It seems appropriate to report a rationality failure from this week.

It was 8:00 AM and I was sitting in the window seat of a Boeing 737, toward the back of the plane. The aircraft is preparing to back away from the gate. I hear the engines power up and almost immediately the view out my window is obscured by a thick cloud of smoke or vapor.

I hear a few other voices in the cabin comment on this with varying levels of alarm, but nobody actually does anything beyond make a remark to their neighbor. A few seconds later, I detect a strong acrid smell - the man sitting beside me comments that he smells it as well. I have never experienced anything like this is dozens of flights on jets.

At this point, nobody, including me, seems to have any plans to do anything - except my wife, who is sitting behind me, who almost immediately starts to stand up and wave for the attention of a flight attendant.

Interestingly, several people around her, including me, start trying to reassure her that nothing serious is wrong. I hear a voice say, "Somebody on the ground would have noticed and said something." I myself say, "I think it's just water vapor," which is stupid because I can smell fumes of some kind.

My wife succeeds in informing the flight attendant, and she goes to report this to the pilot. A few moments later the pilot comes over the intercom and explains that the thick plume of smoke is totally normal in cold weather, and the flight proceeds without incident.

So, nothing bad happened, but I consider this to be a huge rationality failure on my part, because I not only fell prey to the Bystander Effect, but I tried to dissuade my wife from shaking free of the Bystander Effect in a situation where I really had no privileged information. I later thanked her and she explicitly acknowledged that she didn't care if she looked like a fool, she wasn't going to let herself become a victim of the Bystander Effect.