Sunday, February 8, 2009

Computers Cannot be Wrong

(those not in lab, ignore the following)

From the reading it struck me odd that they didn't make the claim that I am about to make.

Some say that if I have a calculator and ask it 2+2 it will say 4 and we will say it's right, but if it states 3 then some say it is wrong. I feel like this point justifies the claims made by the two authors. To compare we can ask ourselves if we hop on the 3'clock train to Minnesota, are we expecting it to go in Texas? No, because the tracks are made so that when we hop on the train the system will do what we planned it to do. In the same way, if we look into a mirror, can we say the mirror is wrong?

So another person will say, well then how can a human be wrong. They know the system of addition and substraction? To answer this I can also say that in the same way a computer can't be wrong, a Nueron can't be wrong. If you remember in psychology the biological stimulas known as action potential has close resemblencies to a computer. A Neuron will either fire or not fire based on if it is triggered. so where is the casual properties? The choice of what is triggered or not is built upon our experiences. It is the reason why we say 2+2 = 4 (mathametical) and not two plus two equals twotwo (linguistic?). For example, their was an instance in which a harvard graduate had a problem in her brain in which one hemisphere became deffective. Her neurons were now transmitting in differant ways. She stated that she felt "free" and saw things in differant ways, and started to preach about nirvana afterwords. She was seeing the same things she was before but her perception changed becouse her brain was relaying information in a differant way.
So if we were to say a human is wrong, it would mean that some nueral connections were triggered that led to the wrong end based on what neural network was stronger at the time. For example I may think that the stimulas package is not actually beneficial, but more of a statment to infuse confidence. That is becouse my experiences in politics, history, and economics outweigh my acceptance of basic rhetoric. However the key point remains; I may be wrong.
If a computer had part of it's "brain" altered, basically we would see an error becouse unless someone difines where it's tracks are headed it won't be able to reach a destination. If computers could answer everything, it could answer what it didn't know, and their would be no need for software support. Viruses try to destroy the "answers" in a program and when you see an error, lots of times you will see: "_____ _____ exception fault", meaning their is an exception to the rules that are in place and I have no idea what to do so I'm showing you this screen so you can tell someone to tell me what to do.
A computer cannot be wrong by the mere fact that a nueron can't be wrong. It may lead to a conclusion that we feel isn't true, but if the program remains the same it will never change it's answer.

1 comment:

  1. I thought I would add that many times computer errors even say "syntax error" which you can weigh in with how that is different than "semantic errors"

    ReplyDelete