Comment by socalgal2
13 days ago
That's a typical "reductio absurdum"
The purpose of a system is not what it does.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
13 days ago
That's a typical "reductio absurdum"
The purpose of a system is not what it does.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
I think you're taking it too literally. A more generous interpretation would be "what it does can be a better indicator of what the true hidden motive was for nefarious state programs".
I have to agree that this is problematic in the sense of ascribing malicious intent, but it is actually a useful concept when performing an honest/truthful analysis and trying to acquire new knowledge and perspectives so you can compare them. i.e. the analysis of what it ought to do versus what it actually does.
Given a software product, there are often marketers/advertisers telling you what use cases they envisioned for their product, but you as the customer actually know more about your core business and your own needs. Hence you choose the products not based on what the vendor claims about the product i.e. the intended/prescribed purpose, you care more about what the product can do for your business and that includes discovering ways to use the product that the vendor could have never imagined in the first place.