How Tiny Bugs Cause Huge Disasters
“If I were to write a curriculum at university,” says engineer Fung Turing , “I would spend an entire semester on the Challenger disaster and make it a must for any remote STEM-focused subject area.” Because, says Fung, the disaster was much less random and simple than people think. In a thread of 102 tweets, which you can read here in essay form , Fung explains the real reason for the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster in 2003, the sinking of the Titanic, and the last time you melted with worry.
“The Challenger crash was not the only mistake, flaw, or accident that killed seven people and lost the $ 2 billion spacecraft,” says Fung. “It was a series of mistakes, oversights, and overlaps over time, and at every step they thought they could get away with it because they believed the risks were minimal and they had a lot of engineering overhead. And in most cases they were right. Then one day they were gone. “
Deviation normalization
Fone describes the specific cascades of reductions and errors that led to these famous crashes, and similar cascades that lead to horrific car accidents on supposedly safe roads. A common factor is that a system is built and stress tested for one set of circumstances, then stretched a little with regular use, and then finally stretched so far in a non-optimal situation that something reaches a tipping point. And all the inventions and manuals fall apart in a catastrophic failure. According to Fung, this is called “deflection normalization” (a term coined by Diane Vaughn in her book The Challenger Launch Decision ).
For example, a certain road is rated at a speed limit of 50 miles per hour. But since drivers will always insist on it, the engineer makes sure the road is safe all the way up to 70 mph under normal conditions. It is inevitable that drivers drive 60 mph as everyone knows it is still safe. And then some people think it should be safe to go a little faster than the “normal” 60 mph. And some go even faster. And then it rains, and someone still goes up to 80 mph, crashes and dies.
Everyone who develops the system is constantly fighting against normalizing the deviations. And the more devices are designed to protect against misuse, the more often users abuse it. We’re in an arms race. And not only designers and engineers, but all of us – we all build our lives with the normalization of deviations.
Personal Disaster Preparedness
We’ve all been there at some point: failed the test because we pulled too many nights, or missed the deadline because we couldn’t find the extra hours we thought we’d have on the weekend, or a big fight because that we accumulated too many petty claims against our partner or went bankrupt with a medical bill because we spent as much as we earned and tried to live in a predatory capitalist system.
Yes, the systems around us create certain stressors and points of failure, and until these systems are fixed, we must try not to impose too many other stressors on them. Personally, as a father of a three-month-old child, I realized this quite recently ! Previously, if the laundry, dishes, or grocery shopping was not done, everything else went smoothly and the house could function normally until the weekend. Raising a child puts a lot more stress on the system, and it becomes critical to run the dishwasher or load the laundry in time to dry and fold everything before bed. A baby is a series of small disasters, so there is less room for others.
Compassion aware of the disaster
Second personal lesson (another important one for the new parent): Everyone around you is also in control of a whole system of pressures and impending disasters, sometimes much more than you, so you need to be patient and empathic with them.
In less personal terms, this is why asking someone for “just five minutes of their time” or “just a few dollars” is a bigger request than you might think. This is why whenever you want something from someone else, you must think about all the potential barriers and sacrifices – travel time, opportunity cost, incidental costs – and take them on. Meet with someone near their place of work, pay the bill, secretly set deadlines so that procrastination does not become a disaster.
In close relationships, seek to normalize each other’s deviations and help them ease the escalation. Take things off each other, exchange things or appointments, pool resources, cover each other during times of stress. And show the same compassion to yourself.
And then, of course, be ready to adapt, because the normalization of deviations is coming for all of us. The best we can do is reduce the likelihood of disaster.
Normalizing Yarn Deviation | Foone on Twitter
Normalizing Deviation: Essay Format | Foone on Thread Reader