Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ozzie_osman | Hacker News Reader

In systems thinking, this would be called "intrinsic responsibility" (or lack thereof).

  > Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision makers. Because the pilot of a plane rides in the front of the plane, that pilot is intrinsically responsible. He or she will experience directly the consequences of his or her decisions.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12139955-intrinsic-responsi...

View on HN

How does that work, though? In the early days, pilots were daredevils. It doesn’t seem like aviation became safer because pilots took risks?

Workspace safety didn’t improve by blaming the workers, even though they bore the risk.

Workplace safety improved massively when labor unions became a thing and workers got a say in safety standards.

The workers were not the decision makers.

> It doesn’t seem like aviation became safer because pilots took risks

That's pretty much the job of test pilots even today. They are usually dual trained pilots and engineers/technicians, and their job is basically to QA new planes. In military aviation especially test pilots are often feeders into the astronaut program (a different but similar type of daredevil).

On the contrary, rules and regulations are written in blood, and airplanes are manufactured stronger in different ways because pilots took risks. The Wings don't shear off when the pilot yanks the yoke left and up because someone did before, and the Wings either fell off or didn't - but until it happened, the wings were an unknown quantity. And that's just one example.

That's basically the job description of a Test Pilot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com