Good firmware tells no lies. But it doesn't have to be built with a specific OS in mind to be good - on the contrary, I believe that building firmware with specific OS in mind is what got us into this whole bad firmware mess.

And yet, holistic systems can lie. They can lie horribly about their state, and you'd be none the wiser. Being "holistic", created with the intention of the whole, does not mean that the system cannot lie. If the whole is created with the intention of lying to you, than it will.

We don't need holistic systems. We need good systems. A system doesn't need to be holistic to be good, and a system doesn't need to be good to be holistic.