created: 2024-05-31
tags: #RegressionTesting, #EpistemicTesting, #Sandtesting
published: 2025-08-22
publish: true
## Epistemic Critical Properties of Regression Testing
_An interpretive perspective from Sandtesting_
##### Regression tests are never merely technical routines; they are epistemic artefacts.
Each one embodies a belief, a judgement, a model of how the system was once understood to behave.
Their value lies not in their mechanical execution, **but in what they reveal or conceal about our ongoing relationship with the system’s behaviour over time.**
##### A regression test, when run, confirms the validity of a previously held model.
But the crucial question is rarely asked: is that model still valid? Over time, contexts shift, systems evolve, and requirements are reframed. The same test that once confirmed correctness may now merely preserve an outdated view. In this sense, regression tests are epistemically **model-confirming**, unless we deliberately design them to challenge.
##### Their meaning is never self-evident.
Outcomes, pass or fail, do not carry truth on their own.
Their significance emerges through interpretation, shaped by test intent, system history, and domain context. In Sandtesting, this is central: a test result without interpretive framing is an epistemic fragment.
What matters is not just _what_ the test shows, but _why_ it was run, and _what kind of knowledge_ it is meant to produce.
##### Regression tests are temporally fragile.
What was once relevant may now be noise.
Systemic change, even if invisible at the code level, can render a test obsolete.
Risk landscapes shift. A meaningful regression suite must be constantly re-evaluated not only for technical correctness, but for _epistemic alignment_ with current system understanding.
##### Furthermore, every regression test is entangled with assumptions.
**Some protect these assumptions**, acting as guards to prevent unintended change.
Others, more rarely, expose **where assumptions no longer hold.**
This difference is crucial. Tests that merely reinforce old boundaries may stifle insight.
Tests that reveal their own limits promote growth in understanding.
##### A healthy regression practice supports active learning.
Bugs are not merely indicators of broken functionality; they can surface conceptual gaps, missed interactions, or outdated expectations. In this way, regression becomes a mirror: not just of the system, but of the mental models that shaped it. The suite itself becomes a diagnostic tool, not only of code, but of thought.
##### Bugs in regression are often taken as signs of instability.
But under the **epistemic lens**, they indicate something deeper: that the system or more often, the model of the system lacks resilience.
This insight redirects attention from fixing bugs to examining our assumptions.
**A resilient model absorbs failure as signal, not noise.**
##### However, regression testing is often tool constrained.
Automation, while necessary for coverage and repetition, cannot interpret.
Automated tests can confirm structure but rarely challenge meaning.
**Without reflective interpretation**, automation creates the illusion of certainty, a false sense of safety built on unexamined assumptions.
##### Finally, every regression test is an artefact of trust.
It **encodes** what the team, at some point, **decided was worth** preserving.
It reflects a historical judgement about value and risk.
These artefacts do not stand outside of time; they are historical and interpretive.
To treat them as neutral is to ignore the human decisions that shaped them.
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## About Regression Testing
- ![[Regression Testing]]