5 ms·

We want it to be true, so we squint and connect dots and it's true. I've had numerous people look at the actions of software I wrote over the last 30 years mak

• freedomben 5y ago
  Heh, likewise. It's amazing how often choosing sane defaults and falling back to defaults in the even of error is "the right thing" in the eyes of users.
• throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  People always over-estimate the complexity of stuff they don't understand. If I had a nickle for every time an internet commenter attributed intentional design to a feature that's simply the designer copying established default practice...
  • robocat 5y ago
    > People always over-estimate the complexity of stuff they don't understand. Really? I see people hugely under-estimate how complex things are. Cellphones. Water reticulation systems. Networks. Software. Etcetera. Anything where they don’t know much about the problem, and they come up with a trite solution (as though they have some sort of amazing level of insight, and everybody else in the world must be just plain stupid).
• dragonmost 5y ago
  In the game speedrunning community it's impressive the number of time a glitch or behavior of the game is attributed to "the game is confused".
  • beaconstudios 5y ago
    That's just casual anthropomorphisation. I think most gamers, especially speedrunners realise that games are unintelligent because they encounter and exploit counterintuitive reactions all the time.
• robotresearcher 5y ago
  ELIZA (1964) is the canonical demonstration of this phenomenon in software. We see faces in clouds and intelligence in anything interactive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
• mcswell 5y ago
  Not unlike what people read into the minds of their pets.
  • psd1 5y ago
    An open question. But the crappiness of ML makes those people look a lot more correct just by contrast.