written by users (those with lots of knowledge write it for others who have lots of knowledge). Even simple wikipedia is not immune to this, due to explaining the concept theoretically instead of taking example problems.
I do not mean to say that I think wikipedia is bad or that others do better. I'm not even sure such a problem is solvable at all (making it useful for both beginners and experts)
Some topics have excellent coverage, others are barely touched so ymmv.
As in you read several books about a medical condition, and then see what Wikipedia says about it? Because if you just start by reading the Wikipedia article, you'd have no idea whether it's wrong or not. (It's usually wrong.)
I'm surprised at the idea though, and pretty skeptical that it's actually the case since I would have assumed many others with medical knowledge would also have noticed, and one of them would have corrected things eventually.
[1]: "During the 1852 campaign between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig Winfield Scott, Justice John McKinley died in July. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig who was not running for reelection, nominated three candidates — one in August, one in January and one in February. The Democratic-controlled Senate took no action on two candidates and the third withdrew after the Senate postponed a vote until after inauguration. One of Fillmore’s nominations was never even considered by the Senate, while the other was simply tabled." from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/...
Similar to a pocket veto, not acting upon a nomination is a form of action. It's an indirect mechanism to reject a nominee.
I'm pretty sure changing this to mandate a hearing within a fixed number of days would require a constitutional amendment, not just a regular law, so is essentially impossible.
"Unprecedented in recent history" is misleading sensationalism.
1. Craft an essay on the Talk page explaining why your modifications are well sourced and should not be changed
2. Camp the page for modifications
Both of which require much more time than it took to write OP's comment above.
When I ventured to the 'Talk' page, I was surprised to see so many edits and comments from editors.
This was for a little known company in a niche field with little traffic or chance to profit. Yet the editors were as diligent as ever.
3. Car Model history
crazy the amount of information available on wiki around automobiles/auto programs (DARPA, etc)
these are qualities of a low entropy system.
Heck, I remember the day the news broke, I thought "Wow, so many news articles on this... let me just head to Wikipedia and see the consensus.
The news had broken just hours beforehand, and already Wikipedia had all the info and a creative-commons graphic of a map of the cave.
I'm not from US and never been to US either. But many of these stories are heart-breaking.
Thanks for the info.
Here is Jeh Johnson talking about the separation of kids from their arrested parents: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/24/obama_dhs...
But several years ago nobody really cared, which tells me, nobody really cares that much now — it’s just yet another tool to generate the rabid hysteria necessary to bolster midterm elections prospects.
Every week it’s literally another outrage, while the previous week’s outrage is quickly forgotten. This shouldn’t be a political thread, but since someone seems to be following the “outrage playbook” by making a comment about the detention of those arrested for illegal immigration under Trump, but likely never said anything when it happened under prior administrations —- it is important that we call out political manipulation when we see it.
Perhaps if those opposing Trump had actually protested about kid-detention years ago when it started, maybe I might consider their outrage genuine. But now, people are using detained children for political gain, which is pretty disgusting in my opinion.
It’s fasionable to pretend to hate Trump, I get it. But it’s funny how people seem to fall all over themselves to express how “woke” they are. Implying that before Trump they were all sleeping? Because in the case of detained children, they sure as hell were sleeping — because their guy was in the White House.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/07/609225537...
There are weekly outrages because these people are shitty, dishonest, incompetent people.
It's not just a minor disagreement in some technical bit of policy that causes an arch-conservative like George Will to urge people to 'vote Democrat' come November:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/vote-against-the-gop...
is it callous to ask whether there isn't a more efficient (from the perspective of actually helping a significant number of people) way to allocate these resources? there are a lot of lives that could be changed for way less.
Certainly, there are logistical costs in moving material around, but if an active US Navy ship isn't deployed on a humanitarian mission it's either patrolling or training.
It's still a sizable cost, but it'd be a lot less than expected if sunk expenditures were removed.
1) It's a fun challenge to try to solve, particularly when traditional solutions seem to be failing.
2) You get to help some people.
3) It's great publicity for you and your companies, particularly if you succeed in an out of the box way.
And other people would have of course have had radically different motivations for why they chose to get involved. There's no grand overseer that found it reasonable to 'spend' or risk a life. It all comes down to completely subjective views, motivations, and value systems. So if you want to know why what any given individual would do is something they would consider reasonable, you would need to ask them. There is no right or wrong answer. In this case the diver's motivations and value determinations convinced him that this was a reasonable spot to risk his life, and he died. I expect he had no regrets and so it was, all things considered, a great way to die from his perspective. By contrast, it would be a terrible way to die from the perspective of many others. Nobody's right, or wrong. It's just different motivations and value determinations.
You implicitly posed an interesting moral question. Can history justify the deaths of 3.3-6+ million (Holodomor), 4+million (dekulakization), 5 million (1921 famine, admittedly coincident with the civil war) when compared to the planned atrocities of the Nazis if we credit those deaths with greatly contributing towards the defeat of the Hitler and the NSDAP?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-capitalist_and_co...
The introduction to the article even makes this clear:
> Of the 66 states listed here, 9 of them are republics ruled by a socialist, communist or anticapitalist party, five of them are official socialist states ruled by a communist party, of them four of them espouse Marxism–Leninism (China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam) while the fifth (North Korea) espouses Juche.
You are probably looking for the current article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state#List_of_curren..., or the historical article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states.
Thanks for the links, they are a much better jumping off point. I cross-referenced [0] with the tables on [1] and population data from [2] to build this list for further analysis:
Country *ist since Total wealth (USD) Mean wealth/adult (USD) Median wealth/adult (USD)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
China 1 October 1949 29,000 billion 26,872 6,689
Pop 2017: 1.386 billion Pop 1949: 542 million* Pop growth/year: 12.41 million
Laos 2 December 1975 22 billion 5,662 1,382
Pop 2017: 6.758 million Pop 1975: 3.042 million Pop growth/year: 88,476
Vietnam 2 July 1976 358 billion 5,391 2,235
Pop 2017: 95.54 million Pop 1976: 49.81 million Pop growth/year: 1.12 million
Bangladesh 11 April 1971 263 billion 2,612 1,587
Pop 2017: 164.67 million Pop 1971: 66.42 million Pop growth/year: 2.14 million
Guyana 6 October 1980 2 billion 5,345 2,510
Pop 2017: 777,859 Pop 1980: 780,153 Pop growth/year: -62
India 18 December 1976 4,987 billion 8,976 4,295
Pop 2017: 1.339 billion Pop 1976: 635.77 million Pop growth/year: 17.15 million
Nepal 20 September 2015 40 billion 2,392 1,151
Pop 2017: 29.30 million Pop 2015: 28.66 million Pop growth/year: 320,000
Portugal 2 April 1976 750 billion 89,437 38,242
Pop 2017: 10.29 million Pop 1976: 9.4 million Pop growth/year: 21,707
Sri Lanka 7 September 1978 68 billion 4,802 2,448
Pop 2017: 21.44 million Pop 1978: 14.53 million Pop growth/year: 177,179
Tanzania 26 April 1964 22 billion 858 510
Pop 2017: 57.31 million Pop 1964: 11.34 million Pop growth/year: 867,358
*https://countryeconomy.com/demography/population/china?year=1949
Missing data for: Cuba, North Korea
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_state#List_of_curren...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org
[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.KD?location...
[4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
For example, there's plenty of communist countries that had industrialism but failed to grow economically as much as capitalist peers as examples. I'm unaware of many (any?) examples counter to this.
--edit--
Note that I thought this comment chain was at max reply depth, this comment was a reply to scotty79 not the parent.
Your link provides a nice graph [1] showing that USSR and many countries that were capitalist had similar GDP per capita in 1913, but diverged wildly over the following years. I suspect academic has such a graph including more countries along with some rating of how the underlying economic system worked. It would be interesting to see that. I am aware of a decent amount of economic literature that does credit capitalism as a major force for pulling billions out of poverty.
Your page seems to back up my point, does it not?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_USSR_GDP_per...
I believe that the graph does in fact support your conclusions.
I imagine if someone could accurately answer your question they'd win a Nobel Prize. But there is little doubt free market economies vastly outperform centralized economies. Plus free markets are about exercising freedom over how your labor and assets are used. So yay freedom.
Capitalism is the distribution method enforced by the military by the rent-seeking ruling classes. Like democracy, it sucks but it's better than what was tried before.
Or is it?
This (more than literally anything else) has made a staggering improvement in the lives of hundreds of millions of people over the last few decades.
That said, I wouldn't call purchasing cheap clothes "promoting capitalism".
I'm still interested in user merpnderp's answer.
It's probably the biggest, most important claim of the millennium. And it is really, really good for hundreds of millions (maybe billions).
These two are pretty good start points. [1] [2]
In short, globalization converted hundreds of millions of would-be Chinese farmers into middle class urbanites in about one generation.
It is the most massive improvement of quality of life in world history. It is staggering to consider how much life has improved for so many people in such a short amount of time.
This is basically step one of "how do we save the world". First get everyone to a baseline standard of living, then instill ideas of sustainability and environmentalism, then try to boost everyone to a more than bearable standard of living sustainably.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-sto...
[2] https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/how-has-globalization...
"More than half the world’s supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, with 20% of cobalt exported coming from artisanal mines in the southern part of the country. In 2012, Unicef estimated that there were 40,000 children working in all the mines across the south, many involved in mining cobalt."
"Adult miners dig up to 600ft below the surface using basic tools, without protective clothing or modern machinery. Sometimes the children are sent down into the narrow makeshift chambers where there is constant danger of collapse.
"Cobalt is such a health hazard that it has a respiratory disease named after it – cobalt lung, a form of pneumonia which causes coughing and leads to permanent incapacity and even death.
"Even simply eating vegetables grown in local soil can cause vomiting and diarrhoea, thyroid damage and fatal lung diseases, while birds and fish cannot survive in the area.
"No one knows quite how many children have died mining cobalt in the Katanga region in the south-east of the country. The UN estimates 80 a year, but many more deaths go unregistered, with the bodies buried in the rubble of collapsed tunnels. Others survive but with chronic diseases which destroy their young lives. Girls as young as ten in the mines are subjected to sexual attacks and many become pregnant.
The cobalt "ends up in smartphones, cars and computers sold to millions across the world, by household brands including Apple, Microsoft and Vodafone"
"Car maker Tesla – the market leader in electric vehicles – plans to produce 500,000 cars per year starting in 2018, and will need 7,800 tons of cobalt to achieve this. Sales are expected to hit 4.4 million by 2021. It means the price of cobalt will soar as the world gears itself up for the electric car revolution, and there is evidence some corporations are cancelling their contracts with regulated mines using industrial technology, and turning increasingly to the cheaper mines using human labour."
[1] - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4764208/Child-miners...
[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/19/c...
If the overall trend is to bring prosperity and increased standards of living to an area (which it generally appears to be), then globalization is a net win.
That doesn't mean it's a win for everyone all the time.
But over time, these sorts of humanitarian concerns melt away as countries grow richer and start behaving more humanely because they can afford to.
Rich nations tend not to have child labor. It's not because they're more moral, per se. It's just that they can afford a reasonable standard of living without child labor.
GDP per capita in DRC is $500 per year, so, yeah, parents are going to do what they have to to survive.
Africa also has lots of special problems like corruption that don't result from globalization and capitalism.
Capitalism is also farm subsidies, tax breaks and other corporate handouts given by rich nations that destroy the farming industries in poor countries. Capitalism (as currently practised, or in its purest, unregulated form) is not an untarnished 'good' by itself.
This is without considering how capital is leveraged to the detriment of anything protecting poor people in order to extract more profits (by lobbying, quid-pro-quo deals, or threats to stop investments). See the recent insane row over breastfeeding vs. formula at the UN, and what force was brought to bear on Nicaragua.
The optimistic narrative that I adopt hopes/assumes that we'll somehow become more sensible on these issues as time goes on.
You're of course correct that industrialization has an outsize positive impact initially. But it's pretty silly to ignore the eventuality of "and then Bill Gates donates money to make the world better!"
India and China were doing fine until the Europeans came and subjugated them. There was some upheaval when the Europeans left and created a power vacuum. Shockingly, being conquered and ceded and the related civil unrest could also be blamed for (for example) strongman dictators that happened to come into power and cause famines, or genocide and sectarian strife. A lot of that conquering was done in the name of capitalism. (The British East India company, specifically).
Capitalism is fine, it serves the purpose of obtaining a local optimum in certain trade situations. But it is a completely amoral theory. All it tells us is if this, then that. It is a set of formulas.
Sometimes it creates net good, because it causes us to have more efficient and liquid markets, overall creating more wealth for those allowed to participate in the market. But other times it tells us, these people should starve or go homeless, because they don't create economic value. (In true, unbridled capitalism, a lot of marginalized people would simply die). The number of people who don't create economic value will clearly increase if automation of 'work' continues.
And how is freely trading your labor and goods for other's labor and goods an immoral system? I would call capitalism the most moral system we've ever devised. I assume you would think some central authority should decide who gets and does what, in some system that graph theory quickly shows runs into O2 complexity with node to node interactions swamping any decision making authority. FYI, having an authority tell people what they can and can't do with their labor sounds suspiciously like slavery, or exactly how the majority of people in India and China lived most of their lives pre-contact - as serfs, just like the rest of the world.
GP said "amoral" not "immoral". Morality is only a factor in capitalism in so much as it informs the decisions of the actors involved. Both truly moral activities and truly immoral activities can coexist in a capitalist system.
Not immoral, amoral. Capitalism as a system doesn't make moral judgements. Guns, child sex-slaves and heroin follow the same principles as wheat and butter. We make moral judgements about them, but the market does not. It just weighs.
I understand the complexity issue fine. Complex markets are likely NP hard. As I said, capitalism (specifically free trade) is an okay heuristic for reaching a local optimum, but it is certainly possible that we could do greater good under a different system with a better heuristic that actually takes into account what good is.
Anyway, it doesn't deserve to be your primary compass for making the world better. Following the maxim of bettering capitalism at all costs can lead you down some decidedly twisted paths.
If anything, Adam Smith's most famous work on free trade was a critical moral point in ending English slavery, which dovetailed nicely in with reformed Christian beliefs against slavery.
And free trade capitalism is just a tool, but a tool so powerful it lifts billions out of poverty even when they're ruled by totalitarian governments. Or would you argue that the US's efforts to reform Chinese communism were more effective than it's efforts in engaging in free trade, in helping alleviate the suffering tens of millions? We should all support freedom and democracy, but lets not kid ourself about the power of free trade markets to improve people's lives faster than simply advocating for the vote and free speech.
> I'm enslaving you and stealing your capital in the name of a free market system which believes every person is the owner and price arbitrar of their own labor.
Capitalism is a practical theory, you can't create your own utopian free market system where people's 'rights' to property are magically enforced.
There's no rule or capitalist ethos saying that I can't simply take your stuff if I have the resources to do so. In fact, as far as I can tell, the objective is for me to take your stuff. If I can trade nothing of mine for everything of yours, I'm simply maximizing my profits. Pat on the head for me! You need an outside theory to understand property rights, courtesy of someone like John Locke.
But saying Indians or Chinese didn't have a system of property rights or government before the Europeans saved them with capitalism, is wrong and a bit racist. As if everything in the rest of the world was awful before the white-man came and created civilization to save the savages.
> And free trade capitalism is just a tool, but a tool so powerful it lifts billions out of poverty even when they're ruled by totalitarian governments.
This is a rhetorical platitude. I'm supposed to believe it because you believe it, and you keep repeating it, but you haven't provided evidence that it's actually true.
> Or would you argue that the US's efforts to reform Chinese communism were more effective than it's efforts in engaging in free trade, in helping alleviate the suffering tens of millions?
I think the US has had little to do with China solving it's internal problems. (Which arguably, it still hasn't entirely solved, my pessimistic view is that it has simply taken a break). Also, let's talk about those factories with subhuman working conditions in Shenzhen where people commit suicide and make iPhones. Free trade, yay.
> We should all support freedom and democracy, but lets not kid ourself about the power of free trade markets to improve people's lives faster than simply advocating for the vote and free speech.
I'm not saying free trade is bad, but what I am saying is that it is terrible as a #1 guiding principle. You need something more substantive than that.
For what it's worth, I do my part in criticising capitalism, spreading the works of those who also criticise it, and prompting people to think of alternative modes of production. I think that not only has capitalism saved a great many lives, but it's improved a great many too. That doesn't mean that it should be here to say, nor that its evils can be ignored. To use an analogy, capitalism is the boat one can use to cross the river; you don't carry the boat with you once you've finished.
In another system you refer to capitalism as simply being "freely trading labour and goods". To me, this shows your ignorance of the history of capitalism, and what it is today. Have you read "The Origin of Capitalism"[0] or any contemporary critiques, such as those of the Frankfurt School?
In short, capitalism requires a lot of separation and very strange ideas of liberty, which all rely on quite a neat subjectivist-individualist approach.
[0] https://www.versobooks.com/books/2407-the-origin-of-capitali...
Second, unless you are a diplomat or a policy maker (er, removed), I don't think you're promoting capitalism more than the rest of us.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17498676 and marked it off-topic.
Diving in caves is dangerous as f.. and requires a special training. Not sure that cave diving is part of a Navy Seal training. I read the dive out of the cave takes five hours. Hands of to the SEALS and kids for pulling it off.
The question was put to him by random people on Twitter, not by the Thai government. His initial response that he thought the Thai government had it in hand.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785
It shows correspondance with one of the dive team, urging Musk to continue with the sub.
Other teams from other organisations were also working on similar things: https://twitter.com/Jiradett/status/1016690284619599873
I don't know what level of social ineptness is required to ignore not only the blatant insult against the chief, but Musk's presumably unintentional insult to the rest of the team that informed the chief what they thought about Musk's idea to carry a 300lb tube through volatile currents in a tight, murky cave system.
Talk about domain specialization.
As I posted elsewhere, all this angry arguing about Musk, pro or con, is as meaningful as angry arguing about Spider-Man. Since you're on the con side, I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR you deplore, by giving it your attention and attracting others into doing the same. Go for it if that's what you want—but please not here.
Not once have you called out people hurling personal insults towards people that have a minority opinion on this board, you've done the exact opposite.
You have implied my statements violate some aspect of HN, but you're going to need to specifically point out which statements do that. Dissent is not violation. You might not be interested in the dissent or critique but you can't use your position as moderator to quell it.
And if you're actually willing to be honest with yourself, or even devote some amount of diligent effort to pretend you're here to upload intellectual standards (despite discouraging dissenting opinions), you need to explain why blatant personal attacks are being allowed in threads you are most definitely reading.
> I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR you deplore,
Dang, that's a unsubstantiated view point and you know it. I'm honestly in shock you think that's a valid point to make (I'm not). Please explain how someone who gets public attention as a status quo is somehow actually being fueled by his critics. This talking point comes in up various contexts and is always meant to dismiss critique or even worse, victim blame. What the actual fuck are you on?
To recap since you most definitely again will side step any critique of moderating actions:
* What rules am I violating and where. A simple quote of my statement and the rule will suffice.
* Why are you framing the debate as if it's about a fictional character, when it's the CEO of a company who receives significant funding from U.S. tax payer dollars.
* How does critiquing a public figure's positive media coverage in a small thread somehow get the news to continue positive coverage?
I definitely don't mean to pick on you personally. Dozens of HN users have been filling the threads with this lately and it needs to stop. We literally can't moderate it all, and the Elonian Provocation is large enough to be capable of swamping this site entirely.
That seems largely contradictory to the hacker ethos, no?
Right now it seems like current moderation tactics are encouraging a "lie hard and fast" mode, so the truth can't catch up -- so to speak. Essentially the moderation policy is acting as a floodgate that only closes when perspectives that negate the "pro" side of things are brought into play.
This is apparent in what was allowed to be posted without question and in how you, intentionally or not, only replied to anti-musk threads. There were at least 4 threads, that I just looked at now at the time of this post, that were both not flagged by the community nor set straight from a moderator that were purely composed of vague personal attacks (it would have been better if they had just been forthright with it).
I understand that HN has limited resources and you clearly value the integrity of this forum, I just think certain perspectives unfairly caught your attention more than they should have.
>Pure Flix films managing partner Michael Scott told AAP in Chiang Rai, “I see this as a major Hollywood film with A-list stars”.
It's hardly just mere Hollywood money grabbing IMO.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
>Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
The man's death probably isn't a big focus of the Guardian's live coverage because it happened a while ago. There may have been an article just about him, I don't recall.
God, if those children were doing an initiation endangering themselves. Remember the newborns dying in Syria, Africa and other places.
I wish the 13 well.
Edit: the NYT online front page now mentions him, so maybe it was just a matter of scrambling out the news that the rescue was complete (though I'd have expected them to write that copy in advance).
I not only got notified by multiple newspapers on my phone, I later saw pictures and a video of the funeral completely surrounded by cameras, which I learn the Thai royalty entirely paid for.
For the record, I didn't see any of this coverage a week ago but have already admitted that it happened and I'm sure it was extremely significant. I'm still surprised that he's not mentioned in every recap article's opening and wasn't praised by, for example, Trump and other celebrities reacting to the event.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07/06/56-missing-in-thai-r...
It's just what happens....some people capture the public's hearts and minds, and some don't.
Just not "exciting" enough for the general public, ratings, and newspaper sales
It is probably true that in countries like Thailand, serving in the military is somewhat thankless. That's hard to imagine from a US perspective where veterans/servicemembers today receive amazing support.
Running out of air while diving is a mistake that any amateur diver with crap equipment can make, but we make it while 50 ft deep in open water, so we just swim to the surface if our buddy isn't close or attentive enough to help us. [0] If you're in a cave you can't do that, but if you're a professional military frogman with fancy professional equipment you probably shouldn't make that mistake. If the global media had concentrated to closely on this, embarrassing questions would have been asked. Therefore it's better that everyone just praise his courage and move on.
[0] I did this, when I was 13 and I was using a system with a bad air gauge. When everyone got to the top, the dive master said "OK, you've done an emergency ascent, now switch tanks and we're going back down to practice buddy breathing." I haven't run out of air while diving since that episode.
I can see how, being reminded of the logistic time cost of every bottle, he might have pushed and run too close for his return. And that's not even broaching equipment malfunctions.
Things happen. Maybe it was a mistake and maybe it was bad luck. But the man's a hero for returning from retirement to play a critical role in saving 13 people.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2018/07/06/thai-cave-diver-...
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/07/06/world/asia/ap-as...