Human Error

Ever since Eve ate the apple, human error has been a critical component in everything from historical events to the birth of children. We've spent a lot of time in our lives answering the questions that are hardest, and eventually we reason it out either by trusting someone else or by getting things sorted out in our own head. But regardless of how we reason things out, are we right?

This weighed heavily on my mind as I drove home and just prayed that the guys tailgating each other through the 35F sleet on the highway wouldn't decide to swerve and avoid an accident, totaling Scoot and I in the process. I never took drivers education classes but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to have it figured that if you tail someone in sleet at 70 mph, you will hit them or someone/something else in the case of an accident.

It led to me think about just why planes are so much safer to travel in than cars. For a long time, the idea of flying was rooted in my head as a hugely risky and death-wish type of endeavor, but statistically, it's actually safer than driving your car to work. (Also of interest, more people die of car accidents in the US than die in Iraq from violence.) Key to all of this is still the issue of human error. With so many independent drivers on the road, every person's individual error in judgment is basically multiplied on the road whereas flying puts your life into the hands of just a few.

We sit 3 days a week in the sauna of a classroom on campus and hear about all of the statistical models, rules, assumptions and suggestions that statisticians use every day to justify or reject research claims but it all shakes down to the same thing - human error. And there's no way to put a limit on this noise amidst the analysis. Everything from a bad project design to unforeseen consequences of a treatment, inexperienced employees to a mis-type during data entry can lead to a misconception from research results. And yet, we seem to think that the justifications we propose to sort out this error will not in fact be as erroneous as the original. So in the end, in an effort to avoid human error, aren't we ironically also putting our own trust in it?

The carryover into today's society is apparent everywhere. The best-laid plans do fail, good intentions don't work out like expected, the predictions and estimations of BP's impact on the gulf coast is most likely erring on the side of optimism, and there is of course the potential for intentional error as well. And who knows what someone was thinking with this food idea?

So what hope is there in all of this? We've put our faith and based our reasoning on the assumption that someone knows what's going on, or that a group of people can reason with each other to finally figure out a truth in the big world which can be used to form all those other truths which we need to operate on a daily basis. So the final question, how much do you trust those Greek philosophers?

My good Samaritan

The parable goes in the Bible how a man fell into trouble with thieves and laid on the side of the road as two people who should've helped him just passed by (retold here by some camp counselors). They never asked what he needed or even looked at him. But in the end it was the one least suspected who stopped to help him.



Well, the same can be said for me yesterday as I tried to come home through the ice. I turned down a smaller road, hit a huge slick spot and uncontrollably spun off the road. I got out, and realizing that the situation wasn't too bad, decided not to call the tow truck but to put the car in neutral and try to push it back on the road. As it poured rain, and the road and slush got slicker, there were several cars who drove straight past me, driving out of my way as they ignored my obvious need. Finally, a woman rolled down her window and asked if I needed a phone to call. "No, I thought I'd push it back myself". She couldn't help me with that and she left.

It was 20 minutes of pushing and shoving the car in the snow and I almost had made it back onto the road when a ghettoed out car so low it was riding the ice pulled up and a kid the size of my little brother hopped out. With multiple face piercings, he wasn't the stereotypical stop on the side of the road to help kind of guy, but he was all it took to get the car off the shoulder and back on the road. I could barely thank him as I ran to jump in my car which was now in neutral sliding the opposite direction. I jumped in the car, threw on the emergency brake, thanked him a lot and then tried to get the car going again. The road was so icy that I couldn't even get traction for a while.

But that is how I made it home last night, and exactly why I still occasionally believe in the future of society.