7 ms·

Various appeals to emotion and analogies that ultimately provide little to nothing of value. Maybe it is a good article about why we build human-operated escape

Various appeals to emotion and analogies that ultimately provide little to nothing of value. Maybe it is a good article about why we build human-operated escape hatches and failsafes in software and hardware. When was the last time you saw train doors ruthlessly separate children from their parents? Have you seen anyone lose a limb to that ruthless guillotine? No. Machines do what they are programmed or built to do. They are only oppressive if created to be, whether that be out of malice or incompetence. Either way, any "ruthlessness" is human in origin. The same goes for blockchain, by the way, which the author attempts to tar with this same brush of oppression. Bitcoin can't be stopped? It has already been, when it proved necessary, and one day it likely will again. The "inviolable and absolute integrity" the author associates with blockchain is the same failure to acknowledge escape hatches as above. Cryptographic guarantees are not the foundation of a blockchain. Neither are the economic guarantees. The social layer is the foundation. In other words, the human element.

Smaug123 4y ago
I certainly have seen with my own eyes a train door "ruthlessly separate a child from his parent". I don't think I've ever seen an adult so distraught. I have also seen with my own eyes a lift door close on the head of an extremely elderly man. These things do happen.
- syzygyhack 4y ago
  > I don't think I've ever seen an adult so distraught. And no one pulled the stop train cord? The train just pulled away, business as usual, leaving them separated?
  - russelldjimmy 4y ago
    It’s not obvious to me that the train pulling away was the point here. It is merely a meditation on the fact that machines are “absolutely incorruptible”, so if we’re talking about the same thing, it is a tangential fact if some human did or did not pull the cord. If we are talking about how human intervention softens the incorruptibility of machines, then what you wrote supports that point. If we are talking about if machines are inherently good or evil, then we have somewhere changed the topic in the middle.
II2II 4y ago
> When was the last time you saw train doors ruthlessly separate children from their parents? Have you seen anyone lose a limb to that ruthless guillotine? It is also worth noting that those examples have a positive element as well. Train operators are too far from the doors to know when it is safe to depart. The closing of the train door ensures everyone is safely inside before the train can depart. Having a human operator who uses discretion at each door would only create a new set of problems, namely of train delays causing the entire system to grind to a halt (at best) and safety issues (at worse). Likewise for the food dispenser guillotine. While the case described sounds poorly designed, the general idea behind those doors is to prevent thieves from leeching upon unsupervised vending machines. One may argue that a human could use discretion for when a person is truly starving. On the other hand, that after hours supply of junk food wouldn't exist without vending machines since the labour involved would make it too expensive. It is also worth noting that a real human would rarely hand out food that is not their food to give away. As a side note: I also detest the use of the term jobsworth to describe something the author doesn't agree with. More often than not, those rules exist for a reason. While preventing the submission of a form a second late is not one of them, encouraging the submission of the form in a timely manner is. There are many people behind the scenes who need to get their job done for the benefit of those who filled out those forms in a timely manner.

Smaug123 4y ago

I certainly have seen with my own eyes a train door "ruthlessly separate a child from his parent". I don't think I've ever seen an adult so distraught. I have also seen with my own eyes a lift door close on the head of an extremely elderly man. These things do happen.

syzygyhack 4y ago
> I don't think I've ever seen an adult so distraught. And no one pulled the stop train cord? The train just pulled away, business as usual, leaving them separated?
- russelldjimmy 4y ago
  It’s not obvious to me that the train pulling away was the point here. It is merely a meditation on the fact that machines are “absolutely incorruptible”, so if we’re talking about the same thing, it is a tangential fact if some human did or did not pull the cord. If we are talking about how human intervention softens the incorruptibility of machines, then what you wrote supports that point. If we are talking about if machines are inherently good or evil, then we have somewhere changed the topic in the middle.

II2II 4y ago

> When was the last time you saw train doors ruthlessly separate children from their parents? Have you seen anyone lose a limb to that ruthless guillotine? It is also worth noting that those examples have a positive element as well. Train operators are too far from the doors to know when it is safe to depart. The closing of the train door ensures everyone is safely inside before the train can depart. Having a human operator who uses discretion at each door would only create a new set of problems, namely of train delays causing the entire system to grind to a halt (at best) and safety issues (at worse). Likewise for the food dispenser guillotine. While the case described sounds poorly designed, the general idea behind those doors is to prevent thieves from leeching upon unsupervised vending machines. One may argue that a human could use discretion for when a person is truly starving. On the other hand, that after hours supply of junk food wouldn't exist without vending machines since the labour involved would make it too expensive. It is also worth noting that a real human would rarely hand out food that is not their food to give away. As a side note: I also detest the use of the term jobsworth to describe something the author doesn't agree with. More often than not, those rules exist for a reason. While preventing the submission of a form a second late is not one of them, encouraging the submission of the form in a timely manner is. There are many people behind the scenes who need to get their job done for the benefit of those who filled out those forms in a timely manner.