#therac-25

[actual-corpse]

Therac-25: *exists. Injures many*

Engineers of the past: aw damn. Better not put to much faith in software. It might override its safeguards and kill people! Thanks for the lesson Therac-25!!

Self aggrandizing software bitches: Self driving cars! Remove human error! No mechanical input!

Therac-25: wait. Have you learned NOTHING FROM ME?!

Self driving car enthusiast: We give the robot moral tests to make it choose between killing a baby and a grandma!

Any person with a lick of sense: Just.... Just drive off the road if you can... Bro!

Car bitch: THE CAR STAYS ON THE ROAD! THINK OF THE TROLLEY PROBLEM

Engineers: WE SOLVED THAT!

Another insulting name that I'm using in place of people like Elon Musk: YAY TECHNOLOGY! HUMANS ARE WEAK AND OBSOLETE I AM GOD!

[naomiknight-17]

Learn from my mistake and don't watch documentaries about the Therac-25 before having x-rays done

[theracs25]

[90frogsinatrenchcoat]

*goes on a rampage about the therac-25 and how fucked it was that no one was paying attention to that shit*

[maachine]

do any of you have a favorite radiation accident / incident

[bringmefoxgloves]

saw x possible spoilers

Thank you Star ( @starlightsailfish​ ) for getting the screencap, and all the Sawtuals for listening to my infodump on radiation incidents in Mexico! 

But this particular trap? The one for the woman who faked being cured? She’s being exposed to a radiation therapy unit. 

You can just see the arm of it, down below, turned upside down. Right side up, an older model could look like this:

I believe the glow of the orange is from radioactive decay. Exposure to unshielded radiation, which as most people already know, creates terrible burns from weaker short exposure, and unrecoverable sickness and burns that lead to death from powerful exposure. Either way, she’s in for a rough time.

Based on the real life history of radiation therapy units becoming incidents of widespread contamination (The Ciudad Juárez cobalt-60 incident and the 1962 Mexico City radiation accident come to mind) from being not so closely guarded or maintained, (in Mexico itself, no less!) I think it is absolutely possible for John Kramer to get his hands on a unit, if not from the practice that deceived him, for curing his cancer. Which these units are used to treat. 

[mizuthe-cat]

new documentary

radiation related malpractices this time

[leafmutual]

New fear unlocked

[naomiknight-17]

At the Ultrasound/x-ray clinic like

Don't think about the Therac-25 Don't think about the Therac-25 Don't think about the Therac-25

[clarabaguette]

Therac 25 pilled

[osakanone]

Therac-25 is one of those things where, if it were in a novel, people would call it unrealistic. It’s horrifying in the extreme.

So the article is neat, but read the comments:

Yeah.

[machine-saint]

"a computer cannot be held accountable, therefore a computer must not make a management decision"

this always seemed like a weird statement to me, more based on being snappy than any logic. the people who programmed the computer can be "accountable". the people who designed the system that the computer integrates it with can be accountable. does the tragedy of therac-25 means that we should never use computers in a medical context, since we couldn't put the therac-25 on trial?

if your concern is that the computer acts as an impenetrable "blame absorber", then consider that people have been doing this with "i'm just following the rules" for centuries, and people rarely suggests that this means we should abolish structure. consider all the times that a systemic flaw has been excused as "we found the single person responsible for all these problems and got rid of them", or the fact that in industrial accident analysis care has to be taken to avoid just letting all the blame attach itself to whatever human was most proximal.

[postoctobrist]

Similar to the caving episode, have you ever considered doing more WTYP episodes about software-related disasters? Stuff like THERAC-25, or that screw up with the Royal Mail system?

Therac has been in the planning stages for a while

[sabakos]

Okay so we all know of AI risk like the Therac-25 and all but how do you deal with this "superintelligent AI risk" oh wise ones who have been studying these things for the past decade or two because "this kind can only come out through prayer" just isn't cutting mustard for us. Oh but that's really the best you've been able to come up with, too? Well, not really much reason to keep paying you, then!

[puppybeast]

indeed searching for entry level job and "traveling radiology technician" comes up hell yeah brotherr im going to recreate the therac-25 incidents

[antvnger]

So, I'm watching educational videos on nukes and radiation for fun, and aside from greed and fear of others just as volatile as ourselves, the only thing more dangerous in our short history of using radioactive materials... Is curiosity.

We never stop to think of the consequences of our search for knowledge or, in the case of the Goiania incident, the consequences of taking a blue glowing powder like substance out of a shiney lead can that they took out of an abandoned machine from an abandoned cancer research building.

Cesium 137 glows a ghostly blue color in the dark, and without proper knowledge of radioactive materials is easily mistaken for some pretty rock or dust because other than the glow it looks entirely harmless.

A debated theory in biology is that of an evolutionary trap, the concept that something evolved to help a species survive can rapidly become their downfall in a swiftly changing environment. Something like sea turtles following the light of the moon at night after hatching to become sea turtles getting lost headed towards a much brighter street lamp, or beetles seeing a discarded beer bottle the same color as them and trying to mate with it. For humans, it's curiosity. We were curious enough to invent and survive, and now we're curious enough to kill and destroy even unintentionally. Just as a sea turtle never stops to wonder if that street lamp will lead it to its death, we never stop to wonder how what we create may lead to hundreds of deaths within the span of a single year.

Bikini atol was fear, therac 25 was greed, and Goiania was curiosity. Really makes you wonder how much longer we can make it before one or more of these traits plummets the world into complete darkness before our species is expected to die out naturally.

Change is inevitable and the world is growing darker, but eventually it just might glow like cesium 137 and we might just come back from it all better than ever.

This isn't depression or meant to bring anyone down, btw, I'm just noticing a pattern in human ingenuity and genuinely wondering how much longer our species will last when shit like the bikini atol and Chernobyl happen and people still claim nukes are fake simultaneously, like we cannot possibly be the leading species on this planet and still be this stupid, we created fusion bombs and can't use them because they're too powerful, we created fission bombs and turned them into power plants! We have solid evidence for our nuclear experiments! People have died and yet they still claim it's not real! They laugh in the face of our very nature to create and destroy and I can't stand it!

This rant is brought on by stupidity I heard at work yesterday, from old people with wrinkles and starch white hair, who's parents very well could have been involved in the creation of the nukes they claim aren't real for all I know.

Sir Anon

I…wow.

I kinda need to like…let this marinate in my brain for a bit because I have no words right now.