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Ghosts in the machine

Beanbag said:
As a watchmaker, I can tell you that ANY mechanism with more than ten moving or interconnected parts has a personality, and usually not a good one. That includes computers, where the parts may not exactly move, but they interact. Many are the times that I've been made to look like a complete idiot by a cranky watch that for all appearances and efforts should function correctly, but chooses not to.

Beanbag
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As a programmer and a hardware tinkerer, I can't tell you how many times I've encountered a problem and said "This doesn't make any sense. There is no reason this should be happening.".

However, because I ALWAYS have to know the reason behind a problem, I will always find the solution, and it always makes sense in the end.

And maybe that's the answer to the initial question: People have computer problems, and even if they constantly think it's 'haunted' or that they're 'cursed', the problem gets solved. Because people rely on computers so much, they NEED these problems to get solved. So someone like myself comes along, looks at the machine for a bit, and gives them a straightforward answer for what their problem was, such as 'Oh, you had a virus. I cleaned it up and now it works.'. The user (For the most part) can understand what went wrong, and sees that it's now working. They start to realize that even the strangest behaviours of computers CAN eventually be explained.
 
Gah! So the god of irony raises an eyebrow at me once more, and my post about how we all treat computers like they have personalities, and shout at them when they thwart us, disappears into the ether instead of being posted.

Stupid, stupid bloody computer!

But anyway, I think I typed some stuff about they're easy to anthropomorphise, and we often treat them as if they have personalities, feel about them as if they were conscious, blah transference blah blah, and then my main point was to link to John Suler's stuff on the psychology of cyberspace, which includes an article on the way we feel about and relate to our computers.

Off topic, also of general interest to JREF forum users would be his stuff on healthy & pathological internet use, cyberspace addiction, and various sundry stuff uncomfortably relevant to us folk who like nothing better than arguing with people we've never met and can't see.

Don't always agree with him, and some of it's a wee bit dated, in that already-six-months-old what's-a-bulletin-board kind of way, but it's definitely worth a browse.

Now back to threatening my computer....
 
Beanbag said:
As a watchmaker, I can tell you that ANY mechanism with more than ten moving or interconnected parts has a personality, and usually not a good one. That includes computers, where the parts may not exactly move, but they interact. Many are the times that I've been made to look like a complete idiot by a cranky watch that for all appearances and efforts should function correctly, but chooses not to.

Beanbag
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I love this statement!!!!

In other threads (even other forums), when asked to define either "life" or "consciousness" (especially the latter), I have yakked on and on about how we actually use the terms, which of course both reflects and determines how we learn the terms. A watch, a computer, a car... each are complex enough to "have a mind of their own". This is how we use the term, this is how we learn the term. These "ghosts in the machine" are part of how we learn the term. My computer has more unpredictability and "will" in its actions than Terry Schiavo has had in years...A watch "chooses" not to work. (so does my computer. So does my car.) How do we know? By looking at its behavior (or lack therof). Same as with people. We infer "will", "mind", "consciousness", even "life", from the behavior of people...or other animals...or computers, cars, and watches.
 
I work on a computer helpdesk, and I think that I can safely say that yes, although computers are designed machines, and in principle "we" know exactly how they operate from the transistors up, it is certainly not true that people understand them.

I have rarely encountered someone who attributes paranormal activity to their computer, but every day I encounter people who have no understanding of why their computer just did what it did. About 60-80% of computer errors are user-inflicted.

As far as "most" people are concerned, there is a "black box" in the computer. It does mysterious things that they don't understand. There are people who have developed computer supersititions. For example: "It won't crash if I convert it to RTF and back - no, I don't know why, but it works".

A lot of people say that they think that their computer is conspiring against them, but I don't know of anyone who actually believes it.

Oh, and you should never anthropomorphise your computer. They really hate that.
 
arthwollipot said:
I work on a computer helpdesk, and I think that I can safely say that yes, although computers are designed machines, and in principle "we" know exactly how they operate from the transistors up, it is certainly not true that people understand them.

I have rarely encountered someone who attributes paranormal activity to their computer, but every day I encounter people who have no understanding of why their computer just did what it did. About 60-80% of computer errors are user-inflicted.

As far as "most" people are concerned, there is a "black box" in the computer. It does mysterious things that they don't understand. There are people who have developed computer supersititions. For example: "It won't crash if I convert it to RTF and back - no, I don't know why, but it works".

A lot of people say that they think that their computer is conspiring against them, but I don't know of anyone who actually believes it.

Oh, and you should never anthropomorphise your computer. They really hate that.
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When I worked on a computer help desk, it seemed like everyone wanted their problem to be a virus. There's something mysterious and exciting about "getting a virus", much more so that finding out that you simply don't know how to use your software properly. Believing in a virus also allows the user to place blame on some unknown, nefarious character with evil intentions. That way the problem becomes less random and easier for the novice to understand.
 
Yeah, people would rather "have a virus" until they actually get one that does anything.

lets see... I have to choose between reading the software manual or... spending 200 bucks to have my hard drive recovered as much as possible, only to learn that documents I wanted to save for LIFE have been deleted and hackers got ahold of all my important data.....I think I will choose to be a stupid human who is virus free over a genius with a nasty trojan!!
 
Yes indeedy. I am constantly saying to people "you don't have a virus. Viruses don't do this. You have a pebcak error."

OK, so I don't usually tell them that last part.
 
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