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Comment by JackFr | Hacker News Reader

I imagine that Boeing engineers are decent people who want to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and be able to sleep at night. So I find it hard to believe in an active conspiracy, but the propensity for groupthink and self-delusion seems extraordinarily high.

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I always quote this, but only because it’s always applicable:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair

People tend to understand this as saying that people will fight you and feign ignorance. I think it should be taken more literally: a person’s financial position affects their reasoning, and it is literally difficult for them to understand something that will harm them. Not impossible by any means, but when there’s a financial incentive not to understand, it’s far more likely that people just won’t get it.

If you've spent your career at a company, who can fire you for not parroting the company line, in a field as small as aviation, chances are you'll not get hired elsewhere, and you'll do as your indirectly expected to.

I doubt that would have gotten past their unions (for either the engineers or the engineering technicians).

I am as cowardly and timid about my job as any other clock puncher, but I would not knowingly risk peoples lives.

I suppose the distinction I'm making is one between bona fide self-delusion and knowing cynicism.

I imagine some of it has to do with not wanting to be wrong. And especially not wanting to be wrong when that means you have caused/contributed to someone's death. That is a powerful motivator to find alternate explanations.

Everyone here is probably intimately familiar with that attitude, since it permeates software engineering (and probably every other technical field).

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