[HN Gopher] The Conquest of Hell Gate [pdf]
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The Conquest of Hell Gate [pdf]
Author : sklargh
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-05-18 11:39 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nan.usace.army.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nan.usace.army.mil)
| MontagFTB wrote:
| Additional details here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_Hell_Gate_rocks
| ddulaney wrote:
| It's fascinating to me what a different view of risk we had in
| the past.
|
| The no damage being caused on the surface was a "new fact". That
| would never fly today, for better or for worse.
| Aloha wrote:
| I think one of the problems of modern society is the level of
| risk people deem acceptable - its now near zero, instead of
| "reasonable risks".
|
| Aside from that, culturally the value we impart on a single
| human life has also changed too - death used to be much more
| common, infant death in particular - its not uncommon to go to
| an old cemetery and see a single family having buried three or
| more children, with another 2-3 having survived to adulthood.
| This was not something limited to the lower classes either,
| Calvin Coolidge had a son who died of sepsis from a blister
| while he was president.
| resource_waste wrote:
| >I think one of the problems of modern society is the level
| of risk people deem acceptable - its now near zero, instead
| of "reasonable risks".
|
| I've watched plenty of youtube videos that say something like
| 'But management needed dem profits so they took the risk'
|
| So... let us not pretend we don't cut corners and take risk.
| There are plenty of modern deaths and environmental
| destruction because people take risk.
|
| What I think should be more acceptable, is that people take
| personal risks. Nothing wrong with accepting risk being the
| first person in an unregulated prototype space ship or taking
| unverified medicine.
| Aloha wrote:
| The regulatory and legal strangleholds we have put on
| modern society allows large organizations to roll the dice
| with abstract and diffuse risks - often without owning the
| liability from those choices, but often preclude
| individuals from taking their own personal risk assessments
| and deciding to take part or not - because the liability
| rolls someplace else (aka, you can always sue).
| ls612 wrote:
| I watch those USCSB videos too and the takeaway I have is
| that even with these sorts of fuckups there are a single
| digit or low double digit number of people killed in
| industrial accidents each year in a country of 350 million.
| That suggests that we are actually pretty good at chemical
| safety already.
| Aloha wrote:
| I love those USCSB videos!
|
| The biggest thing we have done is managed to protect the
| general public, which IMO is what should be done.
| ndileas wrote:
| Are you implying that was, somehow, good? Because it was bad.
| Most major religions / ethical paradigms agree on this.
|
| People, individually, should take risks if that's what they
| want, and it's not going to hurt others. I'm totally fine
| with skydiving, base jumping, rock climbing, whatever. I'm
| not fine with pumping chemicals into the local water table
| because that's the way Grandpa do.
| Aloha wrote:
| The biggest issue I have, is we allow large organizations
| to make decisions on difuse/abstract risks - often without
| owning the liability from those choices, but roll many
| liabilities up for an individual choice to an organization
| - its perverse, and should be the other way around.
|
| If I do something that earns me a darwin award at work, my
| company probably should not be liable for it.
| kulahan wrote:
| These types of arguments are always so easy when you
| present everything as insanely black and white.
|
| A thought experiment: if we could install a device which
| increases the likelihood of everyone surviving a car crash
| by 0.001%, but it costs $100,000 should it be mandated in
| every car? After all, this involves a victim as well.
|
| I don't think anyone would agree to that particular law.
| There is inevitably going to be a cutoff where you say "the
| increased safety is no longer worth the cost". That's
| acceptable risk and it's not only good, it's absolutely
| necessary to a functioning society.
| shadowpho wrote:
| > if we could install a device which increases the
| likelihood of everyone surviving a car crash by 0.001%,
| but it costs $100,000 should it be mandated in every car
|
| I mean we can do that right now and we don't.
|
| However we do mandate rear back up camera which costs
| $1-2k and saves some percentage of lives when backing up.
|
| So it's all about balance.
| Aloha wrote:
| rear backup cameras are one of the cases where I think
| the math falls apart - its like 250m dollars to save
| approx 30 lives a year - where is does work is reduced
| body damage to vehicles, however I dont know thats enough
| to mandate them.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Surely the backup camera wouldn't need to cost that much?
| kulahan wrote:
| Well yeah, that's my point - acceptable risk is, in fact,
| good. If it weren't, then there would be no resistance to
| that $100,000 component. But of course we still want to
| reduce danger, so adding an extra 2% to the cost of a car
| is fairly reasonable.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| Not to mention the discussions around risk are too coupled to
| political positions / zealotry now, so they can no longer be
| civilly discussed. If you ever take the position of wanting
| to accept what you believe to be reasonable risk, it's
| standard practice for the opposition to slander you as an
| evil person that wants to kill
| people/babies/homeless/whoever. For example: the other person
| in this very comment thread that interpreted you saying we
| don't have acceptable levels of risk anymore as people like
| you wanting to poison the water table.
|
| An illustrating example might also be the US cities like
| Seattle that have their "vision zero" programs. A "vision",
| and related actions, to get to zero traffic related deaths or
| serious injuries every year. It's the official position of
| these city governments that literally any non-zero death rate
| is unacceptable. No matter how low the death rate is (and
| it's already very low). They officially accept zero risk. Is
| that reasonable? Is it even about the death rate or something
| else? Either way, it's fully undebatable.
| Aloha wrote:
| Very much agreed - and actually the fact that people can
| poison the water table is the exact problem we have,
| abstract and diffuse risks (tragedy of the commons type
| stuff) is treated one way, but the chance of risk to an
| individual is treated another. We worry very much about
| individual lead or asbestos exposure, but yet there is no
| system plan to clean it up. An example - We've spent lots
| of effort on trying to eliminate Leaded AvGas (which
| primarily effects users of it), but not as much on
| environmental lead from batteries.
|
| Part of this is driven by the social media discourse and
| polarization - We essentially had a whole bunch of ideas
| which were outside of the window of normal discourse that
| have now been adopted as ideology and dogma by their
| respective camps. Once an idea is dogma/key ideological
| tenant it's really hard to challenge it.
|
| Vision Zero should be viewed for what it is.. as a dumb
| idea.
| dmoy wrote:
| Oh shoot I thought this was gonna be about the other hell gate:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater
|
| Similar approach though I guess? Blow it up / set it on fire and
| hope for the best
| anyonecancode wrote:
| "Hell Gate" in this case meaning "Bright Gate", from the Dutch
| colonial period.
| monster_truck wrote:
| 1 in 50 ships getting stuck (1,000 a year) is wild. So are their
| discoveries
|
| > That an unlimited number of mines may be simultaneously fired
| by passing electric currents through the platinum wire bridges of
| detonators.
|
| Was this really the first time anyone really 'went for it' with
| detonators? Surely there's an upper limit to how many it can set
| off
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(page generated 2025-05-18 23:01 UTC)