Errors are painful

[Jochen Fromm-5]

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

[Gillian Densmore]

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 <[hidden email]> 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

[James Steiner]

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 <[hidden email]> 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