Program logic bugs vs input/environmental errors

[Ola Fosheim Grostad via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 4 October 2014 at 11:39:24 UTC, Joseph Rushton 
Wakeling wrote:
> The thing is, the privilege to make that kind of business 
> decision is wholly dependent on the fact that there are no 
> meaningful safety issues involved.

Surgeons can do remote surgery using VR equipment. There are 
obvious dangerous technical factors there, but you have to weigh 
that up to getting an emergency operation done by the most 
exerienced surgeon in the country. So it is a probabilistic 
calculation. From an absolute safety point of view, you should 
not do that. The comm link might fail and that could be serious. 
It is a system that might create extra complications. From a 
probabilistic point of view it might lead to the highest survial 
rate and make local surgeons better, so it might be worth the 
risk when you amortize risk over N operations.