Author: "5% chance of shipping something that only looked good by chance". One philosophy of statistics says that the product either is better or isn't better, and that it's meaningless to attach a probability to facts, which the author seems to be doing with the phrase "5% chance of shipping something".
Parent: "5% chance of looking as good as it did, if it were truly no better than the alternative." This accepts the premise that the product quality is a fact, and only uses probability to describe the (noisy / probabilistic) measurements, i.e. "5% chance of looking as good".
Parent is right to pick up on this, if we're talking about a single product (or, in medicine, if we're talking about a single study evaluating a new treatment). But if we're talking about a workflow for evaluating many products, and we're prepared to consider a probability model that says some products are better than the alternative and others aren't, then the author's version is reasonable.
Parent: "5% chance of looking as good as it did, if it were truly no better than the alternative." This accepts the premise that the product quality is a fact, and only uses probability to describe the (noisy / probabilistic) measurements, i.e. "5% chance of looking as good".
Parent is right to pick up on this, if we're talking about a single product (or, in medicine, if we're talking about a single study evaluating a new treatment). But if we're talking about a workflow for evaluating many products, and we're prepared to consider a probability model that says some products are better than the alternative and others aren't, then the author's version is reasonable.