awhitby

The analog has its limit though, because I've never reversed a television into a gate post.

Obviously individual people can be at fault, but it is this further process of asking _why_ individual people fail—pointing to systems, procedures, cultures—that has (in part) contributed to the extraordinary safety of aviation.

So I would say on the contrary, it is that systems worldview that actually leads to lasting improvements. Because human nature is not changing in a hurry.

FWIW my guess is most people are aware, and do know that supermarket/drugstore acetaminophen / paracetamol is the same, in some relevant sense, as Tylenol / Panadol. It's not like the retailers lack marketing resources. But for these off-the-shelf drugs the total $/£ amounts are small for a lot of people.

Then, there _are_ arguments about whether generics face adequate testing to ensure the same quality as the originally-approved name brand drug. A lot of this is FUD - I'll happily buy generic acetaminophen in the US - but it's not a totally irrational concern. I doubt any regulator ensures generic equivalence to the same degree of conformity that a big pharma companies' own quality control does.

For example, I personally find real differences in the jankiness of different asthma inhalers, even amongst generics. Maybe that's because I don't shake/use/clean them exactly per the directions, but then that's real-world use for you. My personal experience says brand-name Ventolin has solved a "robustness against user error" problem in a way some alternatives often have not, suggesting the FDA does not enforce equivalence on this dimension. It's not enough of a difference for me to go name-brand, since out-of-pocket price differences can be egregious, but I do distinguish between otherwise-unknown generics.

Finally, you may trust the UK regulator and so do I, but traveling somewhere without good regulatory oversight, I'd probably reach for Panadol - assuming it seemed authentic - over a generic brand I'd never heard of. Brands have value and brand owners have a lot to lose, which is a kind of insurance (see 1982 Tylenol recall).

Perhaps my reading is coloured by optimism but by my count, apart from peace, language, currency and (debatably) universal good taste, all of which seem a bit utopian (so maybe I’m a cynical optimist) we do—or are well on our way.

Another factor in this mix is frequency, which matters a lot, especially to business travellers.

A once-daily supersonic flight might minimize “time in the air” while a once hourly mostly-economy 737 shuttle minimises “time away from home.”

There’s a good argument for not “leaving it to the market” for things like this: when you’re evaluating an apartment (to rent, or even to buy), it can be difficult to know what the soundproofing is like. Noise is maybe not life and death, but it’s a major quality of life issue for some people.

Of course an outright ban is pretty extreme, but alternatives to overcoming this information asymmetry are not straightforward. Ideally: compulsory testing and disclosure, if it could be done.

You're very likely right there's no causation in that direction, but it seems entirely possible that we experience red as a vivid color in part because noticing blood is evolutionarily important.

One obvious thing is that some people are probably toasting a slice a week and others half a dozen a day. The parts don’t time out, they wear out, so that really matters.

Another is that being cheap, there’s probably quite variable quality.

So it’s not that surprising that experiences vary.

A more interesting question is do the cables (size, positioning, tension) vary by aircraft? Can any carrier-capable aircraft land on any carrier in the US fleet?

I don't really disagree. It's a naive analysis, but ignoring the opportunity cost of the time the owners put into a business, which I was replying to, is even more naive, and yet an extremely common mistake small business people make.

You're missing something. From the post:

> I don’t draw a salary, so the total amount I earned from TinyPilot in 2023 was $236k.

and

> Result: I worked 35-40 hours per week, a reduction from previous years, and traveled more than any previous year.

This is a person who is effectively full-time CEO of this business and whose market salary is likely at least $236k. If they sold the business, the new owners would have to pay someone else to put in those 35 hours.

Maybe the new owner could employ a less-skilled manager and pay them less, or maybe there's still lots of potential growth or room to cut costs, but that's all quite speculative: right now the business has a profit, and therefore a valuation, closer to zero.

That might be true for the simple case of following within a lane, although you only have to drive around to realize most drivers do not leave adequate following distance at all times to make this a pure physics problem. And neither is a good driver watching only the car in front, but also the brake lights of the cars in front of that, to help anticipate the car in front's likely actions.

But take an even slightly more complex example: you're on a two lane roadway and the car in the other lane changes into your lane, leaving inadequate stopping distance for you. You brake as hard as you safely can (maybe you have a too-close follower, too), but still there will be a few seconds when you could not, in fact, avert a collision if for some reason the car in front braked.

I have no idea what the legal situation would be: is it their fault if the crash happens within 3 seconds but yours if it happens after you've had time but failed to restablish your needed stopping distance?

Honestly even in the simple one lane case, I doubt you can slam your brakes on the interstate for no reason then expect to avoid any liability for the crash, blaming your follower for following too close.

Driving has a bunch of rules, then an awful lot of common sense and social interaction on top of them to make things actually work.

They can vote with their vote too. If regulators do their job, grounded airplanes start to become quite a large expense for airlines and influence their fleet choices.

I come from a completely different background but am about the same age as the author. It sounds like many other commenters are in this same general bracket too. So are the sentiments expressed truly a period (or, maybe, cohort, given the post-communist contrast) effect, as suggested, or just an age effect?

I suspect that the middle aged in every society feel some closing of the frontier as possibilities seem to collapse and family commitments multiply.