The Guru and the Bard

As airline wreckage eludes discovery, lawyers cast for the big catch

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, and has yet to be definitively found. But the lack of wreckage or even an idea as to what happened isn’t sufficient to stop the first lawyers from filing lawsuits. The lawyers are already seeking to identify component manufacturers and the companies that inspected and performed maintenance on the aircraft.

I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise. This isn’t the first time lawyers started lawsuits before investigators knew what happened.

At least this time around we can probably assume any fires resulting from the crash of the missing Boeing 777 were out by time the first lawsuits started. Asiana Airlines Flight 214 hit a seawall while landing in San Francisco last July. News reports indicated the crashed airliner was still burning as other news reports covered the first lawsuits. I think it’s safe to say the analysis into the cause of the crash hadn’t been completed by this time.

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Ugh

I heard this joke in the film The Doctor, with William Hurt:

Q: What's the difference between a Manta Ray and a Lawyer?

A: One's a scum-sucking bottom dweller and the other's a fish.

Truth by opinion poll

I agree with the premise here. Lawyers are busy working on it, as are pollsters. What happened to Malaysian flight 370? The truth is, we don’t know. So, here comes a poll about the fate of Malaysian flight 370 to clear it up. Although someone close to the event may know the truth, how does asking the ignorant public answer the question? While the poll results may provide insight, this insight doesn't really concern the fate of the flight. Truth isn’t a popularity contest. The truth conveyed when the results of this poll are reported has nothing to do with the truth in reality. Whether flight 370 went down due to mechanical failure or pilot error, or it was hijacked and rerouted somewhere, or it met with some other fate, the public opinion in this matter has absolutely no relation to the truth of the matter. Even if the poll reports 100% of respondents believe it crashed at sea due to a mechanical failure, what does this result tell us? Without any evidence one way or the other, 100% of people who responded to the poll believe that flight 370 crashed due to a mechanical failure. Great. That’s all it tells us. While it may be true that flight 370 went down due to a mechanical failure, it isn’t true because 100% of the poll respondents believed it before there was any evidence whatsoever. The poll actually tells us what people LIKE TO THINK what happened (which is kind of morbid, really, looking at the poll results). What value is such a poll? It doesn’t tell us what really happened; the results don’t bear any correlation to the truth of the matter. Should we behave as if something is true because admittedly clueless people believe it? The real news: being clueless doesn’t stop people from voting. Really, the poll itself is something of a farce: understanding we are all ignorant of the reality of what happened, we are nevertheless going to poll people and report what we THINK happened. From that, we really know nothing at all, except that clueless people vote. We have proof of it, provided by 100% of the people responding to the poll.