Comment by Legend2440
5 hours ago
>The purpose of a system is what it does.
I am so tired of this saying.
It's not true, in general. Systems almost universally have unintended consequences and result in side effects their designers did not foresee.
Designing benchmarks resistant to adversarial attempts to exploit the benchmark software is just something no one was thinking about when they created SWE-bench.
I think the point is that if the side effects become known and are accepted, or if they are known and rejected, then indeed the purpose of the system is what it does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
You are misunderstanding the saying. It is entirely about unintended consequences and viewing the system for what it actually does and not any stated intentions of the designers.
I will propose that you are wrong.
1. We must ignore the intentions of the designers (your claim), and instead see what the outcomes are
2. Therefore we should ignore Beer's intentions when designing the phrase POSWID, and instead see how it is used.
3. The overwhelming majority of people using it on the internet (including the GP comment) is to imply that the people perpetuating the system actually desire the outcome.
So the purpose of POSWID is clearly to imply intent.
Well that’s stupid and completely ignores the meaning of the word “purpose”.
Same. Anyone who has designed anything at all in any domain realizes that what your intentions are and what materializes are often not the same. You have practical constraints in the real world. That doesn’t somehow make the constraints the purpose. The saying makes no sense.