[cmurf]

There's a Faustian bargain made by accepting so much abstraction from the true nature of an airplane by using software, and yet also that abstraction is not absolute. Pilots are made responsible for knowing all of the aircraft's behaviors, with full abstraction (normal mode), as well as partial abstractions (error and failure modes, of which there can be quite a few for a specific made/model, many of which must be inferred rather than being clearly displayed). If pilots get confused, however complicated and unintuitive the system behavior, they are blamed.

The more "piloting" computers are doing, it seems appropriate that they will be increasingly, properly, accused of the equivalent of "pilot error". And yet here is Boeing, taking more and more piloting responsibility, while still blaming the pilots when that doesn't work out. It's a deification of engineering: when things go properly and safely, praise engineering; when things fail, blame the pilots.