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A world where poorly designed software denies you access to your property because you are an "edge case," and humans who could help just shrug and defer to the
by chc 9y ago
A world where poorly designed software denies you access to your property because you are an "edge case," and humans who could help just shrug and defer to the computer? I don't know, it sounds to me like a dystopia that somebody might have written about a few decades ago.
Also, I don't think that's the full extent of her point here. She's just offering an example of how our pervasive reliance on computers (which often have poorly designed software) has caused trouble for her personally.
- pfisch 9y agoIs that really so different from them just sending you into an infinite bureaucracy loop where they refer you to each other in a wide circle until you give up.
- graphememes 9y agoNo, but it is still dystopian.
- meri_dian 9y agoIn reality if you are one of those edge cases, you'll still get what you need, you'll just be inconvenienced by having to wade through bureaucratic morass. Temporary inconvenience is not dystopian.
- vec 9y agoA system where everyone has to wade through a bureaucratic mess occasionally is certainly not dystopian. A system where only a handful of people have to wade through a bureaucratic mess with alarming regularity can get very dystopian very fast for those few.
- zrth 9y agoSerious question, which is better though?
- vec 9y agoWhere possible, distributed is almost always better. Comfort and convenience, like all forms of currency, have diminishing marginal utility. Therefore, distributing the costs minimizes the net human suffering.
- ams6110 9y agoThere are always edge cases. That's why they are called edge cases.
- jlgaddis 9y agoNot being able to find a place to live (rent, in this case) is merely an inconvenience? Or, if you do manage to find a place to live but can't get access to your money to pay for it? If you can't obtain housing or (your own) money, I'd imagine that most other aspects of your life aren't going to be very pleasant either. Personally, I would consider having to forego food and/or shelter for an unknown length of time -- while a bureaucratic morass is being sorted out, because "the computer said no" -- to be much, much more than just a "temporary inconvenience".
- forthefuture 9y agoYou are misunderstanding. The computer only helps everyone it works for. It doesn't hurt the people it doesn't work for. The worst case is that you get handled by people because the computer didn't work, which is the same as if there were no computers. We might not be optimized for human intervention into these processes, but that's because at the scale we operate at (hundreds of millions of users) it is physically impossible to provide human to human service for everyone.
- tootie 9y agoIf you're in a society that does a generally good job of protecting property rights at all then it's not dystopia.