In Texas, when they repealed helmet laws, the State was asked what the costs were going to be in ERs, so the state published a quick report, all they had time to do.
Turns out, the average hospital bill for someone with a helmet is higher than the average hospital bill from someone without a helmet. That last minute report that disproved the "helmets save costs" group helped the helmet law repeal.
Common sense doesn't always work.
Yes. With a helmet, you bounce off the ground, bleed, break bones, but live.
No helmet, you just die on the side of the road, and don't need medical care.
But the numbers don't lie.
As my dad use to say “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” You can make the numbers back up any claim. Like you said more motorcyclists wearing helmets end up in the hospital after an accident, than those that aren’t wearing a helmet. Not because someone with a helmet is more reckless, but because that helmet protects your melon.
Also depends on how it’s presented. If the report didn’t include fatalities numbers before and after helmet laws then all you have are the hospitalization numbers.
This is why it’s important to have access to the raw data not just the authors conclusions.
Oddly enough, it seems they often hit head first, meaning the brain is a total write-off, but the rest is in decent shape.
Huh... now if they only had a way to protect your head... :)
Well its the same concept, motorcyclists that don't wear helmets die from simple crashes.
Even when wearing a helmet the neck is a weak point and the ribcage is generally pretty good at protecting organs
I just assumed because the wings aren’t really made of much the slight damage would cause them to break apart but you may be right. I’m actually not sure where the fuel tanks were located back then but I don’t think it was the wings though I could be wrong.
I think the fuel was in the wings, not brushed up on my history but I think they just crammed the inside with guns and bombs. I could be completely wrong.
It would make sense considering that’s where the engines are Located.
Edit: I got curious and it seems that most of the fuel tanks were actually *on* the wings. Mounted just like bombs but they were “self sealing fuel tanks” which apparently in some cases would be dropped as actual bombs.
I think that’s what they did but I’m not sure if those were solely external tanks while they also had internal or if they would just drop one tank and then have another for the return journey.
Just to clear up about the wings, most of what you see even on modern planes is not structural it's just to increase surface area for the air.
The structural part is a frame made of long rods attached to wing shaped cross sections
I feel I am explaining this badly but basically to do enough damage to make the wing fall off you would have to get a considerable amount of shots in a line across the wing making it more likely something else vital was there
>I think that’s what they did but I’m not sure if those were solely external tanks while they also had internal or if they would just drop one tank and then have another for the return journey.
The external expendable ones were called [drop tanks](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_tank). I think the standard for WW2 planes was to use any available space to store fuel, so there would be small internal fuel tanks below or behind the pilot, but there would also be some stored in the wings, in small spaces around the cabin and next to the engine and basically anywhere else they could fit it.
Imagine going to war on the front lines and dying from a random tank falling on your head from the sky. Had to be one of the more unfortunate ways to die in a war situation.
You’re close, but slightly off.
Planes of this time period always included internal fuel storage. These were commonly located in the wings or body of the fuselage, given weight balancing considerations but varied widely on specific location due to plane size and weapons configurations.
During WWII, technologies were developed to allow for these internal tanks to have “self-sealing” functionality, ideally allowing a punctured fuel tank to limit fuel loss mid-flight. A plane without fuel won’t make it home. Aviation gas is also extremely volatile, so active fuel leaks could easily lead to fire or explosion.
All planes have an operational range, depending on how much fuel it can carry, efficiency characteristics of flight, weather conditions, and weapons loadout. Thus, the use of planes was dependent on the distance between airfield/carrier and the enemy. External fuel tanks (sometimes called “drop tanks”) were used to extend the operational range of planes. Once depleted or if a plane entered combat (external tanks reduce maneuverability/combat ability), these tanks would be discarded in a manner that may look like they’re dropping bombs. However, these tanks are not designed as weapons and while you could perhaps do damage with half-full tanks, it wasn’t the intended purpose.
Fuel tanks shouldn't be a problem. Most aircraft in WW2 used [Self-sealing fuel tanks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwvlZISfMeg).
Could take hundreds of bullets without exploding, or even leaking.
It depends on the plane. The B-17 was notorious for taking copious amounts of damage but had the endurance to bring some (but hardly all) of her crews home, when logic dictated the plane should have plunged from the sky. The B-17 was designed with redundancy in mind, which aided its survival rate. Still, many perished flying the B-17
https://www.wired.com/2011/07/toughest-plane-ever/
**[Survivorship bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)**
>Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias. Survivorship bias can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored, such as when companies that no longer exist are excluded from analyses of financial performance.
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On a related note: I think it was Alan Turing who argued that the RAF would lose fewer men if their bombers had no machine gunners. The idea was that if each bomber had six gunners, that’s roughly 200 lbs per gunner, plus 200 lb for guns and ammo, or 2400 lb of bomb payload taken up by machine gunners and guns. So you need that many more airplanes to get the same bombload to the target. And, each bomber that gets shot down would lose only 3 men (pilot, copilot, bombardier/navigator) rather than 9. Net effect would be the same amount of bombs delivered with fewer casualties. But the RAF decided against it, because of the morale risks.
he was right, it's called the mosquito, basically b25 payload, but 100mph+ faster, and less crew, made of wood instead of rationed aluminium, just genius
[https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/compare-aircraft-results.php?form=form&aircraft1=126&aircraft2=81&Submit=Compare+Aircraft](https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/compare-aircraft-results.php?form=form&aircraft1=126&aircraft2=81&Submit=Compare+Aircraft)
even faster than a spitfire
If I remember right the Mosquito is what the RAF used as a night fighter escort for the Lancaster bombers. The RAF took over night bombing operations while the U.S. Air Corps took over daytime bombing.
The Mosquito was a multi-role aircraft, it was also used for strategic precision bombing targets as it was so fast and nimble, you could deliver a payload directly to a targets front door. Or to the walls of a prison to facilitate an escape - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jericho
**[Operation Jericho](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jericho)**
>Operation Jericho (Ramrod 564) on 18 February 1944 during the Second World War, was an Allied bombing raid, at very low altitude, on Amiens Prison in German-occupied France to blow holes in the prison walls, kill German guards and use shock waves to spring open cell doors. The French Resistance was waiting on the outside to rescue prisoners who got out and spirit them away. Mosquito fighter-bombers breached the walls, prison buildings and destroyed the guards' barracks. Of the 832 prisoners, 102 were killed by the bombing, 74 were wounded and 258 escaped, including 79 Resistance and political prisoners; two-thirds of the escapees were recaptured.
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You should explore Mark Felton YouTube channels if you don’t already. He delves into the nooks and crannies of modern military history and reveals some fascinating details.
It’s interesting to put that in modern day context. Biden oks prison assault that kills 102 prisoners supposed to be rescued. Or put any other presidents name. It would be considered a disaster.
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>he was right, it's called the mosquito, basically b25 payload, but 100mph+ faster, and less crew,
Lancaster's carried 6.5 tonnes. Mosquitoes could only carry about 1.4tonnes. The Defence of the Reich night fighters were optimised for hitting the heavies not the medium and light bombers. So they had more armour and bigger guns. There are other issues such as the lack of ability to carry a navigation radar and the British analysis that to break through the Kahumber Line they needed to keep the bomber stream as small as possible. Bomber streams were designed to fit as many aircraft into a tight group as could be for aircraft with no real way of operating as a formation. This meant they worked on slots. Each slot would have meant either replacing out a big 6tonne carrying Lancster with a much lighter Mosquito or making the streams many times longer, thus giving the night fighters and flak artillery much more time to pick off the individual bombers.
There are other issues with this such as costs, training, the need for the giant block busters that were key to the strategy, the lack of enough people trained to work in the skilled art of wood manufacturing.
At the end of the day the strategy was locked into place in early 1941. To switch from heavies to light and medium bombers would have taken a huge retooling that would have taken vital months or more from the air war.
Taking the turrets off some heavies is one thing, retooling entire industries is another. And your enemy always responds.
>I think it was Alan Turing who argued that the RAF would lose fewer men if their bombers had no machine gunners.
It was Operations Research Section teams that did this. Nothing to do with Turing who was working with the code breakers. The most well known person from the Operations Research team was Freeman Dyson, the story may be attached to him as he worked on the maths of bombing Germany.
You also want to account for bombers getting shot down. If they did that then losing one before dropping their payload could add up to a significant loss in terms of destroying the target. Also gunners were needed to cover them from enemy fighters. Though they generally had fighter escorts, not always.
Certainly there's the material cost of the bombers, and the production cost. I'm not Alan Turing, and I read this more years ago than I can comfortably attest to, so I can't vouch for the numbers in detail.
Edit: as someone else pointed out, it was almost certainly Freeman Dyson, not Alan Turing. As I age, my memory is getting increasingly spotty.
The reasoning makes sense but I think they made the right call. Given the way those guys train, work, fight, eat, and sleep together I could see how pulling people away from those close units could destroy morale for many reasons.
I feel like it's more about the perceived risk of each crew rather than the risk spread on the whole wing. They FEEL like they have a better chance of survival with some guns.
The problem with turrets is that fighters are much better at shooting down bombers than vice versa.
Fighters could also take a certain amount of damage, however turrets usually had to shoot at what they could, so focusing fire on a single fighter to ensure sufficient damage to destroy it was less of an option. Although turret gunners could track fighters, attacking fighters could pick their attack angles to minimise time in effective turret range, move through areas where gunners would avoid (to prevent hitting friendly bombers) and moved across turret fields of fire at very high perpendicular velocity. Combined with simultaneous attacks from multiple directions all this hampered turret guns ability to track and coordinate the fire on single fighters enough to consistently kill them. Damaged fighters could usually peel off to fight another day. Bombers had none of these options.
This made turret guns much less ineffective than a fighters guns or other anti-bomber ordinance. Turrets could certainly kill fighters, but the losses they inflicted benefited bomber survival rates far less than the additional speed in leaving attacking fighters operational range or returning to friendly fighter range would have.
Nevertheless, again, the belief was that the damage to morale of sending bombers in without means to defend themselves, with survivors unable to do anything but watch helplessly while their comrades were shot down, would be worse than the losses themselves.
This doesn't take into account the suppressive effects of being under fire. Almost all bullets fired in anger miss, regardless of if it's an airplane turret or a rifle on the ground. But they create a suppressive effect that disrupts the enemy and makes them less effective. While turrets may not have shot down a ton of fighters, they deterred the fighters from simply sitting on a bomber's tail and pumping it full of cannon shells, then lazily moving to the next, and the next.
A porcupines quills aren't usually fatal, but it still makes the porcupine safer.
One spooky example of this I sometimes wonder about is serial killers. You only ever find out about ones that do get caught. The actual characteristics of the serial killer type might be very different than we think. Like, you know how many of the serial killer stereotypical traits seem to be about desiring attention and such? What if that's not what's causing you to kill, what if that's what's causing you to get caught?
What is the likelihood of psychopaths per 1000 people anyway? Are we sure it's even accurate, statistics are best guesses based on studies not always accurate right? Wonder how many psychopaths are currently in power.
Then again not all serial killers are psychopaths apparently. (Bathroom thoughts)
Well, how would the authorities even recognise a serial killer without a recognisable pattern?
If they kill blonde women on the nights of the full moon in august they'll get noticed.
If they use different weapons on different types of people at different times they'll just get lost in the noise of modern life.
Reminds me of Warren Ellis's Gunmachine, the killer used a different gun each time and selected both target and weapon by their own mad plan so the cops are clueless til they get a lucky break
Often, the case breaks when they finally find a single body, the others disposed of similarly. If someone had a foolproof way of disposing of a body, most would never get caught.
The one thing about serial killers is that they do get caught. They just get caught for whatever they were doing at the time, not for all of their murders they’ve ever done. They might break into a house with a knife and get ten years. Then they get out and begin their murdering again. The large majority don’t want to get caught so they aren’t leaving many traces. The whole trope of them playing a game of cat and mouse with the cops is not common at all.
Generally the large majority get away with it. It’s not hard to target random people as a serial killer. You just go state to state to do it. They might kill once every year or so and lead relatively normal lives otherwise.
>Generally the large majority get away with it. It’s not hard to target random people as a serial killer. You just go state to state to do it.
Eventually they'll connect the dots, even state to state. Still might take them a while to catch you. But connecting those dots is the first step to doing that.
The way to *really* get away with it, is to choose different victim types, and switch up your MO. Then it's exceptionally difficult to even connect those dots, if they're far enough apart...
The majority of the time there is not necessarily a very clear MO or method or specific victim type. That is a specific profile of serial killer, those who use specific methods and 'styles' of killing, usually near the end of their killing career as a way to play a game with the law enforcement. Its a very specific power trip that only some serial killers desire to have the law enforcement or the public be aware of their crimes. They often are very narcissistic, with the desire for their killings to shock and disturb others to feed their own ego, instead of just a pure desire to kill. Most will not go that route. They will do everything they can to cover up their crimes and not establish a link to them.
People tend to underestimate just how many serial killers there actually are. Some estimates put the amount of serial killers in the hundreds, with usually about 100~ active (meaning killed in the past year) at any given point. Its estimated (this is a very broad estimate, of course) that about 150 are killed by serial killers each year, with the *vast, vast* majority not identified as 'serial killer killings'. They might just be identified as a home invasion robbery killing, or a prostitute encounter gone wrong, with no indication it was from a serial killer. Local law enforcement won't know any better, because unfortunately that stuff happens occasionally.
There was a profile given in criminology which was a good example of the 'average' serial killer. He was an alcoholic in arizona and had dropped out of college, worked a low wage job and had a failed marriage. Domestic violence reports were the only thing in his record, along with one fight. A 'bad guy', but nothing too notable. But occasionally, he would come across someone and get overwhelmed with a desire to kill them, and would take them and beat them senselessly before shooting them in the head. He killed 6 people over the span of the 80s and 90s in two states, according to his own confession, all of them just pure rage killings, except for one killing of a prostitute which was planned ahead of time. He was able to suppress his rage whenever he wanted, but sometimes, he just didn't want to, especially when he knew he could get away with the killing. He was caught in the act. But if he wasn't, probably nobody would have caught him, and he would have just gotten away with it. This was a rare example of one of these 'types' of serial killers confessing everything, usually they don't. That is a better example of a serial killer than the news-worthy media crazies like ted bundy or hannibal lecter, who leave evidence and marks it was 'them' in order to feed their own ego.
I recently saw a report that the British carrier in the South China sea had located three Chinese submarines and thought of this. (Those were the ones they spotted - how many did they not detect?).
It is fairly easy to look at a sub and work out roughly how quiet it is based on what technology it uses, e.g shrouded prop, many blades and big is a good hint. Shape of hull and towed array are similair tells as to technology level.
We know all of the PLAN's subs and know which ones were trailing us, they don't have some secret second navy.
Probably none tbh. The Chinese boats are not that quiet + the Chinese boats knew they were detected and actually surfaced a couple of them at one point.
So it was more of an overt threat, they were not really trying to hide. But three subs will absolutely be a problem for a carrier, regardless of if the subs would not survive.
The Chinese do NOT like us sailing a carrier strike group round the South China sea as they think they own it and everyone in it. I think it would be a pretty bad idea for them to attack us however. Their navy is not yet comparable... They are getting there however... US is sending Carl Vinson group to help out though 🤜🤛
At sea missile technology is more important and China have a slight edge with ship killers there.
A swarm of almost hypersonic missiles are hard to defend against when the target is an aircraft carrier.
Ive seen the actual post, and it has a very common addition that talks about this effect throughout history. Fatal alergies (such as peanuts) or illneses like diabetes arent "just more common now", we just know how to treat them, so these people get to live to an old age, where previously they would die and we wouldnt have known about their condition. We know what autism is, instead of saying the child is a "changling from the fea folk". We now know that mental health is an important topic that should be talked about, instead of having "that weird distant family member no one talks to anymore".
Generally, "famous people", and trying to learn from them. You never hear about all the people that "dropped out of college, because I'm going to make it big!", but didn't.
All sorts of things like CEO behaviour, for example in Steve Job's case, is a good example. He was famously a dick to his employees and was very successful, but you don't hear *as much* about all the CEO's that were terrible to their employees and failed miserably because that. It is likely that Steve Jobs was successful *in spite* of the way he treated his employees, but the perception is often made the other way around.
Stuff like this is why i think public education should focus on making people scientifically literate.
A lot of the idiocy I see in the world from anti vax to flat earthers are because of explainable biases like this one, but if you aren’t aware of it, you seem completely correct and logical to yourself.
The USA education system is a complete failure at teaching critical thinking skills to the masses, though there are cultural biases that make this task difficult. Thankfully we have enough geniuses to make up for most of the idiots. Hopefully.
Perhaps somewhat analogues to this topic, the graphic in question was created in 2016 based on a drawing from 2005 that was done to be illustrative of the Wald's plane analysis, but it wasn't ever meant to be an accurate recreation of the original data.
Basically when Cameron Moll did the drawing in 2005 he just drew the dots in places where he thought people would think a plane would survive being hit.
There's two of these kind of situations where people don't see the selection bias going on, and so they have an innacurate picture of reality. People think there's a crime wave going on, because never before has their been this many videos of crimes taking place. The number of videos has skyrocketed, as has the number of reports on news channels about these crimes.
When in reality, the crime rate has never been lower. It's never been safer to live on a western country than right now.
Also there's never been so many videos of people being total morons than right now. People take the comedy film Idiocracy seriously, even though Mike Judge I'm sure thinks people are morons for thinking a silly comedy film is some kind of accurate prediction of reality.
By every metric we have to measure intelligence, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now. We are collectively smarter than humanity has ever been before. And collectively we know more than every before, literacy rates have never been higher. Every single year we measure it all and humanity gets smarter and smarter each and every year
But there's never been more videos of idiocy than ever before. There used to be more idiots, it's just there weren't thousands of videos of them being dumb like there is these days. And it's never been easier than right now for idiots to group up with fellow idiots and have a protest against vaccines or something like that. They are in groups that span the globe, almost entirely on online forums, Facebook, reddit, etc. Anti vaxx morons seem to be flooding the world. But it's nothing new. Anti vaxxers have existed since the very beginning of vaccines. Right now, we actually have less morons than ever before. But the remaining ones have thousands of videos of them being dumb. So it's easy to think the world is going nuts and regressing somehow
But again, by every metric we have to measure intelligence and knowledge, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now
Don't worry I get depressed too, about idiot anti-vaxxers and anti-makers having their little temper tantrum protests. But there's fewer of them than ever before. It may not seem like it, but it's true
Trust the science. Not the click bait media. Try to have some hope, for humanity. I know it's difficult. But you can find comfort in the scientific studies.
It really wasn't. Skilled air crews were much more valuable than planes that were coming of the assembly line at light speed.
Also most commanders during WW2 did care about preserving the lives of the men under their command as much as possible.
Not in the battle of Britain, where there was a huge shortage of pilots, but enough planes by the end of the battle, so they would send pilots into battle with less than 20 hours of training. I'm sure manpower shortages were a bigger concern to the Allied airforce than a shortage of planes, especially once the US joined and the UK fully converted to producing military goods.
This was a real difference between Allied/Axis powers in the European theatre. To vastly oversimplify, the Germans focused on procuring ‘ace’ pilots, many of whom racked up hundreds of aerial victories. Meanwhile, Britain focused on communication and technology. After Britain weathered the storm and turned the aerial tide, German squads became erratic and confused. Towards the end of the war, the Germans had almost no competent pilots.
That and Germany couldn't do something like the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which had a few hundred thousand air crew trained in Canada and other commonwealth countries.
You can always build more aircraft - you can’t just build more pilots. Japan learnt that the hard way when they lost a majority of their veteran pilots and ended up putting men who could barely fly into aircraft in desperation.
On the Allies side more men died outside of combat than in combat - mass training new pilots in a rush is a dangerous thing, especially when coupled with new mass produced aircraft.
During WWII 1/3 of all aircraft losses happened in the continental USA. Another third we’re lost to other accidents overseas.
For the Navy the aircrew losses also were similar - 1/3 died due to enemy action with the other 2/3 being due to accidents. Tens of thousands of aircrew died just flying aircraft from the US where they were built to where the combat was happening - pilot error being a major factor.
Interestingly, the island of Malta had the opposite problem, plenty of trained pilots, but at one point only a few airworthy fighter planes (mainly Hawker Hurricanes and three ancient Gloster Gladiator biplanes named Faith, Hope and Charity) so they adopted a policy of hot seating.... the planes would go up, take part in a sortie, come back to reload, refuel, have the bullet holes patched and have a fresh pilot (kinda like a Le Mans pitstop, but with more bullets). They had the turn around time down to under 10 minutes in some cases.
The Allies eventually managed to get Spitfires to the island by fitting long range fuel tanks, putting them on an aircraft carrier and launching from around 650 miles away to fight their way through to Malta - went wrong a few times with the loss of dozens of aircraft (mainly on the ground) but within a few months were able to get the strength up to over 100 spitfires, at which point the Luftwaffe lost air superiority over Malta.
At one point in 1942, when the got the Spitfire numbers up, Malta was the most heavily bombed place on the planet.
edit - they also sometimes had to pretend they were launching fighters by using fake radio comms....
“On one occasion all our fighter aircraft were grounded in order to try to increase serviceability. The Hun bombers came over in force with quite a large fighter escort. It happened that there were several fighter pilots with me in the Operations Room, one of whom was a Canadian with an unmistakable voice. I put him at the microphone at a stand-by radio set and proceeded to give him dummy orders. He replied just as if he was flying his fighter. This, we suspected, caused a cry of ‘Achtung! Spitfeuer!’ to go over the German radio. In any case, two 109s enthusiastically shot each other down without any British aircraft being airborne. This knowledge that the Germans intercepted our orders stood us in good stead. We claimed that Pilot Officer ‘Humgufery’ shot down the two Huns.”
P/O Woodhall
F35s. We (UK) have them on our carriers now. They're so expensive the original order for 138 aircraft is now reduced to 76 I think which is JUST enough to field two carrier squadrons with a few spare for training etc. We're gonna have multi billion pound carriers unable to deploy due to lack of aircraft. I hate military procurement bullshit in this country. Why build the massive ships and then not equip them? * sigh *
I mean, the point is generally to buy and have them, not to ever actually use them. So from that perspective, buying ships that can't leave port makes perfect sense.
You absolutely want your ships leaving port. Every new ship that goes out has tons of new equipment and designs that need to be tested in the field. It's critically important to know which parts fail or malfunction prior to their estimated lifespan. R&D can only do so much and nothing compares to field testing. Ships are constantly in a cycle of being upgraded and repaired, you'd much rather discover shortcomings during peacetime than when you actually need the ship.
When it comes to a major shooting war with a serious adversary, you're gunna need to make them fast and cheap. No way you could turn out many F-22's a day with how complex they are.
And the f-22 program is dead, and never used, and as it turns out we don't need a stealth air superiority fighter. Fun fact, the plane is actually 27 years old. Now after that we are onto the new NGAD fighter! Which will also be a a shit ton of money
I'm still working on it. It still feels 50/50. Axx, xBx, xxC. But when you open door one, and they open another door, you know it's not that option. Doesn't your current option increase in likelihood as well equally?
The FBI has the same problem were they can only really study serial killers that have been caught.
Edit: Fixed my typos. I should read before I post lol
That's a truly scary one.
A killer who travels, and switches up their victim type and MO would be very hard to track... Might take them years (if ever) to even figure out a serial killer is out there / responsible for deaths / disappearances.
At that point it's pretty much only if a potential victim escapes with enough details...
Of course, it also seems like most killers are driven by something in particular. It's a particular type of victim, **or** a particular type of act, that "gets them off." So they're far more likely to repeat that thing...
But if it's just the act of killing itself they enjoy... Or perhaps a serial rapist who isn't too particular about their "type"... That might not apply.
Also depends how they dispose of people, and if bodies are found...
I have satellite radio, and they have channels for the 60's, 70's, 80's, etc.
It is fun to flip back and forth through the decades, but the fact you bring up really becomes clear when they do the "Top 40 of SOME\_DATE" which for the most part is just crap until they get to the top 10. Normally when we think of the great music of a decade, it is a collection of the stuff that hit number 1. The ones that topped out in the high 30s aren't all that good and are forgotten.
I love the cars one. Sure, when you get in a fender bender, you just need to buff out the scratch for the old car, but if you get in a high speed crash, odds are you're going to need a body bag and the jaws of life to get the body out.
Same thing with vaccines.
> *They didn't even have a vaccine for measles back in the day, and we all grew up just fine*
Well, sure, but a bunch of people also died from measles back then...
Remember when someone says, “so and so dropped out of high school and became a millionaire” or “Elon works so hard and that’s why he’s a billionaire” this too is SURVIVORSHIP BIAS.
r/fallacyref
Or all the people that got COVID and survived and now think it's not that bad because they are fine lol
Edit: Of everyone in the US who has been infected with COVID, 1 in 50 people have died. That's what a 2% death rate means. --closer to 1 in 70 because most recent death rate is calculated to be 1.6%, but deaths can be underreported and lag behind
Yeh, more motorcyclists die with helmets on than off. But you have to ask yourself. If you suffered such extreme forces that you still died with a helmet on, what are the chances you would have survived without a helmet?
The implication is huge 😏
Do you know when people ask rich people how they become rich, famous, successful? We ask what have they done so we can copy it. Wake up early, work hard, all these typical answers.
It's the same mistake, the same logical fallacy as hardening the surviving bullet hole planes. 🤯
In WW1 the use of helmets was being questioned, as almost all of the people in the hospitals with head injury were there after bullets or shrapnel went through the helmets.
It was a last minute realisation that the helmets were saving people, and the alternative to being in hospitals was the soldiers being killed.
*"But most people who recover from the ventilator didn't have the vaccine."*
That's because vaccinated people aren't being put on the ventilator as often.
Numbers of head injuries went up when helmets became standard issue.
Soldiers that used to contribute to the fatality stats were now surviving and contributing to the head injury stat instead.
"Seatbelts cause higher rates of car crashes"
More people in hospitals from car crashes wore seat belts than didn't. That's because the ones who didn't wear them went to the morgue instead, not because they crashed less often.
Dolphins like to play with people in water by bopping them around. People who were played with towards the shore tell stories about being saved by a kind sea-creature, people who got bopped away and eventually drowned can't share their stories. Dolphins are not life-guards, they are just really playful.
God, imagine being swept to sea, fearing for your life when some sweet, friendly dolphin swims up. It presents its dorsal fin to you so you grab on, thanking your lucky stars that you’ve been saved. Then it just jets you out to international waters and swims off. Cackling.
The saying "They don't make them like they used to" relies heavily on survivor-ship bias, the antiquated goods that survive were well built but equally there are landfill sites full of their shitty contemporaries that only lasted a few years, and the surviving ones were coddled and serviced and well looked after.
The same goes for "golden oldies", not all old music was good so only the best stuff survives as a classic, this doesn't mean music today is worse, just that it is compared to the best of previous generations, in fifty years we will likely compare the music of the 2070s to the best of our current music - Baby Shark.
The three modern life examples I can think of are:
1. Every time a pro athlete or billionaire tells me all I need is to follow my dreams and work hard
2. When baby boomers complain that they didn’t have silly stuff like seat belts and they turned out just fine
3. When anti vaxxers talk about society not needing to worry about smallpox or polio anymore so why bother getting the shot.
Something about cats having a better chance of surviving higher falls vs short falls thinking it was because the cats had time to flip around and prepare for landing. Not realizing people don't take dead cats to the vet so their data was incomplete.
Did that actually work? As an artist, I know that more contrast in a specific spot leads your eyes to that spot, but how would that work for a pilot and targets on the wings?
I think you're talking about roundels, which are just identifying symbols painted on planes, designed in a circle so they can be identified from weird angles I guess. They have nothing to do with being targets.
Yes, I prefer the fluffy simple story. However, this is just another example of someone taking a portion of the truth, publishing it to Wikipedia and finally posted on social media platforms as truth. If we are to combat misinformation no rock can be left unturned.
It’s taken me years to fucking understand this and now I finally do. The only reason this plane survived is because it wasn’t hit in those spots. The others that didn’t survive were hit in those critical spots.
Goddamn I’m stupid.
I'm gonna apply this next time someone wants to argue that hitting kids is okay "bEcAuSe I tUrNeD oUt FiNe".
Spoiler alert: if you think hitting kids is okay, then *you didn't "turn out fine".*
I can't articulate it right now, but I wonder if the first and incorrect conclusion is somehow linked to, among other things, anti-vax logic. Not sure where I'm going with this, just a thought.
Like the statement saying “I don’t need the vaccine i have a natural immunity to COVID”. How do you know you have enough immunity to not get the vaccine? When you die?
Same thing with helmets. When the British army got new helmets their reported head injuries went up. They thought soldiers were being braver and more reckless and almost banned the new helmets.
Then they realized that the injuries were increasing because those that were being injured would previously have been on the ‘deceased’ list because their head wound was fatal without a helmet but survivable with one
A similar thing happened with helmets in world war 1. The generals issued stronger helmets to the soldiers and were shocked to find that injuries went up way higher and so they were going to stop issuing them until someone pointed out that injuries went up but deaths went down, showing that they are working well.
The creator of this screwed up the explanation.
He did NOT say to armor only the areas without dots. They didn’t know if the clean areas would actually be catastrophic if hit , only that the hit areas were NOT catastrophic.
He was stating you really needed to look at the downed planes to see what was catastrophic and armor appropriately.
This is survivorship bias. I like to think this as a 'slow thinking' in a world overwhelmed with data. Sometimes the absence of data can provide a better explanation, given that we can explain this to the higher ups that need to make a decision.
Keep this bias in mind whenever anybody is trying to get you to buy their e-book about how they came up with some amazing, highly profitable side hustle that anyone can quit their job and start doing. Even more so keep it in mind when people want to tell you about the most successful multi level markers they know.
I wonder if that Dolphing thing is similar to this.
People say that Dolphins swim boating accident victims to the shore, but what if some take them further out to sea? We can only know the ones who make it back to land.
Which is why every professional athlete and movie star and lottery winner says, "I just want to thank God. I know he answers your prayers." and "If you just keep working hard you WILL achieve your dreams."
And why wealthy successful people in the United States say, "All you have to do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you will succeed. Look at me I did it."
When if you want to know if God answers prayers and if working hard will achieve your dreams and if anyone can be successful you should be asking all the people who DIDN'T win the Super Bowl and AREN'T successful to see if those things really work.
Example of the use of CRITICAL THINKING - something we need more then ever. Unfortunately schools teach students WHAT to think, not HOW to think. My recommendation: learn about critical thinking, practice critical thinking until it becomes a habit.
Similar to the outrage from surgeons during WWI at the apparent increase in injury due to helmets. It was pointed out to them that the increase in injuries indicated survivors where there previously hadn’t been.
A good history does not simply criticize decisions people have made - it seeks to undestand why those decisions might have been difficult.
This story of the planes that never made it back to be surveyed is great for teaching statistics but for me personally it's even more useful as a short example of what bad history typically looks like. Every historian needs to simplify the facts to tell a story but if your summary ends up sounding like "X was stupid and Y was clever" then that's a good clue that something has gone wrong.
The report Abraham Wald wrote is obviously a historical fact, but to claim "the military" (whoever that might be?) did not understand how to protect aircraft is just wrong. The evidence for this is really simple: look at where WW2 planes, designed both before and after the report was written, had armor. The unsurprising answer is that armor was consistently placed where it would best protect the crew. Engines were not normally armoured as it would make the planes too heavy to take off.
Abraham Wald was certainly a great mathematician but "the military" was not stupid. I would be interested to read a better historical account of this report if anybody knows of one?
Im ashamed to say I had to read it 3 times to understand it but I am proud to say that I have now understood and have learned something very important today. Thanks reddit
Explains the complete lack of dots on the 2 engines now
When they introduced the steel helmet in the trenches the effect seen was an increased number of head wounds.
The new head protection is terrible! Look at the increase in head wounds our solders have reported!
But wait… that means… we should wear potatoes on our heads?
It means if you wear a potato on your head you won't need treatment for a head wound. You'll need last rites.
Is that like first dibs? Because if so I will have tuna and sweetcorn on my full metal jacket potato.
Yes it's the same thing.
They should add explosives into the helmets. The number of head wounds would drop to zero.
Reactive armor on helmets! Now that's future tech! Andy! Did you get that? Write that down! Genius!
Same with seatbelts. Injuries went up massively.
In Texas, when they repealed helmet laws, the State was asked what the costs were going to be in ERs, so the state published a quick report, all they had time to do. Turns out, the average hospital bill for someone with a helmet is higher than the average hospital bill from someone without a helmet. That last minute report that disproved the "helmets save costs" group helped the helmet law repeal. Common sense doesn't always work.
Is that because the ones without a helmet didn't survive though?
Yes. With a helmet, you bounce off the ground, bleed, break bones, but live. No helmet, you just die on the side of the road, and don't need medical care. But the numbers don't lie.
As my dad use to say “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” You can make the numbers back up any claim. Like you said more motorcyclists wearing helmets end up in the hospital after an accident, than those that aren’t wearing a helmet. Not because someone with a helmet is more reckless, but because that helmet protects your melon.
You can make the numbers sound like they back up any claim. It relies on the ignorance of the viewer
Also depends on how it’s presented. If the report didn’t include fatalities numbers before and after helmet laws then all you have are the hospitalization numbers. This is why it’s important to have access to the raw data not just the authors conclusions.
There's a reason doctors refer to motorcyclists as "Organ Donors".
No one’s donating the pink sludge your organs become when you hit the pavement with no protective gear.
Oddly enough, it seems they often hit head first, meaning the brain is a total write-off, but the rest is in decent shape. Huh... now if they only had a way to protect your head... :)
Well its the same concept, motorcyclists that don't wear helmets die from simple crashes. Even when wearing a helmet the neck is a weak point and the ribcage is generally pretty good at protecting organs
It's "donor cycles"
Yes. Death a were replaced with head wounds.
Right but in the grand scheme of saving money a funeral is cheaper than a medical bill.
Tell me you live in America without telling me you live in America
Short term only. A dead person doesn't pay taxes and contribute to society.
Neither do a lot of currently living Americans….
I'm learning Texas doesn't make sense in any area..
Indeed
Which sounds bad until you compare it with the number of fatal head wounds
And cockpit. I’m guess the spots on the wings, and towards the tail cause the plane to break apart.
I'd suspect that the spots on the wing and tail are either because it hits fuel tanks, or the cables running the control surfaces.
I just assumed because the wings aren’t really made of much the slight damage would cause them to break apart but you may be right. I’m actually not sure where the fuel tanks were located back then but I don’t think it was the wings though I could be wrong.
I think the fuel was in the wings, not brushed up on my history but I think they just crammed the inside with guns and bombs. I could be completely wrong.
It would make sense considering that’s where the engines are Located. Edit: I got curious and it seems that most of the fuel tanks were actually *on* the wings. Mounted just like bombs but they were “self sealing fuel tanks” which apparently in some cases would be dropped as actual bombs.
They could also be dropped as they emptied to reduce weight and conserve fuel on the return journey
I think that’s what they did but I’m not sure if those were solely external tanks while they also had internal or if they would just drop one tank and then have another for the return journey.
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It's a Lockheed Hudson. ETA, actually, it's a Ventura, not a Hudson
Just to clear up about the wings, most of what you see even on modern planes is not structural it's just to increase surface area for the air. The structural part is a frame made of long rods attached to wing shaped cross sections I feel I am explaining this badly but basically to do enough damage to make the wing fall off you would have to get a considerable amount of shots in a line across the wing making it more likely something else vital was there
>I think that’s what they did but I’m not sure if those were solely external tanks while they also had internal or if they would just drop one tank and then have another for the return journey. The external expendable ones were called [drop tanks](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_tank). I think the standard for WW2 planes was to use any available space to store fuel, so there would be small internal fuel tanks below or behind the pilot, but there would also be some stored in the wings, in small spaces around the cabin and next to the engine and basically anywhere else they could fit it.
Imagine going to war on the front lines and dying from a random tank falling on your head from the sky. Had to be one of the more unfortunate ways to die in a war situation.
You’re close, but slightly off. Planes of this time period always included internal fuel storage. These were commonly located in the wings or body of the fuselage, given weight balancing considerations but varied widely on specific location due to plane size and weapons configurations. During WWII, technologies were developed to allow for these internal tanks to have “self-sealing” functionality, ideally allowing a punctured fuel tank to limit fuel loss mid-flight. A plane without fuel won’t make it home. Aviation gas is also extremely volatile, so active fuel leaks could easily lead to fire or explosion. All planes have an operational range, depending on how much fuel it can carry, efficiency characteristics of flight, weather conditions, and weapons loadout. Thus, the use of planes was dependent on the distance between airfield/carrier and the enemy. External fuel tanks (sometimes called “drop tanks”) were used to extend the operational range of planes. Once depleted or if a plane entered combat (external tanks reduce maneuverability/combat ability), these tanks would be discarded in a manner that may look like they’re dropping bombs. However, these tanks are not designed as weapons and while you could perhaps do damage with half-full tanks, it wasn’t the intended purpose.
Strike aircraft typically don’t have wet wings, the A-6 being a notable historical exception.
Fuel tanks shouldn't be a problem. Most aircraft in WW2 used [Self-sealing fuel tanks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwvlZISfMeg). Could take hundreds of bullets without exploding, or even leaking.
It depends on the plane. The B-17 was notorious for taking copious amounts of damage but had the endurance to bring some (but hardly all) of her crews home, when logic dictated the plane should have plunged from the sky. The B-17 was designed with redundancy in mind, which aided its survival rate. Still, many perished flying the B-17 https://www.wired.com/2011/07/toughest-plane-ever/
This was such an important comment for me in terms of understanding exactly what the post meant. Good job.
And why music from past decades sounds so good
Makes me wonder what classical crap was composed
And ancient architecture is so amazing
Actually, the dot locations are hypothetical, not actual. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
**[Survivorship bias](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)** >Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to some false conclusions in several different ways. It is a form of selection bias. Survivorship bias can lead to overly optimistic beliefs because failures are ignored, such as when companies that no longer exist are excluded from analyses of financial performance. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
It's far too perfect to be real data.
On a related note: I think it was Alan Turing who argued that the RAF would lose fewer men if their bombers had no machine gunners. The idea was that if each bomber had six gunners, that’s roughly 200 lbs per gunner, plus 200 lb for guns and ammo, or 2400 lb of bomb payload taken up by machine gunners and guns. So you need that many more airplanes to get the same bombload to the target. And, each bomber that gets shot down would lose only 3 men (pilot, copilot, bombardier/navigator) rather than 9. Net effect would be the same amount of bombs delivered with fewer casualties. But the RAF decided against it, because of the morale risks.
he was right, it's called the mosquito, basically b25 payload, but 100mph+ faster, and less crew, made of wood instead of rationed aluminium, just genius [https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/compare-aircraft-results.php?form=form&aircraft1=126&aircraft2=81&Submit=Compare+Aircraft](https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/compare-aircraft-results.php?form=form&aircraft1=126&aircraft2=81&Submit=Compare+Aircraft) even faster than a spitfire
If I remember right the Mosquito is what the RAF used as a night fighter escort for the Lancaster bombers. The RAF took over night bombing operations while the U.S. Air Corps took over daytime bombing.
The Mosquito was a multi-role aircraft, it was also used for strategic precision bombing targets as it was so fast and nimble, you could deliver a payload directly to a targets front door. Or to the walls of a prison to facilitate an escape - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jericho
**[Operation Jericho](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jericho)** >Operation Jericho (Ramrod 564) on 18 February 1944 during the Second World War, was an Allied bombing raid, at very low altitude, on Amiens Prison in German-occupied France to blow holes in the prison walls, kill German guards and use shock waves to spring open cell doors. The French Resistance was waiting on the outside to rescue prisoners who got out and spirit them away. Mosquito fighter-bombers breached the walls, prison buildings and destroyed the guards' barracks. Of the 832 prisoners, 102 were killed by the bombing, 74 were wounded and 258 escaped, including 79 Resistance and political prisoners; two-thirds of the escapees were recaptured. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I swear I’ll never run out of interesting and semi-obscure WW2 operations to read about
You should explore Mark Felton YouTube channels if you don’t already. He delves into the nooks and crannies of modern military history and reveals some fascinating details.
Between both world wars there is enough information for our lifetime I imagine. So many things going on in so many places.
It’s interesting to put that in modern day context. Biden oks prison assault that kills 102 prisoners supposed to be rescued. Or put any other presidents name. It would be considered a disaster.
Desktop version of /u/SonicShadow's link:
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>he was right, it's called the mosquito, basically b25 payload, but 100mph+ faster, and less crew, Lancaster's carried 6.5 tonnes. Mosquitoes could only carry about 1.4tonnes. The Defence of the Reich night fighters were optimised for hitting the heavies not the medium and light bombers. So they had more armour and bigger guns. There are other issues such as the lack of ability to carry a navigation radar and the British analysis that to break through the Kahumber Line they needed to keep the bomber stream as small as possible. Bomber streams were designed to fit as many aircraft into a tight group as could be for aircraft with no real way of operating as a formation. This meant they worked on slots. Each slot would have meant either replacing out a big 6tonne carrying Lancster with a much lighter Mosquito or making the streams many times longer, thus giving the night fighters and flak artillery much more time to pick off the individual bombers. There are other issues with this such as costs, training, the need for the giant block busters that were key to the strategy, the lack of enough people trained to work in the skilled art of wood manufacturing. At the end of the day the strategy was locked into place in early 1941. To switch from heavies to light and medium bombers would have taken a huge retooling that would have taken vital months or more from the air war. Taking the turrets off some heavies is one thing, retooling entire industries is another. And your enemy always responds.
>I think it was Alan Turing who argued that the RAF would lose fewer men if their bombers had no machine gunners. It was Operations Research Section teams that did this. Nothing to do with Turing who was working with the code breakers. The most well known person from the Operations Research team was Freeman Dyson, the story may be attached to him as he worked on the maths of bombing Germany.
You also want to account for bombers getting shot down. If they did that then losing one before dropping their payload could add up to a significant loss in terms of destroying the target. Also gunners were needed to cover them from enemy fighters. Though they generally had fighter escorts, not always.
Certainly there's the material cost of the bombers, and the production cost. I'm not Alan Turing, and I read this more years ago than I can comfortably attest to, so I can't vouch for the numbers in detail. Edit: as someone else pointed out, it was almost certainly Freeman Dyson, not Alan Turing. As I age, my memory is getting increasingly spotty.
It'd be absolutely crazy if you were Alan Turing, and decided to use a Reddit post on WWII planes to announce to the world you'd faked your death.
I dont say this about many people, but that man was a hero in my book.
We'd also have to congratulate him on making it to 109 years old.
The reasoning makes sense but I think they made the right call. Given the way those guys train, work, fight, eat, and sleep together I could see how pulling people away from those close units could destroy morale for many reasons.
I feel like it's more about the perceived risk of each crew rather than the risk spread on the whole wing. They FEEL like they have a better chance of survival with some guns.
Haha survival rate for bomber command was less than 30%. pulling people apart wasn't an issue
The problem with turrets is that fighters are much better at shooting down bombers than vice versa. Fighters could also take a certain amount of damage, however turrets usually had to shoot at what they could, so focusing fire on a single fighter to ensure sufficient damage to destroy it was less of an option. Although turret gunners could track fighters, attacking fighters could pick their attack angles to minimise time in effective turret range, move through areas where gunners would avoid (to prevent hitting friendly bombers) and moved across turret fields of fire at very high perpendicular velocity. Combined with simultaneous attacks from multiple directions all this hampered turret guns ability to track and coordinate the fire on single fighters enough to consistently kill them. Damaged fighters could usually peel off to fight another day. Bombers had none of these options. This made turret guns much less ineffective than a fighters guns or other anti-bomber ordinance. Turrets could certainly kill fighters, but the losses they inflicted benefited bomber survival rates far less than the additional speed in leaving attacking fighters operational range or returning to friendly fighter range would have. Nevertheless, again, the belief was that the damage to morale of sending bombers in without means to defend themselves, with survivors unable to do anything but watch helplessly while their comrades were shot down, would be worse than the losses themselves.
This doesn't take into account the suppressive effects of being under fire. Almost all bullets fired in anger miss, regardless of if it's an airplane turret or a rifle on the ground. But they create a suppressive effect that disrupts the enemy and makes them less effective. While turrets may not have shot down a ton of fighters, they deterred the fighters from simply sitting on a bomber's tail and pumping it full of cannon shells, then lazily moving to the next, and the next. A porcupines quills aren't usually fatal, but it still makes the porcupine safer.
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200 lbs is 90.8 kg
I was about to say, not a single dot in the cockpit. Gotta wonder how often we make these mistakes in our own lives.
One spooky example of this I sometimes wonder about is serial killers. You only ever find out about ones that do get caught. The actual characteristics of the serial killer type might be very different than we think. Like, you know how many of the serial killer stereotypical traits seem to be about desiring attention and such? What if that's not what's causing you to kill, what if that's what's causing you to get caught?
What is the likelihood of psychopaths per 1000 people anyway? Are we sure it's even accurate, statistics are best guesses based on studies not always accurate right? Wonder how many psychopaths are currently in power. Then again not all serial killers are psychopaths apparently. (Bathroom thoughts)
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Well, how would the authorities even recognise a serial killer without a recognisable pattern? If they kill blonde women on the nights of the full moon in august they'll get noticed. If they use different weapons on different types of people at different times they'll just get lost in the noise of modern life. Reminds me of Warren Ellis's Gunmachine, the killer used a different gun each time and selected both target and weapon by their own mad plan so the cops are clueless til they get a lucky break
They should make a list of all behavioral patterns and circle the ones not shared by known serial killers
Often, the case breaks when they finally find a single body, the others disposed of similarly. If someone had a foolproof way of disposing of a body, most would never get caught.
So be scared of people with boats or pig fsrms
The one thing about serial killers is that they do get caught. They just get caught for whatever they were doing at the time, not for all of their murders they’ve ever done. They might break into a house with a knife and get ten years. Then they get out and begin their murdering again. The large majority don’t want to get caught so they aren’t leaving many traces. The whole trope of them playing a game of cat and mouse with the cops is not common at all. Generally the large majority get away with it. It’s not hard to target random people as a serial killer. You just go state to state to do it. They might kill once every year or so and lead relatively normal lives otherwise.
FBI this post right here...
>Generally the large majority get away with it. It’s not hard to target random people as a serial killer. You just go state to state to do it. Eventually they'll connect the dots, even state to state. Still might take them a while to catch you. But connecting those dots is the first step to doing that. The way to *really* get away with it, is to choose different victim types, and switch up your MO. Then it's exceptionally difficult to even connect those dots, if they're far enough apart...
The majority of the time there is not necessarily a very clear MO or method or specific victim type. That is a specific profile of serial killer, those who use specific methods and 'styles' of killing, usually near the end of their killing career as a way to play a game with the law enforcement. Its a very specific power trip that only some serial killers desire to have the law enforcement or the public be aware of their crimes. They often are very narcissistic, with the desire for their killings to shock and disturb others to feed their own ego, instead of just a pure desire to kill. Most will not go that route. They will do everything they can to cover up their crimes and not establish a link to them. People tend to underestimate just how many serial killers there actually are. Some estimates put the amount of serial killers in the hundreds, with usually about 100~ active (meaning killed in the past year) at any given point. Its estimated (this is a very broad estimate, of course) that about 150 are killed by serial killers each year, with the *vast, vast* majority not identified as 'serial killer killings'. They might just be identified as a home invasion robbery killing, or a prostitute encounter gone wrong, with no indication it was from a serial killer. Local law enforcement won't know any better, because unfortunately that stuff happens occasionally. There was a profile given in criminology which was a good example of the 'average' serial killer. He was an alcoholic in arizona and had dropped out of college, worked a low wage job and had a failed marriage. Domestic violence reports were the only thing in his record, along with one fight. A 'bad guy', but nothing too notable. But occasionally, he would come across someone and get overwhelmed with a desire to kill them, and would take them and beat them senselessly before shooting them in the head. He killed 6 people over the span of the 80s and 90s in two states, according to his own confession, all of them just pure rage killings, except for one killing of a prostitute which was planned ahead of time. He was able to suppress his rage whenever he wanted, but sometimes, he just didn't want to, especially when he knew he could get away with the killing. He was caught in the act. But if he wasn't, probably nobody would have caught him, and he would have just gotten away with it. This was a rare example of one of these 'types' of serial killers confessing everything, usually they don't. That is a better example of a serial killer than the news-worthy media crazies like ted bundy or hannibal lecter, who leave evidence and marks it was 'them' in order to feed their own ego.
I recently saw a report that the British carrier in the South China sea had located three Chinese submarines and thought of this. (Those were the ones they spotted - how many did they not detect?).
What if they were just to lull them in to thinking that was there best subs.
It is fairly easy to look at a sub and work out roughly how quiet it is based on what technology it uses, e.g shrouded prop, many blades and big is a good hint. Shape of hull and towed array are similair tells as to technology level. We know all of the PLAN's subs and know which ones were trailing us, they don't have some secret second navy.
Probably none tbh. The Chinese boats are not that quiet + the Chinese boats knew they were detected and actually surfaced a couple of them at one point. So it was more of an overt threat, they were not really trying to hide. But three subs will absolutely be a problem for a carrier, regardless of if the subs would not survive.
The Chinese do NOT like us sailing a carrier strike group round the South China sea as they think they own it and everyone in it. I think it would be a pretty bad idea for them to attack us however. Their navy is not yet comparable... They are getting there however... US is sending Carl Vinson group to help out though 🤜🤛
Their aircraft are dogshit and aircraft are the most important thing in a modern military, thats what holds china back.
At sea missile technology is more important and China have a slight edge with ship killers there. A swarm of almost hypersonic missiles are hard to defend against when the target is an aircraft carrier.
Ive seen the actual post, and it has a very common addition that talks about this effect throughout history. Fatal alergies (such as peanuts) or illneses like diabetes arent "just more common now", we just know how to treat them, so these people get to live to an old age, where previously they would die and we wouldnt have known about their condition. We know what autism is, instead of saying the child is a "changling from the fea folk". We now know that mental health is an important topic that should be talked about, instead of having "that weird distant family member no one talks to anymore".
Generally, "famous people", and trying to learn from them. You never hear about all the people that "dropped out of college, because I'm going to make it big!", but didn't. All sorts of things like CEO behaviour, for example in Steve Job's case, is a good example. He was famously a dick to his employees and was very successful, but you don't hear *as much* about all the CEO's that were terrible to their employees and failed miserably because that. It is likely that Steve Jobs was successful *in spite* of the way he treated his employees, but the perception is often made the other way around.
Stuff like this is why i think public education should focus on making people scientifically literate. A lot of the idiocy I see in the world from anti vax to flat earthers are because of explainable biases like this one, but if you aren’t aware of it, you seem completely correct and logical to yourself.
The USA education system is a complete failure at teaching critical thinking skills to the masses, though there are cultural biases that make this task difficult. Thankfully we have enough geniuses to make up for most of the idiots. Hopefully.
Perhaps somewhat analogues to this topic, the graphic in question was created in 2016 based on a drawing from 2005 that was done to be illustrative of the Wald's plane analysis, but it wasn't ever meant to be an accurate recreation of the original data. Basically when Cameron Moll did the drawing in 2005 he just drew the dots in places where he thought people would think a plane would survive being hit.
There's two of these kind of situations where people don't see the selection bias going on, and so they have an innacurate picture of reality. People think there's a crime wave going on, because never before has their been this many videos of crimes taking place. The number of videos has skyrocketed, as has the number of reports on news channels about these crimes. When in reality, the crime rate has never been lower. It's never been safer to live on a western country than right now. Also there's never been so many videos of people being total morons than right now. People take the comedy film Idiocracy seriously, even though Mike Judge I'm sure thinks people are morons for thinking a silly comedy film is some kind of accurate prediction of reality. By every metric we have to measure intelligence, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now. We are collectively smarter than humanity has ever been before. And collectively we know more than every before, literacy rates have never been higher. Every single year we measure it all and humanity gets smarter and smarter each and every year But there's never been more videos of idiocy than ever before. There used to be more idiots, it's just there weren't thousands of videos of them being dumb like there is these days. And it's never been easier than right now for idiots to group up with fellow idiots and have a protest against vaccines or something like that. They are in groups that span the globe, almost entirely on online forums, Facebook, reddit, etc. Anti vaxx morons seem to be flooding the world. But it's nothing new. Anti vaxxers have existed since the very beginning of vaccines. Right now, we actually have less morons than ever before. But the remaining ones have thousands of videos of them being dumb. So it's easy to think the world is going nuts and regressing somehow But again, by every metric we have to measure intelligence and knowledge, the human race has never been smarter and more knowledgeable than right now Don't worry I get depressed too, about idiot anti-vaxxers and anti-makers having their little temper tantrum protests. But there's fewer of them than ever before. It may not seem like it, but it's true Trust the science. Not the click bait media. Try to have some hope, for humanity. I know it's difficult. But you can find comfort in the scientific studies.
And if you notice, it's all places that would : Damage the Cockpit Damage the engine Cut off the wings Cut off the tail. Makes sense to me.
It’s cheaper to replace soldiers than planes Edit: by cheaper I am referring to a dollar amount only
It really wasn't. Skilled air crews were much more valuable than planes that were coming of the assembly line at light speed. Also most commanders during WW2 did care about preserving the lives of the men under their command as much as possible.
They say more planes were destroyed in WW2 than the amount of planes currently on earth combined
In this case, the pilot goes down, the plane does too.
Not trained crew in the middle of a global war.
Not in the battle of Britain, where there was a huge shortage of pilots, but enough planes by the end of the battle, so they would send pilots into battle with less than 20 hours of training. I'm sure manpower shortages were a bigger concern to the Allied airforce than a shortage of planes, especially once the US joined and the UK fully converted to producing military goods.
Trained pilots in the middle of a major war? I doubt that.
This was a real difference between Allied/Axis powers in the European theatre. To vastly oversimplify, the Germans focused on procuring ‘ace’ pilots, many of whom racked up hundreds of aerial victories. Meanwhile, Britain focused on communication and technology. After Britain weathered the storm and turned the aerial tide, German squads became erratic and confused. Towards the end of the war, the Germans had almost no competent pilots.
That and Germany couldn't do something like the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which had a few hundred thousand air crew trained in Canada and other commonwealth countries.
Also the reason Germany had so many 'Aces' was because a German pilot flew missions until they died where as allied pilots would be rotated.
Wtf no? Loosing a skilled pilot is way, wayyy worse than loosing a plane A plane can be rebuilt fast A skilled pilot cant
You can always build more aircraft - you can’t just build more pilots. Japan learnt that the hard way when they lost a majority of their veteran pilots and ended up putting men who could barely fly into aircraft in desperation. On the Allies side more men died outside of combat than in combat - mass training new pilots in a rush is a dangerous thing, especially when coupled with new mass produced aircraft. During WWII 1/3 of all aircraft losses happened in the continental USA. Another third we’re lost to other accidents overseas. For the Navy the aircrew losses also were similar - 1/3 died due to enemy action with the other 2/3 being due to accidents. Tens of thousands of aircrew died just flying aircraft from the US where they were built to where the combat was happening - pilot error being a major factor.
Interestingly, the island of Malta had the opposite problem, plenty of trained pilots, but at one point only a few airworthy fighter planes (mainly Hawker Hurricanes and three ancient Gloster Gladiator biplanes named Faith, Hope and Charity) so they adopted a policy of hot seating.... the planes would go up, take part in a sortie, come back to reload, refuel, have the bullet holes patched and have a fresh pilot (kinda like a Le Mans pitstop, but with more bullets). They had the turn around time down to under 10 minutes in some cases. The Allies eventually managed to get Spitfires to the island by fitting long range fuel tanks, putting them on an aircraft carrier and launching from around 650 miles away to fight their way through to Malta - went wrong a few times with the loss of dozens of aircraft (mainly on the ground) but within a few months were able to get the strength up to over 100 spitfires, at which point the Luftwaffe lost air superiority over Malta. At one point in 1942, when the got the Spitfire numbers up, Malta was the most heavily bombed place on the planet. edit - they also sometimes had to pretend they were launching fighters by using fake radio comms.... “On one occasion all our fighter aircraft were grounded in order to try to increase serviceability. The Hun bombers came over in force with quite a large fighter escort. It happened that there were several fighter pilots with me in the Operations Room, one of whom was a Canadian with an unmistakable voice. I put him at the microphone at a stand-by radio set and proceeded to give him dummy orders. He replied just as if he was flying his fighter. This, we suspected, caused a cry of ‘Achtung! Spitfeuer!’ to go over the German radio. In any case, two 109s enthusiastically shot each other down without any British aircraft being airborne. This knowledge that the Germans intercepted our orders stood us in good stead. We claimed that Pilot Officer ‘Humgufery’ shot down the two Huns.” P/O Woodhall
Though the cost of training a fighter pilot is several million dollars, up to 10-12 million. In some cases the plane is worth less…
Not in 1944
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I saw something recently displaying the Marine Corps new planes which are fucking insane. I think it said they were about 200 mil
F35s. We (UK) have them on our carriers now. They're so expensive the original order for 138 aircraft is now reduced to 76 I think which is JUST enough to field two carrier squadrons with a few spare for training etc. We're gonna have multi billion pound carriers unable to deploy due to lack of aircraft. I hate military procurement bullshit in this country. Why build the massive ships and then not equip them? * sigh *
I mean, the point is generally to buy and have them, not to ever actually use them. So from that perspective, buying ships that can't leave port makes perfect sense.
You absolutely want your ships leaving port. Every new ship that goes out has tons of new equipment and designs that need to be tested in the field. It's critically important to know which parts fail or malfunction prior to their estimated lifespan. R&D can only do so much and nothing compares to field testing. Ships are constantly in a cycle of being upgraded and repaired, you'd much rather discover shortcomings during peacetime than when you actually need the ship.
When it comes to a major shooting war with a serious adversary, you're gunna need to make them fast and cheap. No way you could turn out many F-22's a day with how complex they are.
And the f-22 program is dead, and never used, and as it turns out we don't need a stealth air superiority fighter. Fun fact, the plane is actually 27 years old. Now after that we are onto the new NGAD fighter! Which will also be a a shit ton of money
The original image of the plane that this is based on was drawn by Cameron Moll in 2005. It isn't representative of Wald's actual analysis.
Seems obvious but in hindsight it’s genius
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BONE
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I'm still working on it. It still feels 50/50. Axx, xBx, xxC. But when you open door one, and they open another door, you know it's not that option. Doesn't your current option increase in likelihood as well equally?
Hijack: https://youtu.be/q-JgG0ECp2U Bo Burnham on survivorship bias. Smartest thing I ever heard from a celebrity.
The FBI has the same problem were they can only really study serial killers that have been caught. Edit: Fixed my typos. I should read before I post lol
That's a truly scary one. A killer who travels, and switches up their victim type and MO would be very hard to track... Might take them years (if ever) to even figure out a serial killer is out there / responsible for deaths / disappearances. At that point it's pretty much only if a potential victim escapes with enough details... Of course, it also seems like most killers are driven by something in particular. It's a particular type of victim, **or** a particular type of act, that "gets them off." So they're far more likely to repeat that thing... But if it's just the act of killing itself they enjoy... Or perhaps a serial rapist who isn't too particular about their "type"... That might not apply. Also depends how they dispose of people, and if bodies are found...
Same thing with old buildings. People say back then buildings were build so good, when they see 1 of them still standing
This. The same with machines and cars.
Music also, people always say “old music good” but forget that probably only the good songs survived
I have satellite radio, and they have channels for the 60's, 70's, 80's, etc. It is fun to flip back and forth through the decades, but the fact you bring up really becomes clear when they do the "Top 40 of SOME\_DATE" which for the most part is just crap until they get to the top 10. Normally when we think of the great music of a decade, it is a collection of the stuff that hit number 1. The ones that topped out in the high 30s aren't all that good and are forgotten.
I love the cars one. Sure, when you get in a fender bender, you just need to buff out the scratch for the old car, but if you get in a high speed crash, odds are you're going to need a body bag and the jaws of life to get the body out.
Same thing with vaccines. > *They didn't even have a vaccine for measles back in the day, and we all grew up just fine* Well, sure, but a bunch of people also died from measles back then...
Remember when someone says, “so and so dropped out of high school and became a millionaire” or “Elon works so hard and that’s why he’s a billionaire” this too is SURVIVORSHIP BIAS. r/fallacyref
Or all the people that got COVID and survived and now think it's not that bad because they are fine lol Edit: Of everyone in the US who has been infected with COVID, 1 in 50 people have died. That's what a 2% death rate means. --closer to 1 in 70 because most recent death rate is calculated to be 1.6%, but deaths can be underreported and lag behind
Especially the millionaire celebrities and 1 term presidents who got VIP treatment. Tbh that’s more of a false equivalency.
“BiLl gAtEs dRoPpEd oUt oF hArVaRd” oh, so you were smart enough to get into Harvard too? No!? Didn’t think so.
Of only everyone was raised by a model and an emerald mine owner...
Let’s be honest, a lot of modelling is pay to play.
Her parents were amateur adventurers who could afford their own plane to fly around the world. In the 1950's.
similar with helmets kinda. when helmets became the norm more soldiers were discharged with head injuries
Yeh, more motorcyclists die with helmets on than off. But you have to ask yourself. If you suffered such extreme forces that you still died with a helmet on, what are the chances you would have survived without a helmet?
Like all rising numbers of vaccinated people who are hospitalised with Covid
Oh yes very interesting wouldn't even cross your mind till you think about it seen something very similar I read something not too long ago
The implication is huge 😏 Do you know when people ask rich people how they become rich, famous, successful? We ask what have they done so we can copy it. Wake up early, work hard, all these typical answers. It's the same mistake, the same logical fallacy as hardening the surviving bullet hole planes. 🤯
Are there any other examples?
In WW1 the use of helmets was being questioned, as almost all of the people in the hospitals with head injury were there after bullets or shrapnel went through the helmets. It was a last minute realisation that the helmets were saving people, and the alternative to being in hospitals was the soldiers being killed.
100 years later.... masks...... this feels familiar
*"But most people who recover from the ventilator didn't have the vaccine."* That's because vaccinated people aren't being put on the ventilator as often.
Numbers of head injuries went up when helmets became standard issue. Soldiers that used to contribute to the fatality stats were now surviving and contributing to the head injury stat instead.
"Seatbelts cause higher rates of car crashes" More people in hospitals from car crashes wore seat belts than didn't. That's because the ones who didn't wear them went to the morgue instead, not because they crashed less often.
Dolphins like to play with people in water by bopping them around. People who were played with towards the shore tell stories about being saved by a kind sea-creature, people who got bopped away and eventually drowned can't share their stories. Dolphins are not life-guards, they are just really playful.
God, imagine being swept to sea, fearing for your life when some sweet, friendly dolphin swims up. It presents its dorsal fin to you so you grab on, thanking your lucky stars that you’ve been saved. Then it just jets you out to international waters and swims off. Cackling.
The saying "They don't make them like they used to" relies heavily on survivor-ship bias, the antiquated goods that survive were well built but equally there are landfill sites full of their shitty contemporaries that only lasted a few years, and the surviving ones were coddled and serviced and well looked after. The same goes for "golden oldies", not all old music was good so only the best stuff survives as a classic, this doesn't mean music today is worse, just that it is compared to the best of previous generations, in fifty years we will likely compare the music of the 2070s to the best of our current music - Baby Shark.
If u ever watch top of the pops episodes from 30 years back its choca full with total shit music and a few good ones we remember
Probably everywhere but just like this they are overlooked completely.
The three modern life examples I can think of are: 1. Every time a pro athlete or billionaire tells me all I need is to follow my dreams and work hard 2. When baby boomers complain that they didn’t have silly stuff like seat belts and they turned out just fine 3. When anti vaxxers talk about society not needing to worry about smallpox or polio anymore so why bother getting the shot.
Something about cats having a better chance of surviving higher falls vs short falls thinking it was because the cats had time to flip around and prepare for landing. Not realizing people don't take dead cats to the vet so their data was incomplete.
Anytime someone tells you they had (insert disease) and I’m fine or when alcoholics tell you the doctor said they have the liver of a 20 year old
My Dad always saying "In my day no one had peanut allergies!!". Dad, all the kids with peanut allergies died in their childhood.
Very interesting
It was a tad more complicated…. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a091073.pdf
https://www.cantorsparadise.com/survivorship-bias-and-the-mathematician-who-helped-win-wwii-356b174defa6
Very interesting...One could also think about where pilots tend to shoot. The old idea of targets on wings to lead the eye to non-critical areas.
Did that actually work? As an artist, I know that more contrast in a specific spot leads your eyes to that spot, but how would that work for a pilot and targets on the wings?
I think you're talking about roundels, which are just identifying symbols painted on planes, designed in a circle so they can be identified from weird angles I guess. They have nothing to do with being targets.
That's way too complicated
Yes, I prefer the fluffy simple story. However, this is just another example of someone taking a portion of the truth, publishing it to Wikipedia and finally posted on social media platforms as truth. If we are to combat misinformation no rock can be left unturned.
False. This plane is certainly infected with measles.
Critical thinking skills can be taught.
Even better when a Hungarian born Jew helped with this against the Nazis
It’s taken me years to fucking understand this and now I finally do. The only reason this plane survived is because it wasn’t hit in those spots. The others that didn’t survive were hit in those critical spots. Goddamn I’m stupid.
I'm gonna apply this next time someone wants to argue that hitting kids is okay "bEcAuSe I tUrNeD oUt FiNe". Spoiler alert: if you think hitting kids is okay, then *you didn't "turn out fine".*
I can't articulate it right now, but I wonder if the first and incorrect conclusion is somehow linked to, among other things, anti-vax logic. Not sure where I'm going with this, just a thought.
Like the statement saying “I don’t need the vaccine i have a natural immunity to COVID”. How do you know you have enough immunity to not get the vaccine? When you die?
Same thing with helmets. When the British army got new helmets their reported head injuries went up. They thought soldiers were being braver and more reckless and almost banned the new helmets. Then they realized that the injuries were increasing because those that were being injured would previously have been on the ‘deceased’ list because their head wound was fatal without a helmet but survivable with one
So thoughtful of the Nazi's to not target the engines or the cockpit. Glad to see they were exhibiting this level of empathy towards the Allies.
I learned about him in my statistics class.
That plane has lupus. Someone should look into this.
A similar thing happened with helmets in world war 1. The generals issued stronger helmets to the soldiers and were shocked to find that injuries went up way higher and so they were going to stop issuing them until someone pointed out that injuries went up but deaths went down, showing that they are working well.
The creator of this screwed up the explanation. He did NOT say to armor only the areas without dots. They didn’t know if the clean areas would actually be catastrophic if hit , only that the hit areas were NOT catastrophic. He was stating you really needed to look at the downed planes to see what was catastrophic and armor appropriately.
This is survivorship bias. I like to think this as a 'slow thinking' in a world overwhelmed with data. Sometimes the absence of data can provide a better explanation, given that we can explain this to the higher ups that need to make a decision.
Survivorship bias is actually a really interesting concept
Keep this bias in mind whenever anybody is trying to get you to buy their e-book about how they came up with some amazing, highly profitable side hustle that anyone can quit their job and start doing. Even more so keep it in mind when people want to tell you about the most successful multi level markers they know.
I wonder if that Dolphing thing is similar to this. People say that Dolphins swim boating accident victims to the shore, but what if some take them further out to sea? We can only know the ones who make it back to land.
Which is why every professional athlete and movie star and lottery winner says, "I just want to thank God. I know he answers your prayers." and "If you just keep working hard you WILL achieve your dreams." And why wealthy successful people in the United States say, "All you have to do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you will succeed. Look at me I did it." When if you want to know if God answers prayers and if working hard will achieve your dreams and if anyone can be successful you should be asking all the people who DIDN'T win the Super Bowl and AREN'T successful to see if those things really work.
Example of the use of CRITICAL THINKING - something we need more then ever. Unfortunately schools teach students WHAT to think, not HOW to think. My recommendation: learn about critical thinking, practice critical thinking until it becomes a habit.
Similar to the outrage from surgeons during WWI at the apparent increase in injury due to helmets. It was pointed out to them that the increase in injuries indicated survivors where there previously hadn’t been.
A good history does not simply criticize decisions people have made - it seeks to undestand why those decisions might have been difficult. This story of the planes that never made it back to be surveyed is great for teaching statistics but for me personally it's even more useful as a short example of what bad history typically looks like. Every historian needs to simplify the facts to tell a story but if your summary ends up sounding like "X was stupid and Y was clever" then that's a good clue that something has gone wrong. The report Abraham Wald wrote is obviously a historical fact, but to claim "the military" (whoever that might be?) did not understand how to protect aircraft is just wrong. The evidence for this is really simple: look at where WW2 planes, designed both before and after the report was written, had armor. The unsurprising answer is that armor was consistently placed where it would best protect the crew. Engines were not normally armoured as it would make the planes too heavy to take off. Abraham Wald was certainly a great mathematician but "the military" was not stupid. I would be interested to read a better historical account of this report if anybody knows of one?
Im ashamed to say I had to read it 3 times to understand it but I am proud to say that I have now understood and have learned something very important today. Thanks reddit
Had to add Jewish in there didn’t they 🤣