That was a classic disaster. All the safety procedures and routines
were in place so it was assumed that everything would work. Another
case of relying on the technology rather than the people. They
couldn't see how it could go wrong, not really, hen they thought that
they'd done everything possible to control the emissions. Never
occurred to them that their people on the ground neither understood
the procedures nor saw the necessity for them. More of an
'undersight' than oversight.
Taleb's point is actually that reason has very little to do with
anything - you can reason out what you cannot envisage. The engineers
and managers who built the Bhopal plant were literally unable to see
the real potential for catastrophe. You can't choose what you can't
imagine.
My favorite personal example is based on Pascal's gaming theory. If
we come to a fork in the road we assume that we have two choices -
left or right. We actually have four choices - left, right, stay put
or go back. But the last two are not even on the agenda. It is
amazing how well that analysis works for a simple two variable
situation and how blind we are to the real range of choices,
especially when there are more than just two variables. Especially
when we are addicted to change, growth and 'progress.'
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 31/10/2007, at 7:21 AM, Doug wrote:
> I remember a conversation I had with the project manager on the
> project that I
> was working on. We were talking about the Union Carbide disaster in
> bhopal
> India. His contention was that we didn't really know how to manage
> large
> projects. He believed that we didn't have too many problem, not
> because we
> were good but that it took several things going wrong at the same
> time for
> someone to get in trouble. In other words we are lucky.
>
> In response to Moose, The real idiots are the managers that
> support, promote
> or otherwise encourage luck choices over well reasoned choices. The
> person
> who preaches caution very seldom has as much influence as the
> person who says
> lets just do it. I'll get off my soap box know.
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