I was so glad to learn about it. This was such an unlikely rescue mission and amazingly heroic effort from everyone involved.
If I was religious I'd say this was a miracle. Just very happy every one is ok.
The amazing part to me is that it was 12 kids and one adult. Between the fear and the biological needs, I wonder what kept them alive for so long.
First, the first time I fasted I was quited stressed about it, and it was in controlled, cozy environment.
Second, they didn't know if anybody would come. Not even if somebody could come. For 9 days without eating and living in their own shit in the dark, they wondered.
I'm awaiting for the unavoidable book/movie, hoping they don't try to make it epic and get into real details about this.
I bet literally being a team helped out. It's not just a random group of people. They all know each other, they know each other's personalities, and there's a natural cohesion to win (i.e. not die!) together.
It'll probably take place somewhere in the US and white wash it with white actors. Maybe they'll make one of the kids (a girl) Asian to give a little nod to the original story.
The coach then will be an american living in Thailand, half the team will be girls, the sport will be american football instead of soccer, one of the rescuers will be a woman who happens to be an ex-girlfriend of the coach, there will be a bad guy from the government or some company that wants to leave them in the cave because it's cheaper... and Elon Musk's device will save the day.
Caves are generally the average yearly temperature of the area they are found in, also given that the water was rainwater and not spring water I’d imagine that unless the boys were like waste deep in water the entire time they were probably rather warm given the tropical location of Thailand.
People in general are able of amazing deeds under the threat of death.
Unfortunately it's why we are able to wage war. Was watching a documentary on the Vietnam war the other day and one guy was describing how he felt like an automaton that was focusing only on survival, which kept him from going insane, while another guy was describing how he felt no pain from his bullet injuries while trying to stay alive alone in the jungle for 3 days, only feeling pain after he was rescued.
But yeah, this coach is a hero for sure, I'm so glad they made it out.
Watched that episode with the South Vietnam veteran recalling that episode where he was left for dead (literally, by his own allies AND adversaries), crawled through the jungle for 3 days and only then felt the pain and smelled the nasty odor of the rotting flesh.
Not to belittle his accomplishment, but it's the times of great hardship where the search for meaning flourishes. See Viktor Frankl. It is the gift hidden in the horror.
The coach is the key. His parents passed away when he was young and he was brought up by his grandmother. He was a monk for about 10 years. He taught them how to meditate constantly even during training when the kids couldn't control their temper. This crisis puts the kids into the test, proved the power of meditation and team spirit.
When contact was first made, they had no idea how long they had been in there and asked "how long have we been here".
Sat in the dark, with no night and day, the bodies internal clock gets shot to pieces. They would have had no idea whether they had been there 3 days or 30
> People can live over 60 days without food, so maybe that part isn't so unexpected
It's not a physiological problem. It's a psychological one. When you ate everyday all your life, not eating is scary.
> I believe after 48 hours severe dehydration sets in...after 3 days...kaput.
You can live more than 3 days without water. Either with training, of because the conditions help (you don't move much, temperature and humidity are favorable, you don't eat, etc).
There are cases were human lived for 9 days without water.
But they had water near them so that was out of the equation.
> The amazing part to me is that it was 12 kids and one adult. Between the fear and the biological needs, I wonder what kept them alive for so long.
You can go a few weeks without food. The cave is likely at a consistent enough temperature that you're not going to freeze to death (sweating is more likely to be your real issue), so the only real constraint is potable water.
It's also been commented that the children had no idea they were trapped for as long as 9 days. Quite likely, without any source of natural light, they lost track of time, which certainly would help ease some of the panic.
I love how the global diving community came together to rescue them, it's unfortunate that Petty Officer Saman Gunan died after doing a run of oxygen tanks to the caves though.
I even liked how Musk came out of left field "grab that tube, we're making a rescue pod!" and then hopped on a plane with it when it was tested and ready. While it didn't really matter I like that sort of thinking outside of the box and how he just dropped everything he was doing and set people to work on it and then took it over anyway in the event it will ever been needed in the future, I really wish more people had that go-the-extra-mile attitude.
Musk had no business being involved. Really, 'inventing' a MVP prototype of a submarine which he 'tested' in a swimming pool and then intended to test for real on live children, when an existing rescue effort underway was working?
This was egoism at its finest, taking public credit for 'helping' with a rescue he wasn't invited or asked to help with. And the media ate it up hook, line and sinker.
I don't know what went down but I think he should have asked the people on location what they need. Maybe he did... If he didn't it's just pretty arrogant to spend a little time on a problem you know nothing about and then publicly exclaiming you know a solution.
A good idea now would be to send money to the family of the driver who died. That would be helpful.
It's odd that you admit you don't know what went down but are still passing judgement.
Even if he did, he didn't interfere or impede rescue efforts and gave them a tool they could possible use in the future. It's cool and a nice thing to do, and doesn't really seem like a big deal.
He did impede rescue efforts if the people on location had to spend even one second on thinking about some half baked solution instead of the task at hand. Why did he do all his stuff in public attracting a lot of attention away from the people risking their lives instead of working on it quietly?
Checked his Twitter feed, he talked with a few persons about their gear and how to help with pumps, power etc. So the sub wasn't the only thing he did.
And yeah, he probably doesn't have all the domain knowledge needed, but I reckon he had some help. Example; the 6 or so people seen on the video when they tested the tube.
I really can't see why people are bashing him. Yes, he was public about it, but he also created something that seems to work, and if it's a prototype, that prototype can be used for further development. It feels like nothing speeds up R&D like a crisis.
If he truly wanted to help he would have done so quietly, in contact with the local authorities. But he didn't. He proclaimed in full voice he had found a solution, on twitter. So he doesn't care. He just cares about appearing in front of the cameras.
His idea was stupid and useless anyway. It just came off as if he wanted to play the hero and build a Batsub in his mansion to deploy it and rescue the stranded children.
>and then intended to test for real on live children, when an existing rescue effort underway was working?
It was a good alternative to telling them to hold their breath and dragging them through dark and claustrophobic submerged spaces...
They tested it to make sure it was water-tight and easy to maneuver. Worst case you throw an oxygen tank in it and put a full-face regulator on each kid in the event it would have filled with water (which I'm imagining they did in the water anyway). Much easier to control a panicking child in a tube where he can't get at your hoses or slam his head into a rock.
They'd already rescued multiple children before Musk even got there, no sense changing what is working. They didn't seem to mind him leaving it behind for future rescues though. shrugs
The closest alternative would probably have been to immobilise the children by strapping them to a spinal board stretcher, and putting a full face SCUBA mask on them [and it seems that the other alternative of letting them swim/walk themselves actually worked].
I don't really understand how the more claustrophobic "submarine" capsule would be an improvement on this.
> Much easier to control a panicking child in a tube where he can't get at your hoses or slam his head into a rock.
Also much easier to get said child into a state of panic by sticking them in a claustrophobia-inducing tube. Also, whatever manoeuvrability characteristics the sub might have had, it was still a rigid tube bigger than the child inside. They were navigating caves, where some of the tunnels were hard to navigate by a single (flexible) adult. I _really_ wouldn't want to even chance getting the sub stuck on a tunnel.
I don't understand the submarine idea, that is an untested device for cave diving, also human breath from a very localized part of their body, so their is no point to pressurize everything, and you keep the flexibility of the body to not have a full metal cylinder around you. If you need to control someone, some anti anxiety pills and a harness are some tested tools for that.
> It was a good alternative to telling them to hold their breath and dragging them through dark and claustrophobic submerged spaces...
You can't say that?! Those SEALs train ALL the time so they have training to fall back on when things happen. You can't introduce something like this and expect them to use it. They would have no training to fall back on.
The only part I think was weird was him brainstorming on twitter.
I know there is a huge anti-Musk sentiment lately. Whatever you think of the guy, I think it's commendable that he used what resources he had to attempt to help.
People can blast him all they want for his 'egoism', but sitting behind the keyboard mocking him is even less helpful than what you accuse him of doing.
People blast McDonalds for putting phrases about tragic situations on their signs. People criticize them for being opportunistic and capitalizing on a tragedy. So, how is this different? Because he happens to be able to build a "submersible" for kids, he should get a pass? Why can't McDonalds say, "Our thoughts are with you" and get a pass?[0] This was pure PR. Everyone claims he's so smart and all this, but he ignored the domain when he designed this! Those SEAL divers aren't trained to work with a kid size submersible. Human bodies flex and can move around the narrow areas of the cave, this metal tube can't do that. If they had used this they would not have had training to fall back on when everything went south.
Musk injected himself into this situation as only a narcissist can and decided to PR the hell out of it.
Yeah, there's just a bit of anti-Musk sentiment lately, but he brings it on himself.
[0] I don't think they should. I think businesses should stay out of it. Even the ones helping would do themselves a favor and play down their involvement. It's the respectful thing to do.
>>So, how is this different? Because he happens to be able to build a "submersible" for kids, he should get a pass?
Because this wasn't Tesla or SpaceX taking out an ad and saying 'look at all the good we can do!' this was a human using resources in his means to help a situation. In the end it was futile, but it's pretty amazing that they were able to prototype something in days and offer support in the way they know.
Sure, you can argue he's a narcissist, but the public made him that way. His entire legacy and fortune was built on PR, which we gave him on a silver platter. Now all of a sudden it's become bad taste to support him, and everyone flips and expects him to slink away into the shadows.
There was literally 0 net negative from his move. Sure he got his name thrown around headlines, but it didn't take away from the hundreds of people who contributed.
Why is being critical of someone so much more important than acknowledging an act of kindness?
I thought the sentiment was fine, in particular sending engineers given that his latest subterranean endeavours. On the one hand there's a whiff of publicity off it, but the initiative is to be commended. I wouldn't go talking up the part he played beyond that though.
One of the things about these kinds of emergency situations is that the major media attention can cause harm by making people be too helpful. In most emergency situations, there's already a surplus of unskilled people on the scene who can help; the lack is in people with particular skillsets and materiel.
Granted, Musk probably is thinking he's providing relevant skills, but the concept has several potentially problematic things (most notably, the fact that you're basically doing an underground canoe portage and the fact that spending extended periods of time in a claustrophobic space is likely to be panic-inducing for the children). It doesn't sound like he fielded the advice of anyone who had actually had experience doing cave diving or caving rescue to figure out what problems are likely to come up. Indeed, from the response of the Thai coordinators, it sounds like the general sentiment on their end was a politely-worded "go away, you're not helping."
So while the sentiment of trying to help can be positive, this attempt does feel like it crossed a tad too far into counterproductive territory.
One of the biggest philosophical questions is whether helping people because you see it benefiting yourself is still a good deed... Ask yourself, does it really matter what his motivations for helping were? At the end of the day he was prepared to help. If someone volunteers at the soup kitchen not because they want to help people but because they need community service hours, are you really going to complain about that or call them a bad person?
If the volunteer was telling other people constantly in all kinds of situations that he was helping the poor, many people would turn the other way, somewhat embarrassed.
when Musk got involved things werent looking as happy as now. the thai navy hero had just died and the 'more people will probably die' sentiment was in the air.
Im glad he did it and I hope this will set an example to other billionaires who has enormous resources available for them to help out people in need instead of sipping decades old whiskey on the golf course, like literally every other billionaire did except Musk
I wonder how many on HN are thinking more about Elon Musk's now-not-needed rescue plan than the delight those mothers of those boys must be feeling!
There is also a tragedy going on in Japan right now with a lot of people actually with us no more. But a few million people with flooded homes is a 'statistic' whereas a few boys in a cave is a 'tragedy' to paraphrase Stalin.
I think that there is a time for offering assistance in a big public way, there is also the 'George Michael' approach. He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought. When he passed away a lot of people then learned how many people he had extended his hand of friendship to.
I’m no going to dispute that Musk might’ve been on a narcissistic trip, he admitted as much himself. However in his defense, the sub was made of falcon 9 liquid oxygen transfer tubes and the water in the cave was no deeper than a swimming pool it was just in a cave. Plus the whole rescue operation was very much let’s figure out a plan and try it on live kids as there weren’t really any other options. AFAIK no one has ever tried to do a multiple km rescue dive in a cave, with fatigued and terrified pre-teens who can’t swim let alone do basic scuba.
The office of Thailand’s prime minister has thanked the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk for his offers of help. Officials praised his mini-submarine but said it was not needed. Musk praised the "outstanding rescue team" but questioned the expertise of the official who turned down his submarine.
He inserts himself into the event (but contributed nothing), requiring the Prime Minister to kiss his ass (again, when he contributed nothing), then criticizes the people who saved the kids for not using his idea.
I know talking about voting is generally forbidden, but there is no reason for the parent to be flagged. It's not my favorite post ever on HN, but criticizing Musk isn't a violation of HN rules. Several other posts that criticizes him are also flagged (though some of them are pretty useless comments).
You're arguing the point that because his help wasn't needed in the end that he shouldn't have offered to help.
But it's conceivable that his expertise could have been useful.
Did any other organisations offer subterranean expertise? Genuine question, e.g. mining companies, drilling, or was it just that Musk made the most noise about it?
My impression was that this was not a good-faith effort to help but rather to be seen to be helping, without any concern for whether his efforts were useful.
Which is itself a bad faith evaluation. I'd prefer to be kinder and thus keep the door open for other such "help" in the future. Fundamentally, he didn't do any harm.
Actually, I believe that other people were exploring the options of drilling a rescue tunnel from the surface. IIRC, there was even the beginning of projects to make a usable tunnel launch site for such a rescue tunnel.
The expertise you'd want for drilling an emergency rescue tunnel would be a combination of skills related to drilling roughly pipe-sized vertical shafts [1] (mining/oil services, or maybe the companies themselves; I don't know what the exact breakdown of work packages end up being) and remote (specifically mountainous and jungle, in this case) infrastructure and logistics, which is military or again mining/oil services. Possibly a geologist or two on hand to assess the rock layers and identify hydrographic hazards as well as risks such as accidentally causing cave-ins. For the cave diving extraction, you'd want experienced cave divers, ideally ones with good first aid knowledge and cave rescue experience. For any further expertise, I wouldn't suggest anything without hearing the observations from the cave divers who have just explored the cave themselves.
There is no evidence presented that Musk, nor any of his companies, has any of this kind of useful expertise.
[1] Emphasis here on vertical shafts. There is a world of difference between a tunnel-boring machine that tends to remain within a single geological stratum and a vertical shaft that is constantly cutting through several strata of different kinds of rock (that require different cutting techniques).
> There is a world of difference between a tunnel-boring machine
Yeah it wasn't the machine he was offering but the expertise.
I get it, you've got it in for Musk. Fair enough, and I'm not out to hero worship him but lets be fair here - he did offer to help, and did so in good faith.
I added the footnote to emphasize why I thought The Boring Company was not relevant expertise, which you seem to have ignored or missed. Considering that Musk touted what SpaceX could do for the trapped people, not what The Boring Company could do, I also suspect that Musk recognizes the difference.
My contention isn't that Musk didn't make a good-faith offer to help, it's that Musk didn't have anything useful to offer. The end result is that would come across as something like this: https://xkcd.com/793/.
In my discussions with people, it seems like he’s becoming increasingly polarizing. His fans are idolizing him, but others see his behavior as attention-seeking theatrics. Interesting to see how it plays out in the long run, in terms of company PR.
I wonder how many on HN are thinking more about Elon Musk's now-not-needed rescue plan than the delight those mothers of those boys must be feeling!
There is also a tragedy going on in Japan right now with a lot of people actually with us no more. But a few million people with flooded homes is a 'statistic' whereas a few boys in a cave is a 'tragedy' to paraphrase Stalin.
I think that there is a time for offering assistance in a big public way, there is also the 'George Michael' approach. He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought. When he passed away a lot of people then learned how many people he had extended his hand of friendship to.
"There is also a tragedy going on in Japan right now with a lot of people actually with us no more."
This is true, and a tragedy, but I think it's natural for "12 kids in great jeopardy" to draw more interest than 100+ people who are already gone due to a flood and perhaps couldn't have been saved.
To be honest had the kids been found dead in the cave, it would have been a relative blip on Western media like the flood deaths in Japan or the 41 dead in the sinking of the Phuket tourist boat.
"He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought"
In this case, talking about it on Twitter was probably an easy way to get in touch with the relevant authorities at the rescue site.
Similarly, when he offered PowerWall batteries to help Puerto Rico, perhaps that made it easy for people who knew where they were needed to get in touch with him.
His efforts turned out to be a bit of a damp squib but that's because the rescue effort was launched earlier than expected due to coming heavy rains.
There was talk about having the kids wait in there until as late as November, or maybe a long process of drilling an escape hole.
If the rescue had begun a week or two later, perhaps Musk's gadget would have been used. As it is, the divers already had a plan that, by the time Musk arrived, appeared to be working well.
But yeah, he tweets a lot about his projects, and no doubt has some thought toward self-promotion.
He appears to follow through, so I can't be too cynical about his apparent opportunism.
Is the second half of this even true? If you create something that is impractical for the mission and won't be used have you been useful at all? I think not.
I would guess the "sub" was not much wider than the kids. While an adult or kid couldn't get through while wearing a cylinder, a cylinder a little bigger than a kid (or smaller than the torso of a Navy SEAL) might get through.
The problem may have been more that it would be too long to navigate some bends in the caves.
It also occurs to me that, being made of aluminum, the tube would act like a giant heatsink in the cold water, chilling whoever was inside.
But with more time before the rescue, and by consulting with divers familiar with the caves, the problems might have been worked out.
So, yeah, taking the tube to Thailand was kind of pointless, but I guess at least shows that it wasn't just empty tweeting. There was an effort.
Talking about drilling escape holes.
The Dahlbusch rescue device was improvised in 5 days, with no patents claimed whatsover. Wonder if Musk will do the same with his contraption.
I got the feeling that he just jumped in on that, without further thinking (which at least to me seems sympathetic). Got the feeling that it rather hurt their PR as people were quick to call it a PR stunt, which is foreseeable if you mainly think about PR.
How dare you slander our lord and savior Elon Musk! /s
Seriously though, there's a strong cult of personality at play and HN readers frequently downvote any comment that is even slightly negative about Musk or Tesla or SpaceX.
It's "awesome" but the cynic in me sees this as PR stunts and nothing else. Every day 150,000 people die. The media "happened" to latch onto this story and make it the headliner for an entire week. Objectively speaking, and at the risk of sounding like a cold hearted bastard, the life or death of 12 people isn't important news compared to other things that are happening right now.
Then, types like Musk grabbed this opportunity to score some points in the public eye by appearing to take immediate and energetic action to solve such a massively popular and publicised rescue. In conclusion, I'm 95% sure the motivation was PR and not the goodness of their hearts.
EDIT: Regardless of your agreement with what I just said, flagging is not cool, and against the rules of the site.
He's already working on the leading non-health-related cause of death. (car accidents) Both via self-driving cars and group transport. While you're right that this is a PR game to some degree, I think it's much different than if Bezos or someone similar did it.
Awesome news. But how long until Hollywood capitalizes on this event and makes a movie? "... Based on a true story, starring insert big name actor here..."
The film crew are already in the cave filming. It is not a bad thing since everyone trapped is out. They have to collect as much data as possible while everything is still fresh
Interesting stories (like this) are extremely valuable to our species. The movie about the Chilean miners [1] being trapped was an amazing film and I learned much about the conditions of miners and mine safety from viewing it and reading up on it later. It also shined a light on the local Chilean politics at the time.
It's hardly just mere Hollywood money grabbing IMO.
It was a near tragedy, a man died in the process, but someway it is comforting to see everybody concentrated on a problem like this, trying to help fellow people, than waging war etc.
just this. It's trite to say it, and I'm sure it's cold comfort to his family, but we all die, and this person went out saving lives, young lives with lots of years to save, and in service to others. His death is somber and sad, but not tragic.
Not only did he die saving lives, he died doing (apparently) what he loved, being a frogman. I imagine he didn't hesitate to show up and get in the water fully knowing his life was at as much risk as theirs, those guys are a different breed altogether.
With all due respect lets all be wary of the 'cult of sacrifice' which often takes hold when someone dies to save someone else. Any time someone dies to save someone else, I suggest the appropriate reaction is that we should simply regret among ourselves that we didn't develop a technological solution to the problem before the problem presented itself, not engage in hero worship (please don't read this as diminishing what this person did, it was a sacrifice, and those kids owe it to him to live good lives now).
Very much agreed. Similarly, the risk is something I was aware of when I signed up as a firefighter (and magnified even more now as an officer who makes decisions about going inside on structure fires, etc). But it's very much a matter of calculated risk.
This is related to firefighting, but it's interesting to see what some of the things we are trying to fix are in terms of saving lives, and little is around technology, and much in the way of culture, safety.
It is tragic. Tragic for him, his familly, his friends and collegues. Tragic for saved boys too, actually, I am sure they would be happier if no one died.
His dead is bad news not good news. Everybody would be better off if this man survived. Him dying while trying to save others does not make it less tragic.
Let's not minimize his death by saying (as sibling comment did) that his dead somehow matters less or is less important because he was rescuer and thus different. His life had same value.
I suggest reading the book "Shadow Divers" for a look at some of the professional diving culture. It's super interesting. This death is definitely horrible. However, reading Shadow Divers also made me think that any cave divers take on high risk every time they swim, and that this death - while tragic - is a risk this person confronted long before the incident.
Just wanted to point out that diving culture as described in 'Shadow Divers' is pretty much as far from professional as it gets. What the book does describe is east coast deep wreck diving community of the early 1990s. In which I suspect it does a good job at. And how they pushed the limits before mixed gas diving / non-open circuit scuba equipment was well understood or widely available outside military and possibly some commercial outfits.
That said, the book is great read. Especially if you're into diving. It's just that it should not be read as a role model for anything but reckless regard of ones life.
Not to drift completely off-topic, here is a link to a long thread about Thailand cave rescue from the cave diving forums[1].
Can anyone explain how the heck they found the children in the first place?
Seriously, I can't wrap my head around it. The kids were stranded 2.5 miles inside the cave. All anyone knew was that the kids didn't return form their hike. How does that lead to "Hey, let's dive into the cave and maybe we'll find live children"?
From what I recall, they used knowledge of the caves coupled with predictions of where they might reasonably have gone to escape the rising flood waters. It wasn't so much a stab in the dark, but it was still a very difficult and dangerous search, in the dark.
They were signing their names on a wall of the cave, which was stated to be a tradition in the news reports that I read. So I think if was more like "why isn't [child] back from [explicit cave] yet?"
The kids were known to explore that cave regularly. Presumably they had followed a consistent path into the cave (or had a destination in mind) but never got that far. Some caves are also fairly linear, but that may not have been the case here.
One of their class mates knew they'd gone to the cave, apparently as an initiation to the team, writing their names in the wall. Their bags were found outside the entrance
They only went into the entrance of the cave but sudden monsoon rains blocked it and forced them further in as the water rose, all the way to 2.5km in to an elevated section
It was the birthday for one of the team members. To celebrate this day, the coach brought them to the cave(which was not the first time that they've been there), and they're supposed to race in to write their names at the first wall of the cave. Then heavy rain fell and water started flooding in when they tried to return. To survive, the only way is to go deeper in to the higher platform.
- “A ranger of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation alerted authorities to the missing group after seeing their unclaimed belongings at the cave entrance.”
- “Volanthen was placing guidelines in the cave to later assist others in navigation. He ran out of line, which led him to swim to the surface—there, he found the missing team and its coach.”
Your circadian cycle gets wacky without sunlight to regulate it.
I've talked to cavers that say they need to set alarm clocks otherwise they will be inside the cave for days without noticing (thinking it's hours), which can be quite dangerous if you're not getting hydrated.
Super interesting. Can't comprehend how the sailor lived in that claustrophobia-inducing space for over 48 hours. Human spirit in these extreme situations is really something.
I think that sailor is unique more for being rescued than for being in that position in the first place. I don't think "trapped in an air bubble in a sunken ship" is all that rare of an occurrence. Look at the K-141 Kursk disaster for example - 23 men survived the initial explosion, and spent the next several days in a compartment before succumbing to fire.
Yeah I can imagine you get visual hallucinations after spending some time in the darkness, so I can imagine they were skeptical seeing lights or hearing things at first. I hope they write a good book about their experiences.
Richard Stanton and John Volanthen are the real deal. People should read their wikipedia pages. Also, watching cave diving videos... even on their best day, when they're having a great time, it looks absolutely horrifying. lol
The cave was well known and documented. They made an educated guess about what happened, where they would have fled, and where the air pockets would be.
This cave was not new to them and one of the kids didn't go because he didn't have his bike with him after soccer training. Some kids did inform the parents about it too.
I was surprised to hear that there were long stretches of dry walking between their location in the cave and the cave entrance. In particular there were dry stretches prior to the very nasty tiny hole they all squeezed through. I guess they were panicked and ran further than they needed to just to be extra sure?
Also looking at the side-view diagrams of the cave, if they were running away from the entrance because it was starting to fill up, I'm surprised that very tight hole they crawled through wasn't also underwater at the time since it looks like it is as low or lower than the cave entrance itself. They descended to below the entrance altitude after having gained a lot of altitude. I know there are probably no answers but from the calm, adult, safety of my office I can't wrap my head around the decisions they made at all. Seems like they were running like panicked deer and then stopped because...? They couldn't run any further?
The story I read indicated it was a planned "expedition", so presumably they had torches and such? You can't go far in pitch black in a cave and not injure yourself.
It doesn't really add up as it's been told. The death of the expert diver too seems very strange.
It's strange to me. I've only dived at a novice level and never in a cave:
An expert diver who was delivering spare oxygen (or was it air), with a buddy, in a system in which a static line had been placed, and in which presumably a dive leader was managing operations and wouldn't allow a diver to return without a suitable amount of air .. in that situation they simply ran out of air? It seems so unlikely.
I just assumed that he got trapped, or carried by a current, or died in what might be perceived as a "stupid" way and they didn't want to mention it as it might hinder the rescue or sully the man's memory.
I’ve done both caving and cave diving. Other than free diving (single breath), cave diving is the second most dangerous form of diving. Cave diving is really technical. As you’ve said, there’s a 1000 things that can easily go wrong.
Imagine you are in pitch black darkness, with limited visibility even with torches. The water is moving, there isn’t a GPS equivalent, it’s real hard to keep track of position other than markers on a rope.
There can be castrophobicially small tunnels that you need to crawl through. Add bulky gear to the scenario. There can be sharp edges that can tear through skin or gear. Worse, there can be stones in the water stream shooting at you.
There is so much that is an element of luck.
This is one of the reasons that interest me so much in robotics. Imagine being able to send 10’s of robots that can map the entire cave in parallel and send the accurate position of the kids. Not only that, but they can autonomously deliver important gear like food, oxygen, heat blankets e.t.c while human divers prepare for rescue. The man-machine patnership can potentially save so many lives.
I strongly believe the future of exploration/rescue is all about how smart + cheap we can make our robots. It’s so much cheaper sending robots than humans to dangerous missions.
Cave diving is a much more difficult version of diving. Many of the Thai seal team divers are open water divers. This is why there was a large contingent of foreign divers involved. Those with the requisite skills levels are widely dispersed. It's entirely likely that Saman Gunan could have done a hundred more open water dives and survived then all, but due to the difficult conditions in this situation it is possible he got disoriented and/or panicked and ran out of air. I think because the boys survived many people perhaps underestimate the difficulty of the situation now that it is resolved.
We don't know how far into the cave they were when the flood hit. They may have gone through the dry tight section before the flood pulse hit and they were unable to return.
The other possibility is that the various elevation diagrams published by the media may well be wrong. The only proper survey I have seen by cavers is the plan view (for example here: https://www.caverescue.org.uk/luang-nang-non-cave-rescue-tha... ). It looks like the produced diagrams have been... "estimated" from reports of what the rescuers were experiencing. The cave may have filled up from the entrance first and chased the team up the cave.
I don't know the details, but the article describes them as simply walking to the location they were found in. I wonder if the route they walked is now impassable due to flooding, but wasn't at the time, and whether the rescue route was simply the least worst path...
I'm more surprised by the fact that they went that far into the cave in the first place! The coach should be in prison now for putting so many kids in danger and be the cause of a rescue diver death!
You are being down voted (probably too glib), but among all the excitement of everyone getting out, there is a rescuer who did die.
There have been discussions about what responsibility people who act recklessly and put the rescuers in harms way should take (unprepared mountain climbers/ people who don't evacuate storms).
I too was transfixed by the maps and cave cross sections and did wonder how they got in that far.
The parents public statement to the coach was not to assign blame.
One factor in this discussion on what do to about "idiots" is: if it weren't for those people who do "stupid things" and require rescue, the rescue organizations would have to hire people to simulate real rescue conditions.
There are always situations that require rescue that are not the fault of the victim. We thus need prepared rescuers, and the best preparation is real situations. The problem with a simulation is it is unethical to send someone out without enough food/shelter to potentially survive. Thus you never get a real race against the clock where you have to make life or death decisions without enough information.
Being a rescue worker is a profession that carries risk, the only place where we could potentially put blame on a rescuer's death would be if the organization that employs them be negligent or if the rescuees had actively tried to harm them.
They went in the cave well before the period of time the warnings said not to, they did nothing wrong.
The 1-2-3 of rescue. Save yourself first, your partner second, and the victim last.
It's tragic that he died. You aren't supposed to go down more than 1/3 of your air supply so you have the same amount to get back with plus a third for emergencies. In addition, he was literally carrying extra oxygen tanks. I don't know the full story, but from what I understand, he wasn't fouled -- just ran out of air. In that case, it seems like he put the victims ahead of himself by acting recklessly and paid the price.
A blame mentality is a dangerous and self-defeating road to travel. It is only a matter of time before the blamer makes a mistake. Punishments are for the discouragement of others. How long before everyone is too paralysed by fear to make any movement at all?
I have recently (within the last few years) heard stories like "I won't help that person because their relatives will sue me if they die".
The cave had warning signs about entering during certain months due to the rainy season. The team didn't disobey the warnings - they went in the month before signs said not to go in. The rains came early.
It's hard to fault the team/coach, since they heeded the posted warnings. I have a feeling the signs will be changed after this.
Calling for prison without knowing much is very harsh.
We don't know if the coach led them in or if he just followed them.
We don't know how far in they went initially. Maybe they just went a bit inside the cave and then increasing water levels forced them further in.
At least he stayed with the boys. Imagine if no adult had been there.
Blaming the coach for the death of the rescue diver is completely uncalled for. There is causality, yes, but it was hardly foreseeable to the coach - if he really led them in - that they would get caught by flooding and that as a result of that a rescue attempt would be launched in which a diver would die.
Agree, but I wonder if he even checked the weather forecast before getting into a cave. Which even for a complete amateur like me seems to be the most basic precaution (along with notifying someone that I am going there).
But again: Maybe the kids went in there and the coach just followed with them. We assume that he was in charge, but we don't know. We don't know if he encouraged them to go in, or whether he tried to talk them out of it or something in between. If he encouraged them to go in, we don't know if he thought they would just enter the opening of the caves.
Some reports say that kids in that area regularly go to the caves. Maybe that's just what you do around there, like kids in America hanging out at a parking lot (which probably kills more kids annually) or kids hanging out at pools (in which way more kids probably drown than in caves). Maybe it's not considered so reckless.
Except as a tourist a couple of times, I have never been to such caves. I wouldn't think rain would be an issue. Like you, I have now read in the media that there were warning signs that said something about flooded caves during monsoon season, and maybe they saw the signs or should have seen the signs. Or maybe people in that area know that local caves flood during monsoon. I don't know. Three weeks ago I certainly wouldn't have thought of flooding as the obvious risk in a cave. I would probably have worried more about falling or slipping or snakes or earthquakes or getting lost.
And even if they did check the weather forecast, would they have known that caves would be flooded? In the last few days, every meteorologist in the world has looked into whether that mountain in Thailand would get rain and experts have tried to guess what it would mean for the flooding in the caves and the ongoing rescue mission. But although it rained it didn't mean that the water raised much. Maybe these people go to the caves regularly while it rains and it's not a problem.
Weather forecast in Thailand is not very accurate, even in Bangkok let alone the rural areas. Even the public radar in Chiang Rai[1] (from the Thai Meteorological Department) has a disclaimer[2] that it’s not accurate in mountain areas.
Even during the rescue, the forecast said Chiang Rai was going to have a heavy rain for the whole week (thus the reason they started the operation few days ago), but it has been pretty dry so far.
A report I read said that the coach went in looking for the kids after they had been reported missing — he didn't lead them in. Don't know if that's true or not. I'm sure we will find out in the coming days.
Even if we agree he's guilty, the guy just spent 18 days in a cave with a bunch of kids, 10 of those without knowing if anyone would come or if they would all drown or starve, and never knowing if any - including him - would die.
Is prison really needed? Didn't he pay enough for his crime?
A good friend of mine is heading to prison for a car accident in which one of his friends died. He wasn't drunk or texting, just unlucky. The family of the victim is horrified the prosecutor is doing this.
This is an ugly and poisonous attitude. I don't usually downvote for pure spite... I did just now.
> I'm more surprised by the fact that they went that far into the cave in the first place! The coach should be in prison now for putting so many kids in danger and be the cause of a rescue diver death!
I would at least wait to know if he endangered them or if he actually saved them by taking them that for in. For all I know if he hadn't been there they might've drowned in the flood trying to get out rather than go deeper inside.
From what I understand the coach's actions after they became trapped are a significant reason the boys survived until the rescue. He shared a large portion of his food with them and taught them meditation exercises to remain calm and level headed (which probably also conserved their oxygen). Regardless of the circumstances leading to them being trapped, this man should be seen as a hero.
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
>Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
Why wasn't the death of Saman Gunan more widely publicized? I barely heard about it - in the NYT article on this it's a single sentence 2/3rds of the way through the article. I'd have thought that the concept of someone sacrificing themselves for the recovery of 12 children would have been a major story. The Guardian's liveblog (or whatever this is) doesn't mention it in the first couple pages, nor do the responses of any of the world leaders and celebrities quoted mention it. Elon Musk's participation is cute but has gotten way disproportionate response compared to the lack of acknowledgement that I see this guy getting.
The man's death probably isn't a big focus of the Guardian's live coverage because it happened a while ago. There may have been an article just about him, I don't recall.
Unfair life. I am glad the children are out of the nightmare. I feel crushed because a young man (navy seal) with bravery focused on helping as much as possible without thinking twice. RIP our hero.
God, if those children were doing an initiation endangering themselves. Remember the newborns dying in Syria, Africa and other places.
It was something that happened last week, and was very widely publicized then. I remember reading it on the front page of every newspaper site I visited.
I see, I was probably not paying attention to the story at the time. I still find it odd that these summary articles after the fact seem to be ignoring the fact that one person died during the rescue attempt. I'd have expected more "heroic efforts on the part of Thai divers, including one who gave his life,..." kind of lines in the first three paragraphs.
Edit: the NYT online front page now mentions him, so maybe it was just a matter of scrambling out the news that the rescue was complete (though I'd have expected them to write that copy in advance).
Are you basing this merely on one NYT article you read announcing their rescue a week after a diver died?
I not only got notified by multiple newspapers on my phone, I later saw pictures and a video of the funeral completely surrounded by cameras, which I learn the Thai royalty entirely paid for.
No, I wasn't. You can see in my original one that I cited The Guardian's coverage that was original story as well as all the tweets they listed there (praising the rescue work - I'm completely shocked they weren't mentioning the dead rescue workers) which included summaries of the efforts highlighting Elon Musk's activities but not the dead diver's. Since I figured right-wing news agencies would be more likely to include a story about an ex-military agent dying in an attempt to save children, I also read Fox News's front-page article on the completion of the mission. Though the article covered Elon Musk's efforts in substantial depth (including graphics with annotations about where the sub would have the most difficulty), it didn't even mention the one casualty the operation had!
For the record, I didn't see any of this coverage a week ago but have already admitted that it happened and I'm sure it was extremely significant. I'm still surprised that he's not mentioned in every recap article's opening and wasn't praised by, for example, Trump and other celebrities reacting to the event.
Wasn't it? It got featured in our main TV news multiple times. But frankly, there wasn't much to hope for in that story, unlike with the cave rescue. After the first couple of hours, it's very unlikely that you'd find more survivors.
You've clearly never done that "job". It cannot simply be left behind. It fundamentally changes a person. Especially in SOF.
It is probably true that in countries like Thailand, serving in the military is somewhat thankless. That's hard to imagine from a US perspective where veterans/servicemembers today receive amazing support.
One reason not to focus too much on his death might be because it seems to have been more "random mistake" than "heroic sacrifice"? The children had already been located, the system for supplying and evacuating them had already been arranged, and everyone who entered the cave had all the supplies and equipment they needed to perform their tasks.
Running out of air while diving is a mistake that any amateur diver with crap equipment can make, but we make it while 50 ft deep in open water, so we just swim to the surface if our buddy isn't close or attentive enough to help us. [0] If you're in a cave you can't do that, but if you're a professional military frogman with fancy professional equipment you probably shouldn't make that mistake. If the global media had concentrated to closely on this, embarrassing questions would have been asked. Therefore it's better that everyone just praise his courage and move on.
[0] I did this, when I was 13 and I was using a system with a bad air gauge. When everyone got to the top, the dive master said "OK, you've done an emergency ascent, now switch tanks and we're going back down to practice buddy breathing." I haven't run out of air while diving since that episode.
From the coverage, he was placing additional air bottles along the route.
I can see how, being reminded of the logistic time cost of every bottle, he might have pushed and run too close for his return. And that's not even broaching equipment malfunctions.
Things happen. Maybe it was a mistake and maybe it was bad luck. But the man's a hero for returning from retirement to play a critical role in saving 13 people.
I tend to agree with you and I think you are being downvoted unfairly. The man was a hero for doing what he did and there should be more attention given to what he did and its impact on the outcome.
It's okay about the downvotes. Completely bizarre though: my comment was originally at +12 and got down to -2! HN is just inscrutable at times. I feel like the initial upvotes show that I was not alone in thinking his story is surprisingly neglected (in this round of coverage).
It turns out that if your suffering is spectacular enough, people will come save you. Maybe if we throw all the poor children of the world into caves people will start caring about them.
[0] is the first source that popped up on a quick googling; the US alone spent 18 billion dollars between 2002 and 2014 on food aid (to hungry children and such).
It does become easier to focus on situations in which imminent death is anticipated and possibly observable. Think of the resources and attention devoted to the exoneration of death row inmates as they near execution, versus the attention given to them in the years/decades leading up to the execution. Nevermind the many, many more people who may be unjustly sentenced to life imprisonment.
It is not a new thing. In Seneca's "On the Shortness of Life" there is about people praying to get a few more years of life, while wasting decades when they were younger.
For me it seems as some sort of artefact of human cognition. (Mercilessly used by "last minute" opportunities by salesmen... and journalist.)
Still, the question is: for a given amount of resources (time, money, people) how many quality-life-years can be added?
If this quality is order of magnitude lower than other less exciting solutions (e.g. access to medicine and education for kids from poor families), then we should be aware that what we pay for is not lives saved, but an emotional entertainment show.
I'm reminded of a fellow in, IIRC, St. Louis. He expends tremendous amounts of energy, time, and money rescuing stray dogs, to the point where he doesn't have much of a social life. It's all about the dogs.
Someone asked him why he didn't instead pour that energy into helping homeless people. His response was something to the effect that there were plenty of others helping people; his passion was the dogs. I believe he also turned the question around: what are you doing to help the homeless?
A few dozen cave divers can't do much to help the millions of impoverished children, but they used their skills to perform heroic and deadly feats to help 12 children and their coach, and inspired many around the world to ask themselves these types of questions.
Reducing that to a cost-benefit analysis vs some vague "but can't we spend that effort on the other lost kids?" question is both impossible and missing the point.
It's hard to imagine leaving them in there AND living with the knowledge that they had been left in there. Attempting a rescue seems like a pretty human thing to do, and I found it hard to blame people for being people. I certainly do awesome & dumb things because I'm a person.
Human empathy is an instinct developed on rought evolutionary heurestics, is not rational and doesn't fit complexities of modern world. What else is new?
The difference is one is a very abstract and broad problem while the other is a very concentrated and narrow one. Humans have a hard time in the abstract. I do admit that the sensationalism of this event brought focus from the world but the same rules apply to someone who's stuck in a burning building or under a car or whatever, people will go out of their way to help when there's a well defined and immediate problem.
Been following the Guardian and their Thai based journalist, Michael Safi. But, was their any other non-TV English language media house that was covering the event minute by minute?
I wonder if it'd be possible to use some of the momentum and talent from this to mount a rescue attempt to save the children trapped in cages in the United States.
This “Trump” obsession drives me crazy. Trump could write a check to NAACP and the news story would be how the check wasn’t large enough and because of that, he’s racist.
But several years ago nobody really cared, which tells me, nobody really cares that much now — it’s just yet another tool to generate the rabid hysteria necessary to bolster midterm elections prospects.
Every week it’s literally another outrage, while the previous week’s outrage is quickly forgotten. This shouldn’t be a political thread, but since someone seems to be following the “outrage playbook” by making a comment about the detention of those arrested for illegal immigration under Trump, but likely never said anything when it happened under prior administrations —- it is important that we call out political manipulation when we see it.
Perhaps if those opposing Trump had actually protested about kid-detention years ago when it started, maybe I might consider their outrage genuine. But now, people are using detained children for political gain, which is pretty disgusting in my opinion.
It’s fasionable to pretend to hate Trump, I get it. But it’s funny how people seem to fall all over themselves to express how “woke” they are. Implying that before Trump they were all sleeping? Because in the case of detained children, they sure as hell were sleeping — because their guy was in the White House.
There are weekly outrages because these people are shitty, dishonest, incompetent people.
It's not just a minor disagreement in some technical bit of policy that causes an arch-conservative like George Will to urge people to 'vote Democrat' come November:
you are being somewhat flippant, but you are getting at something I often wonder about. why is it considered reasonable to spend so much money (and a life) to occasionally rescue a small number of people in a weird predicament? Elon musk was ready to drop about a million dollars on this problem; similarly, I often read about the US Navy retasking entire warships to respond to small maritime emergencies at an hourly cost I can't fathom.
is it callous to ask whether there isn't a more efficient (from the perspective of actually helping a significant number of people) way to allocate these resources? there are a lot of lives that could be changed for way less.
Certainly, there are logistical costs in moving material around, but if an active US Navy ship isn't deployed on a humanitarian mission it's either patrolling or training.
It's still a sizable cost, but it'd be a lot less than expected if sunk expenditures were removed.
it's not callous, and there is certainly an element of group hysteria to well-publicised threats to life like this and the Chliean miner rescue - we do not as a general rule attempt the same urgent response to greater threats to life such as malaria, starvation etc. But the difference I believe is that these incidents are short-term and can be saved by a burst of coordinated effort, whereas other causes of greater death are often structural and hard to impact without a charity's organisational efforts - for example, reducing malaria deaths is a complex web of fundraising, acquisition, distribution, education, and probably many other factors I am not aware of. A million dollars can save 13 lives now, or maybe-hopefully make an impact when added the existing pool of resources dedicated to reducing the impact of hunger or disease.
I think sometimes we abstract society too much. As always, remember that society is just large numbers of individuals. So why might you decide you want to help people in this sort of situation? It's reasonable to speculate that Musk may have had some of the following major motivators, for instance:
1) It's a fun challenge to try to solve, particularly when traditional solutions seem to be failing.
2) You get to help some people.
3) It's great publicity for you and your companies, particularly if you succeed in an out of the box way.
And other people would have of course have had radically different motivations for why they chose to get involved. There's no grand overseer that found it reasonable to 'spend' or risk a life. It all comes down to completely subjective views, motivations, and value systems. So if you want to know why what any given individual would do is something they would consider reasonable, you would need to ask them. There is no right or wrong answer. In this case the diver's motivations and value determinations convinced him that this was a reasonable spot to risk his life, and he died. I expect he had no regrets and so it was, all things considered, a great way to die from his perspective. By contrast, it would be a terrible way to die from the perspective of many others. Nobody's right, or wrong. It's just different motivations and value determinations.
I didn't do anything to help- I don't think saving 12 people in a Thailand cave means a lot, globally speaking. Why do you say he was asked to do something? He offered to help. More realistically, however, he should have chosen to stay out of the way- he didn't get his device to the site until the rescue operation was already half completed. It wouldn't have worked anyway- it wasn't fit for the purpose. Getting a bunch of PR for somethign that wasn't really asked for and doesn't work seems pointless attention getting.
Yes it was not an official call for help, but someone asked. He even acknowledged that experts were already on the field, and his first reaction was to just send goods there before advancing with engineering ideas.
Following your idea why were there so many civilian divers? Why not let the Thai military do the job? That's just PR. Those attention-seeking bastards.
The guy likes solving problems and has a good team to do it as well, he did it on is own dime, so why all the fuss?
"I didn't do anything to help- I don't think saving 12 people in a Thailand cave means a lot, globally speaking." yes that's the thing you're just a neckbeard who cares shit about others and feels smug about pointing fingers on the internet. Who cares if its Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jon Doe, if they have the resources and will, why shouldn't they try to help?
The difference between the divers and Musk is that the divers did it without announcing their plans on Twitter. They just when there and helped. I think it's good that Musk tried to help, but the publicity he got with it makes me question his motivations.
There is also no need for personal attacks
"think it's good that Musk tried to help, but the publicity he got..." If he got all that publicity, then hate the newspapers who kept giving it to him, not the guy who was just happy to help. He probably kept tweeting because that's where he first was "contacted" about the subject and had some cool photos and videos to show.
Nop, not because of Elon Musk per se. I would have lost my judgment and go "ad-hominem" if it was another person as well. I just hate the argument "He's just helping for PR, while I seat my ass doing nothing"
You conveniently cut short my phrase, when quoting, just to push the argument that I'm a Musk fanboy...
So, this is the second time you've said I don't do anything. There is no reason to be rude. My work is in scientific reesarch, and I've worked on projects that made significant improvements to drug discovery, possibly saving millions of lives.
I said above I didn't think this was a situation where anybody should do anything. It's 12 people in a cave. In the global context, that's noise. this is just classic news turning minor events into global news.
Would you please stop posting obsessively about Musk? You're hardly the only one doing it, but you've been doing virtually nothing else. Single-purpose accounts aren't allowed on HN and we ban them, so please don't use the site this way.
These pro-and-anti-Musk flamewars are extremely low-quality discussion. You guys might as well be bickering about Spider-Man.
And Musk and his team (and I believe many others) are qualified enough to present other, engineering, alternatives parallel to the main one. Why shouldn't they? Why is that seen as attention-grabbing?
The question was put to him by random people on Twitter, not by the Thai government. His initial response that he thought the Thai government had it in hand.
You think it's okay to debase the chief of the rescue operation, ignore the advice he took from multiple teams, and cherry pick a personal email correspondence with one guy that basically just says "keep trying" just so Musk can dance around, yet again, people pointing out a potential PR stunt?
I don't know what level of social ineptness is required to ignore not only the blatant insult against the chief, but Musk's presumably unintentional insult to the rest of the team that informed the chief what they thought about Musk's idea to carry a 300lb tube through volatile currents in a tight, murky cave system.
This flamewar was ridiculous all around, but your account stands out as among the worst that made it so bad. This is the kind of thing HN exists to avoid, not perpetuate, so would you please not use HN this way in the future?
As I posted elsewhere, all this angry arguing about Musk, pro or con, is as meaningful as angry arguing about Spider-Man. Since you're on the con side, I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR you deplore, by giving it your attention and attracting others into doing the same. Go for it if that's what you want—but please not here.
Please elaborate? I presented an actual perspective. You have gone around these threads and insulted and demeaned people with a different opinion than the majority and then even equivocated these criticisms to a debate about a fictional character ("You guys might as well be bickering about Spider-Man."). That's not only incredibly dishonest, you really should be ashamed to stoop to such a level publicly. Intentionally framing a debate as not important or just a "flame war" is exactly how you get mindless echo chambers. Musk is a public figure who has had substantial investment in his companies via U.S. tax dollars. He's not a Marvel character, you doughnut.
Not once have you called out people hurling personal insults towards people that have a minority opinion on this board, you've done the exact opposite.
You have implied my statements violate some aspect of HN, but you're going to need to specifically point out which statements do that. Dissent is not violation. You might not be interested in the dissent or critique but you can't use your position as moderator to quell it.
And if you're actually willing to be honest with yourself, or even devote some amount of diligent effort to pretend you're here to upload intellectual standards (despite discouraging dissenting opinions), you need to explain why blatant personal attacks are being allowed in threads you are most definitely reading.
> I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR you deplore,
Dang, that's a unsubstantiated view point and you know it. I'm honestly in shock you think that's a valid point to make (I'm not). Please explain how someone who gets public attention as a status quo is somehow actually being fueled by his critics. This talking point comes in up various contexts and is always meant to dismiss critique or even worse, victim blame. What the actual fuck are you on?
To recap since you most definitely again will side step any critique of moderating actions:
* What rules am I violating and where. A simple quote of my statement and the rule will suffice.
* Why are you framing the debate as if it's about a fictional character, when it's the CEO of a company who receives significant funding from U.S. tax payer dollars.
* How does critiquing a public figure's positive media coverage in a small thread somehow get the news to continue positive coverage?
It's simple: all this fever about GoodMusk vs. BadMusk has become bone-crushingly tedious. When that happens with anything, nothing can redeem it and it's off topic on Hacker News.
I definitely don't mean to pick on you personally. Dozens of HN users have been filling the threads with this lately and it needs to stop. We literally can't moderate it all, and the Elonian Provocation is large enough to be capable of swamping this site entirely.
It's a fair question, but the answer is no, because of the tragedy of the commons. That is, you may be right at the individual level, but it's unfortunately common for the sum total of individual effects to become something completely contrary to what any of the individuals would want. We have to manage the site at that sum-total level. This means telling people "don't do the things that produce lousy systemic effects", even though any one of those things might be fine when considered independently.
Wouldn't the correct thing to do in that case then would be to wholesale delete pro/anti musk threads that specifically revolve around him as a CEO?
Right now it seems like current moderation tactics are encouraging a "lie hard and fast" mode, so the truth can't catch up -- so to speak. Essentially the moderation policy is acting as a floodgate that only closes when perspectives that negate the "pro" side of things are brought into play.
This is apparent in what was allowed to be posted without question and in how you, intentionally or not, only replied to anti-musk threads. There were at least 4 threads, that I just looked at now at the time of this post, that were both not flagged by the community nor set straight from a moderator that were purely composed of vague personal attacks (it would have been better if they had just been forthright with it).
I understand that HN has limited resources and you clearly value the integrity of this forum, I just think certain perspectives unfairly caught your attention more than they should have.
Hmm. I don't agree. I think we're on the turn of the tide where the hacker community and the media will stop fawning over him if we repeatedly and politely point out that he's an attention-seeking person but that doesn't mean he needs to have news coverage.
I can think of at least two problems with that. One is that people don't really change their minds this way; all they do is dig their heels in and object harder. The other is that HN could be smothered under the weight of this material even while opinion is working itself to convergence. The Muskian Market can stay wrong longer than this site can stay solvent.
13 people were rescued from 2 something miles inside a cave by an international effort that involved engineers, possible plans for a drilling effort, master divers and even had people repurposing spacecraft parts and accessories to attempt to make a rescue pod in time to be of use.
Humans came together to find a solution to a difficult, life or death, situation.
They were 1.5 miles in (2.5km as the story states) not that it's important, just a units crusade. This could have been so much worse if the rains hadn't held off as they did.
Lessons showcased here about planning, risk management, international cooperation, decision-making, etc. can be extrapolated to many other aspects of human endeavor. This operation is valuable knowledge for everyone.
You really have to love Wikipedia. It's barely a week old and you already have a page with so many references and detailed information. Thank you, all the anonymous contributors.
Yet there are still people claiming the site is not good for anything. Of course, you shouldn't base your phd paper on it, but I'll use it for any information first checkpoint, all the time.
It's what happens when profit is not your primary (or even secondary) goal. That's why my personal company will never go public. From what I understand it would force me to put profit as my primary goal, even if I value quality more than profit.
In theory, you can incorporate as a Benefit Corp[1], which "includes positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment in addition to profit as its legally defined goals." I'm not sure if that works in practice, though.
I find it even good for medical conditions, condensed history of major events, understanding geography and biography of actors, sportspersons and politicians.
Actually, isn't it the * best * first website to learn about anything?
Have you tried simple Wikipedia? I find it way easier to conceptualization the topics there and then move onto the main Wikipedia to get more detail, as needed.
I also agree, and would further that any relatively technically involved concept tends to contain the most complicated form of that topic, for example the wikipedia page on lift goes into some pretty intense detail.
This is the natural result for a website written by users (those with lots of knowledge write it for others who have lots of knowledge). Even simple wikipedia is not immune to this, due to explaining the concept theoretically instead of taking example problems.
I do not mean to say that I think wikipedia is bad or that others do better. I'm not even sure such a problem is solvable at all (making it useful for both beginners and experts)
On the other hand, articles written by experts with full detail is much more useful to those already well versed in a given field. To use myself as an example: I would look elsewhere for computing or linguistics information if the articles were all written for beginners.
I don't disagree with you - the articles are not at all useless in topics for which I am well versed. Like I say, the issue that is perhaps unsolvable is some intuative way to have the article useful to everyone at once while not bogging them down in useless info
That's all true. I'm making a stronger claim. I believe Wikipedia is the best website for the two things I mentioned. There isn't a second competitor that comes even close to the breadth, depth and convenience provided by Wikipedia.
Please don't try to learn about controversial political topics there. The amount of editorial wars going on is stuggering - and the worst of it, you won't be able to tell when you're looking at a propaganda piece instead of an objective article because you need prior knowledge for that, and Wikipedia is exactly the place where people get their prior knowledge.
I trust Wikipedia for basic historical information, biographies etc. I feel sad that encylopedias and their peer reviews have been obliterated as a definitive source of knowledge and replaced by something which has a questionable editorial model. I use Wikipedia a lot but don't see it as a 'gold standard' of verified information. It seems a lot people do...
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-...
The editorial model seems to work pretty well for things which aren't controversial, and unlike old-style encyclopedias, you can see the edits made and the discussions behind them. With Britannica, you basically just had to trust them.
The same is true for non-Wikipedia sources too, right? If you learn about political topics from, say, a newspaper article, you will not be able to tell if you're looking at a propaganda piece because the newspaper is exactly where you get your prior knowledge.
I think there's a difference: you know that newspaper won't offer you an objective prior knowledge. But with Wikipedia, too many people have such assumption.
As in you read several books about a medical condition, and then see what Wikipedia says about it? Because if you just start by reading the Wikipedia article, you'd have no idea whether it's wrong or not. (It's usually wrong.)
Is it? Why on earth don't you fix it when you see that? You don't even need an account, if that's what your worried about.
I'm surprised at the idea though, and pretty skeptical that it's actually the case since I would have assumed many others with medical knowledge would also have noticed, and one of them would have corrected things eventually.
I strongly disagree about current events. The Merrick Garland wikipedia page was a mess immediately after he was nominated, and I've just checked and the word "unprecedented" appears 7 times, in spite of the fact that it is by-no-means unprecedented for the senate to not consider a nomination [1]. There are a lot of partisan editors that wish to astroturf for their own political convictions, and because Wikipedia articles are generally so nonpartisan after they've had some time to mature, I think it's especially problematic because readers don't realize that a fast-moving article is nowhere near up to standards.
[1]: "During the 1852 campaign between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig Winfield Scott, Justice John McKinley died in July. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig who was not running for reelection, nominated three candidates — one in August, one in January and one in February. The Democratic-controlled Senate took no action on two candidates and the third withdrew after the Senate postponed a vote until after inauguration. One of Fillmore’s nominations was never even considered by the Senate, while the other was simply tabled." from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/...
Unprecedented in recent history. There really should be a law that the Senate needs to start holding hearings within X days. Otherwise partisanship will creep up on either side or multiple sides if we ever move beyond two parties.
> Unprecedented in recent history. There really should be a law that the Senate needs to start holding hearings within X days. Otherwise partisanship will creep up on either side or multiple sides if we ever move beyond two parties.
Similar to a pocket veto, not acting upon a nomination is a form of action. It's an indirect mechanism to reject a nominee.
I'm pretty sure changing this to mandate a hearing within a fixed number of days would require a constitutional amendment, not just a regular law, so is essentially impossible.
True. When I was starting out, I was tasked with editing the Wikipedia page of one of our clients to add more information. Wasn't anything sinister; the company just wanted to ensure the page had up to date information.
When I ventured to the 'Talk' page, I was surprised to see so many edits and comments from editors.
This was for a little known company in a niche field with little traffic or chance to profit. Yet the editors were as diligent as ever.
+1. I have felt this as well. I personally consider the "Lock" icon as a sign that the article is controversial and then I am extra skeptical about it. Might be a good idea for Wikipedia to highlight controversial articles prominently using some other iconography like big bold text telling that the current article is under rapid contradictory edits, or even highlight parts of the text that have been recently edited multiple times and therefore are likely to be controversial.
Thankfully Lord Musk was there to help. Unlike Saman Gunan.
In all honesty, please remember and keep repeating Saman Gunan's name. He gave his life for these kids. Musk reused a part of his rocket that his company didn't even build, in a situation where it would never work. It was so obviously a PR stunt it's disgusting. He even personally showed up to the cave site as if he was ever going to actually contribute something. I can only imagine how much of a nuisance this was to the people running the rescue operation, doing the true blue work that resulted in these kids being saved.
>"Even though their equipment is technologically sophisticated, it doesn't fit with our mission to go in the cave," said rescue chief Narongsak Osotthanakorn.
I already saw Musk being referenced in a positive manner in these comments so we're going to put that to rest immediately. The guy in charge of the operation basically called their presence there completely useless in the most PC way imaginable.
You don't need to bring Twitter's relentless schoolyard bashing here. The escape tube was a misfire - nobody used it, and it was too late, and Musk promoted it way too much on Twitter - but would you have preferred Musk ignore the people who messaged him to help out?
You point out two people. Both sacrificed things selflessly - for Kunan, it was his life. For Musk, it was a little money and a few hours. You do not need to negate one sacrifice in order to celebrate the other.
Your sarcastic attitude is incredibly unpleasant, and I would personally never hire or contract someone that converses in the manner you have. It obviously gave you a dopamine rush to write that little diatribe, but good luck turning that temporary feeling into genuine goodwill or income.
So the guy actually in charge of the entire thing is somehow wrong, but Elon personally emailed exactly 1 person in charge of 1 team who said "keep working on it", which definitely justifies the entire surrounding PR bonanza and Musk personally showing up to the dive site to do... what exactly?
It'd odd that Musk's attempts to discredit the guy in charge of the entire of the operation is somehow not worth pointing out, who no doubt had input from multiple teams he was working close with. Musk then proceeded to release 3 messages between Musk and 1 person, specifically picked to continue this PR spree.
To reiterate, the guy in charge of the entire operation said the submarine wasn't going to work with their mission. Musk then proceeds to cherry pick exactly 1 email correspondence between him and 1 other person to invalidate the official's position on the matter (and the fact that the sub was in fact, never used). In Musk's magical bubble (as you can see from the Twitter replies), this is somehow both reasonable and enough to justify his ever continuing pop-sci PR spree.
After a certain point, you need to start questioning why he's always in these PR spats and why nothing substantial ever happens to actually validate Musk. I do not personally understand what level of sheer, unbridled optimism is required to look at what Musk is doing and go "Yeah, that's totally okay and noble!"
To end:
* Musk constantly tweeted/reported on his own team's developments throughout the entire process, even though basically nothing was actually happening.
* The guy in charge of the operation said the vehicle would not be used
* Musk show's up to the dive site for some selfies, talks with people while taking some extra selfies, and then immediately leaves.
* In a true display of ego, Musk proceeds to screenshot 1 email chain between him and 1 other person because he was factually called out on this matter.
* Musk fan boys across the internet praise him for doing all of the above and contributing exactly nothing.
What is the inverse of a fanboy? An anti-fanboy? Compulsive detractor? Super-carper? There seems to be a large outspoken group of people who go out of their way to talk about Musk despite their apparent dislike of him, rather than just saying nothing and ignoring him, seemingly they feel justified by the fanboys? I think that deserves a title, carper? Detractor? Hard to imagine commenting on this post to just complain about a person only semi-related to the operation.
>There seems to be a large outspoken group of people who go out of their way to talk about Musk despite their apparent dislike of him
I'm sorry what? Musk constantly gets tons of PR over nothing from news outlets, to reddit, to HN. It's really strange that a reasonable response to constant bombardment of Musk's half-baked ideas and PR stunts is somehow attributable to people's dislike of Musk personally. How is directly providing concrete and factual events to counter a corporate narrative and to dismantle a cult of personality "going out of [their] way" or even evidence of some kind of odd personal hate towards Musk?
The entire response is a really cheap, nonconstructive appeal to motive and is quite frankly full of vague personal attacks.
I would maybe give you the benefit of the doubt here by saying you probably just don't participate in the same media channels I do, but you're blatantly aware of the situation given your hostile apology to the current perspective on all things Musk. This is so strangely reminiscent of when Steve Jobs was around.
Because your entire series of posts in this thread thus far have been nothing but questioning the motives of Elon Musk and his fans. Even if you're correct you're a hypocrite to complain about someone doing the same to you.
And you're not really accomplishing your goal anyway. The only reason I knew that Musk was even involved in this whole mess was because of his detractors. You're basically signal boosting Musk without even meaning to. I don't personally see any reason to doubt Musk's stated motives but even if he is seeking publicity and attention the best way to deal with that sort of thing is to ignore it.
>Because your entire series of posts in this thread thus far have been nothing but questioning the motives of Elon Musk
It's not a question. I quite literally detailed what factually has happened. It isn't up for debate. He again, quite literally, decided to discredit and defame the lead of the rescue efforts in attempt to white wash several people calling him out on a very, very obvious PR stunt. They were halfway through the rescue operation while he was tweeting about hauling a 300lb pound tube through a tight cave system.
>Even if you're correct you're a hypocrite to complain about someone doing the same to you.
Pointing out and supporting a common criticism of a largely public figure is quite different than personally attacking someone reiterating that critique. If the difference is not appreciable to you then there's like 50 different things that need explaining and I am definitely not going to waste my time doing that.
>The only reason I knew that Musk was even involved in this whole mess was because of his detractors.
Really? Not the mainstream media outlets reporting about it? Or the 600k+ shares on various tweets? You found out because of random internet comments complaining about it, in threads that had nothing to do with those reports?
That seems very, very far fetched and beggars belief.
>I don't personally see any reason to doubt Musk's stated motives
You don't think a clear, consistent pattern of doing the same thing over and over again for unoriginal benefits is not a valid reason to doubt someone's motives? That seems pretty naive.
Allow me to reiterate what just went down:
Elon Musk came out and publicly attempted to put down and dismiss the chief of the rescue operation, the other people who chose not to use the submarine, while also bolstering up the guy he had a personal email correspondence with just as an attempt to counter people's criticism that he is, yet again, just engaging in empty PR (ask yourself why he is constantly engaged in this).
Your suggested and proposed response to this, by your own words, is not attempt to educate people on what's actually going on here, but to simply ignore it. How do you think that's actually going to pan out? Why is doing nothing against misinformation that aids corporate propaganda okay, but somehow personally attacking people with vague fallacies not only somehow rationally acceptable (it's not, but I'll let you attempt to answer it), but suddenly worth your time?
Not only does it not make me a hypocrite, being a hypocrite has no bearing on the substance of the argument. Questioning motives is perfectly valid, especially when there is a preponderance of evidence to substantiate that question. Appeal to motive is a fallacy because it has no effect on any statements made, so you're definitely confused on that front.
But when you present contrived scenarios to make a point (i.e., lying), your motive can and certainly should be questioned. Unless you're going to argue with most western court systems about the validity of doing that.
What were you honestly hoping to achieve with such a pathetic and ill-thought-out response?
A bunch of posts on Twitter constitutes a "PR bonanza" to you? The media rehashing those tweets into ad-monetizable "articles" isn't Musk's doing, you know.
What are your thoughts on how technology advancement in the next 30 years would change the way of this kind of rescue mission? Say in 2040, can a group of robots finish the mission in one day with ease? That will be awesome, people can be rescued from bad situations much sooner.
I cannot imagine how robots could be used for this kind of rescue in the near future. Each situation like this is too unique to allow for a generic 'life-saving robot'. Even if we were to really try to develop a state-of-the-art cave diving rescue robot, what would we use it for in this case? We still would have to have people working crisis psycology and sitting with the kids as they were extracted, and some way to get the status of the robot as it is kilometers underground with no signal and no easy way we can have a 2km cable. We would still have to figure out how to get the people actually out, which was only really accomplished in this case by getting the best of the best to teach the kids to get themselves out. A robot would not be able to help a child fit through a tiny hole underwater in the dark
I agree with you taking care of people psycologically is probably the weak point of a robot task force. But in terms of pure technology advancement, I 'll just throw some random possibilities here for discussion.
Remember even as of today AI can compete on a high level of huge video games, face recognition, natural language processing, playing Go/Chess game, etc. Imagine in 30 years, all the robots, armed with AI and made of materials a few times stronger than whatever we have today, should be able to scan, learn, adapt and go. Another minor point, the robots can probably carry some heavy machines (or laser guns) and just pound hard on the cave's narrow sections to make the passage wider. Etc.
It'll probably change things so it'll never happen in the first place.
By that time even poor kids in rural Thailand will be carrying smartphones on them at all times.
Those, combined with location-based awareness will warn them just as they're about to enter the cave "uh, are you sure you want to do that? Look at the current weather forecast....".
> "This man...drove more than 200 km just to give ice-cream to the rescue team"
While this level of selflessness and generosity can be found almost anywhere, the Thais are truly some of the most gracious people you'll meet. That country is a gem.
The society is currently torn apart politically (similar, but different, to the polarization in the US) so good to see something unite the nation. And with such a happy ending, too.
"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It might be the unique strength that wins us a Galaxy."
What a great book, just finished listening to it. Afterwards I heard a lot of people thought it had a pro military/war bent; I don't think they read the book
Interesting, I'll have to re-read as it's been several years. My original takeaway was that the surface level pro-military engagement aspect was meant as deep irony and that the user was encouraged to draw their own conclusions. Mine was that war is horrific, even if done for the right reasons.
True, of course it's a simplification. What I meant to say is that the militaristic argument will always be that you'd rather avoid war, but you're forced into it. This doesn't mean that it's never true- but rather that you should be highly suspicious of the claim.
That reminds me of another quote: "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee, commenting on the Battle of Fredericksburg
I've read it multiple times (first when I was 16) and I still think it has a fundamental pro-military bent. Heinlein himself said so, I don't see any reason to doubt him.
A lot of people consider Starship Troopers to be pro-military (the US military itself has it on the recommended reading list for the enlisted). Heinlen's background and the situation surrounding the writing of the book also suggests it would be pro-military.
I'm curious as to what would make you think otherwise?
I always thought that the concept that you had to earn your right to vote was an interesting one. In the book, in order to vote, you first had to complete [onerous] military service.
“Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.” - Startship troopers [1]
I don't think it was pro-war at all. But it could certainly be said it was pro upholding a strong military tradition in the concept of a voting population as a form of civil service to earn full citizenship.
And since the only people who would be voting would be the ones who were or had done the dying, it's likely a very strong anti-war book, as one would presume only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought.
And I am talking about actual attitudes of various real world demographics. Right now.
But also, Nazi leadership was on the shit end of the stick when it comes to WWI. That did not prevented them to start WWII. Instead, the experience normalized the violence for them and shaped their believes. On the other side, Stalin was fighter in particularly cruel war too in his formative years. Was not peaceful either.
Lastly and less importantly, people who had done dying don't vote, they are dead. Only people who survived previous war vote. And survivors often internalized values that are help to survive the war. They sometimes have hard time to adjust to peaceful life afterwards. Your presumption that "only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought" has no basis in reality.
Also, your theory assumes that enlisted soldiers actions are motivated primary by self-preservation and will vote on that. Some are, but many are not. Others are motivated by duty, career progression, pride, social status, honor, professionalism, tradition, salary, wish to prove themselves or simply by liking to be in the army structure. In case of your hypothetical army, many men will join for career in politics and social status reasons. People motivated primary by self preservation wont join your hypothetical army.
Ok well quite a few hundred reviewers have read the book and consider it virulently militaristic, and some go further considering it jingoistic, and fascist. I don't know enough about Heinlein, but I kinda rather doubt he was advocating fascism. But it would not surprise me if he thought civilian control of the military was backwards, because I've had this conversation with members of the military. And some of them have overtly expressed people who have not picked up a weapon and used it to defend the country (I guess by shooting and killing, but perhaps merely by taking the risk to their own life) should not have a right to vote. And that is directly expressed in Starship Troopers as a matter of public policy. If you don't serve, you aren't a citizen, you cannot vote, and you cannot be a member of the government.
This may not have been what Heinlein intended to convey. But I tend not to find an author's advocacy relevant when reading fiction. I see the author as giving me rope to hang myself if I choose, rather than considering that they advocate anything at all. As I read it, militarism so permeated that society that the only possible contrarian point of view would come from the reader. And I thought that was the whole point of the book. It doesn't matter whether that's Heinlein's intent.
If it's true Heinlein just didn't convey the vast majority of Federal Service was non-military, and yet all we have to go on is the exclusively militaristic bent as written, that deficiency might make the book all the better just to have the ensuing ideological battles and discussions that resulted. And this book generated quite a lot of them at the time, and I see it as overwhelmingly beneficial.
A likely metaphor to the non-citizens of Starship Troopers are those who of their own volition do not enter into military service, do not vote, do not participate in government - exist in large numbers in the U.S. Most Americans now do not vote, they're simply along for the ride, and in effect aren't citizens in any meaningful way (other than perhaps they can't be deported - but in Starship Troopers it was a world government so there's no concept of deportation anyway).
Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave.
We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
I keep coming back to this. How many lives could have been saved it improved with the expense we put into saving 12 people who went caving in monsoon season?
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad society found a way to save them, I just wish we took the every day threats to human life more seriously.
When you think 'the money', you're probably counting sunk costs.
What do Thai Navy divers do? If there's no war on, they're probably training. What better training than a live rescue mission? I.e. the wages for those highly skilled Thai teams have probably been paid down already.
Similarly international forces benefit from co-operation because it's something they would want to do anyway: good will, training in co-operation, skills training.
As for volunteers their time is hardly a cost in the same way. But if you're a cave diving medic, the expected utility of using your time to save people in a cave is probably better than working and donating to a charity.
I think you're viewing this wrong. This wasn't a one-time $2M spend on saving 12 people, this was cashing in on an insurance policy where citizens of Thailand pay premiums in forms of taxes.
Failing to save these kids is the case you want to think about - that would be sending the message to the public that if your kid gets lost in the mountains we're not going to save them. Sure this particular "insurance claim" (in this impromptu parlance) was an expensive one, but most of the others aren't, and the thing about insurance is that it is there particularly when the costs are catastrophic.
> We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people
These are different disasters. The cave impacted 13 random children. Hunger impacts millions of poor children. One is random, the other more predictable.
There are utilitarian arguments for numbing oneself to tragedy which predictably strikes those without resources while defending those visited by random misfortune. (Note: I am not arguing for this utilitarian calculus. Just describing it.)
> Define random. The million of poor children are randomly selected too.
Coarsely, what happened to these kids could happen to ours. Starvation, less likely. In-group selection is built into our natures, and that is on display here.
Practically, saving these kids takes a short burst of effort. Their families will pick up the slack thereafter because they have—on average—the resources to do so. Saving children from hunger takes long stretches of coördination, together with efforts to ensure their education (to prevent the problem from repeating in the next generation).
It is cruel, and there is probably a solution. But the analogy between these problems is flawed. With minimal assistance, the cave children will become self-sustaining again. That is not true for the chronically hungry.
My guess is that Thailand wanted to be on the spotlight. There are kids dying of hunger, disease, sex-enslavement, violence or negligence (car/house accidents). But they are very unlikely to be on the spotlight.
We don't want to be humanly. We want to be praised for being humanly.
> My guess is that Thailand wanted to be on the spotlight.
I need to coin a term for this concept, I see it on every Hacker News thread once it reaches a certain size. It is the attribution of the topic to some nefarious intention of a dude in marketing. Once you start noticing it you can't unsee.
Intel fires their CEO? It's a PR stunt.
Startup abandons Europe due to GDPR? PR STUNT!
AlphaZero beats professionals at Dota 2? You guessed it, it's just PR for oligarchy parent Alphabet.
I see this so often now it's becoming humorous. As if some how this being all about PR explains everything. It doesn't explain anything! Although I'm sure Bill over in marketing loves that he has subsumed the historical role of deity in explaining the unknown.
This is a corollary to the /r/HailCorporate mentality, where every discussion about/mention of a brand is astroturfing. Healthy skepticism is encouraged, but there's a point where it becomes FUD, and perhaps in some cases as destructive as any surreptitious marketing.
Not really; their fate is practically predetermined. As in, any child that will be conceived in those areas of the world is highly likely to die of malnutrition. We cannot similarly predict that a not-yet-conceived child will end up trapped in a cave.
Is 3000 a low enough number? There are 3000 children in concentration camps in the USA separated from their parents.
Edit: yes, I have chosen the words concentration camps to evoke the sceptre of the Holocaust. Also note my grandmother is still alive and an Auschwitz survivor. We. have. seen. this. before!
By my count, the USA is at step 8 of the ten steps of genocide.
Or if you want, check the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court:
Article 6
Genocide
For the purpose of this Statute, ‘genocide’ means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Also note who signed the letter about the US not being part of said Rome Statute: https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/9968.htm Bolton was appointed on March 22, the disastrous zero tolerance memo came out on April 6 and I have a horrible feeling of Bolton reminding Trump and Sessions they can't be hauled to The Hague for committing a crime against humanity because the USA is not part of the ICC -- who would know this better?
But they are literal concentration camps. Concentration camps have existed before and after the Nazis; that's not some idea they invented. The horror of the Holocaust is focused around the death camps more than the concentration camps.
The phrase "concentration camp" in the English language no longer has any literal meaning that is simply composed of "concentration" and "camp". It refers strictly to the WWII Nazi concentration camps.
Anyone using the phrase and then insisting that the literal meaning was intended is thoroughly disingenuous. That speaker or writer is deliberately using the loaded term in order to troll the intended audience with a crystal clear Nazi reference.
Ideologically there is no difference to previous uses of the term. Historically it refers to concentration camps of the second Boer War where over 150,000 people died in camps which concentrated specific settler populations in a manner that made the thinning of their population a foregone conclusion.
If it evokes the use of the concept you dislike, rethink your moral stance on it. Not the phrasing of the concept.
Not only is that historically incorrect, but it's also a confession of a tolerance for detaining a specific population on ideological, non-criminal pretenses.
Is that so? So by this amazing reasoning, we should refer to both types of camps using the same term. Since the correct term is evidently "extermination camps" (see surrounding thread), that's what they should be called.
"Historically incorrect" is just a way of saying "presently correct". For instance "sensibility" is not a historically correct way of referring to a rational disposition. Historically, it meant what we today call "sensitivity".
Fuck historically correct; I live today, not in history.
The Nazi camps pertaining to the Holocaust are correctly called extermination camps, not concentration camps. Although e.g. Auschwitz is commonly referred to as a concentration camp, this is a euphemism, and the term is not considered correct by anyone writing seriously about the Holocaust.
The term is a euphemism because "concentration camp" just means a camp with a high density of people. The fact that people know what they're really referring to doesn't mean that the term isn't a euphemism. After all, the whole point of a euphemism is that people know what is really meant.
It's quite well known that "concentration camp" is not the correct term for the Nazi extermination camps.
As I said, it's pretty well known that Auschwitz and the other camps like it were extermination camps, not (merely) concentration camps. I mean, I'd count myself a member of the "public at large" in this context (I'm certainly no expert on the Holocaust or the surrounding history), and yet I still know what the correct term is. Anyone who has so much as looked at the Wikipedia article for Auschwitz or one of the other camps will know the correct term.
I'm totally confused by your argument here. The simple fact that myself and others posting here don't treat "concentration camps" totally equivalent to "Nazi extermination camps" seems like ipso facto proof that this is not a disingenuous distinction.
Yes, but the word was clearly chosen in an attempt to liken them to Nazi concentration camps, which they have little in common with, besides being places where people are temporarily kept.
Concentration camps were used very effectively by the British against the Boers (farmers) in South Africa at the turn of the previous century. They killed more women and children than men on both sides [1].
During the first World War, they renamed New Berlin to Kitchener here in Canada. They may as well have named it Hitlerville. The scale of evil wasn't as horrible as the Holocaust, but it was pretty damn awful. It's true what they say, that the victors write the history books. So few people know about that story.
Technically true. Also technically Holocaust could refer to the Armenian Genocide, or the USSR genocide against Ukraine or whatever other catastrophe and yet it doesn't and comparing what is absolutely aweful to one of the worst genocides in human history shouldn't win you any points.
if you actually pay attention to border patrol, you will see that these kids have left horrible conditions and many are not separated from parents but from strangers using them to get in or for drug smuggling. some dont even have any parents or family with them.
> Many are not separated from parents but from strangers.
These aren't the ones that the uproar is about. The uproar is about the children who have been separated from their parents, not the children being held in foster care or holding facilities in general. The 3000 separated from parents is a number from HHS Secretary Azar. The Trump administration updated that number to 2342 children separated from 2206 parents.
> not a big deal and the kids are still doing better than before, no reason for the uproar
Somehow, they handled it just fine and at lower cost without family separation before. If so, why separate them except due to racism? They are now having trouble reuniting families weeks later because of improper tracking.
what is before? separation has been around since law started because criminals do not say with their kids when in jail, this happens to citizens too which you ignored
thinking that its racism is just you jumping to emotional conclusions
there are no problems reuniting families when they are actually families, it is when kids are alone or abused as drug mules that they have to work harder to find where to put them
they still leave horrible conditions so why arent you upset over how bad the other countries are?
Before Trump’s zero tolerance policy, when criminal charges for illegal crossing were essentially never pursued on their own and families with children targeted for deportation without criminal charges were also (since the court order limiting the use of immigration detention for children) not subjected to immigration detention specifically to avoid separation, and where active steps weren't taken to force entrants seeking asylum to enter illegally by preventing access at ports of entry, which is what actually pushed most of the families subjected to Trump's zero tolerance policy into the system in the first place.
> there are no problems reuniting families when they are actually families
Yes, in fact, there are, in the present situation.
> it is when kids are alone
Unaccompanied minors have been a particular problem at times in the past, but that's not the current issue.
> or abused as drug mules
That happens, but, again, is not the source of the current crisis.
> they still leave horrible conditions so why arent you upset over how bad the other countries are?
Most people upset about this administration’s blatant and indefensible mistreatment and hostage taking with regard to asylum seekers are, also, unhappy with the conditions in the countries that they are fleeing. Which is actually a big reason why they are upset at the Administration’s further tormenting them when they are trying to flee, and actively preventing them from lawfully seeking asylum.
Largely, because the Administration has taken active steps to prevent lawful asylum applications.
> and the kids will be reunited later if they are real family
Maybe, sometimes, after the recent court order requiring that; most recently prior to that the kids were being used as hostages to force parents to sign voluntary deportation agreements and give up asylum claims; during and prior to that children were deported separately from their parents and vice versa in a number of cases. And, in any cases, there was no tracking of any kind to facilitate reunification.
> not a big deal and the kids are still doing better than before
No, they often aren't; especially for the younger children, being forcibly separated from their parents is itself an enormous trauma that will damage their development (social/emotional especially for life.)
No, they don't, even before the Trump Administration policy changes that have produced the recent issues. You are confusing ICE with the Border Patrol. They aren't the same thing.
Exactly, so it is NOT genocide according to the Rome Statute, Article 6 definition. Unless you really want to argue that US ICE is doing this in a deliberate attempt to 'destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'?
It's not just hunger. There is a failure on the part of their parents, i.e. by not being prudent and being selfish having kids they can't take care of; but one could argue that it's how "nature designed it" in order to increase genetic variability and a chance for the species to survive by pruning the traits not beneficial in changing environment, which we observe as inhumane deaths of small children. In the "civilized" world, unwanted children are dealt with the way they don't even register on any human statistics.
Famine and malnutrition hits people with one children or many. Also, Subsaharan Africa, where hunger is highest per-capita, is not an "overpopulated" subcontinent, having roughly 990 million people, and a massive amount of fertile land, rainforests, natural resources. It actually has fewer people per square mile than most places. In fact arguably this is one reason for having higher mortality: People are spread over vast distances, so it's more expensive to build infrastructure to distribute food when one region is hit with a draught/famine, distribute healthcare, etc.
It's simply under-developed and has not become industrialized. When American or European children were dying at higher rates it wasn't because their parents were selfish. It reflected the rate of development of the continent.
Hunger was an issue after World War II in most of Europe, and the US came to their aid. The hunger there was not due to parents being selfish either.
Well, sure, but the people having 8 kids in Sudan probably aren't checking the comments on HN for family planning advice.
So they are probably (well, not probably)... they ARE going to have more kids whether you like it or not.
The question becomes how do we (Western society, which has more resources than we know what to do with) address the issue and try to do good in the world.
> The question becomes how do we (Western society, which has more resources than we know what to do with) address the issue and try to do good in the world
Be involved in how your governments and MNC's behave in these countries. These entities are more likely to pay attention when you, as a voter or customer with more disposable income, say something compared to the citizens of poorer countries who have less of a voice.
> My opinion on this is unpopular, but I will say it anyway; People shouldn't have more kids than they can afford.
It's a natural response to the hardship. If the chance that the kid make it is 10%, then make 10 times more kids. That way you have around 100% chance that your lineage makes it through life.
You never have an around 100% chance. You always have less. The chance of at least one out of ten making it if they have 10% chance each is: 1-0.9^10, that's two thirds.
In other words: In a society where 90% of children die and women have 10 births, one third of the mothers will lose all. All assuming the deaths are independent of course.
The way you reduce family size is by increasing the standard of living, reducing the child mortality rate, and increasing access to education and birth control.
In poor countries children are your retirement savings, so at an individual level having more children is a rational decision. In many cases they aren't having more kids than they can afford--they can't afford not to have more kids. Even at a national level it's not clear that lowering birth rates without additional changes would help a country economically.
I'll go further and say that we should seriously consider getting fewer children, period. We have limited resources here on Earth, and while I could probably support a couple without problems, those resources would be better spent on those who are already here.
I'm only 25 so I don't know how I'll feel in 10-20 years, but right now this is part of my consideration when thinking about long-term goals and whether I'd want to have kids at some point. I might, so for that eventuality, plan B is to adopt. Plan C is to have one (and only one) kid, which already turns two parents into one descendant, so that's better than nothing.
The only thing I'm worried about is that smart families will do this and the stupid ones produce six. It's in the education and not in the genes... but it's also in the upbringing, and if they're brought up with the mentality of the kind of people who currently get six kids...
That's the problem with saying "people should have less children". Yes, they should, but the people who will listen are often the people best equipped to raise children. If prosperous, well educated people have less children (who we can assume will end up better educated) and poor people have more (who we can assume will not receive those opportunities), that will only increase the imbalance.
To me that is quite a popular opinion. Unfortunately, as often is with popular opinions, it is quite... unhelpful. For the vast majority of eart's population, kids are a pension insurance that guarantee income if you happen to live old. As soon as kids turn from asset to economical liability, number of kids fall dramatically. This has been seen over and over again.
From the article: "in 1820, 94 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty (...). In 1990 this figure was 34.8 percent, and in 2015, just 9.6 percent."
>Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year?
Bill Gates and tens of thousands of aid workers globally. The Chinese Communist Party and businessmen who outsource labor from the overfed first world to the underfed third world are by far the biggest help. Also your aunt who volunteers at the soup kitchen. Often these efforts funded by donations or aid grants (tax money, paid by you and me) from our democratically elected governments.
>We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
Do children eat dollar bills for dinner or are humans evil?
If there is no food to spare, then all the money in the world won't solve the problem. If there is food to spare and people let children starve to death, then people are evil. (edit: there technically exists a third potential that there is absolutely no means of delivering food, but at that point, any discussion is pointless)
EDIT: I suppose this idea makes people uncomfortable because it implies that those same people might be evil even though they don't see themselves as evil. We all want the world to be a better place, but we don't want to be inconvenienced. Rather than do something, we give a few dollars in hopes of absolution. Writing posts about starving kids is easy. Moving 100LB bags of food 12 hours a day in Sudan is much harder. "Be the change you want to see in the world"
Do they die of malnutrition or governmental corruption? I thought it was proven in the 1980's that the problem isn't a lack of food, it's the degenerate political systems blocking aid from reaching those who are dying. At least that's the prevailing narrative on reddit.
It's both corruption, and economics. A lot of places with famines are capable of being self-sufficient, in terms of food production, but it's just not profitable for farmers to grow it (And sell it domestically).
When a million people died in the Irish potato famine, it wasn't just because the United Kingdom prevented foreign aid from reaching Ireland. Ireland was the breadbasket of the empire - throughout that entire time, it was a net exporter of food.
Which fuels corruption. Charity imports tons of food for the poor, only to be intercepted by someone in the government and resold for profit. I admit that's a generalisation and I have no idea what actually happens. I've only read that the food has a very hard time making it to those who need it most. Which is why I applaud Gates' charity for rethinking it and trying to get to the root of the problem.
1. Food is free for the starving in many places around the world.
2. Where it isn't free, a meal of rice and beans is usually within reach of even the poorest.
3. Where it is out of reach of the poor, it may be due to corruption; ie North Korea redirecting food supplies to the army instead of the public, and withholding it from prison camps.
Don't fixate on the price or you'll miss the forest for the trees.
It also has to do with drama (saving a kid from starvation doesn't make gripping television) and the perceived futility of it. So you give a kid a meal. Then what? The next day the kid is in exactly the same situation as before. To say nothing of the fact that most starvation is caused by distribution problems that are ultimately rooted in intransigent-seeming politics.
When you try to get a kid out of a cave there is at least some hope of lasting success.
Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year?
Billionaires like Bill Gates. Countless volunteer aid workers with organizations such as MSF.
Fact #1: Since 1960, child deaths have plummeted from 20 million a year to 6 million a year. [1] This was posted quite recently here on HN. Perhaps you missed it.
At the end of the day, the problem of child poverty and the death and suffering it causes is an enormous one but we are making progress on it. Could we do better? Yes. Could we do worse? Oh yes, way way worse.
I’d say Bill & Melinda gates foundation + charities that fight preventable diseases have saved more lives than super heroes.
It’s so easy to forget how nasty Spanish flu, small pox and polio was. My grandfather has stories where they would burn people’s houses/huts with the people alive inside if they had contracted the disease. It was brutal. A curse that would wipe an entire enpire.
13 people were in their situation by chance and bad luck. 3.1 million people are in their position likely because of corrupt governments.
We can help the 13 because government is not the cause and there is nothing to undo, we cannot help the 3.1 as easily because it would take either removing the government in power to putting the 3.1 in further jeopardy trying to fix it. So the real question becomes, when will the world recognize that some small countries need outside governance to see to the needs of their people. Right now sovereignty is absolute unless the nation in question threatens a neighboring country.
It's about conceptual accessibility to the solution.
When you have a small group dying of hunger because of a drought, it is easy to perceive what to do and your ability to realize it. So people are more likely to speak up.
If a drought affects an entire nation, you're at least aware this must be a complicated task. So you're more reluctant to criticize inaction.
That behavior is especially problematic when the solutions are abstract or long-term.
We still can spend money and save 50000 kids, it is not an A OR B problem.
There is plenty of money and resources out there to save all kids dying from easily preventable diarrheal diseases. There is no political will to do that.
It's not just the 12 kids. With the money spent Thailand is paying for a belief in the minds of its people: that the government would do the same for their kid.
I'd argue that this kind of belief is extremely valuable for a country's economics as a whole. In order for the populace to be economically productive (and save 50000 kids from dying of diarrheal diseas) you need to create a safe, reliable, and predictable environment. Governments insuring against events like kids getting lost in caves is the way that they get that.
Your comment is fading, and I upvoted even though I don't really agree with your premise.
I do have a respectful question though - are you, personally, acting to save those 50,000 kids? Is there an effective organization out there that accepts donations for this kind of thing, and if so, are you giving to them?
"If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do."
"The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life... But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong—for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane."
Reality check is that armies do the math and do leave people behind. Rescuers do risk bith lives and life time injuries, but won't go into action that is likely to kill more of them then the amount of saved people.
That book is fiction, fun to read but still made up.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 364 ms ] threadFirst, the first time I fasted I was quited stressed about it, and it was in controlled, cozy environment.
Second, they didn't know if anybody would come. Not even if somebody could come. For 9 days without eating and living in their own shit in the dark, they wondered.
I'm awaiting for the unavoidable book/movie, hoping they don't try to make it epic and get into real details about this.
Hollywood producers are already on the ground http://www.newsweek.com/hollywood-producers-head-thai-cave-r...
I would actually pay to see this.
Elon Musk is ahead of you - he has his government villain already: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785/phot...
Not to mention the cold.
There's a hero-story about the coach that's yet to be told I reckon.
He shared what little rations they had, and his condition was visibly worse than the children by the time they were found.
He also helped them by teaching them meditation, so as not to focus on their hunger.
Learning meditation is hard. Learning meditation when you are scared, hungry and in such a bad situation is extra hard.
So if the guy pulled it off with 12 terrorized famished kids for 9 days, he deserves his own temple.
Unfortunately it's why we are able to wage war. Was watching a documentary on the Vietnam war the other day and one guy was describing how he felt like an automaton that was focusing only on survival, which kept him from going insane, while another guy was describing how he felt no pain from his bullet injuries while trying to stay alive alone in the jungle for 3 days, only feeling pain after he was rescued.
But yeah, this coach is a hero for sure, I'm so glad they made it out.
Watched that episode with the South Vietnam veteran recalling that episode where he was left for dead (literally, by his own allies AND adversaries), crawled through the jungle for 3 days and only then felt the pain and smelled the nasty odor of the rotting flesh.
The coach probably didn't even take a wrong decision based on the information available at the time (it isn't rain season yet).
If you plan to enter deep into a huge cave, you check the weather forecast. Rainy season or not. And you don't enter if you see a chance of rain.
He failed on this one, and a man is dead because of it.
Now I'm don't think he should be blamed for it. It would be very unproductive.
But we certainly should make it a cautionary tale.
Sat in the dark, with no night and day, the bodies internal clock gets shot to pieces. They would have had no idea whether they had been there 3 days or 30
Water of course is a different story..I believe after 48 hours severe dehydration sets in...after 3 days...kaput.
It's not a physiological problem. It's a psychological one. When you ate everyday all your life, not eating is scary.
> I believe after 48 hours severe dehydration sets in...after 3 days...kaput.
You can live more than 3 days without water. Either with training, of because the conditions help (you don't move much, temperature and humidity are favorable, you don't eat, etc).
There are cases were human lived for 9 days without water.
But they had water near them so that was out of the equation.
You can go a few weeks without food. The cave is likely at a consistent enough temperature that you're not going to freeze to death (sweating is more likely to be your real issue), so the only real constraint is potable water.
It's also been commented that the children had no idea they were trapped for as long as 9 days. Quite likely, without any source of natural light, they lost track of time, which certainly would help ease some of the panic.
I love how the global diving community came together to rescue them, it's unfortunate that Petty Officer Saman Gunan died after doing a run of oxygen tanks to the caves though.
I even liked how Musk came out of left field "grab that tube, we're making a rescue pod!" and then hopped on a plane with it when it was tested and ready. While it didn't really matter I like that sort of thinking outside of the box and how he just dropped everything he was doing and set people to work on it and then took it over anyway in the event it will ever been needed in the future, I really wish more people had that go-the-extra-mile attitude.
This was egoism at its finest, taking public credit for 'helping' with a rescue he wasn't invited or asked to help with. And the media ate it up hook, line and sinker.
A good idea now would be to send money to the family of the driver who died. That would be helpful.
Even if he did, he didn't interfere or impede rescue efforts and gave them a tool they could possible use in the future. It's cool and a nice thing to do, and doesn't really seem like a big deal.
And yeah, he probably doesn't have all the domain knowledge needed, but I reckon he had some help. Example; the 6 or so people seen on the video when they tested the tube.
I really can't see why people are bashing him. Yes, he was public about it, but he also created something that seems to work, and if it's a prototype, that prototype can be used for further development. It feels like nothing speeds up R&D like a crisis.
His idea was stupid and useless anyway. It just came off as if he wanted to play the hero and build a Batsub in his mansion to deploy it and rescue the stranded children.
It was a good alternative to telling them to hold their breath and dragging them through dark and claustrophobic submerged spaces...
They tested it to make sure it was water-tight and easy to maneuver. Worst case you throw an oxygen tank in it and put a full-face regulator on each kid in the event it would have filled with water (which I'm imagining they did in the water anyway). Much easier to control a panicking child in a tube where he can't get at your hoses or slam his head into a rock.
I don't really understand how the more claustrophobic "submarine" capsule would be an improvement on this.
Also much easier to get said child into a state of panic by sticking them in a claustrophobia-inducing tube. Also, whatever manoeuvrability characteristics the sub might have had, it was still a rigid tube bigger than the child inside. They were navigating caves, where some of the tunnels were hard to navigate by a single (flexible) adult. I _really_ wouldn't want to even chance getting the sub stuck on a tunnel.
You can't say that?! Those SEALs train ALL the time so they have training to fall back on when things happen. You can't introduce something like this and expect them to use it. They would have no training to fall back on.
I know there is a huge anti-Musk sentiment lately. Whatever you think of the guy, I think it's commendable that he used what resources he had to attempt to help.
People can blast him all they want for his 'egoism', but sitting behind the keyboard mocking him is even less helpful than what you accuse him of doing.
Musk injected himself into this situation as only a narcissist can and decided to PR the hell out of it.
Yeah, there's just a bit of anti-Musk sentiment lately, but he brings it on himself.
[0] I don't think they should. I think businesses should stay out of it. Even the ones helping would do themselves a favor and play down their involvement. It's the respectful thing to do.
Because this wasn't Tesla or SpaceX taking out an ad and saying 'look at all the good we can do!' this was a human using resources in his means to help a situation. In the end it was futile, but it's pretty amazing that they were able to prototype something in days and offer support in the way they know.
Sure, you can argue he's a narcissist, but the public made him that way. His entire legacy and fortune was built on PR, which we gave him on a silver platter. Now all of a sudden it's become bad taste to support him, and everyone flips and expects him to slink away into the shadows.
There was literally 0 net negative from his move. Sure he got his name thrown around headlines, but it didn't take away from the hundreds of people who contributed.
Why is being critical of someone so much more important than acknowledging an act of kindness?
How can people be so blind to think he did this solely out of kindness? Pfffffffftttt!!
The public can't make someone a narcissist.
Granted, Musk probably is thinking he's providing relevant skills, but the concept has several potentially problematic things (most notably, the fact that you're basically doing an underground canoe portage and the fact that spending extended periods of time in a claustrophobic space is likely to be panic-inducing for the children). It doesn't sound like he fielded the advice of anyone who had actually had experience doing cave diving or caving rescue to figure out what problems are likely to come up. Indeed, from the response of the Thai coordinators, it sounds like the general sentiment on their end was a politely-worded "go away, you're not helping."
So while the sentiment of trying to help can be positive, this attempt does feel like it crossed a tad too far into counterproductive territory.
From what I understand, he got involved while rescuers were still considering their options.
There is also a tragedy going on in Japan right now with a lot of people actually with us no more. But a few million people with flooded homes is a 'statistic' whereas a few boys in a cave is a 'tragedy' to paraphrase Stalin.
I think that there is a time for offering assistance in a big public way, there is also the 'George Michael' approach. He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought. When he passed away a lot of people then learned how many people he had extended his hand of friendship to.
The office of Thailand’s prime minister has thanked the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk for his offers of help. Officials praised his mini-submarine but said it was not needed. Musk praised the "outstanding rescue team" but questioned the expertise of the official who turned down his submarine.
He inserts himself into the event (but contributed nothing), requiring the Prime Minister to kiss his ass (again, when he contributed nothing), then criticizes the people who saved the kids for not using his idea.
I know talking about voting is generally forbidden, but there is no reason for the parent to be flagged. It's not my favorite post ever on HN, but criticizing Musk isn't a violation of HN rules. Several other posts that criticizes him are also flagged (though some of them are pretty useless comments).
Okay, you are cynical.
But in all seriousness given the domain knowledge that Musk has at his disposal he was perfectly entitled to get involved.
Tweeting his thoughts is pretty much how he rolls ...
But it's conceivable that his expertise could have been useful.
Did any other organisations offer subterranean expertise? Genuine question, e.g. mining companies, drilling, or was it just that Musk made the most noise about it?
There is no evidence presented that Musk, nor any of his companies, has any of this kind of useful expertise.
[1] Emphasis here on vertical shafts. There is a world of difference between a tunnel-boring machine that tends to remain within a single geological stratum and a vertical shaft that is constantly cutting through several strata of different kinds of rock (that require different cutting techniques).
> There is no evidence presented that Musk, nor any of his companies, has any of this kind of useful expertise
https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/
> There is a world of difference between a tunnel-boring machine
Yeah it wasn't the machine he was offering but the expertise.
I get it, you've got it in for Musk. Fair enough, and I'm not out to hero worship him but lets be fair here - he did offer to help, and did so in good faith.
My contention isn't that Musk didn't make a good-faith offer to help, it's that Musk didn't have anything useful to offer. The end result is that would come across as something like this: https://xkcd.com/793/.
There is also a tragedy going on in Japan right now with a lot of people actually with us no more. But a few million people with flooded homes is a 'statistic' whereas a few boys in a cave is a 'tragedy' to paraphrase Stalin.
I think that there is a time for offering assistance in a big public way, there is also the 'George Michael' approach. He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought. When he passed away a lot of people then learned how many people he had extended his hand of friendship to.
This is true, and a tragedy, but I think it's natural for "12 kids in great jeopardy" to draw more interest than 100+ people who are already gone due to a flood and perhaps couldn't have been saved.
To be honest had the kids been found dead in the cave, it would have been a relative blip on Western media like the flood deaths in Japan or the 41 dead in the sinking of the Phuket tourist boat.
"He was willing to help many desperate people that happened to get into the news, however he helped out anonymously or in a way where it was clear that publicity was not sought"
In this case, talking about it on Twitter was probably an easy way to get in touch with the relevant authorities at the rescue site.
Similarly, when he offered PowerWall batteries to help Puerto Rico, perhaps that made it easy for people who knew where they were needed to get in touch with him.
There was talk about having the kids wait in there until as late as November, or maybe a long process of drilling an escape hole.
If the rescue had begun a week or two later, perhaps Musk's gadget would have been used. As it is, the divers already had a plan that, by the time Musk arrived, appeared to be working well.
But yeah, he tweets a lot about his projects, and no doubt has some thought toward self-promotion.
He appears to follow through, so I can't be too cynical about his apparent opportunism.
But he did also send 700 or so PowerWall batteries to Puerto Rico for hospitals and whatnot.
The cave was too narrow in sections for a diver to pass through still wearing his cylinders. How exactly was a sub supposed to get in?
The problem may have been more that it would be too long to navigate some bends in the caves.
It also occurs to me that, being made of aluminum, the tube would act like a giant heatsink in the cold water, chilling whoever was inside.
But with more time before the rescue, and by consulting with divers familiar with the caves, the problems might have been worked out.
So, yeah, taking the tube to Thailand was kind of pointless, but I guess at least shows that it wasn't just empty tweeting. There was an effort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahlbusch_Bomb
I got the feeling that he just jumped in on that, without further thinking (which at least to me seems sympathetic). Got the feeling that it rather hurt their PR as people were quick to call it a PR stunt, which is foreseeable if you mainly think about PR.
Seriously though, there's a strong cult of personality at play and HN readers frequently downvote any comment that is even slightly negative about Musk or Tesla or SpaceX.
Then, types like Musk grabbed this opportunity to score some points in the public eye by appearing to take immediate and energetic action to solve such a massively popular and publicised rescue. In conclusion, I'm 95% sure the motivation was PR and not the goodness of their hearts.
EDIT: Regardless of your agreement with what I just said, flagging is not cool, and against the rules of the site.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/07/10/tesla-c...
>Pure Flix films managing partner Michael Scott told AAP in Chiang Rai, “I see this as a major Hollywood film with A-list stars”.
It's hardly just mere Hollywood money grabbing IMO.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2006295/
https://www.everyonegoeshome.com/16-initiatives/
This is related to firefighting, but it's interesting to see what some of the things we are trying to fix are in terms of saving lives, and little is around technology, and much in the way of culture, safety.
His dead is bad news not good news. Everybody would be better off if this man survived. Him dying while trying to save others does not make it less tragic.
Let's not minimize his death by saying (as sibling comment did) that his dead somehow matters less or is less important because he was rescuer and thus different. His life had same value.
That said, the book is great read. Especially if you're into diving. It's just that it should not be read as a role model for anything but reckless regard of ones life.
Not to drift completely off-topic, here is a link to a long thread about Thailand cave rescue from the cave diving forums[1].
[1] http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php/35242-Football...
Seriously, I can't wrap my head around it. The kids were stranded 2.5 miles inside the cave. All anyone knew was that the kids didn't return form their hike. How does that lead to "Hey, let's dive into the cave and maybe we'll find live children"?
I guess they were expecting the worst, but still.
One of their class mates knew they'd gone to the cave, apparently as an initiation to the team, writing their names in the wall. Their bags were found outside the entrance
They only went into the entrance of the cave but sudden monsoon rains blocked it and forced them further in as the water rose, all the way to 2.5km in to an elevated section
- “A ranger of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation alerted authorities to the missing group after seeing their unclaimed belongings at the cave entrance.”
- “Volanthen was placing guidelines in the cave to later assist others in navigation. He ran out of line, which led him to swim to the surface—there, he found the missing team and its coach.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tham_Luang_cave_rescue
I've talked to cavers that say they need to set alarm clocks otherwise they will be inside the cave for days without noticing (thinking it's hours), which can be quite dangerous if you're not getting hydrated.
https://books.google.com.br/books?id=8WrmCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA154&l...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9dG5KSD-8J4
>footage ... showing the moment the ship's cook was rescued from an air bubble on the ship, two days after the ship capsized
> Volanthen is a computer engineer who runs marathons in his spare time and lives in Bristol.
These guys are basically superheroes.
Would be interesting to know if at some point they were separated and if not, how they kept together in the dark.
It doesn't really add up as it's been told. The death of the expert diver too seems very strange.
An expert diver who was delivering spare oxygen (or was it air), with a buddy, in a system in which a static line had been placed, and in which presumably a dive leader was managing operations and wouldn't allow a diver to return without a suitable amount of air .. in that situation they simply ran out of air? It seems so unlikely.
I just assumed that he got trapped, or carried by a current, or died in what might be perceived as a "stupid" way and they didn't want to mention it as it might hinder the rescue or sully the man's memory.
Maybe it's denial on my part.
Imagine you are in pitch black darkness, with limited visibility even with torches. The water is moving, there isn’t a GPS equivalent, it’s real hard to keep track of position other than markers on a rope.
There can be castrophobicially small tunnels that you need to crawl through. Add bulky gear to the scenario. There can be sharp edges that can tear through skin or gear. Worse, there can be stones in the water stream shooting at you.
There is so much that is an element of luck.
This is one of the reasons that interest me so much in robotics. Imagine being able to send 10’s of robots that can map the entire cave in parallel and send the accurate position of the kids. Not only that, but they can autonomously deliver important gear like food, oxygen, heat blankets e.t.c while human divers prepare for rescue. The man-machine patnership can potentially save so many lives.
I strongly believe the future of exploration/rescue is all about how smart + cheap we can make our robots. It’s so much cheaper sending robots than humans to dangerous missions.
The other possibility is that the various elevation diagrams published by the media may well be wrong. The only proper survey I have seen by cavers is the plan view (for example here: https://www.caverescue.org.uk/luang-nang-non-cave-rescue-tha... ). It looks like the produced diagrams have been... "estimated" from reports of what the rescuers were experiencing. The cave may have filled up from the entrance first and chased the team up the cave.
Or maybe the water level fell after that first rain stopped.
There have been discussions about what responsibility people who act recklessly and put the rescuers in harms way should take (unprepared mountain climbers/ people who don't evacuate storms).
I too was transfixed by the maps and cave cross sections and did wonder how they got in that far.
The parents public statement to the coach was not to assign blame.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/07/parents-boys-tr...
There are always situations that require rescue that are not the fault of the victim. We thus need prepared rescuers, and the best preparation is real situations. The problem with a simulation is it is unethical to send someone out without enough food/shelter to potentially survive. Thus you never get a real race against the clock where you have to make life or death decisions without enough information.
Suggesting that this incident was a good thing because it helped the rescue teams train is a bit odd.
They went in the cave well before the period of time the warnings said not to, they did nothing wrong.
It's tragic that he died. You aren't supposed to go down more than 1/3 of your air supply so you have the same amount to get back with plus a third for emergencies. In addition, he was literally carrying extra oxygen tanks. I don't know the full story, but from what I understand, he wasn't fouled -- just ran out of air. In that case, it seems like he put the victims ahead of himself by acting recklessly and paid the price.
I have recently (within the last few years) heard stories like "I won't help that person because their relatives will sue me if they die".
It's hard to fault the team/coach, since they heeded the posted warnings. I have a feeling the signs will be changed after this.
We don't know if the coach led them in or if he just followed them.
We don't know how far in they went initially. Maybe they just went a bit inside the cave and then increasing water levels forced them further in.
At least he stayed with the boys. Imagine if no adult had been there.
Blaming the coach for the death of the rescue diver is completely uncalled for. There is causality, yes, but it was hardly foreseeable to the coach - if he really led them in - that they would get caught by flooding and that as a result of that a rescue attempt would be launched in which a diver would die.
But again: Maybe the kids went in there and the coach just followed with them. We assume that he was in charge, but we don't know. We don't know if he encouraged them to go in, or whether he tried to talk them out of it or something in between. If he encouraged them to go in, we don't know if he thought they would just enter the opening of the caves.
Some reports say that kids in that area regularly go to the caves. Maybe that's just what you do around there, like kids in America hanging out at a parking lot (which probably kills more kids annually) or kids hanging out at pools (in which way more kids probably drown than in caves). Maybe it's not considered so reckless.
Except as a tourist a couple of times, I have never been to such caves. I wouldn't think rain would be an issue. Like you, I have now read in the media that there were warning signs that said something about flooded caves during monsoon season, and maybe they saw the signs or should have seen the signs. Or maybe people in that area know that local caves flood during monsoon. I don't know. Three weeks ago I certainly wouldn't have thought of flooding as the obvious risk in a cave. I would probably have worried more about falling or slipping or snakes or earthquakes or getting lost.
And even if they did check the weather forecast, would they have known that caves would be flooded? In the last few days, every meteorologist in the world has looked into whether that mountain in Thailand would get rain and experts have tried to guess what it would mean for the flooding in the caves and the ongoing rescue mission. But although it rained it didn't mean that the water raised much. Maybe these people go to the caves regularly while it rains and it's not a problem.
We simply don't know enough to blame the coach.
Even during the rescue, the forecast said Chiang Rai was going to have a heavy rain for the whole week (thus the reason they started the operation few days ago), but it has been pretty dry so far.
[1] http://weather.tmd.go.th/cri.php
[2] http://weather.tmd.go.th/disclaimer.html
Is prison really needed? Didn't he pay enough for his crime?
This is an ugly and poisonous attitude. I don't usually downvote for pure spite... I did just now.
I would at least wait to know if he endangered them or if he actually saved them by taking them that for in. For all I know if he hadn't been there they might've drowned in the flood trying to get out rather than go deeper inside.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
>Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
The man's death probably isn't a big focus of the Guardian's live coverage because it happened a while ago. There may have been an article just about him, I don't recall.
God, if those children were doing an initiation endangering themselves. Remember the newborns dying in Syria, Africa and other places.
I wish the 13 well.
Edit: the NYT online front page now mentions him, so maybe it was just a matter of scrambling out the news that the rescue was complete (though I'd have expected them to write that copy in advance).
I not only got notified by multiple newspapers on my phone, I later saw pictures and a video of the funeral completely surrounded by cameras, which I learn the Thai royalty entirely paid for.
For the record, I didn't see any of this coverage a week ago but have already admitted that it happened and I'm sure it was extremely significant. I'm still surprised that he's not mentioned in every recap article's opening and wasn't praised by, for example, Trump and other celebrities reacting to the event.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07/06/56-missing-in-thai-r...
It's just what happens....some people capture the public's hearts and minds, and some don't.
Just not "exciting" enough for the general public, ratings, and newspaper sales
It is probably true that in countries like Thailand, serving in the military is somewhat thankless. That's hard to imagine from a US perspective where veterans/servicemembers today receive amazing support.
Running out of air while diving is a mistake that any amateur diver with crap equipment can make, but we make it while 50 ft deep in open water, so we just swim to the surface if our buddy isn't close or attentive enough to help us. [0] If you're in a cave you can't do that, but if you're a professional military frogman with fancy professional equipment you probably shouldn't make that mistake. If the global media had concentrated to closely on this, embarrassing questions would have been asked. Therefore it's better that everyone just praise his courage and move on.
[0] I did this, when I was 13 and I was using a system with a bad air gauge. When everyone got to the top, the dive master said "OK, you've done an emergency ascent, now switch tanks and we're going back down to practice buddy breathing." I haven't run out of air while diving since that episode.
I can see how, being reminded of the logistic time cost of every bottle, he might have pushed and run too close for his return. And that's not even broaching equipment malfunctions.
Things happen. Maybe it was a mistake and maybe it was bad luck. But the man's a hero for returning from retirement to play a critical role in saving 13 people.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2018/07/06/thai-cave-diver-...
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/07/06/world/asia/ap-as...
https://www.reddit.com/search?q=saman%20gunan&sort=top
Cost or donation, can we expect the same for every child in need?
Helping every child in poverty requires a long term paced effort rather than a one time heroic one. As inspiring as this rescue was, it doesn't scale.
[0] http://www.humanosphere.org/world-politics/2014/10/united-st...
For me it seems as some sort of artefact of human cognition. (Mercilessly used by "last minute" opportunities by salesmen... and journalist.)
We're much better at dealing with time-bounded, localizable problems.
Stalin's quote about tragedies and statistics comes to mind.
There as Quote Investigator article on it, it is again a much older quote. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/
If this quality is order of magnitude lower than other less exciting solutions (e.g. access to medicine and education for kids from poor families), then we should be aware that what we pay for is not lives saved, but an emotional entertainment show.
Someone asked him why he didn't instead pour that energy into helping homeless people. His response was something to the effect that there were plenty of others helping people; his passion was the dogs. I believe he also turned the question around: what are you doing to help the homeless?
A few dozen cave divers can't do much to help the millions of impoverished children, but they used their skills to perform heroic and deadly feats to help 12 children and their coach, and inspired many around the world to ask themselves these types of questions.
Reducing that to a cost-benefit analysis vs some vague "but can't we spend that effort on the other lost kids?" question is both impossible and missing the point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect
I'm not from US and never been to US either. But many of these stories are heart-breaking.
Thanks for the info.
Here is Jeh Johnson talking about the separation of kids from their arrested parents: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/24/obama_dhs...
But several years ago nobody really cared, which tells me, nobody really cares that much now — it’s just yet another tool to generate the rabid hysteria necessary to bolster midterm elections prospects.
Every week it’s literally another outrage, while the previous week’s outrage is quickly forgotten. This shouldn’t be a political thread, but since someone seems to be following the “outrage playbook” by making a comment about the detention of those arrested for illegal immigration under Trump, but likely never said anything when it happened under prior administrations —- it is important that we call out political manipulation when we see it.
Perhaps if those opposing Trump had actually protested about kid-detention years ago when it started, maybe I might consider their outrage genuine. But now, people are using detained children for political gain, which is pretty disgusting in my opinion.
It’s fasionable to pretend to hate Trump, I get it. But it’s funny how people seem to fall all over themselves to express how “woke” they are. Implying that before Trump they were all sleeping? Because in the case of detained children, they sure as hell were sleeping — because their guy was in the White House.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/07/609225537...
There are weekly outrages because these people are shitty, dishonest, incompetent people.
It's not just a minor disagreement in some technical bit of policy that causes an arch-conservative like George Will to urge people to 'vote Democrat' come November:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/vote-against-the-gop...
https://people.com/politics/migrant-crisis-children-detained...
is it callous to ask whether there isn't a more efficient (from the perspective of actually helping a significant number of people) way to allocate these resources? there are a lot of lives that could be changed for way less.
Certainly, there are logistical costs in moving material around, but if an active US Navy ship isn't deployed on a humanitarian mission it's either patrolling or training.
It's still a sizable cost, but it'd be a lot less than expected if sunk expenditures were removed.
1) It's a fun challenge to try to solve, particularly when traditional solutions seem to be failing.
2) You get to help some people.
3) It's great publicity for you and your companies, particularly if you succeed in an out of the box way.
And other people would have of course have had radically different motivations for why they chose to get involved. There's no grand overseer that found it reasonable to 'spend' or risk a life. It all comes down to completely subjective views, motivations, and value systems. So if you want to know why what any given individual would do is something they would consider reasonable, you would need to ask them. There is no right or wrong answer. In this case the diver's motivations and value determinations convinced him that this was a reasonable spot to risk his life, and he died. I expect he had no regrets and so it was, all things considered, a great way to die from his perspective. By contrast, it would be a terrible way to die from the perspective of many others. Nobody's right, or wrong. It's just different motivations and value determinations.
Yes it was not an official call for help, but someone asked. He even acknowledged that experts were already on the field, and his first reaction was to just send goods there before advancing with engineering ideas.
Following your idea why were there so many civilian divers? Why not let the Thai military do the job? That's just PR. Those attention-seeking bastards.
The guy likes solving problems and has a good team to do it as well, he did it on is own dime, so why all the fuss?
"I didn't do anything to help- I don't think saving 12 people in a Thailand cave means a lot, globally speaking." yes that's the thing you're just a neckbeard who cares shit about others and feels smug about pointing fingers on the internet. Who cares if its Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jon Doe, if they have the resources and will, why shouldn't they try to help?
Have you looked at Tweets directed at him? People ask him for all kinds of things.
The later stages were coordinated with the local Thai rescue team. As proven by email exchange Elon published.
Not a hint of irony, huh?
There it is, the crazy Musk fans going full out ad-hominem, just like they did on the BI journalist. Careful OP, these people are nuts.
You conveniently cut short my phrase, when quoting, just to push the argument that I'm a Musk fanboy...
Good for you, but that wasn't what I meant. "Do nothing" in regards with the current situation, not in general.
These pro-and-anti-Musk flamewars are extremely low-quality discussion. You guys might as well be bickering about Spider-Man.
BTW, I'm not a neckbeard since I shaved this morning, but really, if you resort to attacks like that, it makes you look like a jerk
The question was put to him by random people on Twitter, not by the Thai government. His initial response that he thought the Thai government had it in hand.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016684366083190785
It shows correspondance with one of the dive team, urging Musk to continue with the sub.
Other teams from other organisations were also working on similar things: https://twitter.com/Jiradett/status/1016690284619599873
I don't know what level of social ineptness is required to ignore not only the blatant insult against the chief, but Musk's presumably unintentional insult to the rest of the team that informed the chief what they thought about Musk's idea to carry a 300lb tube through volatile currents in a tight, murky cave system.
Talk about domain specialization.
As I posted elsewhere, all this angry arguing about Musk, pro or con, is as meaningful as angry arguing about Spider-Man. Since you're on the con side, I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR you deplore, by giving it your attention and attracting others into doing the same. Go for it if that's what you want—but please not here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Not once have you called out people hurling personal insults towards people that have a minority opinion on this board, you've done the exact opposite.
You have implied my statements violate some aspect of HN, but you're going to need to specifically point out which statements do that. Dissent is not violation. You might not be interested in the dissent or critique but you can't use your position as moderator to quell it.
And if you're actually willing to be honest with yourself, or even devote some amount of diligent effort to pretend you're here to upload intellectual standards (despite discouraging dissenting opinions), you need to explain why blatant personal attacks are being allowed in threads you are most definitely reading.
> I'll add that all you're doing by venting like this is feeding the very PR you deplore,
Dang, that's a unsubstantiated view point and you know it. I'm honestly in shock you think that's a valid point to make (I'm not). Please explain how someone who gets public attention as a status quo is somehow actually being fueled by his critics. This talking point comes in up various contexts and is always meant to dismiss critique or even worse, victim blame. What the actual fuck are you on?
To recap since you most definitely again will side step any critique of moderating actions:
* What rules am I violating and where. A simple quote of my statement and the rule will suffice.
* Why are you framing the debate as if it's about a fictional character, when it's the CEO of a company who receives significant funding from U.S. tax payer dollars.
* How does critiquing a public figure's positive media coverage in a small thread somehow get the news to continue positive coverage?
I definitely don't mean to pick on you personally. Dozens of HN users have been filling the threads with this lately and it needs to stop. We literally can't moderate it all, and the Elonian Provocation is large enough to be capable of swamping this site entirely.
That seems largely contradictory to the hacker ethos, no?
Right now it seems like current moderation tactics are encouraging a "lie hard and fast" mode, so the truth can't catch up -- so to speak. Essentially the moderation policy is acting as a floodgate that only closes when perspectives that negate the "pro" side of things are brought into play.
This is apparent in what was allowed to be posted without question and in how you, intentionally or not, only replied to anti-musk threads. There were at least 4 threads, that I just looked at now at the time of this post, that were both not flagged by the community nor set straight from a moderator that were purely composed of vague personal attacks (it would have been better if they had just been forthright with it).
I understand that HN has limited resources and you clearly value the integrity of this forum, I just think certain perspectives unfairly caught your attention more than they should have.
Humans came together to find a solution to a difficult, life or death, situation.
That's why.
1. Current events.
2. Sports tournaments.
The information entropy level is quite high, with basically no ads, extremely good formatting (relevant tables, charts etc.), and relatively unbiased.
This doesn't even mention the benefit of getting simple background information on the subjects with just a simple click (or even a hover these days)
It's really a treasure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
Actually, isn't it the * best * first website to learn about anything?
This is the natural result for a website written by users (those with lots of knowledge write it for others who have lots of knowledge). Even simple wikipedia is not immune to this, due to explaining the concept theoretically instead of taking example problems.
I do not mean to say that I think wikipedia is bad or that others do better. I'm not even sure such a problem is solvable at all (making it useful for both beginners and experts)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(mathematics)
Some topics have excellent coverage, others are barely touched so ymmv.
As in you read several books about a medical condition, and then see what Wikipedia says about it? Because if you just start by reading the Wikipedia article, you'd have no idea whether it's wrong or not. (It's usually wrong.)
I'm surprised at the idea though, and pretty skeptical that it's actually the case since I would have assumed many others with medical knowledge would also have noticed, and one of them would have corrected things eventually.
[1]: "During the 1852 campaign between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig Winfield Scott, Justice John McKinley died in July. President Millard Fillmore, a Whig who was not running for reelection, nominated three candidates — one in August, one in January and one in February. The Democratic-controlled Senate took no action on two candidates and the third withdrew after the Senate postponed a vote until after inauguration. One of Fillmore’s nominations was never even considered by the Senate, while the other was simply tabled." from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/...
Similar to a pocket veto, not acting upon a nomination is a form of action. It's an indirect mechanism to reject a nominee.
I'm pretty sure changing this to mandate a hearing within a fixed number of days would require a constitutional amendment, not just a regular law, so is essentially impossible.
"Unprecedented in recent history" is misleading sensationalism.
1. Craft an essay on the Talk page explaining why your modifications are well sourced and should not be changed
2. Camp the page for modifications
Both of which require much more time than it took to write OP's comment above.
When I ventured to the 'Talk' page, I was surprised to see so many edits and comments from editors.
This was for a little known company in a niche field with little traffic or chance to profit. Yet the editors were as diligent as ever.
3. Car Model history
crazy the amount of information available on wiki around automobiles/auto programs (DARPA, etc)
these are qualities of a low entropy system.
Heck, I remember the day the news broke, I thought "Wow, so many news articles on this... let me just head to Wikipedia and see the consensus.
The news had broken just hours beforehand, and already Wikipedia had all the info and a creative-commons graphic of a map of the cave.
Hopefully it will go as a +1 in our ledger if the fate of our species is ever decided
In all honesty, please remember and keep repeating Saman Gunan's name. He gave his life for these kids. Musk reused a part of his rocket that his company didn't even build, in a situation where it would never work. It was so obviously a PR stunt it's disgusting. He even personally showed up to the cave site as if he was ever going to actually contribute something. I can only imagine how much of a nuisance this was to the people running the rescue operation, doing the true blue work that resulted in these kids being saved.
>"Even though their equipment is technologically sophisticated, it doesn't fit with our mission to go in the cave," said rescue chief Narongsak Osotthanakorn.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/44755093?ns_mchannel=social&ns...
I already saw Musk being referenced in a positive manner in these comments so we're going to put that to rest immediately. The guy in charge of the operation basically called their presence there completely useless in the most PC way imaginable.
You point out two people. Both sacrificed things selflessly - for Kunan, it was his life. For Musk, it was a little money and a few hours. You do not need to negate one sacrifice in order to celebrate the other.
Your sarcastic attitude is incredibly unpleasant, and I would personally never hire or contract someone that converses in the manner you have. It obviously gave you a dopamine rush to write that little diatribe, but good luck turning that temporary feeling into genuine goodwill or income.
Direct quotes from one of the dive team leads: "please keep working on the capsule" and "it is absolutely worth continuing with the development".
It'd odd that Musk's attempts to discredit the guy in charge of the entire of the operation is somehow not worth pointing out, who no doubt had input from multiple teams he was working close with. Musk then proceeded to release 3 messages between Musk and 1 person, specifically picked to continue this PR spree.
To reiterate, the guy in charge of the entire operation said the submarine wasn't going to work with their mission. Musk then proceeds to cherry pick exactly 1 email correspondence between him and 1 other person to invalidate the official's position on the matter (and the fact that the sub was in fact, never used). In Musk's magical bubble (as you can see from the Twitter replies), this is somehow both reasonable and enough to justify his ever continuing pop-sci PR spree.
After a certain point, you need to start questioning why he's always in these PR spats and why nothing substantial ever happens to actually validate Musk. I do not personally understand what level of sheer, unbridled optimism is required to look at what Musk is doing and go "Yeah, that's totally okay and noble!"
To end:
* Musk constantly tweeted/reported on his own team's developments throughout the entire process, even though basically nothing was actually happening.
* The guy in charge of the operation said the vehicle would not be used
* Musk show's up to the dive site for some selfies, talks with people while taking some extra selfies, and then immediately leaves.
* In a true display of ego, Musk proceeds to screenshot 1 email chain between him and 1 other person because he was factually called out on this matter.
* Musk fan boys across the internet praise him for doing all of the above and contributing exactly nothing.
I'm sorry what? Musk constantly gets tons of PR over nothing from news outlets, to reddit, to HN. It's really strange that a reasonable response to constant bombardment of Musk's half-baked ideas and PR stunts is somehow attributable to people's dislike of Musk personally. How is directly providing concrete and factual events to counter a corporate narrative and to dismantle a cult of personality "going out of [their] way" or even evidence of some kind of odd personal hate towards Musk?
The entire response is a really cheap, nonconstructive appeal to motive and is quite frankly full of vague personal attacks.
I would maybe give you the benefit of the doubt here by saying you probably just don't participate in the same media channels I do, but you're blatantly aware of the situation given your hostile apology to the current perspective on all things Musk. This is so strangely reminiscent of when Steve Jobs was around.
You should be the last person to complain about this...
And you're not really accomplishing your goal anyway. The only reason I knew that Musk was even involved in this whole mess was because of his detractors. You're basically signal boosting Musk without even meaning to. I don't personally see any reason to doubt Musk's stated motives but even if he is seeking publicity and attention the best way to deal with that sort of thing is to ignore it.
It's not a question. I quite literally detailed what factually has happened. It isn't up for debate. He again, quite literally, decided to discredit and defame the lead of the rescue efforts in attempt to white wash several people calling him out on a very, very obvious PR stunt. They were halfway through the rescue operation while he was tweeting about hauling a 300lb pound tube through a tight cave system.
>Even if you're correct you're a hypocrite to complain about someone doing the same to you.
Pointing out and supporting a common criticism of a largely public figure is quite different than personally attacking someone reiterating that critique. If the difference is not appreciable to you then there's like 50 different things that need explaining and I am definitely not going to waste my time doing that.
>The only reason I knew that Musk was even involved in this whole mess was because of his detractors.
Really? Not the mainstream media outlets reporting about it? Or the 600k+ shares on various tweets? You found out because of random internet comments complaining about it, in threads that had nothing to do with those reports?
That seems very, very far fetched and beggars belief.
>I don't personally see any reason to doubt Musk's stated motives
You don't think a clear, consistent pattern of doing the same thing over and over again for unoriginal benefits is not a valid reason to doubt someone's motives? That seems pretty naive.
Allow me to reiterate what just went down:
Elon Musk came out and publicly attempted to put down and dismiss the chief of the rescue operation, the other people who chose not to use the submarine, while also bolstering up the guy he had a personal email correspondence with just as an attempt to counter people's criticism that he is, yet again, just engaging in empty PR (ask yourself why he is constantly engaged in this).
Your suggested and proposed response to this, by your own words, is not attempt to educate people on what's actually going on here, but to simply ignore it. How do you think that's actually going to pan out? Why is doing nothing against misinformation that aids corporate propaganda okay, but somehow personally attacking people with vague fallacies not only somehow rationally acceptable (it's not, but I'll let you attempt to answer it), but suddenly worth your time?
Seems a bit odd.
But when you present contrived scenarios to make a point (i.e., lying), your motive can and certainly should be questioned. Unless you're going to argue with most western court systems about the validity of doing that.
What were you honestly hoping to achieve with such a pathetic and ill-thought-out response?
What are your thoughts on how technology advancement in the next 30 years would change the way of this kind of rescue mission? Say in 2040, can a group of robots finish the mission in one day with ease? That will be awesome, people can be rescued from bad situations much sooner.
Remember even as of today AI can compete on a high level of huge video games, face recognition, natural language processing, playing Go/Chess game, etc. Imagine in 30 years, all the robots, armed with AI and made of materials a few times stronger than whatever we have today, should be able to scan, learn, adapt and go. Another minor point, the robots can probably carry some heavy machines (or laser guns) and just pound hard on the cave's narrow sections to make the passage wider. Etc.
By that time even poor kids in rural Thailand will be carrying smartphones on them at all times.
Those, combined with location-based awareness will warn them just as they're about to enter the cave "uh, are you sure you want to do that? Look at the current weather forecast....".
Highlight:
> "This man...drove more than 200 km just to give ice-cream to the rescue team"
While this level of selflessness and generosity can be found almost anywhere, the Thais are truly some of the most gracious people you'll meet. That country is a gem.
The society is currently torn apart politically (similar, but different, to the polarization in the US) so good to see something unite the nation. And with such a happy ending, too.
(Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein)
Just check the wiki page, he wrote it himself (under Major Themes, Militarism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
That's militarism.
I'm curious as to what would make you think otherwise?
Sources: https://sites.google.com/a/newmyths.com/nmwebsite/non_fictio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
“Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.” - Startship troopers [1]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2534973-starship-troop...
And since the only people who would be voting would be the ones who were or had done the dying, it's likely a very strong anti-war book, as one would presume only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought.
Pacifists happen to join armies less.
But also, Nazi leadership was on the shit end of the stick when it comes to WWI. That did not prevented them to start WWII. Instead, the experience normalized the violence for them and shaped their believes. On the other side, Stalin was fighter in particularly cruel war too in his formative years. Was not peaceful either.
Lastly and less importantly, people who had done dying don't vote, they are dead. Only people who survived previous war vote. And survivors often internalized values that are help to survive the war. They sometimes have hard time to adjust to peaceful life afterwards. Your presumption that "only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought" has no basis in reality.
Also, your theory assumes that enlisted soldiers actions are motivated primary by self-preservation and will vote on that. Some are, but many are not. Others are motivated by duty, career progression, pride, social status, honor, professionalism, tradition, salary, wish to prove themselves or simply by liking to be in the army structure. In case of your hypothetical army, many men will join for career in politics and social status reasons. People motivated primary by self preservation wont join your hypothetical army.
> I don't think they read the book
Neither did you...
This may not have been what Heinlein intended to convey. But I tend not to find an author's advocacy relevant when reading fiction. I see the author as giving me rope to hang myself if I choose, rather than considering that they advocate anything at all. As I read it, militarism so permeated that society that the only possible contrarian point of view would come from the reader. And I thought that was the whole point of the book. It doesn't matter whether that's Heinlein's intent.
If it's true Heinlein just didn't convey the vast majority of Federal Service was non-military, and yet all we have to go on is the exclusively militaristic bent as written, that deficiency might make the book all the better just to have the ensuing ideological battles and discussions that resulted. And this book generated quite a lot of them at the time, and I see it as overwhelmingly beneficial.
A likely metaphor to the non-citizens of Starship Troopers are those who of their own volition do not enter into military service, do not vote, do not participate in government - exist in large numbers in the U.S. Most Americans now do not vote, they're simply along for the ride, and in effect aren't citizens in any meaningful way (other than perhaps they can't be deported - but in Starship Troopers it was a world government so there's no concept of deportation anyway).
We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad society found a way to save them, I just wish we took the every day threats to human life more seriously.
Because for better or worse, that’s not how most money is redistributed.
What do Thai Navy divers do? If there's no war on, they're probably training. What better training than a live rescue mission? I.e. the wages for those highly skilled Thai teams have probably been paid down already.
Similarly international forces benefit from co-operation because it's something they would want to do anyway: good will, training in co-operation, skills training.
As for volunteers their time is hardly a cost in the same way. But if you're a cave diving medic, the expected utility of using your time to save people in a cave is probably better than working and donating to a charity.
Failing to save these kids is the case you want to think about - that would be sending the message to the public that if your kid gets lost in the mountains we're not going to save them. Sure this particular "insurance claim" (in this impromptu parlance) was an expensive one, but most of the others aren't, and the thing about insurance is that it is there particularly when the costs are catastrophic.
These are different disasters. The cave impacted 13 random children. Hunger impacts millions of poor children. One is random, the other more predictable.
There are utilitarian arguments for numbing oneself to tragedy which predictably strikes those without resources while defending those visited by random misfortune. (Note: I am not arguing for this utilitarian calculus. Just describing it.)
Coarsely, what happened to these kids could happen to ours. Starvation, less likely. In-group selection is built into our natures, and that is on display here.
Practically, saving these kids takes a short burst of effort. Their families will pick up the slack thereafter because they have—on average—the resources to do so. Saving children from hunger takes long stretches of coördination, together with efforts to ensure their education (to prevent the problem from repeating in the next generation).
It is cruel, and there is probably a solution. But the analogy between these problems is flawed. With minimal assistance, the cave children will become self-sustaining again. That is not true for the chronically hungry.
We don't want to be humanly. We want to be praised for being humanly.
I need to coin a term for this concept, I see it on every Hacker News thread once it reaches a certain size. It is the attribution of the topic to some nefarious intention of a dude in marketing. Once you start noticing it you can't unsee.
Intel fires their CEO? It's a PR stunt.
Startup abandons Europe due to GDPR? PR STUNT!
AlphaZero beats professionals at Dota 2? You guessed it, it's just PR for oligarchy parent Alphabet.
I see this so often now it's becoming humorous. As if some how this being all about PR explains everything. It doesn't explain anything! Although I'm sure Bill over in marketing loves that he has subsumed the historical role of deity in explaining the unknown.
Edit: yes, I have chosen the words concentration camps to evoke the sceptre of the Holocaust. Also note my grandmother is still alive and an Auschwitz survivor. We. have. seen. this. before!
1. Classification 2. Symbolization 3. Discrimination 4. Dehumanization 5. Organization 6. Polarization 7. Preparation 8. Persecution 9. Extermination 10. Denial
By my count, the USA is at step 8 of the ten steps of genocide.
Or if you want, check the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court:
Article 6
Genocide
For the purpose of this Statute, ‘genocide’ means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Also note who signed the letter about the US not being part of said Rome Statute: https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2002/9968.htm Bolton was appointed on March 22, the disastrous zero tolerance memo came out on April 6 and I have a horrible feeling of Bolton reminding Trump and Sessions they can't be hauled to The Hague for committing a crime against humanity because the USA is not part of the ICC -- who would know this better?
This does nothing, but underplay the significance of the holocaust.
Anyone using the phrase and then insisting that the literal meaning was intended is thoroughly disingenuous. That speaker or writer is deliberately using the loaded term in order to troll the intended audience with a crystal clear Nazi reference.
If it evokes the use of the concept you dislike, rethink your moral stance on it. Not the phrasing of the concept.
The word for non-murderous concentration camps is "internment".
"It's different when we do it."
"Historically incorrect" is just a way of saying "presently correct". For instance "sensibility" is not a historically correct way of referring to a rational disposition. Historically, it meant what we today call "sensitivity".
Fuck historically correct; I live today, not in history.
It is not a euphimism; everyone knows that it refers to starvation and horrific murder and aren't using that word for the sake of masking this.
It's quite well known that "concentration camp" is not the correct term for the Nazi extermination camps.
All that remains is the small detail of convincing the public at large that they are using the word wrong.
During the first World War, they renamed New Berlin to Kitchener here in Canada. They may as well have named it Hitlerville. The scale of evil wasn't as horrible as the Holocaust, but it was pretty damn awful. It's true what they say, that the victors write the history books. So few people know about that story.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps
if you actually pay attention to border patrol, you will see that these kids have left horrible conditions and many are not separated from parents but from strangers using them to get in or for drug smuggling. some dont even have any parents or family with them.
ICE also saves the most lives on the border
These aren't the ones that the uproar is about. The uproar is about the children who have been separated from their parents, not the children being held in foster care or holding facilities in general. The 3000 separated from parents is a number from HHS Secretary Azar. The Trump administration updated that number to 2342 children separated from 2206 parents.
it happens to families everyday that are citizens too
not a big deal and the kids are still doing better than before, no reason for the uproar
Somehow, they handled it just fine and at lower cost without family separation before. If so, why separate them except due to racism? They are now having trouble reuniting families weeks later because of improper tracking.
thinking that its racism is just you jumping to emotional conclusions
there are no problems reuniting families when they are actually families, it is when kids are alone or abused as drug mules that they have to work harder to find where to put them
they still leave horrible conditions so why arent you upset over how bad the other countries are?
Before Trump’s zero tolerance policy, when criminal charges for illegal crossing were essentially never pursued on their own and families with children targeted for deportation without criminal charges were also (since the court order limiting the use of immigration detention for children) not subjected to immigration detention specifically to avoid separation, and where active steps weren't taken to force entrants seeking asylum to enter illegally by preventing access at ports of entry, which is what actually pushed most of the families subjected to Trump's zero tolerance policy into the system in the first place.
> there are no problems reuniting families when they are actually families
Yes, in fact, there are, in the present situation.
> it is when kids are alone
Unaccompanied minors have been a particular problem at times in the past, but that's not the current issue.
> or abused as drug mules
That happens, but, again, is not the source of the current crisis.
> they still leave horrible conditions so why arent you upset over how bad the other countries are?
Most people upset about this administration’s blatant and indefensible mistreatment and hostage taking with regard to asylum seekers are, also, unhappy with the conditions in the countries that they are fleeing. Which is actually a big reason why they are upset at the Administration’s further tormenting them when they are trying to flee, and actively preventing them from lawfully seeking asylum.
Largely, because the Administration has taken active steps to prevent lawful asylum applications.
> and the kids will be reunited later if they are real family
Maybe, sometimes, after the recent court order requiring that; most recently prior to that the kids were being used as hostages to force parents to sign voluntary deportation agreements and give up asylum claims; during and prior to that children were deported separately from their parents and vice versa in a number of cases. And, in any cases, there was no tracking of any kind to facilitate reunification.
> not a big deal and the kids are still doing better than before
No, they often aren't; especially for the younger children, being forcibly separated from their parents is itself an enormous trauma that will damage their development (social/emotional especially for life.)
No, they don't, even before the Trump Administration policy changes that have produced the recent issues. You are confusing ICE with the Border Patrol. They aren't the same thing.
It's simply under-developed and has not become industrialized. When American or European children were dying at higher rates it wasn't because their parents were selfish. It reflected the rate of development of the continent.
Hunger was an issue after World War II in most of Europe, and the US came to their aid. The hunger there was not due to parents being selfish either.
http://www.newsweek.com/now-good-news-poor-are-getting-riche...
So they are probably (well, not probably)... they ARE going to have more kids whether you like it or not.
The question becomes how do we (Western society, which has more resources than we know what to do with) address the issue and try to do good in the world.
Be involved in how your governments and MNC's behave in these countries. These entities are more likely to pay attention when you, as a voter or customer with more disposable income, say something compared to the citizens of poorer countries who have less of a voice.
It's a natural response to the hardship. If the chance that the kid make it is 10%, then make 10 times more kids. That way you have around 100% chance that your lineage makes it through life.
In other words: In a society where 90% of children die and women have 10 births, one third of the mothers will lose all. All assuming the deaths are independent of course.
In poor countries children are your retirement savings, so at an individual level having more children is a rational decision. In many cases they aren't having more kids than they can afford--they can't afford not to have more kids. Even at a national level it's not clear that lowering birth rates without additional changes would help a country economically.
We shouldn't turn to ideals in an effort to ignore or abdicate responsibility in dealing with the reality we are given.
I'm only 25 so I don't know how I'll feel in 10-20 years, but right now this is part of my consideration when thinking about long-term goals and whether I'd want to have kids at some point. I might, so for that eventuality, plan B is to adopt. Plan C is to have one (and only one) kid, which already turns two parents into one descendant, so that's better than nothing.
The only thing I'm worried about is that smart families will do this and the stupid ones produce six. It's in the education and not in the genes... but it's also in the upbringing, and if they're brought up with the mentality of the kind of people who currently get six kids...
Now off to the Gulag!
Bill Gates and tens of thousands of aid workers globally. The Chinese Communist Party and businessmen who outsource labor from the overfed first world to the underfed third world are by far the biggest help. Also your aunt who volunteers at the soup kitchen. Often these efforts funded by donations or aid grants (tax money, paid by you and me) from our democratically elected governments.
>We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
Most of us can comprehend two (or more!) things at once. People are extremely mobilized about ending hunger and we have made strides against this in the last century: https://slides.ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-food-provision/
A few hundred people showed up to the cave for a few weeks. Tens of thousands show up to fight hunger every day.
If there is no food to spare, then all the money in the world won't solve the problem. If there is food to spare and people let children starve to death, then people are evil. (edit: there technically exists a third potential that there is absolutely no means of delivering food, but at that point, any discussion is pointless)
EDIT: I suppose this idea makes people uncomfortable because it implies that those same people might be evil even though they don't see themselves as evil. We all want the world to be a better place, but we don't want to be inconvenienced. Rather than do something, we give a few dollars in hopes of absolution. Writing posts about starving kids is easy. Moving 100LB bags of food 12 hours a day in Sudan is much harder. "Be the change you want to see in the world"
Do they die of malnutrition or governmental corruption? I thought it was proven in the 1980's that the problem isn't a lack of food, it's the degenerate political systems blocking aid from reaching those who are dying. At least that's the prevailing narrative on reddit.
When a million people died in the Irish potato famine, it wasn't just because the United Kingdom prevented foreign aid from reaching Ireland. Ireland was the breadbasket of the empire - throughout that entire time, it was a net exporter of food.
1. Food is free for the starving in many places around the world.
2. Where it isn't free, a meal of rice and beans is usually within reach of even the poorest.
3. Where it is out of reach of the poor, it may be due to corruption; ie North Korea redirecting food supplies to the army instead of the public, and withholding it from prison camps.
Don't fixate on the price or you'll miss the forest for the trees.
It is the handiwork of the rapists that beget these children.
When you try to get a kid out of a cave there is at least some hope of lasting success.
Billionaires like Bill Gates. Countless volunteer aid workers with organizations such as MSF.
Fact #1: Since 1960, child deaths have plummeted from 20 million a year to 6 million a year. [1] This was posted quite recently here on HN. Perhaps you missed it.
At the end of the day, the problem of child poverty and the death and suffering it causes is an enormous one but we are making progress on it. Could we do better? Yes. Could we do worse? Oh yes, way way worse.
[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Max-Roser-three-facts...
... without forgetting the holocaust a year that is still happening.
It’s so easy to forget how nasty Spanish flu, small pox and polio was. My grandfather has stories where they would burn people’s houses/huts with the people alive inside if they had contracted the disease. It was brutal. A curse that would wipe an entire enpire.
We can help the 13 because government is not the cause and there is nothing to undo, we cannot help the 3.1 as easily because it would take either removing the government in power to putting the 3.1 in further jeopardy trying to fix it. So the real question becomes, when will the world recognize that some small countries need outside governance to see to the needs of their people. Right now sovereignty is absolute unless the nation in question threatens a neighboring country.
When you have a small group dying of hunger because of a drought, it is easy to perceive what to do and your ability to realize it. So people are more likely to speak up.
If a drought affects an entire nation, you're at least aware this must be a complicated task. So you're more reluctant to criticize inaction.
That behavior is especially problematic when the solutions are abstract or long-term.
https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/obesity-a-bigger-problem-t...
There is plenty of money and resources out there to save all kids dying from easily preventable diarrheal diseases. There is no political will to do that.
I'd argue that this kind of belief is extremely valuable for a country's economics as a whole. In order for the populace to be economically productive (and save 50000 kids from dying of diarrheal diseas) you need to create a safe, reliable, and predictable environment. Governments insuring against events like kids getting lost in caves is the way that they get that.
My thinking is that we're a long way from that point -- there are numerous other, small, sacrifices that can be made.
I do have a respectful question though - are you, personally, acting to save those 50,000 kids? Is there an effective organization out there that accepts donations for this kind of thing, and if so, are you giving to them?
(The Martian by Andy Weir)
(Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card)
That book is fiction, fun to read but still made up.