Prospector, agreed. You don't get off a ticket for running a red light because people do it all the time without getting caught. You don't get away with murder just because some people do. Collins made a mistake, he broke the rules and exhibited poor airmanship, but he didn't set out to kill anyone. This is why I tried to reduce the behaviour, the error, to statistics: How many pilots would have done what Collins did?
I suggest very few. It is an approach I used to try to get Paragraph377 to rethink his position. If he was an airline pilot, and I have doubts he is a pilot, he has been brainwashed. That is the danger of NZALPA: groupthink.
Anyway, getting back to statistics, we know one pilot did what Collins did: Collins.
I am also trying to explain that it was the outcome that changed the decision from poor airmanship to shocking error.
The mind is a funny thing. We all make poor decisions. Clever people do stupid things, without thinking. That's the reason we need rules. Pilots should obey the rules, but pilots are humans, and humans tend to observe rules that make sense, that seem important.
Collins should not have descended, regardless of the outcome, which we are aware of but he was not - it being in the future. He shouldn't have descended because it broke the rules in place to ensure a safe flight, and because he was flying VFR on instruments, which is forbidden. Why? He had reasons and he had justifications but he was wrong on all counts.
There is a point where we all must take responsibility for what we do. A surgeon can't defend an action because he was trained a certain way. An engineer can't blame a collapsed bridge on his school. Collins cannot defend his decision to descend because he wasn't trained to fly in whiteout. We can say it would have made a difference had he been, but he went outside his task and his training. He took a bet on his skill and he lost. Along with a lot of other people.
If my exposition seems clumsy or waffly, presumptuous even, sorry.