[SystemSafety] Australian System Safety Conference 2018, May 23 to 25, Melbourne

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 2017-12-08 10:08 , Fredrik Asplund wrote:
>> Whether the braking system on my bicycle is dependable is prima facie a technical engineering.
>> issue. It has two aspects: (a) whether the design and implementation of the system makes it 
>> effective and highly reliable; (b) whether I maintain it appropriately.
>> (a) is not at all cultural.
> 
> I am probably misunderstanding some part of the argument. How is (a) not dependent on the culture of the bike manufacturer?

The same way in which the correct proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not dependent upon the
psychology of Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor and the culture which nourishes them and which enables
them to think about it to the exclusion of almost anything else for many hours per day.

The same way in which the five-sigma evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson is not dependent
upon the organisational culture of CERN.

Whether it exists is dependent on cultural factors. When it exists, its properties (for my bicycle
brakes, physical; for the proof, mathematical and logical; for the evidence, statistical) are not
necessarily dependent on any cultural factors at all.

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
MoreInCommon
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de







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