Run Silent, Run Very, Very Deep

My takes on the takes on the Titan submersible implosion.

There’s been a lot of talk and opinion. Here are my responses to some things I’ve heard. Feel free to add yours to the comments.

Take One:  It’s good when a bunch of rich people die.

My Take:   Really?  Envy is a deadly sin and when you hate people so much that you want them dead, just for the crime of existing, that’s not admirable.

As Ben Dreyfuss notes, this sentiment is basically psychopathic:

So on Monday you probably ended up thinking about it a bit and felt sad.

I assume that is true of you because I assume you’re a normal human being. This is how people process things. It’s how normal people process things. It is unremarkable.

The thing about normal people, though, is that they aren’t all of the people. There are also other people who are not normal—Qu'est-ce que c'est: abnormal—and the thing about those people is that a lot of them are fucking psychopaths. . . .

This isn’t a clinical definition or anything but one way of thinking about those people is that they actually issue stand-down orders to their empathy machine too much. In fact, their empathy machine might not even be up to code. It’s there! And it can work! They can feel empathy. It’s not a total paperweight. They can do the thing! But their protocols for when to let the mind do it are dysfunctional; in some cases, they only allow themselves to humanize people they personally know. Or people who look like them. Or people who believe the same things they believe. Their empathy machines are pathologically reinforcing the segmentations of society that undergird their moral framework.

This lack of empathy is increasingly common – and, I would argue, encouraged – by many segments of our society, particularly those that exist in what you might call the “Cultural Marxist” space.  Well, anytime you find yourself in any kind of Cultural Marxist space, you’re probably at least adjacent to psychopathy.

Now there are variations on this that don’t rise to the “good, they’re dead” level.  For example, “they knew it was risky and they took the risk anyway.”  This is clearly true, and doesn’t necessarily indicate a lack of empathy.  It might even indicate an understanding of people’s willingness to take risks to advance personal or societal horizons, which is actually a kind of empathy.  The deceased aquanauts did in fact know that what they were doing was risky (more on that below) and chose to go anyway.  By saying “they knew the risks,” you may also be saying that just because the press wants to make them into victims doesn’t mean that they are.

Take Two:  This was criminally dangerous.  It was an uncertified craft!

My take:  Meh.  It’s possible that they cut some corners.  We’ll find out.  The fact that the craft was uncertified means nothing in itself.  Things that are certified crash and explode all the time.  Things that are not often do fine.  The certification isn’t worthless, but it’s generally some third party’s opinion that certain specified standards have been met.  This might seem more compelling to those who have not been involved in the development of such standards, which is often an arbitrary, and sometimes corrupt or self-interested, process.  I’m not saying that’s the case here, but it often is.  At any rate, although I saw James Cameron saying that the deep-submersible biz is a mature industry, I’m not so sure.  The number of operating craft is tiny worldwide, and the total number of hours of experience probably puts us about where aviation was in 1912.

I confess that I was surprised to hear that they used composite materials, since those are known more for their tensile than for their compressive strength, and are probably more prone to fatigue from repeated compression cycles than metals (which themselves can and do fatigue from that.)   I think they’re more prone to “frangible” than “ductile” failures, too, though at these depths I’m not sure that matters.   I’m just a law professor who has written about tech for a while, but James Cameron, who has actual experience in the field, said the same thing.

But the fact is, this wasn’t some rattletrap built in someone’s backyard.  It had made numerous successful dives before.  Then, for reasons we don’t know, it failed.  This is cutting edge technology, and people die testing cutting edge technology.  Just ask Howard “Tick” Lilly, and the numerous test pilots after him who lost their lives.

Sure, those test pilots were engaged in a risky vocation.  But the Titan aquanauts were engaged in a risky avocation.  As the WSJ reported, they signed very extensive waivers:  “Another prior passenger, David Pogue, a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent who went on the Titan last year at the invitation of OceanGate, showed The Wall Street Journal part of the waiver he signed. It read in part: ‘This operation will be conducted inside an experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body,’ and later: ‘Travel in and around the vehicle could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death.’”

OceanGate’s customers were experienced adventure travelers who had also done things like mountain climbing, Mig-25 flights to the edge of space, and the like.  One of them had already gone three times deeper than the Titanic site, in the Challenger Deep.  This isn’t like exposing commercial air travelers to unexpected risks.  The risk, in fact, was part of the appeal.

Take Three:  This stuff is wasteful, a rich man’s toy, and shouldn’t be allowed.

My take:  Most cutting edge technology starts out as a rich man’s toy.  Automobiles, passenger airplanes, VCRs, etc. all started out that way.  Letting rich people buy the tech drives the technology and pushes prices down over time so that ordinary people can afford it.  I don’t think ordinary people will ever be interested in doing miles-deep dives, but improved subsea technology is a very big deal.  We often hear about how unexplored the deep ocean depths are, and there’s a reason for that – we aren’t very good at it yet.  We get better at it by doing it.  We can do it more if people are willing and able to pay for it.

The same is true with the various space tourism efforts.  Sure, it’s mostly rich people buying a thrill.  But by doing so they open up the technology for the rest of us.  Unlike the test pilots, they aren’t doing it for a living; they’re doing it out of love, and even paying for the privilege.  That seems commendable to me.

Take Four:  We need more government regulation!!!

My take:  This field has done fine without it.  It’s not as if there’s been a raft of submersible-sinkings this year.  In fact, disasters like this one have been vanishingly rare.  Government regulation is most useful when incentives don’t match – for example, where a company’s desire to make a profit from its factory runs counter to desires that it not pollute its neighbors.  But here everyone’s goals are aligned:  The companies don’t want to lose a sub, and neither do the passengers.  (The same alignment exists in the space tourism industry, obviously.)

And it’s not as if the number of deaths involved is particularly big.  A Chicago Saturday night with only five deaths would be a triumph of nonviolence.  People die every year climbing mountains, or, like John Denver, flying in experimental private aircraft.  Again, we’re not talking commercial aviation here.

Claims that there should have been some sort of location-pinger are plausible, but it’s a legitimate design decision to say that if something fails, there probably won’t be any survivors to need rescuing, so a pinger is just a source of additional weight and complication.  That certainly is how things worked out:  Pretty much all the coulda/shoulda safety equipment stuff I heard about would have made no difference.

A Last Take:  This one’s mine, not a counter-take.  I was struck, at least among my circle of online and real-world acquaintances, at the gender divide.  Most of the women seemed to find the story compelling, and were gripped by the thought of people trapped helplessly in a crippled vessel, hopefully awaiting rescue.  The men, on the other hand, were almost universally of the opinion (which turned out to be correct) that the Titan had imploded about the time the ship lost contact and it was all over but the shouting.  Maybe it’s just because the men had read a submarine novel or two, and had a firmer grip on what happens under pressure, or maybe it was some deeper difference.  (The press, of course, went breathlessly with the former narrative, because otherwise there wasn’t much of a story.)  Regardless, I really noticed.  Even some pretty hard-boiled women I know were sucked into the story.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.  Feel free to share your takes and counter-takes in the comments, and remember:  If you like these essays, please consider a paid subscription.

UPDATE: My friend Jim Bennett, an early rocket-biz pioneer, writes in response to reports that OceanGate wouldn’t hire “ex-military white guys over 50” by commenting: “When I was in the rocket business we were a bunch of crazy 20s and 30s somethings. We were delighted to get some 65 and 70 year old ex-military guys working with us. We found that they were even crazier than we were and longed for the old days when good ideas hadn't been killed by timid bureaucracy. Half of the stuff they developed was put in the Pentagon warehouse along with the Lost Ark. They in turn were delighted to be with us. What we would have missed if we had been as snotty as the builders of that death trap!”