The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday a remote operated vehicle (ROV) discovered a "debris field" near the Titanic wreckage site where a submersible went missing.
I don’t know anything about this guy, so take my pet theories with a pinch of salt, but…
In my experience, people who think of themselves as entrepreneurs are often simply bad at perceiving risk. They start out with a certain hubris that is a product of this deficiency in assessing risk. Many of them will be taken down by this, but others will get lucky.
When they get lucky, these people tend not to notice the element of luck but ascribe their success wholly to their smarts and hard work. This can lead to an inflated sense of how good one’s judgement is.
It can also lead to a lack of humility. It takes both good judgement and humility to know when to defer to someone else’s judgement. These people had hubris to start with, and their success can compound this to the point where they consider themselves the best judge of everything. Then they stop listening to people who may know better than them.
They also have the power to surround themselves with yes-men, so they are challenged less and less as time goes on.
Maybe this guy wasn’t like that, but his comments about safety measures being a waste, his disregard for safety standards in constructing this submarine, and the way he fired the employee who complained that the sub was unsafe, suggest he may have been in this mold.
Regarding your first point, I think that the toxic culture around start-ups and such even incentivises people to be bad at gauging risk. Each funding round means making more outlandish promises, as investors keep expecting you to grow how fast you’re growing; do more, with less.
I have a few disabilities that mean that I’m often unable to do all the basic things a person needs. I’ve got very good at gauging risk and balancing my resources accordingly, but there have been times where things are just too stacked up against me and there’s little chance of a win outcome, but also no space for losing. I’m talking situations like being miserable from being bed bound for a day or so and needing to make it over to my computer to hang out with friends, somehow obtaining food and water en route. In a weird way, I sympathise with the CEO, because I know how desperation distorts perspective.
The worst decisions are made when I have decided to try to do the big difficult thing (food, then computer), but I realise part way through that I don’t have the capacity to do it all. The smart thing would be to adjust my goals and get food and medication, and retreat to bed. However, that outcome doesn’t feel worth the painful ordeal of leaving bed in the first place. Had I known it would’ve ended like this, I wouldn’t have attempted it, but I was rolling the dice.
Usually, my original decision to leave bed is good; I understand relative risk levels and I’m aware of the chance of failure and how to mitigate the fallout. The point of failure isn’t actually the point where the submarine explodes, or the sad cripple who pushed herself too far has to sleep on the floor because she can’t make it to her computer or her desk. The failure point is when you know that unless you alter your goal, you’re fucked.
If this CEO had made the right choices, his company probably would’ve died. He made negligent choices in building the submarine because he couldn’t afford to do it properly (and thus shouldn’t have even attempted this silly ordeal), but he had already spent millions of other people’s money, trying to fulfill impossible promises. I wonder at what point he realised his stated goals were impossible, and that he was just desperately stringing along investors hoping for a hail Mary stunt that could buy him more time. I wonder if it was always the plan for him to go on the sub, or whether his presence there was an attempt to assuage anxious ticketholders. I wonder if he had any sense to fear for his life or if his only fears were for his company.
Absolutely fuck this guy. His pointless folly has killed people. The people who bought tickets were perhaps fools too, just in a different way, but I also believe they were at least partly scammed by the CEO guy making impossible promises. Fucking rich people and their vanity projects. And yet, I feel like he was also a victim of the toxic system that made him, in a way. Ugh, I have a lot of complex feelings about this whole thing.
I don’t know anything about this guy, so take my pet theories with a pinch of salt, but…
In my experience, people who think of themselves as entrepreneurs are often simply bad at perceiving risk. They start out with a certain hubris that is a product of this deficiency in assessing risk. Many of them will be taken down by this, but others will get lucky.
When they get lucky, these people tend not to notice the element of luck but ascribe their success wholly to their smarts and hard work. This can lead to an inflated sense of how good one’s judgement is.
It can also lead to a lack of humility. It takes both good judgement and humility to know when to defer to someone else’s judgement. These people had hubris to start with, and their success can compound this to the point where they consider themselves the best judge of everything. Then they stop listening to people who may know better than them.
They also have the power to surround themselves with yes-men, so they are challenged less and less as time goes on.
Maybe this guy wasn’t like that, but his comments about safety measures being a waste, his disregard for safety standards in constructing this submarine, and the way he fired the employee who complained that the sub was unsafe, suggest he may have been in this mold.
deleted by creator
Survivor bias at its finest.
For every Steve Jobs there is just some dude wearing a turtleneck somewhere.
Totally agree, this is great insight. Political leaders also sometimes do this.
Regarding your first point, I think that the toxic culture around start-ups and such even incentivises people to be bad at gauging risk. Each funding round means making more outlandish promises, as investors keep expecting you to grow how fast you’re growing; do more, with less.
I have a few disabilities that mean that I’m often unable to do all the basic things a person needs. I’ve got very good at gauging risk and balancing my resources accordingly, but there have been times where things are just too stacked up against me and there’s little chance of a win outcome, but also no space for losing. I’m talking situations like being miserable from being bed bound for a day or so and needing to make it over to my computer to hang out with friends, somehow obtaining food and water en route. In a weird way, I sympathise with the CEO, because I know how desperation distorts perspective.
The worst decisions are made when I have decided to try to do the big difficult thing (food, then computer), but I realise part way through that I don’t have the capacity to do it all. The smart thing would be to adjust my goals and get food and medication, and retreat to bed. However, that outcome doesn’t feel worth the painful ordeal of leaving bed in the first place. Had I known it would’ve ended like this, I wouldn’t have attempted it, but I was rolling the dice.
Usually, my original decision to leave bed is good; I understand relative risk levels and I’m aware of the chance of failure and how to mitigate the fallout. The point of failure isn’t actually the point where the submarine explodes, or the sad cripple who pushed herself too far has to sleep on the floor because she can’t make it to her computer or her desk. The failure point is when you know that unless you alter your goal, you’re fucked.
If this CEO had made the right choices, his company probably would’ve died. He made negligent choices in building the submarine because he couldn’t afford to do it properly (and thus shouldn’t have even attempted this silly ordeal), but he had already spent millions of other people’s money, trying to fulfill impossible promises. I wonder at what point he realised his stated goals were impossible, and that he was just desperately stringing along investors hoping for a hail Mary stunt that could buy him more time. I wonder if it was always the plan for him to go on the sub, or whether his presence there was an attempt to assuage anxious ticketholders. I wonder if he had any sense to fear for his life or if his only fears were for his company.
Absolutely fuck this guy. His pointless folly has killed people. The people who bought tickets were perhaps fools too, just in a different way, but I also believe they were at least partly scammed by the CEO guy making impossible promises. Fucking rich people and their vanity projects. And yet, I feel like he was also a victim of the toxic system that made him, in a way. Ugh, I have a lot of complex feelings about this whole thing.