Surprise Endings are Good
Don’t tell me how it ends! We love the surprise of an unpredictable turn in the story. I won’t spoil it for you, but you know what I mean about mind-blowing plot twists in films like Arrival (2016) and The Sixth Sense (1999). Novels and movies with predictable endings are less dramatic and less memorable.
My wife and I have watched some excellent television series, some of which run for many seasons. One of the genres we binge-watch is the crime-solving type -- especially when the series provides in-depth character development so that we grow to love the personality and quirks of the investigators. We often watch the program on Netflix well after it has aired on live television. Watching shows later has advantages. You can check reviews to ensure the series ran multiple seasons and was highly rated. The disadvantage is the risk of coming across a spoiler that gives away a plot twist.
We were a few seasons into watching a particularly good series -- far enough that we had come to know and love the main characters. One day my wife was having lunch with her talkative mother and mentioned this series. My mother-in-law then blurted out, “oh, is that the one where Detective X’s wife is killed?” We were not up to that season. We didn’t know. We could never have predicted the writers would kill off this character. To her credit, my wife kept this particularly heart-wrenching twist to herself as we continued watching. She only told me that her mom had given away a crucial plot twist, but she didn’t divulge any further details. We didn’t reach that gut-wrenching episode until much later. It was only then that my wife pointed out the unexpected twist that her mother had given away previously.
Television crime series are not the only entertainment with unpredictable twists. In the 1980s, a popular children’s book series called “Choose Your Own Adventure” invited the reader to make a choice at the end of every couple of pages. Each decision sent them to a page number in a different part of the book, where the story would continue based on their choice. After a few more pages, another choice would be presented and the story would again fork into different paths. Eventually, the selected story path would reach a conclusion, sometimes a happy ending of the protagonist, and sometimes an unfortunate end. It was usually difficult to anticipate the consequences of the early choices to choose the path to the happy ending.
An early computer game, The Oregon Trail, was similarly challenging. Originally text-based, many of the choices one made would result in progress for your frontier party to make its way to Oregon. However, the game could end short of that goal somewhat unpredictably. You could take an innocent drink from a cool stream and fall ill from dysentery. You could suddenly get bitten by a colorful snake and die of poisonous venom.
Fictional stories are more dramatic and compelling with some good plot twists, however, as a society, we prefer stability and reliability.
Surprise Endings are Bad
We generally do not like surprises from our tools, since unexpected behavior usually indicates a failure. Technological products that fail often result in disgruntled customers demanding refunds and posting unfavorable reviews. Technological product failures that harm people or property often result in lawsuits and unfavorable publicity. However, while engineers can prepare for some potential issues, it is impossible to anticipate every possible situation.
On January 28, 1986, I was a student driving home after a class at Calvin College when I heard it on the radio. The space shuttle Challenger had exploded. In the coming hours, we learned that the seven astronauts aboard the spacecraft had been killed. In the coming months, it became clear that O-rings on the booster rockets were not sufficiently reliable at the cold temperatures of that launch morning. Their failure resulted in the infamous explosion. (The figure on the right shows a diagram locating the O-rings within the booster system.)
Technological failure is a surprise ending that engineers work hard to avoid. Engineers are called to hold public safety as the paramount goal in their design work. Ensuring that a technological product is safe requires sufficient analysis and testing so that users can be confident the product will not fail under normal use. Users expect it will not fail after repeated use, over a reasonably long time. They even expect it will not fail after abnormal use, at least to some extent.
The space shuttle O-rings were not meant to operate in frigid temperatures and were only tested down to a temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The decision to launch the vehicle outside of its specified operating range was a fateful choice, resulting in catastrophic failure.
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were designed according to best practices of the time and thus built to withstand the stresses of extreme weather. The terrorists’ fateful decision to smash into the buildings with fuel-laden aircraft forced the buildings outside of their specified operating conditions, resulting in catastrophic failure.
Engineers who seek to put their faith into practice should see product safety as paramount, in part because we are commanded to love our neighbor. Whether designing smartphones or space shuttles, whether designing ice scrapers or skyscrapers, engineers have a responsibility to ensure their designs are safe. However, the extent of their responsibility is not infinite. Engineers must anticipate and design against many possible future scenarios, but not to anticipate all possible outcomes and certainly not operating conditions that are reasonably believed to be impossible.
No design is ever completely safe. It is not possible to develop a product that is guaranteed to cause no harm under any condition. At some point, the added effort and cost to improve safety produces diminishing returns. A product must be reasonably safe, even very safe. But there are reasons an engineer might be justified in declining to build in further safety features once a certain threshold is reached. Adding safety features may unacceptably reduce product usability, e.g., enclosing a hammer with rubber foam would prevent many accidental injuries, but the hammer would no longer be functional. Adding safety features may increase the cost of the product beyond what most can afford. Adding safety features is not always a net gain -- in some cases improving safety in one element is a trade-off that reduces safety in a different element of the same system.
Trade-offs are inherent in engineering design. Another constraint we face while attempting to design tools with high utility and high safety is the limited availability of resources, including raw materials and energy. Engineers putting faith into practice should also see stewardship of creation as part of their calling.
Even with the smartest designs that anticipate many failure modes, provide safety mechanisms, and are well tested, things can go wrong. Unanticipated consequences can never be fully eliminated. Sometimes the surprise endings are bad.
Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
Sometimes technology fails us in ways that no one could foresee. Who do we blame when the designer, manufacturer, and maintainer all did their jobs right and yet something still goes wrong? We do not blame, we mourn. We lament our human frailty, our inadequate wisdom, and paltry imagination. Though we are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet we are finite creatures of dust. We are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. We are not God.
Sometimes technology fails us because of corruption, negligence, or malice. When preventable failures cause harm, we can sometimes blame engineers for the foreseeable flaws in their designs. Sometimes the design is correct and robust, but it is manufactured or maintained poorly. We might then blame the manufacturer or the maintenance service for the resulting harm.
We blame, but we also mourn. We lament our human fallenness, the weakness of human flesh. This is not the way it was supposed to be. In the beginning, the creation, including humanity, was good. It was characterized by shalom, a flourishing peace. Though we were made good, sin has stained us and all creation.
Our mourning might lead us to despair. Despair might lead us to anger. In our anger, we might reason that while humans might be prone to failure and corruption, God is not. God is ultimately in control. God is good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. Why, then, does God let evil persist?
Asking the question is already a hint at the answer. Only a creature granted the gift of free will would be in a position to consider asking. God made humans his last and best creature on the sixth day of his creating. Unlike any other creature, he made humans in his image. Unlike any other creature, he gave Adam and Eve the power to make a moral choice. Of all the fruit-bearing trees in the garden, humans were forbidden from eating food of only one. Our collective fateful choice to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an act of free will.
God surely knew that we would choose foolishly. God surely knew that all creation would suffer as a result. God surely knew he would sacrifice his only son to redeem the fallen creation. God had the power to prevent all that, yet he chose to make us humans, not robots, even at such a terrible cost. If God could create any number of possible worlds, and he foreknew how each would turn out, why would he choose one that he knew included the fall of humankind? Asking the question is already a hint at the answer. If God determined that man should not sin, then creating a world without the possibility of sin would imply that he did not give humans a true choice. Of all the wondrous aspects of creation, God’s endowment of humans with free will was perhaps his greatest creative act.
The God-given ability of humans to make a moral choice is truly astounding. Consider how our most advanced Artificial Intelligence is still simply a set of algorithms and state machines that carry out computations according to the rules we dictate. Machines that think can only do what we tell them to do. Any apparent choices they make are simply randomized or purely determined by our program driven by the inputs we provide. I can imagine how to write complex software so that a computer recognizes images better than I can myself. I can imagine that one could construct a computer system that plays chess better than a grandmaster or a system that gives a more accurate analysis of medical conditions than a human medical expert. Computers can be designed to do many things. But I cannot imagine how to endow a computer with free will. Such a feat is beyond my comprehension.
Despite the cost, I suspect that our good, all-powerful, all-knowing God gave us the gift of moral choice to make us fully human. God did not bring evil to the world, but he allowed humans to choose evil. God granted humans the ability to decide to turn from him in disobedience.
Nevertheless, when evil harms us, God grieves for us and turns it to our good. Already in Genesis, we see this pattern again and again. Joseph’s brothers chose evil and sold him into slavery. Yet God used this situation to raise Joseph to be the highest official in Egypt next to Pharaoh. Joseph later assured his brothers: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. “ (Genesis 50:20) God’s plan included miraculous dreams for Pharaoh that Joseph interpreted as a prophecy about the future seven years of abundance and then seven years of famine. It also incorporated technology, as Joseph directed surplus food to be collected in each city, preserved in storehouses against the coming years of famine.
Harm can come from natural disasters such as famine. It can also come from failures in our technology. Engineers should work diligently to design technology to be as safe and reliable as we reasonably can. Those that use technology should be able to trust it -- conditionally. However, no one should ultimately rely on technology or people. Our ultimate trust should be in God. In this world, he will turn evil to our good, and in the next world, ultimately, he will wipe away every tear. This is one happy ending we can predict with certainty.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
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