[SystemSafety] "Lack of Imagination" greatest problem with hazard analysis

[Robert P. Schaefer]

this, more or less, points to the phase of requirements elicitation, and requirements elicitation (from my experience) is a political, 
not a solely technical, domain.

> On Sep 6, 2019, at 9:28 AM, Peter Bernard Ladkin <ladkin at causalis.com> wrote:
> 
> Well, just to keep us on our toes, here is another quote from Risks-31.40
> 
> Apparently those of us who perform hazard analysis are guilty of lacking imagination. Of a solution
> to this issue (perhaps micro-doses of LSD?) there is no suggestion. However, there is some rather
> implausible analysis of some airplane accidents with the root cause identified as ....... lack of
> imagination. I'll post the URL when it comes up on the Risks Forum WWW site.
> 
> 
>> Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2019 13:28:17 -0400
>> From: "R. G. Newbury" <newbury at mandamus.org>
>> Subject: Frequency-sensitive trains and the lack of failure-mode analysis
>>  (Re: RISKS-31.39)
>> 
>>> Identifying all these failure modes in advance obviously takes more
>>> expertise and foresight -- but is that really too much to ask of the
>>> relevant experts?
>> 
>> It is a lack of imagination. The 'relevant experts' are often what Nassim
>> Taleb calls Intelligent Yet Idiot. The experts transgress beyond their
>> expertise and wrongly (and disastrously) believe that NOTHING CAN GO WRONG,
>> beyond what they have considered. They lack the imagination to see other
>> scenarios. In Taleb's words, they cannot see black swans, therefore no black
>> swan can exist.
>> 
>> What is actually needed in the planning/design stage is to present the
>> unexpected scenario to people who face the real situation every day, and ask
>> them ``X has just failed. What can happen next? What do you do? What can
>> happen then?''  And present it to *lots of people in the relevant
>> field*. Some one of them will likely have experienced it, or recognized it
>> lurking just out of sight, and *not gone there*.
> 
> 
> 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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