Regarding your first point, I think that the toxic culture around start-ups and such even incentivises people to be bad at gauging risk. Each funding round means making more outlandish promises, as investors keep expecting you to grow how fast you're growing; do more, with less.
I have a few disabilities that mean that I'm often unable to do all the basic things a person needs. I've got very good at gauging risk and balancing my resources accordingly, but there have been times where things are just too stacked up against me and there's little chance of a win outcome, but also no space for losing. I'm talking situations like being miserable from being bed bound for a day or so and needing to make it over to my computer to hang out with friends, somehow obtaining food and water en route. In a weird way, I sympathise with the CEO, because I know how desperation distorts perspective.
The worst decisions are made when I have decided to try to do the big difficult thing (food, then computer), but I realise part way through that I don't have the capacity to do it all. The smart thing would be to adjust my goals and get food and medication, and retreat to bed. However, that outcome doesn't feel worth the painful ordeal of leaving bed in the first place. Had I known it would've ended like this, I wouldn't have attempted it, but I was rolling the dice.
Usually, my original decision to leave bed is good; I understand relative risk levels and I'm aware of the chance of failure and how to mitigate the fallout. The point of failure isn't actually the point where the submarine explodes, or the sad cripple who pushed herself too far has to sleep on the floor because she can't make it to her computer or her desk. The failure point is when you know that unless you alter your goal, you're fucked.
If this CEO had made the right choices, his company probably would've died. He made negligent choices in building the submarine because he couldn't afford to do it properly (and thus shouldn't have even attempted this silly ordeal), but he had already spent millions of other people's money, trying to fulfill impossible promises. I wonder at what point he realised his stated goals were impossible, and that he was just desperately stringing along investors hoping for a hail Mary stunt that could buy him more time. I wonder if it was always the plan for him to go on the sub, or whether his presence there was an attempt to assuage anxious ticketholders. I wonder if he had any sense to fear for his life or if his only fears were for his company.
Absolutely fuck this guy. His pointless folly has killed people. The people who bought tickets were perhaps fools too, just in a different way, but I also believe they were at least partly scammed by the CEO guy making impossible promises. Fucking rich people and their vanity projects. And yet, I feel like he was also a victim of the toxic system that made him, in a way. Ugh, I have a lot of complex feelings about this whole thing.
