Groupthink
Previously I was inspired when I learned that air travel safety changed significantly at some point because the goal switched from keeping accidents under a certain percentage to keeping them under a fixed absolute number. For example, if their goal is to keep accidents no higher than 2%, it means that as the number of flights increases, so does the number of allowable accidents. With a fixed number of accidents as a goal instead of a percentage, as the number of flights increases, the percentage of accidents goes down... meaning that the quality control system must learn what it takes to accomplish this... which is done by guaranteeing the allocation of the resources needed to diagnose and correct problems. In the past the only opportunity I've had to see under the hood of this is when a big accident happens and eventually the results of the investigation are released to the media. I recently found a youtube channel that is dedicated to looking closer at the everyday details of h...