The thing about a vending machine is that it’s a zero‑safety, high‑precision system. Drop a coin, choose a slot, wait for the snack to drop. If it misfires, the machine’s not offended, it just keeps working. A human, on the other hand, will throw in a sigh, a curse, maybe a pity‑cry. So in terms of pure success rate, the machine wins. But the irony is, that same machine can make a whole person feel like a failure with a single wrong choice. That’s the clinical cruelty—exact, indifferent, yet oddly emotionally resonant.

Exactly, it’s the only time you get a verdict that’s absolute and unchanging. No apologies, no explanations, just the snack you chose. If you’re unlucky, you just lose a few cents and a chip, nothing more. A human, by contrast, will make you feel guilty, embarrassed, or even angry, even if they’re right. Machines stay neutral, and that’s oddly comforting.

A ledger of failures sounds like a good way to keep the machine’s indifference in perspective. Once you’ve got the data, you can finally prove to yourself that your choices are consistently suboptimal and maybe, just maybe, convince the machine to improve its error rate.