3 ms·

There are still multiple causes of failure there though. Why was the chain manufactured with a weak link? Why wasn't the weak link discovered during periodic in

by ummonk 5y ago

There are still multiple causes of failure there though. Why was the chain manufactured with a weak link? Why wasn't the weak link discovered during periodic inspection / testing? Why wasn't there a second chain to add redundancy and back up the first?

rramadass 5y ago
You have missed the point. It is not that there cannot be multiple points of failure; it is that it takes just one point of failure to bring the entire system down. As long as there are dependant and moving parts failure will be inherent in the system; it cannot be "inspected/tested" away. Adding redundancy does not remove failure it merely transforms/postpones it. Failure is the "natural" state; we intuitively understand this through the concept of entropy always increasing (or more colloquially; "everything is going to shit") unless we do something about it i.e. expend energy and do work.
roenxi 5y ago
And practically, a company is built to succeed and designed with centralised executive power (end of the day, the CEO). If it fails then there is always a deeper level of accountability that can be singled out as a cause. Therefore there has to be a single cause of failure, because all else failing the CEO has mucked up. And practically speaking there is probably a root cause somewhere closer to the problem. "There are multiple causes of failure" style arguments are technically true, but also the sort of argument that people make when they aren't going to do anything to improve. There are many things that could change. There aren't many reasons why there was a failure. > Why was the chain manufactured with a weak link? I don't think it is feasible to manufacture a chain without a weakest link. The materials science requirements to produce truly identical links are extreme.
- kqr 5y ago
  The CEO does not operate in a vacuum -- they, too, can be the victim of the circumstances they find themselves in. By saying "person X screwed up" you're making it impossible for yourself to learn important things that could prevent the same problem from occurring again. This is true regardless of the level of the person you're blaming. The people who truly improve systems are, in my experience, the ones that do consider multiple causes of failure. The ones who latch onto narrow chains tend to fix symptoms and then think they're done.

by ummonk 5y ago

rramadass 5y ago

You have missed the point. It is not that there cannot be multiple points of failure; it is that it takes just one point of failure to bring the entire system down. As long as there are dependant and moving parts failure will be inherent in the system; it cannot be "inspected/tested" away. Adding redundancy does not remove failure it merely transforms/postpones it. Failure is the "natural" state; we intuitively understand this through the concept of entropy always increasing (or more colloquially; "everything is going to shit") unless we do something about it i.e. expend energy and do work.

roenxi 5y ago

And practically, a company is built to succeed and designed with centralised executive power (end of the day, the CEO). If it fails then there is always a deeper level of accountability that can be singled out as a cause. Therefore there has to be a single cause of failure, because all else failing the CEO has mucked up. And practically speaking there is probably a root cause somewhere closer to the problem. "There are multiple causes of failure" style arguments are technically true, but also the sort of argument that people make when they aren't going to do anything to improve. There are many things that could change. There aren't many reasons why there was a failure. > Why was the chain manufactured with a weak link? I don't think it is feasible to manufacture a chain without a weakest link. The materials science requirements to produce truly identical links are extreme.

kqr 5y ago
The CEO does not operate in a vacuum -- they, too, can be the victim of the circumstances they find themselves in. By saying "person X screwed up" you're making it impossible for yourself to learn important things that could prevent the same problem from occurring again. This is true regardless of the level of the person you're blaming. The people who truly improve systems are, in my experience, the ones that do consider multiple causes of failure. The ones who latch onto narrow chains tend to fix symptoms and then think they're done.