Game Theory And The Implications for India Air And Yesterday’s Tragic Crash

             Yesterday, for a brief period, the top story wasn’t DT’s having invaded Los Angeles with marines or the near-arrest of a sitting U.S. Senator from California, merely for asking questions at a news conference (back to how viewpoint discrimination is illegal, and it shouldn’t have mattered he was a Senator), before DT was rebuked on Thursday night by Judge Breyer, but a tragedy in India where a plane full of passengers crashed into a medical school killing nearly everyone aboard, and leaving only one survivor. (To those who doubt miracles, how amazing is it that this one guy survived and was able to call his family? The fact that anyone survived is amazing.)

            Yet this disaster may have been fully preventable. Why? The airline in question was Boeing. And one of the things that my scholarship addresses is mass torts, which this is, or large-scale accidents. Boeing (which I fly, so I’m not hating on it too much), has been “rocked” by a series of scandals that started years ago, and that my former colleague at Cornell, Brad Wendel (who is a pilot himself and amazing in every conceivable way and who gave an amazing presentation to the faculty about airlines) shows that accidents were partially caused by a people pleasing culture at Boeing, just like NASA had a people pleasing culture and this led to the Challenger, and also to the Columbia’s, explosions. 

            Boeing it is #nottoolate for you, or for anyone. If I had to analyze this problem, people have suggested that I become a “high flying” consultant to distressed companies, and I’ll give you some free non-legal advice purely based on game theory. It’s well known that Boeing’s corporate restructuring led to the people being in charge to basically be consultants, not engineers. Boeing, listen to your engineers. That’s how to prevent accidents, and Boeing would likely have fewer accidents were engineers in charge. Of course, in the view of certain scholars in the Chicago School (or law and economics movement), some accidents are “optimal,” and possibly this includes this epic tragedy in India where over 200 people died, mostly Indians. 

My game theory, and a non-Nashian view of game theory, stands for preventing accidents entirely, or as much as humanly possible. For many reasons I could get into at length, zero is the most special number on the entire numberline and has special, spiritual properties, and that’s the number of accidents Boeing should be aiming for. (Of course, there are some situations where zero is highly undesirable and should lead to settlement, but I’ll leave those out.)

-Cortelyou C. Kenney (6/13/25, 8:36 am PT)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Mary Anne Franks Is the Single Best First Amendment Scholar In the Country, But Why Feminism Also Needs A Huge Update From The Perspective of Game Theory, Math, and Physics

              Today's post is lengthy personal essay and book review and is about the First Amendment and feminism, and why feminist scholars like Mary Anne Franks put the entire scholarly community to shame for being simply outstanding in every conceivable way. But while I stand with Mary Anne Franks and the entirety of her new book, in my view feminism in the end should yield to other more important values, including curiosity, love, forgiveness, spirituality, and belonging, though I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, by definition, although I can call on the whole world to adopt my values, for the reasons I explain in this TLDR post below. Main point: Franks in my view should be able to go wherever she likes, but I also conclude feminism is insufficient and must be problematized from the perspective of game theory.  A.      Frank’s Book: I’m privileged to personally know many of the top ...
Read more

Rage is natural, but ultimately less effective than being loving

               My background as a future doctrinal law professor has been, shall I say, circuitous. This is my second career, and my prior career was as a social justice warrior and clinician. Clinicians are deeply and badly needed in this world, and while I once regretted my decision to pursue a doctrinal path and would have given anything to go back in time to highly specific moments, like the protagonist in the science fiction movie,  The Time Traveler’s Wife   (though I’m a woman and not a man, and I’m an academic, not a librarian), I don’t regret and will never regret it, though if I’d known what it would have involved and could have foreseen each and every aspect of my journey, no force on the entire planet could have compelled me to go through with it, unless of course I was compelled by the laws of spacetime itself.  I leave the specific question of time, a deep interest of mine, to another moment. There are many wise p...
Read more

Why Versus How? Physics, Feminism, And Shifting Perspective: A Reflection.

Image
Many years ago, I was a “why” person. In fact, I’m still a “why” person and I always want to know why things are the way they are because if the reason isn’t good, then something (like rules) may have to change. I used to pester my parents, and ask “why, why, why” about basically anything in any subject, and my parents, who were educated, my Dad at the University of Chicago, and my Mom at Oberlin with an actual PhD at UC Berkeley, did their best to answer my questions. However, in the end, my tiny five-year-old self stumped them routinely and they would eventually run out of answers. Asking “why” is one of my favorite techniques, not to disrespect boundaries because obviously “no” in many contexts is a full and complete answer and no one has to justify, for example, not requiting romantic interest. But if the legal system is built on making sense, then laws  ought  to have sound justifications for why rules or laws exist.  My life’s work actually started well before I was...
Read more