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The presumption that computers are working correctly

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Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#101

Post by fanf2 »

fineIllregister wrote: post #96
bboygravity wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add some meta irony to my previous post: as you can see in my previous post the formatting got all mangled. The new-lines (enters) that I typed got ignored upon posting. I cannot think of any good reason for that "functionality" from a user perspective? Also I can't edit that post anymore to fix it. And to think that HN is an example of relatively good software that seems un-bloated, super stable, fast and seems t…

> I cannot think of any good reason for that "functionality" from a user perspective? Markdown ignores single return because people used it to manually wrap their plain text but HTML can wrap automatically on the fly. Add two spaces before the return to make a line break ` `. Two returns in a row start a new paragraph ` `.

Hacker News does not use Markdown. Double space at end of line does not work, but double newline is a paragraph separator.

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#102

Post by didntcheck »

dan-robertson wrote: post #92
didntcheck wrote: post #56

The last time I looked into the Post Office scandal, the impression I got was that "we just had too much faith in the IT system!" was a convenient story, but the high-ups knew full well about the problems, and full well that they were persecuting innocent people, but did it anyway to cover up their own failings. If so, people need to see substantial jail terms for this. Perverting the course of justice is no misdemea…

Do you think an increase in punishment the executives expected would have led to the problems for subpostmasters being resolved faster or slower?

Am I inferring correctly that you are suggesting I may cause a perverse incentive, wherein they would be more motivated to cover it up due to the potential of punishment? I don't think that applies, as the punishment I'm suggesting is for the cover-up and knowing prosecution of innocent people, so the incentive would be to not do that. Not to mention they already seemed fully motivated to continue saving face anyway

Having rich people face actual material consequences to their life, rather than "punishments" like losing a job or honor, would hopefully reduce corporate malpractice, yes, as they now know that they are not invincible (obligatory note that I am talking about criminal responsibility, not suggesting we do away with LLCs or something)

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#103

Post by K0balt »

bmitc wrote: post #40
zubairq wrote: post #26

After a lifetime of fixing bugs I’m often surprised that computer systems work at all. I had something similar to the failed post office system affect me personally, and everyone just rejects that the computer system could be at fault, even when presented with evidence, as it too too much work for them to try to understand.

> I’m often surprised that computer systems work at all. I also remain contunually amazed that anything works. It boggles my mind, because I have seen how software gets built. How can it possibly all work? I think my answer to this conundrum and seeming paradox is that it doesn't all work. We have trained ourselves and been trained to accept things that aren't working as something else. And like you say, people treat…

To me, modern computers, in particular, are an enigma, and I am an electronic engineer specializing in digital systems.

Imagine something with 200 billion individual parts with individual functions (and that’s just the cpu) that is presumed to work perfectly flawlessly billions of times a second for a decade.

By contrast, the crankshaft on your car goes through a bout 1 billion revolutions before it is worn out. Your heart might beat 4 billion times before you die, if you are really lucky.

The precision and reliability we take for granted from modern computing hardware is dumbfounding.

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#104

Post by sjy »

jfoutz wrote: post #8

How does that work? I'm not a lawyer. I'm a lazy programmer. So, does the defense get to subpoena the logs, and depose a programmer to explain why some random request returned a 502? Does the defense get, like, red team access? Although I'm a lazy programmer, I do think a lot about failure modes. If my freedom is on the line, I can probably think up a few (orders of magnitude) test cases. Happy to provide a shell scr…

> So, does the defense get to subpoena the logs, and depose a programmer to explain why some random request returned a 502?

In theory yes, but you can get some idea of how it worked in practice from the transcript of the trial of Seema Misra [1]. This was one of the few cases where the postmaster pleaded not guilty and expert evidence was presented to the jury. The defence complained throughout the trial that their expert did not have adequate access to the underlying computer records. New documents were identified during the course of the trial, and the defence applied unsuccessfully for the trial to be stayed at the close of the prosecution case.

[1]: https://journals.sas.ac.uk/deeslr/article/view/2217/2151

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#105

Post by dan-robertson »

didntcheck wrote: post #102
dan-robertson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think an increase in punishment the executives expected would have led to the problems for subpostmasters being resolved faster or slower?

Am I inferring correctly that you are suggesting I may cause a perverse incentive, wherein they would be more motivated to cover it up due to the potential of punishment? I don't think that applies, as the punishment I'm suggesting is for the cover-up and knowing prosecution of innocent people, so the incentive would be to not do that. Not to mention they already seemed fully motivated to continue saving face anyway…

I think that might be an effect, but I’m not sure. If something like this were to happen again, the thing I would most want would be whatever rules would most speedily lead to any prosecutions against subpostmasters being sopped and any convictions being overturned (with just compensation for the wrongful convictions).

I think to achieve that it has to be better in expectancy for someone who knows about the problem (and widely believed by that person too) to act sooner to resolve the problem than to try to cover things up, but I don’t really know what rules would help. For example, maybe an alternative thing that would work would be some kind of whistleblower rules like in finance[1].

In the hypothetical where I am stood with my hand on the lever choosing between stopping the scandal sooner and letting executives off entirely or having more wrongful convictions for longer but later throwing the executives in jail, I will choose the former every time, even though it feels unjust.

[1] In finance the whistleblower rules are designed to incentivise people to not be accomplices to crimes done by their superiors/coworkers. The incentives must be high because, no matter what the rules say about it, whistleblowers will expect to not work in finance again after blowing the whistle. The rules work because those large-scale financial crimes generally are hard to without one’s competent colleagues finding out.

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#107

Post by dan-robertson »

actionfromafar wrote: post #99
dan-robertson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think an increase in punishment the executives expected would have led to the problems for subpostmasters being resolved faster or slower?

Will punishment cause time-travel, you mean? Probably not.

Consider it as either a counter factual or a question about similar events in future.

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#108

Post by wahnfrieden »

didntcheck wrote: post #56

The last time I looked into the Post Office scandal, the impression I got was that "we just had too much faith in the IT system!" was a convenient story, but the high-ups knew full well about the problems, and full well that they were persecuting innocent people, but did it anyway to cover up their own failings. If so, people need to see substantial jail terms for this. Perverting the course of justice is no misdemea…

Why say punishment via rules can solve this, in other words, putting people in cages at the end of the day (or in other cases, taxing a permitted behavior), instead of advocate for structurally removing that power from them?

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#109

Post by di4na »

cf141q5325 wrote: post #66
di4na wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is one of the biggest scandal of our time related to software. I ... want to recommend learning more about it but only do so with a strong stomach. Numerous people that rabbithole into this case end up running to a nearby bucket. It is... not pretty.

Its a major problem with many of such issues. Some stuff is just really horrible, often even without any clear approach of how to fix it. It then gets even more problematic if people react to this by retreating into easy stories that act as mental fig leaves. Especially once these leads to clearly dysfunctional attempts to solve the issue, making the situation even worse for those effected.

I mean sure, but it is also ok to delegate handling these to people with the proper psychological support.

Re: The presumption that computers are working correctly

#110

Post by Jochim »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #108
didntcheck wrote: post #56

The last time I looked into the Post Office scandal, the impression I got was that "we just had too much faith in the IT system!" was a convenient story, but the high-ups knew full well about the problems, and full well that they were persecuting innocent people, but did it anyway to cover up their own failings. If so, people need to see substantial jail terms for this. Perverting the course of justice is no misdemea…

Why say punishment via rules can solve this, in other words, putting people in cages at the end of the day (or in other cases, taxing a permitted behavior), instead of advocate for structurally removing that power from them?

Punishment is an intermediate solution.

Holding executives responsible for their misdeeds is the bare minimum in the meantime.

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