Humans And Their Ability To Make Mistakes In today's pop culture, there is one very popular view of the future.All humans will be free to do as they wish, because robots and computers willwork for us. Computers are viewed as the ideal slaves. They work non-stop, nevercomplain, and above all, never make mistakes. It is often said that computersdon't make mistakes, that it is the person using the computer who commits errors.What is it that makes humans err, but not computers? I will prove that it issimply the way humans are built that makes us commit errors. Unlike computers,built of mechanical or electronic parts, humans are made of organic matter andnerve pathways. These same pathways, with the help of the brain are responsiblefor all the decision making.
I shall demonstrate why humans err, despite thefact that we have eyes and ears to sense with. Before I can establish causes for error, I shall define the terms'error' and 'mistake'. In the context of this essay, they will simply mean thata human obtained a result different from the expected, correct one. Whether itin be adding two numbers, or calling someone by the wrong name, these are allerrors that a computer would not make. An error can also be interpreted as beinga wrong physical move. If a person is walking in the woods and trips on a branch,it is because the person erred in the sense of watching the path followed.There is no doubt in anyone's mind that humans make mistakes all thetime.
Let us simply analyze any process in which there is a chance for someoneto commit an error. Take for example a cashier in a grocery store. The cashierobtains the total on the cash register, and receives a twenty dollar bill fromthe customer. She must now give the patron back his/her change. The cashregister tells the cashier that the client is owed 4.60$. The cashier thenreaches into her change drawer to retrieve the proper set of coins.
This iswhere the opportunity for error increases. What if the cashier only gives...