I just can’t understand why ANYONE with that much money wouldn’t be a little more careful about where they choose to take risk. A little investigation on their part would have turned up the previous safety concerns.
Except that you can: you hire intelligence. He paid people to build it and fired them when they weren’t comfortable with the design and had safety concerns. Lol
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.
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.
specifically, you don’t hear much about those unlucky
The 19-year-old reportedly told family he was terrified. It was Father’s Day and his father is very interested in the Titanic, so he went anyway. He was just trying to impress and relate to his father.
I think CEO of the company being on the board made people think all those regulations were just unnecessary red tape. In fact that was what the CEO thinks.
BTW: kind of unrelated, but I find it crazy that CEO’s wife lost her parents to Titanic, and now she also lost her husband to it.
After a certain point, you consider the risks and have to make a decision weighing the pros and cons of the voyage. Yes, there’s a very real chance of death if things go wrong, but there’s also a chance for a life changing experience if things go right. For some people, the risk and adventure of it all is entirely the point of life.
As for the money, the $250K is a rounding error to a billionaire. Someone with a net worth of $1B spending $250K is similar to someone with a net worth of $10K spending $2.50 (e.g. about the same as a bottle of soda from a gas station).
I think a lot of people on here would be willing to take a trip to Mars if it came with a 1% chance of death and a 99% chance of the most memorable experience of your life. You’d probably get a lot of people willing to do the same if the chance of death were increased to 10% too, though obviously, many would view the 10% as too risky. If you increased the chance of death to 50% or higher, most people would decline, but there are a number of thrill seeker / adventurer type of personalities out there that would jump on the offer in a heartbeat. It all comes down to your personal risk/reward tradeoff.
They understood the risks; there is no question in my mind that they didn’t. I think they were bored with what life could offer them with that much money. At a certain point you really can basically experience it all. Instead of going on a tested rocket ship; they gambled the ultimate wager. Their life or bragging rights. Image the tale you could tell coming back from the journey in such a rigged tube; or the publicity of your fatal demise and making a “historical” moment regarding it. The world was watching. Darkly their death reads better than any final service of passing or headstone does.
I assume they got more arrogant the richer they are. A lot of things that requires thinking and effort were done for them by throwing money around, so why not this dodgy sub?
I just can’t understand why ANYONE with that much money wouldn’t be a little more careful about where they choose to take risk. A little investigation on their part would have turned up the previous safety concerns.
One thing you can’t buy with money is intelligence.
Except that you can: you hire intelligence. He paid people to build it and fired them when they weren’t comfortable with the design and had safety concerns. Lol
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.
specifically, you don’t hear much about those unlucky
Survivor bias at its finest.
The 19-year-old reportedly told family he was terrified. It was Father’s Day and his father is very interested in the Titanic, so he went anyway. He was just trying to impress and relate to his father.
I think CEO of the company being on the board made people think all those regulations were just unnecessary red tape. In fact that was what the CEO thinks.
BTW: kind of unrelated, but I find it crazy that CEO’s wife lost her parents to Titanic, and now she also lost her husband to it.
I guess the CEO of OceanGate joining them for the dive would have given them a false sense of comfort.
Interestingly, that same CEO mentioned that the Titan submersible was already showing signs of cyclical fatigue back in 2020:
https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-bigger-submersible-fleet-get-set-titanic-trips/
It would be fascinating if we could get an aircraft disaster style analysis but I don’t know if they would do so for marine accidents.
I wonder if they have a blackbox built in. doubt they have since they’ve skip so many standard.
They didn’t even have a locator beacon, and the sub ran Windows for some insane reason.
I would be amazed if they had a black box.
AFAIK they had already been down to the titanic multiple times, so I can see people thinking it was safe regardless.
After a certain point, you consider the risks and have to make a decision weighing the pros and cons of the voyage. Yes, there’s a very real chance of death if things go wrong, but there’s also a chance for a life changing experience if things go right. For some people, the risk and adventure of it all is entirely the point of life.
As for the money, the $250K is a rounding error to a billionaire. Someone with a net worth of $1B spending $250K is similar to someone with a net worth of $10K spending $2.50 (e.g. about the same as a bottle of soda from a gas station).
I think a lot of people on here would be willing to take a trip to Mars if it came with a 1% chance of death and a 99% chance of the most memorable experience of your life. You’d probably get a lot of people willing to do the same if the chance of death were increased to 10% too, though obviously, many would view the 10% as too risky. If you increased the chance of death to 50% or higher, most people would decline, but there are a number of thrill seeker / adventurer type of personalities out there that would jump on the offer in a heartbeat. It all comes down to your personal risk/reward tradeoff.
same reason why people will climb mount Everrest.
Those people are idiots too
Honestly Everest is way more tested and predictable than the Titan. This is like being Laika but for no gain.
They understood the risks; there is no question in my mind that they didn’t. I think they were bored with what life could offer them with that much money. At a certain point you really can basically experience it all. Instead of going on a tested rocket ship; they gambled the ultimate wager. Their life or bragging rights. Image the tale you could tell coming back from the journey in such a rigged tube; or the publicity of your fatal demise and making a “historical” moment regarding it. The world was watching. Darkly their death reads better than any final service of passing or headstone does.
I assume they got more arrogant the richer they are. A lot of things that requires thinking and effort were done for them by throwing money around, so why not this dodgy sub?