0fc66fedcb
Standardize draft articles with YAML frontmatter including title, date, topics, related, and abstract. Expand README drafts section into a table listing all drafts with topics. Add "Testing Telos" to published articles.
15 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
15 lines
1.2 KiB
Markdown
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title: "The Oracle Problem"
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date: 2026-04-20
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topics: [philosophy, epistemology, craft]
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related: []
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abstract: >
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The uniquely testing-flavoured version of "how do we know?" is: how do we know what "correct" means? An oracle is whatever tells a test whether an output is right, and in practice oracles are requirements, expectations, customer satisfaction, and regulator sign-off — all of which can conflict.
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---
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The Oracle Problem. This is the most glaring missing piece. Your entire framework asks how do we know? — but you haven't yet tackled the uniquely testing-flavoured version: how do we know what "correct" means? An oracle is whatever tells a test whether an output is right. In your world, oracles are sometimes requirements, sometimes expectations, sometimes customer satisfaction, sometimes regulator sign-off — and they conflict. Elaine Weyuker's original 1982 paper[^1] on the oracle assumption and Doug Hoffman's "Heuristic Test Oracles"[^2] are the obvious anchors. This also unifies your Categories-of-Testing triad: each of the three fact-kinds has its own oracle species.
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[^1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1093/comjnl/25.4.465
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[^2]: https://www.stickyminds.com/article/heuristic-test-oracles
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