[SystemSafety] Standards Committees (was Re: Fetzer)

[Michael Holloway]

Greetings,

On 6/20/19, 11:57 AM, Peter Bernard Ladkin" wrote:

> On 2019-06-20 16:17 , Tom Ferrell wrote:
>> Perhaps you meant this as a rhetorical question...
> I read it as Martyn asking us to try to explain why ...
>> People reject what they don't understand.
> ... I think it is an epistemic issue: people reject what they know .
> But I also don't think this is the main factor in play. ...

I agree with much of what Peter wrote about the social factors that are in
play in standards committees. I'm writing this message because (1)
sometimes I can't help myself, and (2) based on my experience there is a
third factor that is at least as important.

Using the phrase others have used, people reject what they are obnoxiously
told they *must* accept. At least within the aviation community, supporters
of formal methods for a long time did far more harm to their cause than
good. The situation has changed a little bit recently, but not enough.

I doubt that even Alzheimer's (or some other form of dementia) will cause
me to ever forget what happened shortly after the publication of the
National Research Council's *Software for Dependable Systems: Sufficient
Evidence?* An avid formal methodist stood before a packed room of engineers
at an FAA Systems, Software, and Airborne Electronic Hardware conference,
and told the audience they were ignorant and irresponsible for not
requiring the use of formal methods for critical systems. Unwittingly he
provided a classic case study in how to *not *win friends or influence
people.

The residual harm from that talk (and others like it) still remains, and
likely will until all the people in the room that day retire. As much as we
may all want people to be able to separate messenger and message, few
people are able to do it well. This difficulty is even greater when the
messenger insults the collective intelligence of an entire industry. Only a
handful of folks can laugh at the messenger's own ignorance and have their
judgement of the message be unaffected. I've learned this the hard way,
having been an obnoxious messenger myself more times than I can count.

--
cMh

*Presuppositions predetermine plausibility.*
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