I do safety work, and one of the key concepts is that idiots exist.
Say there’s a something so blatantly, incredibly stupid that only someone in the bottom 0.01% would do it (say, pushing their hand into boiling acid).
If 5 people walk past every hour, you’ll lose the first hand in April on average.
Even if you’re confident that the only people working a task are competent, they will eventually do something idiotic. Someone will have multiple nights with barely any sleep, or work really long shifts, or have a terrible event in their personal life. Eventually, someone will be trying to do their job while not fit for the task.
The concept of idiot proofing can sound derogatory or elitist at times, but the reality is that any one of us could end up being the idiot given bad enough circumstances.
I always design things assuming the user is a complete idiot. This is mostly since I know what I can be like on a bad day.
I recently saw the results of someone else not following this. It cooked a £30k piece of kit, and almost completely scuppered the job. I had even explicitly warned them that the wiring was a danger. “No one would be stupid enough to plug it in like that.” 6 weeks later…
Did they use the same style and gender of connector for both power and signal?
They ended up with a gender bender cable. It was supposed to always stay attached to 1 bit of kit. That kit could run on 7-48V. Unfortunately, they unplugged it from the wrong end. When they plugged it back in, they put it into the 2nd power source connector. A 28V lipo was wired directly into a regulated 12V bus. That bus apparently was also connected to internal parts, and wasn’t protected against backflow (defence in depth failure). Magic smoke was lost.
Yep, even the smartest of us are idiots when we’re not on our game, in a hurry or we get complacent. I’m the technical lead for my team, and I still catch myself periodically doing stupid stuff because I’m rushing or multitasking.
There’s a reason I work to automate anything I can to save me from my own idiocy.
I don’t know why this popped into my head, though I gotta share:
His Optometrist looks at him and dramatically proclaims, “LOOK AT ME WITH YOUR GOOD EYE!” in an oddly regal tone.
I don’t know either.
That is a man who has been sued because one of his patients made that mistake.
But even that was after he got sued by the guy who got brain ameobas from not boiling it at all.
In his defence – look at society.
I can’t do that, you see I had this eye doctor that…
