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

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

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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