What you can't see can't hurt you? Really?
Some things are just hard to do, and even harder to do well. Building commercial airplanes is one of those things. For many years, Boeing, from its perch in the Emerald City, ruled the Big Iron the airlines bought to fly passengers around the world.
Competitors arose, but most of them were also-rans – even at the height of their popularity – at least with passengers. The simple phrase often heard among regular airline travelers was, "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going!"
I once got a ride in a small airplane from a retired military flight surgeon. I asked about his transition from flying the F-16 to the small Piper we were in. It was a short conversation. "They all fly the same," he said.
Funny thing that, about the laws of physics. It doesn't matter how small or unique the little airplane you are flying in, or how automated and impressive the Big Iron tube you walked into for a transatlantic flight as an airline passenger: They all fly the same. But do watch your airspeed, because the same quirks kick in at different speeds in different planes.
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The technoramuses of the world's news outlets seize every opportunity to promote self-driving and self-flying vehicles. I have yet to hear of a self-piloted airliner that ingested a flock of birds and then chose to land on the Hudson River, because that was the best choice to save its passengers. Maybe turning back to the airport without power would work; maybe not. Are you feeling lucky today?
As good as Capt. Sully's decision was, and despite the extreme pressure under which it was made, it was something he had trained – repeatedly and often – to do well. When that time came, a lifetime of training paid off for everyone. It didn't matter if the airplane was from Boeing or Airbus. The pilot had trained extensively, and he knew what the airplane would do in response to his inputs.
How do you codify that experience into silicon?
At some point in Boeing's Big Iron success heyday, the company decided that building the best airliners in the world wasn't enough. Perhaps management felt the hot breath of Airbus on its neck; perhaps it was something else. They decided to automate as much of the cockpit workload as possible. They hired software engineers, taught them the airplane business and encouraged them to automate the pilot's job.
Automation is not a recent development. The pilot is a big expense. I knew a DC-10 airline pilot many years ago. I asked him how automated that airplane was. He simply replied, "It wouldn't need me to land it." But he also felt passengers would not accept that action. That was a long time ago. That same level of automation is now available in some small airplanes.
But how does this airplane flying stuff relate to, "What you can't see can't hurt you?" Well, once again Boeing has led the way, recently with the 737 Max, and as I write this, the company is trying to figure out why their Starliner burned too much fuel and failed to reach the correct orbit to dock with the International Space Station.
Let me suggest that both failures have the same source. At some point the company's management decided to transition from being a Big Iron manufacturer into a Big Tech company (self-flying airliners). Around that same time they jettisoned the bulk of their longtime software engineers and outsourced the most important part of their new business. With hindsight management may have recognized that software engineers who understand the pilot's job in an airliner are themselves pretty rare birds. Ditto for the "rocket science" required to dock with the Space Station.
You and I can't see inside the black boxes where the coding instructions live that run the computers and intelligent microchips that ultimately run our lives (if we let them). But there is something else we can't see, either. Human pride, arrogance and greed are all intrinsic qualities of unredeemed humanity. And unredeemed humanity is what grew out of the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve's first encounter with Satan. Look at that encounter as a corruption of our DNA (which is probably what it is).
The renewed human mind results from an ongoing encounter with the God of the Bible. "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2 NIV).
The renewed mind is not proud, not arrogant and not motivated by greed. Therefore, the renewed mind avoids the disastrous outcomes by pride, arrogance and greed.
Imagine, for a time, what a world without pride, arrogance and greed looks like. Imagine the changes that would take place in manufacturing, our service industries, government and personal relationships.
Pride, arrogance and greed dictate that we transform our culture by taking what we want from the rich, redistribute it to the poor and then pat ourselves on the back for our good works. We enact laws to prevent hate speech, which tunes out disagreement speech. We ban Christianity from public education, because an understanding of how and why men and women were created would be disastrous for our secularist institutions.
Now think about the algorithm-dominated world Big Tech is building – silently and secretly – to run the world as they see fit. Then tell me that Christianity has no place in our culture or public discourse.
Each of us needs to decide if we would prefer to live in a world built by the unredeemed mind that followed humanity's first encounter with Satan, or the renewed mind bequeathed to us in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Merry Christmas. Sometimes the things we can't see are the most important of all.
Here is a mind being renewed. Start reading at page 45 in the page counter at the bottom. Read more at craigemcmillan.com.