Everybody needs to hate somebody

But what do you do when you're the victim of anonymous machines talking to each other? I recently received an automatically generated notice from an agency which asserts that I engaged in a financial transaction I never heard of but may well have been conducted automatically on my behalf and which may have generated some electronic form. Various computers were involved, and I have no idea which computer either got it wrong or missed the number.

So, I'd like to hate someone, but there's no one there.

It's tough for me to hate myself when I didn't do anything wrong. But computers have a way of making trouble for humans by not talking to each other properly, then later imputing their misconduct to humans who had nothing to do with them, so that all you need to do is have a social security number, and VIOLA! You can be in a lot of trouble for the crime of not knowing what it was not possible to know.

Which means you can be in trouble for doing absolutely nothing.

One of the dumbest mistakes I ever made was "moving" (only temporarily and because I had to, not because I wanted to) from California to the East Coast. This caused taxing authorities there to impute income to me that I never had, but because I wasn't there to open the mail, the imputed income morphed into real income because of the simple passage of time. (Nor did calling myself "bicoastal" help.)

Not knowing what computers are doing can get you in big trouble.

But when you can't even figure out which computer to hate, how can you figure out which human (or group of humans) deserve the imputed hatred?

I know the Christian approach is love, but isn't that also an emotion?

When we get into trouble, our natural instinct is to either blame ourselves (which results in an emotion of guilt), or blame others (anger or hate). These natural instincts and emotions are useless when contending with electronically generated trouble.

So, even if I put aside my feelings, I know that I am not the only person who has been treated this way by machines.

My theory is that there's a lot of hate with no place to go.

AFTERTHOUGT: It occurs to me that I forgot to mention the issue of fairness.

Silly me.

Can there be such a thing as "undifferentiated hatred"? I can think of few things more irrational, but then, nothing about is rational about being blamed for the mistakes of machines.

posted by Eric on 10.27.06 at 11:34 AM





TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://classicalvalues.com/cgi-bin/pings.cgi/4158






Comments

There was no computer error. It is a scam. Ignore it.

Bleepless   ·  October 27, 2006 09:18 PM

Hate is an emotional toxin in which the mentally healthy person does not imbibe. I have no hate in my heart. Except for Hitler. I hate him. Stalin, too. And Jimmy Carter. And Stuart Scott on ESPN. And people who drive 5 miles under the speed limit in the left lane. And those really horribly annoying "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" commercials that are all over the TV, god I hate those.

Rhodium Heart   ·  October 28, 2006 03:22 AM

Well, if you're going to hate, I think it's healthier to hate specific targets. But in the case of a bureaucratic error -- and they can really mess up your life -- the targets are unclear.

I'll never forget the cops coming to the law firm where I worked to serve an out-of-state arrest warrant naming me as the suspect in a serious crime allegedly committed in Texas (where I'd never been). There was no remedy, as it was a bureaucratic error, the Texas authorities couldn't have cared less, and didn't even apologize. (The Berkeley police told me they were rude and unapologetic.) What did I do? I hated Texas with a vicious passion, for many years.

It might not be logical to hate Texas, but that's what I did. Hatred helped ease my emotional pain.

Eric Scheie   ·  October 28, 2006 09:28 AM

And by the way, 22 years later, I'm still waiting for an apology from Texas, because I think it "should" apologize. (How crazy is that?)

Eric Scheie   ·  October 28, 2006 09:47 AM


March 2007
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
        1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

ANCIENT (AND MODERN)
WORLD-WIDE CALENDAR


Search the Site


E-mail




Classics To Go

Classical Values PDA Link



Archives




Recent Entries



Links



Site Credits