this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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descriptions of Demons and the arcane rituals required to banish them feverishly relayed by occultists in ghost/horror stories are a direct homomorphism to computers and actually how awful they are (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Unironically.

Next time you hear a ridiculous description of the steps required for a ghost summoning or exorcism, just think about all the emails you have gotten from HR that detail the pointlessly overcomplicated process for clocking in and out of work.

Or when you hear Sony just lost all their emails and you are like… what does that even mean?

It’s all just spirit forces blasting back and forth on a cosmic scale of bullshit and silicon.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure I understand the analogy. A lot of annoyances that people regularly deal with on computers are either intended mechanisms to stop human bad actors or unintentional bugs passing off as features. You can't really say the same about demons.

I suppose you might be talking about ritualization, or the idea that the people who build protocols are so removed from the people who follow them, that the people who follow the protocols don't know why they do the things they do, but only know that bad things happen if they don't follow the protocols.

But even then, the analogy seems somewhat strenuous, since the point of occultism is exactly to try to study demonology and understand how to work with demons - ie, to try to understand why the protocols are the way they are.

If you wanted to talk about ritualization, there are significantly more apt comparisons. Most examples of culture or religions could be argued to be practical protocols that ended up gaining momentum and becoming more spiritual than they initially were.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There are also analogies with maintaining legacy code bases as software developers:

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sure, I get that, which is why I make the point that the OP may be taking about ritualization. But that isn't made clear in the original post, and especially with how the post is presented, the OP appears to be actively discouraging that notion. The last sentence is particularly confusing because it's implying that most if not all company protocols are just as arbitrary and supernatural as attempting to summon a demon.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The last sentence is particularly confusing because it’s implying that most if not all company protocols are just as arbitrary and supernatural as attempting to summon a demon.

That is exactly what I am saying?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

A lot of annoyances that people regularly deal with on computers are either intended mechanisms to stop human bad actors or unintentional bugs passing off as features. You can’t really say the same about demons.

.....I am honestly kind of terrified if you think the current state of computers and software is fine, I really hope you dont work in software design for the sake of the rest of us.

Every broadly intelligent computer programmer I have talked to agrees, corporations dont build software like elegant well planned skyscrapers they build them as multistory slums each piece added on in a rush until the whole thing collapses.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Nowhere have I said that programs are perfectly fine. In that exact quote that you have quoted me on, I even said that unintuitive features may be bugs passing off as features.

I am making the claim that no matter how much technical debt there is in a code, it is not remotely comparable to occultism and demons. If you read and understand what I have said, I make clear that it is not even that programming and occultism are dissimilar, but more accurately that the two cannot even be categorically compared because there is nothing to compare. You are not comparing apples to oranges, you are comparing apples to chairs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I am making the claim that no matter how much technical debt there is in a code, it is not remotely comparable to occultism and demons.

I mean I am all ears, convince me computers don't have as much arbitrary bullshit and strict specific details to processes, beliefs and rituals that don't correspond to any intuitive rationality?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Reminds me of developing with time zone considerations 15-20years ago

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oh, it's still like that. Mexico just got rid of DST which resulted in some fun bugs at my workplace. And then there's this Lunar Standard Time thing being proposed... why it can't just use UTC, I'll never understand...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Do you suppose folks on the moon will shift the clocks by an hour twice a year as well? I don't like the idea of moon kids having to walk to school in the dark during the winter.

But for real tho, maybe there are some tiny time dilation effects that require a separate time system for lunar missions. But I'm not sure, I'm not a physicist.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

there's an actual whole book about date and time in PHP: php|architect’s Guide to Date and Time Programming

I remember a video about the topic in general too, but don't remember enough details to find it. It's like nations have decided to mess up times and dates on purpose.

[–] xoggy 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

"Hey grandpa, you have heard about these new Spells-As-A-Service subscriptions where you can access your spellbook anywhere because the spellbook follows you around in a fluffy cloud?"

"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLOUD SPELLBOOKS, THEY ARE JUST OTHER WIZARD'S SPELLBOOKS!!!!" - grandpa launches off in a tirade and then storms outside for a walk to cool down.

Mom comes over, "honey you know grandpa gets all upset when you start talking about modern spells"

"but why mom, he is a wizard right? Shouldn't he love spells?"

"sigh he does, deep down he does honey, but spells have become so broken by the order of wizards prioritizing "efficiency" over all else...."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Your first example is more a symptom of bureaucracy, isn't it? Most workplace processes of any age accrue tedious, overly complex steps and checks.

The second is... well, a little surprising. Someone got fired for not managing backups properly. But it's no worse than 30 years ago when a single, relatively contained fire could destroy all of a company's records.

Or is this a case of sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic? I'm sure it must seem like it from a non-technical person's perspective. Heck, jet engines at magic, to me. The big space rockets, too - there's so much more going on than just a long, controlled explosion, and I don't understand most of it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Or is this a case of sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic?

No this is a case of technology sufficiently broken and enshittified to the point that you can't ever trust it to work right, simply or even logically if it was made by a large tech company.