Agreed, but with engineering though it's never that binary. Each dimension is a continuum. You have to end up picking some point on each dimension that is eith

Agreed, but with engineering though it's never that binary. Each dimension is a continuum. You have to end up picking some point on each dimension that is either good enough or the best you can do with your budget also considering that you have to balance this across many many individual decisions. Prioritising these decisions against each other is also done with incomplete information. As mentioned in the article engineered items are not in a binary state of faulty or not faulty - it's more 'analog' with physical engineering. Rather they have varying degrees of resilience to different often competing failure modes. And changing requirements can also alter whether something is regarded as adequate or inadequate - eg earthquake strengthening standards for older buildings are a good example. Engineering isn't about perfection (it can't be), it's about designing solutions that satisfy requirements and specifications as best as possible within constraints while juggling inevitable tradeoffs.