Philosophy
It must be stressed here, mostly to attention of the potential reading public, that safety, especially safety as a statistic, is not at stake when discussing the various merits or failings of this or that design. Another simpler way of putting it is, as a passenger, it doesnt matter which type of aircraft one flies in. In the modern day, all recent aircraft types have a very excellent safety record.
As a pilot, it becomes very different. At one end of manual, old-school, dinosaur-like thinking, the pilot has all authority and all responsibility. At the other end of fully automated drone-like transportation system, the system itself, its computers, have all authority and all responsibilty.
The real philosophical question faced today by passengers is whether they would entrust their lives to a (very well-trained) human pilot (who will share their fate), or to a (very well-designed) computer.
In our subject matter, the problem is the aircraft and its designers claim full authority in the name of "envelope protections", which could allow a "concierge" to fly the airplane, but then when things go wrong, some fault is always found with the pilots which somehow shadows that of the design.
Ultimate authority cannot be separated from ultimate responsibilty.
The only difference is not in numbers but in philosophy. As a passenger, I can entrust my life to someone who puts his own life on the line with mine. I can accept responsibilty and pay the ultimate price if I fail to deliver that promise as a pilot. But I will not accept to play scapegoat for a system that claims to be safer than I am when it is easy, and that evades responsibility when things go wrong.