RolfAndreassen comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 March 2013 10:45AM

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Comment author: gwern 01 March 2013 08:04:29PM 3 points [-]

I could think of several possible interpretations of this, but I'm not sure which one you or Munroe have in mind. Can you justify it?

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 01 March 2013 08:11:34PM *  2 points [-]

I think it is a comment on the tendency of human minds to model complex systems as simple ones and therefore stick strongly to a few remedies whether they are sensible or not - ancestrally "whack it with a club" but in the case of computers, "reboot it", "run the virus scanner" and "defrag it". Admittedly, for old computers that relied on vacuum tubes whose connections would sometimes work loose, "whack it with a club" did, in fact, occasionally work.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 March 2013 07:35:19AM 5 points [-]

Admittedly, rebooting works surprisingly often (especially on Windows).

Comment author: ikrase 13 March 2013 07:05:00PM 0 points [-]

And don't we all know it...

For those unable to risk whacking, 'disassemble and reseat all cables' also works. Did it yesterday.

Comment author: Baruta07 03 March 2013 04:03:47PM 3 points [-]

Although the majority of problems encountered at my school's IT desk can be solved by rebooting the ones that can't are a pain to fix.

Comment author: satt 20 March 2013 11:16:24PM 2 points [-]

Admittedly, for old computers that relied on vacuum tubes whose connections would sometimes work loose, "whack it with a club" did, in fact, occasionally work.

Occasionally for more modern computers, too! This can happen when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air get adsorbed by circuit board contacts, where the VOCs react to form frictional polymers. Then...

Sometimes an apparently faulty circuit board starts to work again when it is unplugged and plugged back in again. Engineers call this a "no-problem-found" job. Frictional polymers are bound loosely to the boards, so a smart tap can be enough to clear the problem, in the same way that a thump to an errant TV or video often fixes the fault.

(From a 1997 New Scientist article (PDF).)

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