"I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question" is my all-time favorite way to say "What is wrong with this clueless dipshit."

The 'light' variant of this question makes a lot of sence, though:

The askers were non-technical but very jaded in human nature, so they know the human-provided input might be slightly imperfect but not completely wrong.

Then the question is: Can a machine based on perfection cope? Will it output reasonable but slightly-wrong conclusions? Will it go off the rails and produce completely insane errors?

Answering this question requires a lot of interesting subtility, which has been completely rejected by babbage.

If you want to use incorrect data to get correct answers, you need a human. That's one of the fundamental differences between humans and computers.

> If you want to use incorrect data to get correct answers, you need a human.

More often, that just gets answers that are incorrect in ways other than (sometimes, in addition to, othertimes, instead of) those explicable by the incorrect data.

Floating point numbers are trying hard to rectify this ;-)

On slashdot, someone proposed the theory that this is a good question to ask if you have rational worldview, and know this kind of thing should be possible, but aren't sure if you're dealing with a scam artist who will tell you what you want to hear.

Yes, I've used that principle before; ask a question you know should be "no" and see what happens. Can that car tow this (way too heavy) thing? Will my dishwasher clean my dishes even though my water is full of sulpher? Will this (integrated graphics) computer play $LATEST_GAME at full settings? Will this plastic thing last ten years of solid use outdoors?

In my personal experience, I actually don't get the full-throated lie "Yes!" all that often, if ever, but I get a lot of uncomfortable waffling.

Indeed. In buying a new car some years back, I found a reliable way to translate answers. When the dealer answered, "Yes" it was generally truthful. But when they answered, "I think so", the actual answer was definitively "No".

The question makes sense rhetorically, to establish that the machine is still only as good as its operator, just faster.