Or maybe open hostilities isn't a good solution and this supposed differentiation of soldier vs agent is purely one of convenience?

So you're saying a Korean pilot is like a driver paralyzed from the waist down? I think not. Compare like with like. Prove that the hierarchical thing is at play regarding Asiana. If we're to go by anecdotes, I can conclude a lot of things about Americans I've worked with, or Germans I've worked with. I can prove anything I find agreeable with the right anecdote.

Wow, you have really low standards. I bet you've also found well written overly technical ramblings proving that 9/11 was an inside job and the moon landing was a hoax. Nice that you finally expose your ridiculously flawed standards.

I've written other comments you illiterate arsehole.

Because a terrorist working for the North Korean government is not really a military person. Right. I gotcha.

Illogical? What, that the Korean language explanation doesn't exactly explain anything given the facts of actual language use?

"Therefore, I can allow myself to believe the most stupid shit, because I don't have to prove my stupid shit to anyone but my own prejudices"

Strawman. The point is "inherent weaknesses" of a culture has NOT been proven to be a factor. There's nothing more sad than people who jump on the "I hate political correctness" bandwagon to try to gain credibility when it has nothing to do with political correctness. How about the fact that it's likely wrong? No, paint it as some white-hate thing because otherwise you have nothing but an unsourced anecdote to "back up" your ignorance. I can make up anecdotes to prove anything I believe to if I were as desperate as you.

Bias towards facts and evidence is a good kind of bias. "Equally valid" does not mean "equally correct". To be biased towards the fact that, had Gladwell quoted the pilot transcripts correctly, his thesis about Korean language playing a part in the accident would be completely moot is AT THE EXPENSE of Gladwell's view that it did. You did not show that the bias in this case was wrong.

"Different cultures have inherent strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, it must be the cause of this aircraft accident". Sorry, but it is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. You have to prove the link, not merely make an assertion that one fact somehow translates into another.

As another commenter noted, the blog author does acknowledge one of the military attacks was caused by the plane wandering away from its route. YOU, however, say "said military attacks", completely missing the author's other point that one of the attacks was when an NK operative planted a bomb on a plan in ABU FUCKING DHABI. Furthermore, he didn't deny that they were pilot error. He denies that it is a KOREAN CULTURE error. Gladwell's thesis about the Korean language was plain wrong. Your "pilot error" is not even wrong.

There's nothing wrong with bias. As for inflammatory, maybe, if you have comprehension problems, as you evidently show.

Yes, but how much of that error is cultural and not fundamental human error? That's what's being discussed here. Yes it is pilot error, and yes it is as dangerous as flying a plane into the ground. Why isn't this kind of cultural explanations given for airline crashes of other countries and their airlines?

I can't believe how so many Slashdotters willingly up vote this unsourced anecdote.

Can't they just stumble across us? Do they have to go out of their way?

Maybe consciousness is more complicated to develop than advanced space flight?

Maybe it's not just a matter of electrical efficiency? Say what you like about human brains, but as far as we know, have only evolved once on Earth in 4 billion years, whereas eyes evolved at least 40 times. There is something to be said about a brain that's hacked together that can potentially understand relativistic equations.

What if the aliens require massive computing power? The large mass of sentient brains of this planet could be a very rare thing in the cosmos. Complex chemistry for life is common all over the universe. Maybe multicellular life is also common in this universe. But a massively parallel simulating biological computer is probably rare enough to encounter that it's easier for them to coopt rather than engineer.

It's not hard to imagine, at least for me, that an alien race may find it easier to build on biological computing technology than it is to keep pushing the boundaries of physics for smaller non-biological computers.