[Logic 101] Thinking Like A Human, and Less Like a Robot

Revisions:
9-10-10: Initial release.

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I really had no intentions to write an article like this, but due to the amount of silly questions and comments I am reading here in the blog, as well as on Youtube, I just had to say something.

So let’s look at the general picture first. We are living in the 21st century, and there is technology all around us.  You will be hard pressed to not go to a university, and see students with laptops, iPods, iPads, or smart phones.   Everywhere we go, circuit chips surround our lives.  There are circuits in your phone, computer, car, airplane, coffee machine, and even as simple as your bluetooth headset.

Because of the Internet, I have seen a new age of students and users in general that are having information “spoon fed” to them.  They believe what they see on the Internet, and take it for verbatim.  You have an antivirus program, and it flags a certain program as a virus, and you believe it.  You do not believe in the term “false positive”?  Why?

When I was back in school, our teachers said you can use a graphing calculator, and you can put in all the notes and programs you want, but it was not going to help you on the test.  Why?  My teachers were clever.  They wrote the test such that you have to show your work and not just an answer.  Moreover, some teachers were sneaky where if it was a multiple choice test, they would have the “calculator answer” as an option and you think it is right if you use the calculator. But in mathematics, there are certain limitations in the calculator where the answer it gives you is not technically 100% correct.  Here the teacher was testing your logic/analysing skills.

So let’s fast forward to present day.  The blog is booming. GameDexterity just got affiliated with Appdroid.dk, so we can see that portion of the video blog start to grow as more users get affiliated with smart phones.

However, with the enhanced user base, there is a great probability to see more of a “unintelligent”  user base as well.  Here are some real examples:

• How do I get computer hardware for free?
• What is x64 bit Windows?
• LAN and Internet are two different things. You cannot play LAN over the Internet?! (This is actually a loaded question, but the answer to this is for another time).
• What is fraps?
• What is google wave?
• What is Linux?

There are a lot more questions but all of those are real questions asked to me. Honestly, if the user just used Google, about 99% of their answers are covered without my intervention.

But let me cite a great example of thinking like a robot and not like a person with some common sense.

There are certain PC games that do not have LAN.  Teknogods is a team where they crafted their own little program that enables certain games (Red Alert 3 coop, Halo 2, GTA IV, etc) have their LAN work online through a work around.  Now, in order for the teknogods program to work, it must inject itself into the game “process”.  So to the traditional Antivirus program, it may flag teknogods as a virus.

On the Teknogods forum, they have explicitly wrote that some antivirus programs are sensitive and will flag the program incorrectly.  This is known a a false positive.   Follow me so far?

Ok, so on GameDexterity I have a number of videos that use the Teknogods beta 16 method.  Sometimes (and today is a good example) I get a comment from a user saying this program is a virus and that I am full of garbage.  Now comments like these really piss me off.

Let’s test your analytical skills.  GameDexterity is a respected Youtube account among many circles.  We have a Youtube Partnership.  Why would I host a file on my own dropbox account that some people believe is a “virus” in disguise?  Would I be that stupid to jeopardize my viewers to use a program I uploaded that had a virus inside it?  Would I really want to do that? Screw over my viewers, and have them retaliate against me?

What benefit do I get out of this action?  Why would I want to infect the gamer base?  The answer to all of these questions is i don’t.  If you are thinking like a robot, you download the program, run it and your security software flags it as a virus.

Because you are a robot, you go “Oh Crap! Delete it!”, and go say “F*ck off GameDexterity. You tried to infect me!”

Where is the logical human element in all of this? Oh wait, it’s missing?!  This is what concerns me.  Not only do I verbally say this in the video, put it in writing in the more info section or through an annotation, people still say the file is a virus.

Why? Because they believe what their antivirus program is telling them. Why?  Maybe its because they paid good money for it and refuse to believe it is wrong.  Maybe its a cracked copy and the believe its the best program in the world and there is no way it would give them false positives.

Whatever the case maybe, some people are looking for ways to justify their own logic, even if it is flawed.  So I explain time after time again that it is a false positive, go into the details about how it behaves like a virus to inject itself into a game, but it is clearly not a virus. Once people get this through their thick headed skull, then they start to understand and drop the subject.

Then a week later I repeat the process again for another user. 😦   But it doesn’t stop there in my world. It exists in your world too.  Just because its on TV or in the newspaper does not necessarily mean it is true.  There are editors and producers out there that are preventing the truth from getting out.

Wikileaks? Heard of it recently?  Exactly my point.  A hacker got into the government archives and released all this top secret war information and that was never supposed to go public. It totally defied all information that was written on the Internet and in newspapers years before it.

So even ourselves, we need to take a step back and logically think things through.  Because if we don’t, then we are no better than the coffee maker in your kitchen, the GPS in your car, or the roomba vacuum.