Originally Posted by
LarryJ
Yeah I was referring to this exact post:
No.
Certification rules require that, as the AoA increases, the control forces necessary to hold the increasing AoA increase proportionally. In other words, as the AoA increases, the nose gets "heavier". The greater nose-up pitching moment from the larger, farther-forward, nacelles negated the natural increase in pitch forces. MCAS increases those pitch forces by introducing a nose-down bias through the application of stabilizer trim. Without this, the aircraft would not meet certification requirements.
In other words, I thought (incorrectly), up until yesterday, that planes were allowed pitch up (regardless of the reason) and as long as pilots were trained to counteract this manually, the plane would be good to go. I thought that it was perfectly okay to have a plane that pitches up when thrust is applied and requires the pilots to push down on the nose. This apparently is not the case. Although I wonder if the rules are different for military and experimental aircraft, or do they apply to all aircraft regardless of type? In any case, I thought that the software's only purpose was to make the MAX behave like the NG, and did not realize that there were additional regulatory requirements that would not be met if not for its presence. I learn new stuff here all the time. Thank you for the information. 
A good deal of the aviation terminology I know, I learned from FT and from various websites that I found after posts here got me curious about something. One of my favorite things to do on UA flights at least is to listen to Channel 9/From The Flight Deck, when it's available. Before I joined FT, listening to ATC would have been like listening to a different language, but now, I can understand most, but not all, of what's being said.