Normal people don't understand what the word deterministic is, nor do they really expect their software to produce deterministic results. For one thing, they're not running the operation multiple times and comparing the outputs. For another, if they give the same task to three different people they're going to get three different results anyway, so what does it matter if the computer gives three different results, if they even notice.

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surgical_fire 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Normal people don't understand what the word deterministic is

I would argue that they implicitly do, as any user expects the same action performed on a computer or similar system to provide the same outcome.

> For another, if they give the same task to three different people they're going to get three different results

Give the same three tasks to a single user to be executed three times separately, and he will get supremely annoyed if his actions do not give him the same results.

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bigstrat2003 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not even implicitly understand. A layman is perfectly capable of understanding what deterministic behavior is, and claiming otherwise is just condescension.

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dotancohen 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Then you and I work with very different people. Here it seems "reset it and try again" is considered a viable problem solving technique.

	▲	surgical_fire 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It sometimes is, as resetting may clean some dirty state. Even when people don't really understand why they are doing it, and are merely following trends they saw elsewhere, it does not invalidate the point.

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fn-mote 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think “normal” (non-computer) people have a mental model for computing that is more like a (possibly bad) coworker.

They would quickly adapt to “reload it a few times if it doesn’t work right away”.

Isn’t this what people are already doing when they browse the web? I know I am.

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izacus 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

What are you basing those claims on?