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Wiener’s Laws

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The article “The Human Factor” in Vanity Fair is two years old, but since I can’t believe I missed posting it — here it is! It’s a riveting read with details of the Air France Flight 447 accident and intelligent discussion of the impact automation has on human performance. Dr. Nadine Sarter is interviewed and I learned of a list of flight-specific “laws” developed by Dr. Earl Wiener, a past-president of HFES.

“Wiener’s Laws,” from the article and from Aviation Week:

  • Every device creates its own opportunity for human error.
  • Exotic devices create exotic problems.
  • Digital devices tune out small errors while creating opportunities for large errors.
  • Invention is the mother of necessity.
  • Some problems have no solution.
  • It takes an airplane to bring out the worst in a pilot.
  • Whenever you solve a problem, you usually create one. You can only hope that the one you created is less critical than the one you eliminated.
  • You can never be too rich or too thin (Duchess of Windsor) or too careful about what you put into a digital flight-guidance system (Wiener).
  • Complacency? Don’t worry about it.
  • In aviation, there is no problem so great or so complex that it cannot be blamed on the pilot.
  • There is no simple solution out there waiting to be discovered, so don’t waste your time searching for it.
  • If at first you don’t succeed… try a new system or a different approach.
  • In God we trust. Everything else must be brought into your scan.
  • It takes an airplane to bring out the worst in a pilot.
  • Any pilot who can be replaced by a computer should be.
  • Today’s nifty, voluntary system is tomorrow’s F.A.R.

Kudos to the author, William Langewiesche, for a well researched and well written piece.


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