Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s both, right? The competitors may very well be just as safe in those conditions, but we wouldn’t know based on their liability stance; the Fight Club equation simply doesn’t apply. With Mercedes, the Fight Club equation gives something like a mathematical guarantee of their estimated confidence of the safety of the system. There are no mathematical guarantees from the competitors.
>It’s both, right? The competitors may very well be just as safe in those conditions, but we wouldn’t know based on their liability stance; the Fight Club equation simply doesn’t apply. I was referencing Fight Club as an example of an auto manufacturer making a life and death decision based off their financial incentives and not the best interest of the customer. The decision to take on liability is about money, not…
The Fight Club scene is about how these two things are integrated: their confidence in safety defines their ability to choose to take on liability.
Yes, its intent in the story is to horrify: there's a lack of humanity, a reliance on a simple function relating those two variables.
However, that doesn't imply the two variables are unrelated, in fact, it implies they are completely correlated.