Trust but verify
Trust but verify
A video showing beans being poured into a cup sitting atop of a scale, atop of another scale. Both scales measure the beans concurrently.
I've always hated the phrase "trust but verify."
It's a nonsensical oxymoron. It's like saying "I trust my wife not to cheat on me, but I verify it by having her followed." Then you don't trust your wife dude
I'll get off my soapbox now.
That's why in Germany we instead say: Trust is good, but verification is better
I think you understand it correctly. 😂
Itsironic.webm
It’s a risk management strategy where you only do checks afterwards.
“Trust” means that you don’t make processes wait on passing checks before proceeding, because that would be expensive and/or slow.
“Verify” means that you have a separate process that comes through and runs checks afterwards, maybe on only some of the things you trusted, to catch issues.
It’s ideal when you have high-volume and/or low-latency processes where failures are low stakes but you still want to catch systemic issues eventually.
It’s related to the idea that “the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero”.
I trust that you know what you are doing, however rules say I must verify your work to ensure no errors (or ensure fairness.)
In my work it refers moreso to how you speak with the client, while still needing to verify their claims.
To verify you’d have to set a calibrated weight on there. They could be incorrect by the same amount. The scales have good precision with one another, but the accuracy is unknown.
How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can't even trust his own pants.
Two scales is not enough assurance. You need three.
You also need to triple-weigh your beans after grinding.
Maybe they're using a similar system to O2 sensors in SCUBA rebreathers. 3 identical sensors measure the same thing. When one sensor drifts, the computer uses the value from the 2 concurring sensors, and throws an error to let you know something is wrong.
That system is life-critical, so these beans must be about the same importance.