[trustable-software] We've got this all wrong !

[MacIntosh, JP]

Edmund is right, we need an empiricist system. Ironically, we actually live in one & always have done but the contrived split between in vivo & in vitro or wild & lab that's prevailed in science for a few centuries has obscured that. Now the blinkers are coming off. The first reaction is utter bafflement at the complexity of reality, which refuses to stop changing. It's always done so but we'd rendered ourselves insensate to that. We can now pick up concepts like Synthetic Environments based on principles of Verification & Validation anew. What was formerly the province of the defence sector because it was too big complicated & expensive, is now within the grasp of the many. Before we experience another "agile" gold rush, we need people like your good selves to think how design an evolutionary framework along the lines Edmund is suggesting. It's not a council of perfection or despair. Given the stakes are always rising & the mess left from the recent few decades, there's plenty of incentive to work from a low base & achieve significant gains. Ever the optimist but the very fact you guys are having such a conversation & recognising the challenges for what they are gives me some confidence we're not being idealistic at all. The mother of necessity is sure to bite. J


Professor JP MacIntosh
Leadership Professorial Research Fellow, OVPR &
Director of the Institute for Strategy, Resilience & Security

+44 (0)20 3108 5068 (D1)
+44 (0)20 3108 5074 (D2)



-----Original Message-----
From: trustable-software <trustable-software-bounces at lists.trustable.io> On Behalf Of trustable at panic.fluff.org
Sent: 16 April 2018 11:40
To: Trustable software engineering discussion <trustable-software at lists.trustable.io>
Subject: Re: [trustable-software] We've got this all wrong !

On Mon, 16 Apr 2018, MacIntosh, JP wrote:

>
> I'd not want to throw baby out with bath water though. We need to be 
> clear about how the composability challenges would be addressed 
> differently in an evolutionary system running at a pace we cannot 
> bring to a juddering deceleration.

    ....

> There's the potential to blamed for crying wolf & ambulance chasing 
> but a well calibrated statement could cut through. I'd suggest it 
> includes the inability of cyber insurance to price the risks being run.
>

  So I think that a risk based approach is in fact all we have available to us. The question here is do we believe system to be predicable and a continuous system or do we believe it to have a number of descrete events

For example, the behaviour of financial markets appear to have radical changes where traditional statistical prediction techniques fail, while the statistical mechanics of quantum theory many very good reliable predictions.

I would suggest that we are trying to get things to the point where they are more predicatable.. But that means we have to have a way to experiment on a system and confirm it's behaviours. With Software we very rarely develop a system twice in parallel and compare outcomes. As I raised earlier today we have failed to in fact verify and validate requirements.

We can't even agree on a way to do this..

How do we make this even plausible
Edmund


--
========================================================================
Edmund J. Sutcliffe                     Thoughtful Solutions; Creatively
<edmunds at panic.fluff.org>               Implemented and Communicated
<http://panic.fluff.org>                +44 (0) 7976 938841


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