I dabbled in caving (
no more, too dangerous) and am a certified diver (only open water!!!) and I have a long-term interest in institutional safety *and* Silicon Valley. I don't want to put down any effort to help but I want to explain this and more.https://twitter.com/brodieferguson/status/1017861386636935168 …
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Point isn't that everything should be like the airline industry or like cave-diving. But, look. After the 1996 TWA crash, they put the plane back together. Investigated for four years. Redesigned things. That's why commercial flying is so safe. This approach needs more respect.pic.twitter.com/19OZD75qg9
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The flashy tech solution and the savior make good movies. But what makes most things work is the quite hero/ine embedded in institutional knowledge—divers who brought decades of knowledge. The Thai officials who let go—must have been hard. Farmers who let their fields be flooded.
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In the comments for my piece, some Musk fans think people like me are just ungrateful for the saviors who steps up. I hope this thread explains it more—nobody is ungrateful. But the worst thing to do to a famous/rich person is to be their uncritical fan.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/opinion/sunday/elon-musk-thailand-hubris.html …
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I do seem to have a zillion of them defending Musk with enormous zeal right now in my mentions because he replied to this thread, and I wouldn't wish this kind of fame and fan-base on my worst enemy.



https://twitter.com/Adwait_AD_Dubey/status/1018500909901414400 …This Tweet is unavailable.Show this thread -
The rescuer I've quoted in the first tweet made the "PR-stunt" comment re:Musk's sub, not me. That diver is not a bystander—if someone made a movie, I'd make him the key character. Still, he clearly spoke out in irritation and I was trying to explain why.https://twitter.com/TMclaughlin3/status/1018514508598276096 …
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But my piece—and this thread—is an attempt to go beyond the irritations of the moment and discuss what the tech world could learn from the slow, iterative and deeper safety cultures—but there's a lot to recommend to the can-do optimism in Silicon Valley. Not in isolation, though.
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I’m dumbfounded by this. I’d understand getting mad at me (whatev
) but Vern Unsworth is, by all accounts I saw, a key hero of the miraculous rescue. The kids certainly—and many more divers likely—would be dead if not for him. Apology badly needed.https://twitter.com/maxwelltani/status/1018517885080211456 …
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Seems Musk has deleted his inflammatory tweets & his responses to me.
That makes it hard to follow threads so here's my screenshots on why developing a back-up option QUIETLY is great but doing it with gobs of publicity has potential for harm. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1018498560789286912 …pic.twitter.com/VyIx0gPsxs
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End of conversation
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And that's why Vern is a diver and not a writer explaining things

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Is he a diver? I understood him to be a caver.
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Cave rescuer slams Elon Musk's submarine idea, says "He can stick his submarine where it hurts,wouldn't have made the first 50m, Just a PR stunt" -CNN