For an ethical company, is transparency optional when it comes to defective products statistics?

[Swiss-fairphone]

Dear Snafu,

@Snafu

Steep theses, apart from “toy”, that’s probably true for every smartphone.

I don’t see how your sentence without hard facts and serious statistics leads us anywhere. It is probably true, maybe not, perhaps a little, definitely a possibility: each of us can go on and on with our limited personal experience with what 10, 100 personal smartphones from 8, 9 different brands ?

I could answer you by telling you about my own tiny, tiny piece of reality. I could tell you all about my previous smartphones which had no major problems (I could make phone calls and browse the web) and answer you: “no you are wrong, because my personal experience and numbers shows without question that the other brands are making really mature retail available products and that the Fairphone company is not”.

These are facts that really happened to me. But I still would be as wrong as you, as “chlh” or as “alex21” (FP3 reboots during phone calls - #51 by Swiss-fairphone). That is why we need to have defective smartphone statistics. Otherwise, everyone of us will be left to speculate, tell our own story of our tiny, tiny piece of reality and just point fingers at each other for eternity.

@Snafu

Absolutely, that’s what is commonly known as “life”. Security is sold very successfully here in the first world (and numbers are great for that because they seem objective), which is understandable, since we all lead lives here at the cost of the majority of the rest of the world, so we have plenty to lose, but in the end it’s an illusion: There is no security in life. The phone can die instantly the first time you turn it on or it can work perfectly for almost one year and counting like my FP3 does. If you don’t want any risk: Don’t buy a smartphone.

I think everyone knows that there is no certainty in life, so I don’t see the point you are making. Especially since we are talking about statistics and probability.

I never painted a world in

• black or white
• 0 or 1
• absolute security or chaos
• 0% defective smartphones = success and 100% defective smartphones = failure

In my understanding, statistics and probability is never about being sure of something. It is about calculating the chances of something being true, or some event to happen, etc. And based on theses statistics and/or probabilities (and other quantitative information), and combined with a qualitative analysis, take an informed decision at the best of our ability. Nothing more. Certainly not being 100% sure that something will or will not happen whatever you do and whatever the circumstances.

In fact, inside mathematics I think statistics and probability are among the least black and white tools that manages quite well to give us a model to “begin” to understand our grey world of nuances (but never perfectly, any model stays a model and never can or will be able to reflect the entire reality). Quantum physics is a good example.

@Snafu

but in the end it’s an illusion: There is no security in life. The phone can die instantly the first time you turn it on or it can work perfectly for almost one year and counting like my FP3 does. If you don’t want any risk: Don’t buy a smartphone.

I don’t see how this gets us anywhere.

I never said I don’t want any risk.

Best regards,

Swiss-fairphone