The cockpits of airliners and the control rooms for nuclear power plants are designed such that making a change to the system is also an act of communication when there is more than one pilot or operator present (which is the usual state of affairs). In particular, one of the reasons a cockpit has hundreds of physical switches and levers instead of, e.g., one big touchscreen in front of each pilot is to make it easier for a pilot to observe accurately the changes made by the other pilot.
Every pilot’s needing to memorize what every switch and lever does raises training costs, but the airlines have been willing to pay that additional cost because the experience of the industry strongly suggests that cockpit designs with hundreds of physical switches and levers have lower rates of fatal misunderstandings between the pilots.
The cockpits of airliners and the control rooms for nuclear power plants are designed such that making a change to the system is also an act of communication when there is more than one pilot or operator present (which is the usual state of affairs). In particular, one of the reasons a cockpit has hundreds of physical switches and levers instead of, e.g., one big touchscreen in front of each pilot is to make it easier for a pilot to observe accurately the changes made by the other pilot.
Every pilot’s needing to memorize what every switch and lever does raises training costs, but the airlines have been willing to pay that additional cost because the experience of the industry strongly suggests that cockpit designs with hundreds of physical switches and levers have lower rates of fatal misunderstandings between the pilots.