Re: <nettime> rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

In case you missed, all narratives about pilots not being 
trained/informed were red herrings. It looks like it was an attempt to 
deflect blame on humans (either those that were supposed to inform 
pilots or those that were supposed to establish proper training 
procedures - from Boeing and individual airlines), in order to save the 
sanctity of AI deity. It all turned to be bs.

Pilots did everything Boeing deemed required to regain control:

> As the jet began nose diving, the pilots "repeatedly" performed all emergency procedures provided by Boeing, the manufacturer, but they "were not able to control the aircraft,"
...
> According to the sources, the pilots did not try to electronically pull the nose of the plane up before following Boeing's emergency procedures of disengaging power to the horizontal stabilizer on the rear of the aircraft. One source told ABC News they manually attempted to bring the nose of the plane back up by using the trim wheel. Soon after, the pilots restored power to the horizontal stabilizer.
>
> With power restored, the MCAS was re-engaged, the sources said, and the pilots were unable to regain control before the crash.

So it's much worse than it looked like. Boeing designed automated 
machine controls which they (Boeing) did not understand. It had modes of 
operation unknown to its designers. This is inevitable - I'll repeat: 
INEVITABLE - when you have more than few thousands lines of code. There 
are no testing procedures to save you from this. There are only testing 
procedures to cover up your ass with legal compliance requirements.

This placement of complex automated control loops everywhere is starting 
to look like putting small nuclear reactors in homes, cars, schools, 
offices, etc., because it's cheaper than distributing gas and 
electricity, and hoping that sh*t won't happen. No, I'm wrong: they know 
that the sh*t will happen, but the calculation is that even after 
insurance pay-out and ephemeral PR damage it is still cheaper. The two 
recent disasters were allowed calculated risks.



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