New evidence strongly suggests that OceanGate’s submersible, which imploded and killed all passengers on its way to the Titanic wreck, was unfit for the journey. The CEO, Stockton Rush, bought discounted carbon fiber past its shelf life from Boeing, which experts say is a terrible choice for a deep-sea vessel. This likely played a role in the submersible’s tragic demise.
I think most billionaires have a bit of their brain set to believe in themselves rather more than is warranted. It’s great for making money, but maybe not something you want to put your life on the line over.
I think it scratches a similar itch as most techbros: “if I can solve this hard problem, all problems are easy!” It’s a mentality I see constantly, especially on the orange site.
Problem: exists for decades and has not been solved by experts with tons of funding in all that time.
Redditor with zero knowledge or context: Why don’t they just do X, Y, Z? It’s so easy 😏
In this case, the problem was solved over 60 years ago. This billionaire decided to reject the tried and tested solution and came up with their own.
There was a study done on this kind of mentality. Researches invited pairs of players and before each game flipped a coin to designate one player rich and the other poor. The rich player was then given more money and an easier set of rules. At the end of the game they interviewed the player that inevitably won, and in all cases the players reported that they won because of key decisions they made while playing. Not one mentioned they got lucky with the coin flip.
Summary and interview with a researcher: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/19/why-rich-people-tend-think-they-deserve-their-money/amp/
Study (pdf): https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A2661526/view
I’m surprised this isn’t a named sort of cognitive bias. I think there’s a related thing where we humans tend to cite external causes outside our control when we are unfortunate or make mistakes, and we tend to cite our own virtues when we are fortunate and successful.
I think this would be considered Self-serving bias.