Bonum Certa Men Certa

You Are Not The Only One

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 23, 2024

Reprinted with permission from Cyber Show (C|S).

the odd one out

Figure 1: "Spot the odd one out"

Knowing that you're not the only one is sometimes a life-saver. In so many ways people suffer in isolation, go crazy and even commit suicide thinking that they are uniquely afflicted by a problem. Indeed the force with which normalcy is imposed and difference denied has led to the 21st century phenomenon of "identity politics", at its heart a struggle for recognition, affiliation and belonging.

Strange folk

Neurologically atypical people, sufferers of rare diseases, or victims of medical malpractice like in the Oxycontin opiate scandal, are always told "Nobody else has this problem". The implication is that there is something uniquely wrong with them. Something weak. When people are different, that frightens us. Instead of saying "Oh sure, there's many people like that. Don't worry!", we deny them.

Clinging to normalcy and pushing strange things away is not a sign our society is strong, but that it's fragile. Money (capitalism) exacerbates this because what is unusual is almost always costly, unprofitable and "inefficient". Systems are tuned to serve the typical case. What lies "outside the bell-curve" is dismissed.

Thus minority groups are often marginalised groups too, whose individuals find no help from power or authority. They have had to discover and support each other against deliberately orchestrated campaigns to divide and dismiss them as special and unique freaks. They soon become victimised.

However, what is unusual is not necessarily statistically representative. It may be that you are amongst the first to discover something, or that you're struggling with an old and now forgotten technology, so 'early adopters' and 'long tail' users are commonly marginalised.

Technically incorrect

The tech world has a really very, very serious problem with this.

Again and again we hear that;

"Technical support told me that I'm the only one who has the problem"

It's not just a cliche. It's a strategy, and in some cases it's policy. For example, the UK Post Office "Horizon" scandal exposed a repeated theme for all the thousands of victims. They were each told, "You're the only one".

Everywhere you look, you'll encounter it. In tech we say "That can't be right", or "It shouldn't do that", or we claim it is a glitch, a bug, a one-off, an anomaly, a hiccup…

It's interesting that in tech we have so many words to dismiss events.

Problems are normal

Part of our twisted perception of technology is a poor intuition for its scale and statistical significance. If someone says, "It's a one-in-a-million" we take that as meaning it's rare.

But a microprocessor conservatively executes a billion instructions per second. That means a problem with a one-in-a-million chance might occur a million times per second.

So mistakes in software are very frequent. In fact random radiation from space (called Alpha particles) can just change a programs behaviour. To fix this we give computers error correction and the ability to be tolerant of faults. More commonly though the error lies in the logic of the code, about one bug for every thousand lines of code. A typical app might have a hundred thousand lines of code, and therefore a hundred bugs.

Clustering of bugs into reproducible patterns with common cause is almost guaranteed. In other words, it's certain that for any software problem there is a rational, systematically traceable explanation. Something that affects all other users. In fact we have a name for this. We call it "debugging".

Cocksure code

Mass produced corporate technology from companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple sets itself up as "normal", meaning both ubiquitous and infallible. We are pressured and presumed to accept it, simply because it is the supposed centre of the bell-curve.

But that is false and you should not accept it! There are approximately 350 million companies in the world of which about a quarter provide "digital technology" hardware, software or services. The dominance of about twenty companies in a market worth $6 trillion and comprising 90 million competitors is obscene and twisted.

The reasons for grotesque and almost unstoppable agglomeration into monopolies has nothing to do with quality or other dimensions of trade found in other industries. It's to do with human psychology and our tendency to "stick with the crowd" and eschew outsiders.

Therefore breaking tech monopolies will not occur through government regulation, no matter how much they are fined, split-up or executives are imprisoned. It is a actually a social psychology problem.

Of course it is all marketing puff and brand perception management. We do not suppose that KFC and McDonald's supply the best food simply because they are popular. And almost nobody eats it exclusively. Likewise, there is no reason to suppose that code is better simply because it comes from a big, well known company. Indeed. consumer-grade commercial code has some of the worst quality out there… as many as one bug per hundred lines!

There is no reason to suppose that any individual or organisation should exclusively consume it. Yet we see schools who proudly proclaim themselves a "Microsoft Academy" and government departments whose IT is run by a single commercial provider. This mono-culture is extremely dangerous from a cybersecurity stance.

Yet these companies remain supreme in their arrogance and inflated self-belief in their perfect and unquestionable products. The bigger the product or company the more contempt it has for outliers. The more aggressively it pumps itself up the more slavishly its acolytes follow and chant the mantras. And, in a vicious cycle, tolerance decreases for so-called 'alternative' (non-mainstream) technologies and ways of working.

Eventually most of us foolishly "believe in it" as we go about our daily lives. We don't want to make a fuss, rock the boat, or question technology which we mistakenly see as "an authority" rather than what it is - just one way of doing things. Digital technology is an ever-shifting, precarious miracle held together with spit and string - built by ordinary idiots like you and I who sometimes have bad days and forget a crucial semicolon (and let's not get started on how much worse a job "AI" makes of it!).

When things break we go meekly to IT support, saying "It's probably just me but…". And there we encounter the most subtle and pernicious abuse. The abuse of certainty. An unconscious, reactive, and contradictory abuse.

IT: "You are the only person with this problem"

CUSTOMER: "Perhaps you can give me a little help with it then?"

IT: "Sorry. I've 5000 people to service. You're not special"

For there, at the heart of it, is the real engine of the technology industry. It is not innovation but uniformity needed for a local minima of low-friction. Professional apologists wedded to their comforting myths of perfection are not there to help outliers, but to make sure most people meekly conform. They readily blame and gaslight anyone who questions their systems, springing instinctively to the defence of colourful brands with which they identify.

IT support people are not coders or computer scientists. They've no time for curiosity. For troublemakers. They are there for the 68 percent of "normal" people in the middle of the road, and there to deflect the rest with a shrug.

But you do not have to listen to that. Not any more. Because now you know. Always and for sure;

You are not the only one!

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Layoff Rumours, Large-Scale Implementations Weeks Ahead (in March 2025)
There are some people corroborating
Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere
Such stereotypes end entire careers
BetaNews is Still Publishing LLM Slop/SPAM About "Linux"
Assuming it is indeed LLM slop, it seems clear BetaNews has no intention of improving or is simply unable/unwilling to improve
 
Links 11/02/2025: Current state of the Internet and Smallnet Information Services (SIS)
Links for the day
Conservative Estimate: Over 10,000 IBM Workers to Be Laid Off in the Next Two Waves
The morale is low and layoffs are expected soon, with mass layoffs likely happening next month and then again later
Links 11/02/2025: Trade Wars and "Crisis for American Universities"
Links for the day
Parasitic LLM Slop Sites Destroy the Ability to Find "Linux" News in Google News
Remember that Google News laid off lots of its workers
Richard Stallman's English Talk in Italy Less Than 24 Hours Away (Torino) and Then Another Talk in Italy Scheduled (University of Bozen-Bolzano)
He's active and he travels a lot in spite of his medical condition
Links 11/02/2025: Nutritional Poverty, Closure of USAID, More Fictional 'Valuations' Around Buzzwords
Links for the day
Perl Programming Leftovers
recently in perl.org
Microsoft in Africa: From 98% to Less Than 10% in Just 16 Years
Microsoft being on less than 1 in 10 Web-connected devices in Africa is a very big deal
Almost as If MElon Reads Techrights
The joke we started appears to be spreading
Gemini Links 11/02/2025: NeoVim and Deploying Other People's Code
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, February 10, 2025
Scheduled Maintenance Tomorrow and on Valentines
If the site (or Gemini capsule) is offline for a bit, the maintenance windows are likely the root cause
If Matthias Kirschner Loves Free Software, He'll Change the Name of the Microsoft-Sponsored Organisation He Governs (in Order to Avoid Confusion)
The FSF-EEE does not really like Software Freedom, it just loves money (including Microsoft's)
Soylent News Lessens the Scope of Discussion Due to Persistent Trolling and Online Abuse
if they make it a lot harder for new people to participate, then they limit the "general appeal" and reach
EPO's Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Workers Are Getting Sicker, Conditions in Which to Assess Patent Applications Deteriorate
"According to the Office statistics the total number of days of absence has gone up from 12.4 to 13.1 total number of sick days per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) from 2023 to 2024."
The Standard Needs to Improve Its Standards for Fact-Checking, Aaron Swartz Had Nothing to Do With Reddit and He Detested the Company That Created It
The Web is already bad enough as it is
When the Livestream of Richard Stallman is Apparently Bury-Brigaded Offline You Finally Learn to Avoid Google/YouTube for Streaming
Please, people, stop uploading to Google/YouTube
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake
Links 09/02/2025: Coffee, Toxic Productivity, and Programming
Links for the day
Debian's Human Rights violations & Swiss women Nazi symbolism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 09/02/2025: Software Patents on MP3 and Another Scam Dressed Up as "Crypto"
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2025: Russian Energy Cut Off, LLM Pushers Show Signs of Desperation
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Does Not Have Media Companies and Lobbyists on His Side, But His Message Spreads Regardless
The message of RMS is spreading in spite of all the smears
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time High in Chile
sharp rise for GNU/Linux in Chile
Links 09/02/2025: Hottest January on Record, Panama Blackmailed
Links for the day
Why We Still Love Gemini Protocol
Gemini Protocol may seem like something "old" (it's actually very new) and something "nobody would use", but many people use it
Gemini Links 09/02/2025: "Died as a Mineral" and Game Interface for a Non-Game
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 08, 2025