Substitution Test
Updated 2026-08-09
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The substitution test is a fairness instrument for judging error: put another person, with the same qualifications and the same experience, in the same situation, and ask whether they would have made the same mistake. If the answer is yes, the failure belongs to the system, the environment or the process, and not to the individual. The test separates personal negligence from system-induced error, and it protects the intuition that if the best employee would have pressed the wrong button under that pressure, the button was the problem. Qualification: the test is a counterfactual, and its answer is only as good as the honesty of the replacement scenario you imagine.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Fairness instrument: run the replacement scenario before assigning blame for an error. - Necessity probe: swap or remove one element at a time to see whether the outcome changes. - Equivalence trap: check whether a substitute is genuinely equivalent before calling it a replacement.
Anchor fast decisions
The test works as a controlled substitution: hold the situation fixed and swap the operator. If the error survives the swap, it was produced by the situation; if it disappears, it belonged to the operator. The logic is the same as an ablation experiment, where removing a component and observing the result reveals what that component was doing.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Dekkerverified
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