A general reply to everyone saying this was unacceptable or that insufficient precautions were taken:
This experiment was performed at a facility designed for such experiments under the supervision of people who are trained to handle such experiments.
The result, while upsetting, was a freak accident. It could not realistically have been predicted. It is not necessarily anyone's fault, even if human error played a role.
Life is risky.
Sometimes surgeons slip and kill patients. Sometimes food producers slip and ship contaminated products which kill people. Sometimes parents turn around for 1 second and their kids drown.
All of these are caused by human error, but there has to be a point where you can say that reasonable precaution was taken so no blame is warranted. Because the alternative, only doing things that are 100% certain to be safe, means never doing anything at all.
There is no way to guarantee 100% safety. The building you are sitting in has been checked for safety. But something could have been missed, leading it to spontaneously collapse.
And here is the most important point of this entire post:
This will be true regardless how thoroughly you check the building.
"The result, while upsetting, was a freak accident. It could not realistically have been predicted. It is not necessarily anyone's fault, even if human error played a role."
This statement is just as ignorant as any accusing MB of sloppiness. We know almost nothing right now. To say it a freak accident that couldn't have been predicted is premature.
There needs to be an investigation then a conclusion.
I will admit that my certainty in my conclusion was premature, but it's still my best theory. The mythbusters are professionals. The choice of location was supported by government designation. And the mythbusters were supervised in the experiment. Negligence is still possible, but I feel it's much less likely than a freak accident.
Either way, what I was really trying to address was the attitude in this post ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3324444 ), among others, that accidents like this should never happen. I was trying to say that not every accident is caused by negligence. Even if this one was, the main point stands.
I also realize that sounds like a cop out, which is not my intent. You are absolutely right. My conclusion is really just a theory right now, and I should have presented it as such.
This is true to a degree, and I think few would argue against it. The question is, what is the right amount of consequences?
Should the party at fault have to pay exactly the damages actually caused to make those injured whole (in other words, actual damages?)
Should the party pay a portion of the damages caused so as to partially compensate others while not being ruinous to a party that behaved with reasonable, but insufficient, precautions (a large part of the justification for "proximate cause "is to achieve this, see for isntance "Wagon Mound (No. 1)" and "Wagon Mount (No. 2)", and contributory negligence also plays a similar role)?
Or should the party at fault pay far more than damage caused to discourage improper behaviour (in other words, punitive damages)?
These are decisions best made on a case by case basis, but the doctrines we lay out for deciding which case falls where affect how willing to take or not takes risks a society becomes. And most of the biggest advancements in human society came through enormous risk, so I for one think we should not encourage society to be too risk adverse.
Here, I think the grandparent post makes a good argument that there should be consequences, but they should be exactly actual damages and nothing more.
These are decisions best made on a case by case basis, but the doctrines we lay out for deciding which case falls where affect how willing to take or not takes risks a society becomes. And most of the biggest advancements in human society came through enormous risk, so I for one think we should not encourage society to be too risk adverse.
On a case by case basis, we invariably decide who to blame by determing who accepted responsibility, perhaps implicitly. We don't place blame on individuals for the betterment of society because we know intuitively that that is unfair. So, we may decide e.g. to make cannons illegal, but we wouldn't decide to make Bob's cannon illegal, and throw Bob in jail after the fact. Likewise, we wouldn't decide to let Bob off the hook for blowing holes in people's houses because we like cannons and want to see more of them around.
(And I'm aware that we routinely fail to adhere to this principle, no need for examples, but it is what we strive for).
It depends on what you mean by "We". If you mean the courts that develop the common law of torts, then no it isn't. I suppose it also depends on what you mean by accepted, but in torts who is responsible is very often a highly contentious topic at the very center of the case.
In torts, the courts generally try to ascertain fault and try to do justice. But that is a general principle that they will intentionally and consciously break away from when they think they are serving a higher purpose. They will absolve liability or limit liability to just certain victims through the doctrine of proximate cause. Part of the development of that doctrine was openly to protect businesses from unending liability (and particularly railroads) to make sure they stayed in business. On the flip side, we will apply strict liability for certain activities, even if the injured party was 100% the one at fault. This had numerous reasons, but one of them was to limit use of those activities.
And criminally, we won’t make Bob’s cannon illegal, but we will happily make it illegal for Bob to have a cannon while letting Sally have one. We don’t allow convicted felons to own guns for instance. And we don’t allow the blind to have a driver’s license.
But then there are consequences to the consequences. Surgeons will refuse to operate in marginal cases and people will die unnecessarily. Food will no longer be mass produced and people will go hungry. Parents will stop taking their kids outside to swim.
Shit happens. If you punish people for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they'll never be in that place at all.
It's only the surgeon's fault if they don't deliver what they promise. If the patient is informed of the possible outcomes and their chances, then the patient is the one taking the risk. At least, that's how it should work.
If you sell food called "Peanut Butter OR Poison" then you can't be blamed if some people get sick, but if it's called "Peanut Butter" and it's something else, heads need to roll. If they didn't, then we would go hungry, or at least the smart people would.
As a cannon safety inspector, you are taking personal responsibility every time you tick "yes, this cannon is safe". If not enough people are willing to do that, others will assume part of the risk, for a price. And if nobody wants to do that, then nobody gets to play with cannons.
When a stray cannonball blows a hole in someone's house, somebody is going to suffer no matter what, and it shouldn't be the home owner.
Yes, risks are often worth taking. But we need to make sure that the person choosing to take the risk is the one who suffers the consequences. Then they can decide if it's worth it to them.
What I'm trying to say is that "peanut butter" on a label really means "peanut butter or poison". The only question is how many 9's we put on our certainty of it being peanut butter instead of poison. But it's never 100%.
Eventually, if peanut butter remains popular, someone will be killed by poisonous peanut butter. The argument I'm trying to make is that this doesn't necessary mean heads should roll when it happens. 99.99999999% certainty of poison-free peanut butter is good enough. And it remains good enough even when the 0.00000001% comes up and someone dies.
That doesn't make the death any less tragic. But it does mean the peanut butter producer isn't liable just because it happened.
"Heads roll" was an overly vindictive metaphor, because what actually happens is Skippy pays the poison victim some money, which rectifies the mistake, to some extent. So why would we ever spare them? By doing so, we're effectively shifting the burden to the victim. In delivering justice, consequences can't be eliminated, only redistributed.
And if the risk is really so small, then Skippy should have no problem assuming it. It's either them or little Timmy.
This experiment was performed at a facility designed for such experiments under the supervision of people who are trained to handle such experiments.
The result, while upsetting, was a freak accident. It could not realistically have been predicted. It is not necessarily anyone's fault, even if human error played a role.
Life is risky.
Sometimes surgeons slip and kill patients. Sometimes food producers slip and ship contaminated products which kill people. Sometimes parents turn around for 1 second and their kids drown.
All of these are caused by human error, but there has to be a point where you can say that reasonable precaution was taken so no blame is warranted. Because the alternative, only doing things that are 100% certain to be safe, means never doing anything at all.
There is no way to guarantee 100% safety. The building you are sitting in has been checked for safety. But something could have been missed, leading it to spontaneously collapse.
And here is the most important point of this entire post:
This will be true regardless how thoroughly you check the building.