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Comment by getmeinrn | Hacker News Reader

Something I've learned over my life is not to automatically trust that someone has done or will do the right thing just because they stick their neck out. Sometimes they stick their neck out because they don't actually understand the risks and consequences, but they are pretending that they do. They're artificially signaling confidence.

In this case, the CEO risking his life on this third(!) voyage means 1 of 2 possibilities: 1) The CEO has done the due diligence and has a thorough understanding of the risks and the safety protocols involved to minimize those risks. 2) The CEO is naive.

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> Sometimes they stick their neck out because they don't actually understand the risks and consequences, but they are pretending that they do.

Or they are just adrenaline junkies with far smaller risk threshold than typical human.

In general there was a ton of red flags but as probably nobody gets to that level of money without ability to sell the stuff they are pedding, he probably sold the fact the submarine has successfully dived so it is "tested".

If the rumors about the window being certified to a maximum safe depth of 1300m are true, we’re well in “crazy negligent” territory. It’d be a surprise the sub survived so long.

I wonder if the issue was the certification or the construction. As in, the window was mad for 4k but was not tested and certified for that.

From what I gather they didn't really want to bother with same due dilligence similar other vehicles went thru

Probably. He'd probably think Russian roulette was a safe game if he survived a round of it.

3) Something else than naive

"The OceanGate CEO who is trapped on a 22-foot submersible on an ill-fated voyage to see the Titanic wreck once explained how he didn’t hire “50-year-old white guys” with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t “inspirational.”

The CEO, Stockton Rush, added that “expertise was unnecessary” because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller." [0]

[0] https://www.outkick.com/trapped-oceangate-ceo-refused-to-hir...

The target of the adventure is also surprisingly ironic.

The Titanic is one of the most notorious icons of human hubris. And these tourists died to the same.

Is it an icon of human hubris or simply a tragedy that they didn’t think could happen? I.e. did they take undue risks because of the belief that it was unsinkable? There was another boat not too far off when it sank so presumably they were taking normal risks and it was just an unfortunate way to learn that their belief that it was unsinkable was wrong.

Or are you referring to the insufficient number of lifeboats? I haven’t seen any evidence that other ships carried a larger number of lifeboats relative to their size.

> Is it an icon of human hubris or simply a tragedy that they didn’t think could happen?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120402-the-myth-of-the-... (Titanic anniversary: The myth of the unsinkable ship)

"There is no danger that Titanic will sink. The boat is unsinkable and nothing but inconvenience will be suffered by the passengers." Phillip Franklin, White Star Line vice-president, 1912

I don’t deny that this was the prevailing wisdom but did it lead to them taking any extra risk (relative to what other ships did at the time) as a result?

It's been argued both ways for a hundred and eleven years now, but my understanding of the current historical consensus is that they weren't doing anything especially unusual for ocean liners of the day, either in design or in operation, and indeed had altered course further south in response to iceberg warnings received by radio on the 14th.

It's considered to be true that the prioritization of on-time arrival and the belief that the ships of the day were too well designed to founder contributed to the disaster, but rather than representing unique hubris on the part of Titanic's builders and captain, these are understood to have been common throughout the passenger shipping industry of the day.

Uh, the Titanic ran into an gigantic piece of ice which caused it to sink, the previous quote is the context for that.

This submarine likely decompressed, killing the CEO and I believe 3 rich tourists because they didn't believe they needed to check the health of their submersible, firing the people that raised security concerns.

I think it's safe to say that both captains were full of hubris

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