1013
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 6 points 6 months ago

To be fair, the idea of a computer basically only existed in the minds of Babbage and a few of his peers at the time.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

To be unfair, "If I ask you directions to the church, but I actually wanted to get directions to the library, would you give me the right directions" doesn't need a computer, and the guy is just as stupid.

[-] xantoxis@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah honestly Babbage sounds like kind of a dick in this one response. It's 160 years later but it is actually possible now, in some specific circumstances, to ask a computer the wrong question and still get the right answer. "AI" is probably what popped into your head but search engine spell correction absolutely counts, and many examples predate that one by a large margin. Around the time compilers were first outputting error messages, compiler writers were also saying "ok the author typed This but obviously they meant That, what if we just compile the program they meant and output a warning?"

These people just weren't sure what the technology was capable of, and were examining the possible parameters.

EDIT: Went from +6-0 to +6-5, so I'm being brigaded by a niche faction I didn't even know existed: Babbage stans. These mfs LOVE difference engines

this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
1013 points (99.4% liked)

Microblog Memes

5771 readers
2285 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS