When you’re flying merrily along in the clouds, blinded from the outside world but comforted by the familiar hum of the warm engine, the only thing you have to guide you safely toward the runway is data, and the technology that makes the data meaningful. The instruments process the data to tell you where you are, where you are going and how you’re supposed to get there. The pilot’s job is to monitor the instruments and use the information they present to arrive safely at the destination.
But sometimes the instruments lie, either because they are broken, or because the data is bad, or maybe both. The attitude indicator may lure you into believing you are making a gentle turn toward the final approach course, when in fact you are spiraling toward the ground, toward certain death.
A good instrument pilot can prevent any such catastrophe from developing by learning to spot the early warning signs of instrument failure — a drop in vacuum pressure, or when two instruments that are supposed to be telling the same story, don’t quite agree, leaving you to turn to other sources for the truth. Unfortunately for the pilot this is much easier said than done. Sometimes you just don’t see the poop until it hits the prop, and at that point, all you can do is react.
But there’s hope for us hapless cloud hackers, and that hope lives inside our brains. While we can’t always trust the physical sensations we experience while flying, we can train our minds and our eyes (and if you will allow me some zen-like poetic license, also our mind’s eye) to scan for the truth, constantly and steadily.