• Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    In the late 1970s (I was a kid) the computer is always right was a common sarcastic parody of all the people who actually believed it.

    We’d discover in the 1980s it was possible to have missing data, insufficient data or erroneous data.

    • turmacar@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’s a sentiment at least as old as the first things that we now call computers.

      On two occasions I have been asked, “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” … I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

      —Charles Babbage