The underappreciated weirdness of people and computers

They have a hidden hyperflexibility

We use computers all the time. We talk to people all the time. From an everyday perspective, all these things are normal. But, from another perspective, each is colossally complex and significant.

Computers are unlike every other machine. We routinely use or create new software. That is, we get a machine which we bought years ago to do something new - only thought of yesterday. That's like buying a car, and then years later, easily getting it to bake a cake, because it turns out that it can do that too, oddly enough.

And people change. Radically. Like a computer, it turns out they can speak one language, and later learn another. While "personality" may seem consistent over time, you have almost zero ability to predict the details of what a person will be thinking and doing in a year, or in a day. That's unlike every other organism. A squirrel doesn't eat acorns today, then open YouTube to learn a recipe, and cook acorn pie tomorrow. It's acorns all day, every day.

Computers and people are weird, weird, weird, and for much the same reason. They have a hidden hyperflexibility.