Re: [FRIAM] Errors are painful
I think may be less "pain" and more "unpleasantness". Errors and warnings and such would be like dissonant sounds or clashing colors. when all is working as it should: music and rainbows. pleasure. warnings and errors: cacophony and garishness. displeasure. ~~J On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 6:11 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > Nick once asked the list how a computer > perceives and experiences itself. The > answer is of course it does not do this. > Usually. But if a computer would be able to feel, then it would probably > perceive error messages as painful. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Errors are painful
Reference http://xkcd.com/371/. If this is true, then many of the computers I own are masochists. I would raise exception to the 'blue screen = death' comparison, though. I think one can say that a necessary condition for death is that the individual stays dead. Of course, this goes into the area of defining an individual, which seems integral to this conversation. -Arlo James Barnes FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Errors are painful
To a point. It might also depend on the OS and or development anology. On windows anyway I seem to get sever sounding messages from my antivius program like WARNING: (insirt URL here) has caused a fetal error on fire fox from (cookie type here). Wich when I looked it up just ment that the Fire fox crashed-so maybe if aplication crashes the it might be the equivilant of making a wrong turn and needing to do a different direction. What about if someone is doing something creative? or stuff that uses a lot of processing power? I've thought that if my computer could talk about then it might say: hold on I need to think about (fill in whats going on) a bit I'll get back to you in a second. On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 4:11 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > Nick once asked the list how a computer > perceives and experiences itself. The > answer is of course it does not do this. > Usually. But if a computer would be able to feel, then it would probably > perceive error messages as painful. > > Error messages are a bit like pain, because > they indicate that something has gone wrong. They are not pleasant, but if > they are missing (as for example in Javascript) > it can be even worse, because you don't know what is wrong and why. > > In this sense, warnings are like little itchings, errors are like weak pain > and fatal errors are like heavy pain. > A computer with a fatal system error > like kernel panic or blue screen of death can considered as dead. > > What do you think, does this analogy > make sense? For a distributed system of computers, for instance a whole > datacenter, the worst thing that can > happen is an increasing number of fatal system errors, for example > computers > with kernel panic. In such a system > the loss of computer power and machines would be painful. > > -J. > > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Errors are painful
Nick once asked the list how a computer perceives and experiences itself. The answer is of course it does not do this. Usually. But if a computer would be able to feel, then it would probably perceive error messages as painful. Error messages are a bit like pain, because they indicate that something has gone wrong. They are not pleasant, but if they are missing (as for example in Javascript) it can be even worse, because you don't know what is wrong and why. In this sense, warnings are like little itchings, errors are like weak pain and fatal errors are like heavy pain. A computer with a fatal system error like kernel panic or blue screen of death can considered as dead. What do you think, does this analogy make sense? For a distributed system of computers, for instance a whole datacenter, the worst thing that can happen is an increasing number of fatal system errors, for example computers with kernel panic. In such a system the loss of computer power and machines would be painful. -J. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
