Reminds me of an excerpt from Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff in which fighter pilots perceived doctors as the enemy, and heaven forfend you saw a psychiatrist!
A man could go for a routine physical one fine day, feeling like a million dollars, and be grounded for fallen arches. It happened!—just like that! (And try raising them.) Or for breaking his wrist and losing only part of its mobility. Or for a minor deterioration of eyesight, or for any of hundreds of reasons that would make no difference to a man in an ordinary occupation. As a result all fighter jocks began looking upon doctors as their natural enemies. Going to see a flight surgeon was a no-gain proposition.
This reminds me of when a friend became a cop. One day I saw him or I thought I saw him from far away but I couldn’t tell him that I wasn’t sure it was him because I couldn’t recognise him because of my myopia and, since I sometimes drive without my glasses on - what if one day he caught me?
Xyla Foxlin the YouTuber had some good wins against this recently - including getting legislation passed. Her wings got clipped due to IUD related depression
This kind of don’t ask don’t tell stuff is fine. You want to have a test where passing it is being smart enough to be able to simulate being clean.
In general, this principle works for lots of things. Drug use at your office job? No problem so long as I can’t tell you’re on drugs. And so on and so forth.
The alternative isn’t some clean job. It’s where people who are incredibly stupid and scatterbrained have a “reasonable accommodation” and then you’re on a plane run by a fucking moron so that when the other competent pilot falls ill the moron will have to fly it by himself and then you all die.
You thought you had 2x redundancy? Well one of the machines was always failing. No thanks. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing.
They currently have to pass those tests which is why they're not morons. But if you decide to make it possible to have any of these mentally disabled people then I'm sure someone will find a way to turn it into a lawsuit if we exclude them. e.g. they had a test to hire police that turned out to have 'disparate impact'. The questions were simple things like: if a shift ends at 11 PM, the policeman shows up on site at 10.45 PM and stays there till 1 AM, how many hours of overtime did they work?
But some people couldn't answer them and so they got paid out. When the system is opaque we can preserve competence. If we have to "make reasonable accommodations" and "prevent disparate impact" we're going to be in trouble. Better to keep it quiet.
The government that had to pay out because people couldn't answer that question was also keen on not paying out lawsuits. But they had to nonetheless.
Just because the punishment for seeking mental health care is losing one’s entire career doesn’t make these problems disappear, it just makes everyone very good at masking or self medicating.
> filters out the people who are too mentally ill to mask
this is a very good point - only vulnerability is a person decompensates from "able to mask" to "lets gooooo" in a very short period of time - between two flights say - then we're gonna have some problems
No, it really hasn't. Sweeping the problem under the rug has already resulted in at least 150 deaths, which could have been prevented by allowing pilots to seek mental health care.
150 deaths is statistically insignificant on this scenario and actual a very good evidence the current policy is working.
It is hard for some people to have the emotional maturity to understand this, but we can't fucking prevent every fucking death. We will all fucking die sooner or later, too.
You have absolutely no objective reason to suppose that changing this policy would have prevented this, not to mention the risk of making things worse.
But the paradox is, all of them will die and not all preventions are Pareto efficient.
I can keep an old decrepit rich guy living a miserable life for some more 6 months at the same cost that would take to me to improve the life expectancy of some 100 poor babies a few decades.
I can try save a bunch of fat very-sick boomers from a respiratory infection at the cost of causing an economic crisis that will completely fuck a lot of young people too for decades ahead. Was it fucking worth?
Reminds me of an excerpt from Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff in which fighter pilots perceived doctors as the enemy, and heaven forfend you saw a psychiatrist!
This reminds me of when a friend became a cop. One day I saw him or I thought I saw him from far away but I couldn’t tell him that I wasn’t sure it was him because I couldn’t recognise him because of my myopia and, since I sometimes drive without my glasses on - what if one day he caught me?
Why are you driving around without your glasses?
My prescription is very low and I can drive fine without glasses but I can’t recognise people at a long distance.
Xyla Foxlin the YouTuber had some good wins against this recently - including getting legislation passed. Her wings got clipped due to IUD related depression
Glad to see she got her license back eventually.
(her vid on it https://youtu.be/eu-T7P3o6tU)
I’m impressed the article managed to not mention Nathan Fielder even once.
No one is allowed in the cockpit if there’s something wrong with them, so if you’re here, you must be fine.
One of the all-time great seasons of television.
I'd nearly call it journalistic negligence. In fact, I think I will.
I firmly believe that people should be able to pay cash to get mental health treatment anonymously.
If the provider doesn't know you're a pilot -- or even your real name -- they can't report you.
Until we have many redundant layers of backup, the risk of drugging copilot and going down is a non zero risk that triggered many of these policies.
This kind of don’t ask don’t tell stuff is fine. You want to have a test where passing it is being smart enough to be able to simulate being clean.
In general, this principle works for lots of things. Drug use at your office job? No problem so long as I can’t tell you’re on drugs. And so on and so forth.
The alternative isn’t some clean job. It’s where people who are incredibly stupid and scatterbrained have a “reasonable accommodation” and then you’re on a plane run by a fucking moron so that when the other competent pilot falls ill the moron will have to fly it by himself and then you all die.
You thought you had 2x redundancy? Well one of the machines was always failing. No thanks. Let’s keep doing what we’re doing.
>plane run by a fucking moron
They do have to pass quite strict tests to be a commercial pilot. Also the airlines/insurers are not keen on morons crashing their $100m aircraft.
They currently have to pass those tests which is why they're not morons. But if you decide to make it possible to have any of these mentally disabled people then I'm sure someone will find a way to turn it into a lawsuit if we exclude them. e.g. they had a test to hire police that turned out to have 'disparate impact'. The questions were simple things like: if a shift ends at 11 PM, the policeman shows up on site at 10.45 PM and stays there till 1 AM, how many hours of overtime did they work?
But some people couldn't answer them and so they got paid out. When the system is opaque we can preserve competence. If we have to "make reasonable accommodations" and "prevent disparate impact" we're going to be in trouble. Better to keep it quiet.
The government that had to pay out because people couldn't answer that question was also keen on not paying out lawsuits. But they had to nonetheless.
Great response. Totally agree.
Tricky problem. I sympathize with pilots here, but the zero-risk approach has worked very well for fliers in aggregate.
The problem isn’t tricky at all, actually.
Just because the punishment for seeking mental health care is losing one’s entire career doesn’t make these problems disappear, it just makes everyone very good at masking or self medicating.
It filters out the people who are too mentally ill to mask.
> filters out the people who are too mentally ill to mask
this is a very good point - only vulnerability is a person decompensates from "able to mask" to "lets gooooo" in a very short period of time - between two flights say - then we're gonna have some problems
Until, of course, someone takes shrooms and tries to shut down the engines of a plane in flight.
Everyone will be one with everything (including the ground)
No, it really hasn't. Sweeping the problem under the rug has already resulted in at least 150 deaths, which could have been prevented by allowing pilots to seek mental health care.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
Also probably the 787 crashing in India this year and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Looking at the list of crashes >200 deaths since 2010, it seems to be about 50% pilot suicide.
150 deaths is statistically insignificant on this scenario and actual a very good evidence the current policy is working.
It is hard for some people to have the emotional maturity to understand this, but we can't fucking prevent every fucking death. We will all fucking die sooner or later, too.
You have absolutely no objective reason to suppose that changing this policy would have prevented this, not to mention the risk of making things worse.
People will always die, but almost all of them will die in ways that are PREVENTABLE.
But the paradox is, all of them will die and not all preventions are Pareto efficient.
I can keep an old decrepit rich guy living a miserable life for some more 6 months at the same cost that would take to me to improve the life expectancy of some 100 poor babies a few decades.
I can try save a bunch of fat very-sick boomers from a respiratory infection at the cost of causing an economic crisis that will completely fuck a lot of young people too for decades ahead. Was it fucking worth?
The question is which ones are preventable in advance without causing other deaths.
...but the "zero risk" approach has led to people just lying or avoiding treatment.
That's worse than it being out in the open.
What is the standard for being too mentally ill to pilot a plane?