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Robots are autonomous mechanisms. These are waldoes. Not to belittle the purpose and sentiment (and kudos to the effort to better enabling those with physical

by bregma 8y ago

Robots are autonomous mechanisms. These are waldoes. Not to belittle the purpose and sentiment (and kudos to the effort to better enabling those with physical restrictions), but an androideqsue waldo is just not a robot.

jimmydddd 8y ago
https://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/2016/12/an-open-letter-to-well-actually-guy.html https://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/2016/12/an-open-letter-t...
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >No, you're right, Well Actually Guy. It's not just used by emotional abusers. It's also used by socially tone deaf people who seek to belittle the experiences of others in order to score debate points, or force their way into a discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with them. This seems much too assuming; sometimes technicalities are important to a good discussion, and of course this ties into the concept of sealioning[0] too, but revealing sealioning is a better tool to use against such people. Sealioning is where people don't recognise that you don't want to debate everything, so they continue to pester you. But once committed to a discussion, the tools of skepticism, doubt and rigor are all very useful. They may be useful (within some margin some of us might find agreeable or disagreeable) on a site almost expressly for interesting perspectives - Hacker News. Often I'm happy that there's a "well actually" guy to provide nuance where it might be needed. Maybe it's not needed, but often it is. There is a time and place, and many of the author's examples are examples of the wrong time and place to "well actually". It doesn't mean the points are wrong. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
  - jimmydddd 8y ago
    Good points.
drugme 8y ago
It's a news article, after all -- and fundamentally more about, you know, people rather than technology. So in that sense the distinction hardly matters.
hombre_fatal 8y ago
I bet you couldn't find a single person on the street that is aware of that distinction if you went out right now and asked 100 of them. "Cafe opens in Tokyo staffed by waldos..." is a complete regression to me, though I suppose I'd click the headline just to find out what the hell a waldo is.
JTon 8y ago
Ackchyually... ;) I never heard the term Waldo before. For those who are interested, more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator
erikpukinskis 8y ago
It seems like most actual robots and waldos would contain the other. These waldos presumably have many autonomous mechanisms, for not bumping into each other, not dropping things, wayfinding, etc. And the robots at a car factory are monitored and frequently reprogrammed, stopped and started, etc by humans. So in many respects they are a waldo. How do you draw the line? Is it by percentage of mechanisms? Or frequency of human input?
codeulike 8y ago
Language is open source
hcs 8y ago
Congrats, you found the waldo in this story! On to the next one...

by bregma 8y ago

jimmydddd 8y ago

https://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/2016/12/an-open-letter-to-well-actually-guy.html https://laughing-stalk.blogspot.com/2016/12/an-open-letter-t...

claudiawerner 8y ago
>No, you're right, Well Actually Guy. It's not just used by emotional abusers. It's also used by socially tone deaf people who seek to belittle the experiences of others in order to score debate points, or force their way into a discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with them. This seems much too assuming; sometimes technicalities are important to a good discussion, and of course this ties into the concept of sealioning[0] too, but revealing sealioning is a better tool to use against such people. Sealioning is where people don't recognise that you don't want to debate everything, so they continue to pester you. But once committed to a discussion, the tools of skepticism, doubt and rigor are all very useful. They may be useful (within some margin some of us might find agreeable or disagreeable) on a site almost expressly for interesting perspectives - Hacker News. Often I'm happy that there's a "well actually" guy to provide nuance where it might be needed. Maybe it's not needed, but often it is. There is a time and place, and many of the author's examples are examples of the wrong time and place to "well actually". It doesn't mean the points are wrong. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
- jimmydddd 8y ago
  Good points.

drugme 8y ago

It's a news article, after all -- and fundamentally more about, you know, people rather than technology. So in that sense the distinction hardly matters.

hombre_fatal 8y ago

I bet you couldn't find a single person on the street that is aware of that distinction if you went out right now and asked 100 of them. "Cafe opens in Tokyo staffed by waldos..." is a complete regression to me, though I suppose I'd click the headline just to find out what the hell a waldo is.

JTon 8y ago

Ackchyually... ;) I never heard the term Waldo before. For those who are interested, more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_manipulator

erikpukinskis 8y ago

It seems like most actual robots and waldos would contain the other. These waldos presumably have many autonomous mechanisms, for not bumping into each other, not dropping things, wayfinding, etc. And the robots at a car factory are monitored and frequently reprogrammed, stopped and started, etc by humans. So in many respects they are a waldo. How do you draw the line? Is it by percentage of mechanisms? Or frequency of human input?

codeulike 8y ago

Language is open source

hcs 8y ago

Congrats, you found the waldo in this story! On to the next one...