Has it come to this?

SteveC said:
Skill ≠ experience ≠ judgement

Everything else being equal, yes.

If flying were strictly a physical skill endeavor I'd agree with you. Since it isn't, eh, not so much.
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I completely agree with you, Steve. I'm just saying our intake and evaluation process for civvy pilots is rather FUBAR. As someone said in another post, there is no gradebook that travels with one and - at least somewhat objectively - speaks to one's skill and judgement. And there is too much status quo catatonia at all levels of flying. So many good pilots aren't where they should be, and many lousy pilots are where they should not be. There is probably no perfect or even very good way of evaluating pilots except to have experienced, skilled practitioners personally evaluate the nuggets, and that takes time and money. Obviously, exposure time means something, but after some very minimal number of hours, the idea that more hours sitting in a seat has much if anything to do with skill or judgement just seems obviously preposterous to me.
Certainly, we could devise a better way to train and evaluate pilots. We don't for all kinds of reasons, many being structural, which makes them all the more difficult to change. But that doesn't mean we should just accept the lame status quo and go on about our days.
I suppose anecdotal evidence is worth very little, but I know pilots with +10K hrs with whom I would not enter a cockpit. I also know pilots with 250 hrs whose judgement probably puts mine to shame. And I've seem all variety of folks in between. I don't like the way we currently evaluate because it seems it was designed precisely to eliminate any actual evaluation. The box-checking-as-a-proxy-for-reality approach we use now is kind of like the way we use the SAT as a proxy for college readiness. Unintelligent people will never do well on the SAT, but not infrequently, people who are really smart will do poorly. Then there are many, many in the middle who buy the test prep kits and do marginally well without really knowing anything. So even at the cost of losing many intelligent folks and accepting many marginal folks, we continue to use a flawed test as our major evaluation tool for college acceptance. Why? Because it's efficient, read "cheap". Even the military process is sometimes questionable given the social pressures that exist these days. There's a guy right now who is about to take a seat at a major. This guy failed almost every military checkride yet kept getting moved up for reasons unrelated to aviation until he eventually got a less than honorable discharge. There are guys with good judgement who ground airplanes for good reasons and thereby cause flight delays/cancellations. In many operational environments, these guys won't get promoted precisely because they are exercising good judgement. So, yeah, this is a tough nut to crack. Lots of nuance. Lots of issues that take careful, skilled, human evaluation... which, again, is expensive. So is the answer to simply abrogate any involvement or responsibility by passing the "problem" on to the insurance companies and allowing decisions to be made through "magicmatics"? When we allow our evaluation processes and tools to be mediocre (at best), where will go the quality of the things being evaluated?
 
Crop Duster said:
I completely agree with you, Steve. I'm just saying our intake and evaluation process for civvy pilots is rather FUBAR. As someone said in another post, there is no gradebook that travels with one and - at least somewhat objectively - speaks to one's skill and judgement. And there is too much status quo catatonia at all levels of flying. So many good pilots aren't where they should be, and many lousy pilots are where they should not be. There is probably no perfect or even very good way of evaluating pilots except to have experienced, skilled practitioners personally evaluate the nuggets, and that takes time and money. Obviously, exposure time means something, but after some very minimal number of hours, the idea that more hours sitting in a seat has much if anything to do with skill or judgement just seems obviously preposterous to me.
Certainly, we could devise a better way to train and evaluate pilots. We don't for all kinds of reasons, many being structural, which makes them all the more difficult to change. But that doesn't mean we should just accept the lame status quo and go on about our days.
I suppose anecdotal evidence is worth very little, but I know pilots with +10K hrs with whom I would not enter a cockpit. I also know pilots with 250 hrs whose judgement probably puts mine to shame. And I've seem all variety of folks in between. I don't like the way we currently evaluate because it seems it was designed precisely to eliminate any actual evaluation. The box-checking-as-a-proxy-for-reality approach we use now is kind of like the way we use the SAT as a proxy for college readiness. Unintelligent people will never do well on the SAT, but not infrequently, people who are really smart will do poorly. Then there are many, many in the middle who buy the test prep kits and do marginally well without really knowing anything. So even at the cost of losing many intelligent folks and accepting many marginal folks, we continue to use a flawed test as our major evaluation tool for college acceptance. Why? Because it's efficient, read "cheap". Even the military process is sometimes questionable given the social pressures that exist these days. There's a guy right now who is about to take a seat at a major. This guy failed almost every military checkride yet kept getting moved up for reasons unrelated to aviation until he eventually got a less than honorable discharge. There are guys with good judgement who ground airplanes for good reasons and thereby cause flight delays/cancellations. In many operational environments, these guys won't get promoted precisely because they are exercising good judgement. So, yeah, this is a tough nut to crack. Lots of nuance. Lots of issues that take careful, skilled, human evaluation... which, again, is expensive. So is the answer to simply abrogate any involvement or responsibility by passing the "problem" on to the insurance companies and allowing decisions to be made through "magicmatics"? When we allow our evaluation processes and tools to be mediocre (at best), where will go the quality of the things being evaluated?
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Numerous studies have shown that SAT scores correlate incredibly well with future earnings. A person with a near perfect score averages income of $200k later in life, while someone with a very low score averages $30k. Studies have also shown that people who score well on the SAT typically score very well on IQ tests as well. Is the SAT perfect? No, but it seems to be doing a pretty good job of figuring out who has the mental ability to be successful later in life, so I think tossing it out would be unwise.

Similarly, we have the safest aviation system in the world. While you may not be thrilled with how evaluation is done, you simply can't argue with the results. Planes are not falling out of the sky. And in parts of the world where testing is far more rigorous, safety records are not as strong. Clearly we're doing something (or many things) right.
 
scoobs said:
Sugar Free red bull can't be any worse than coffee.
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Wouldn't know, I don't drink sugarfree drinks.

ATN_Pilot said:
Numerous studies have shown that SAT scores correlate incredibly well with future earnings. A person with a near perfect score averages income of $200k later in life, while someone with a very low score averages $30k. Studies have also shown that people who score well on the SAT typically score very well on IQ tests as well. Is the SAT perfect? No, but it seems to be doing a pretty good job of figuring out who has the mental ability to be successful later in life, so I think tossing it out would be unwise.
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I have a high IQ but I underachieve and didn't take the SAT, where does that leave me?:p
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Actually, I'm in the same boat. High IQ but never took the SAT because I didn't plan to attend college, and my high school grades were just average because I absolutely refused to do any homework. :)
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Sounds like my biography. Though I did enroll and not take college seriously several times and am trying to do it online now.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
Numerous studies have shown that SAT scores correlate incredibly well with future earnings. A person with a near perfect score averages income of $200k later in life, while someone with a very low score averages $30k. Studies have also shown that people who score well on the SAT typically score very well on IQ tests as well. Is the SAT perfect? No, but it seems to be doing a pretty good job of figuring out who has the mental ability to be successful later in life, so I think tossing it out would be unwise.

Similarly, we have the safest aviation system in the world. While you may not be thrilled with how evaluation is done, you simply can't argue with the results. Planes are not falling out of the sky. And in parts of the world where testing is far more rigorous, safety records are not as strong. Clearly we're doing something (or many things) right.
Click to expand...

Isn't there some correlation between SAT scores and that people who score well on them are usually very privileged/ well off? I would think that might have something to do with how much someone earns later in life, parents were well off, you end up making a lot of money as well due to all the opportunities and privileges afforded you.
 
durind said:
Isn't there some correlation between SAT scores and that people who score well on them are usually very privileged/ well off? I would think that might have something to do with how much someone earns later in life, parents were well off, you end up making a lot of money as well due to all the opportunities and privileges afforded you.
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There is a lot of truth in this. Yes, there are exceptions, people "come up" from the ghetto all the time. But people usually don't devolve down to the ghetto very often.
 
durind said:
Isn't there some correlation between SAT scores and that people who score well on them are usually very privileged/ well off? I would think that might have something to do with how much someone earns later in life, parents were well off, you end up making a lot of money as well due to all the opportunities and privileges afforded you.
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Those who have the money to buy the tutors do well.
 
durind said:
Isn't there some correlation between SAT scores and that people who score well on them are usually very privileged/ well off? I would think that might have something to do with how much someone earns later in life, parents were well off, you end up making a lot of money as well due to all the opportunities and privileges afforded you.
Click to expand...
A person in my graduating class scored 100% on the SAT(second try, she was striving for it). She had moved here from China just 3-4 years earlier, she lived in a studio apartment with her large family and was on an assisted lunch program since her parents couldn't even afford to give her lunch money everyday. Knowing her, I'd say her situation compelled her to try and master English and earn a scholarship to better her life knowing her family couldn't support her. She went to UC Berkeley and now works for Google. You're probably right as far as the majority goes, but over all I'd say the impoverished kids have more to gain/lose from the SAT as it can really change their situation in a flash with scholarships and what not. Sadly, the majority seem to have a defeatist attitude rather than a drive to work harder.
 
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