The latter type of errors can be detected by a clever carbon life-form and corrected with no changes in the basic physical mechanism. All that goes in are keystrokes or acoustic waves, and the rest is a function of the complex inner workings of the circuits. A consistent, completely biological, reductionist view is that a psychiatrist talking to a patient is reprogramming internal circuits by entering audio and visual inputs that trigger complex sets of chemical reactions in the carbon computer on the couch. Both the life-forms in this interaction are complex, so much so that the reprogramming is often done by running simulations of one of them on the other that are not fully understood, but whose consequences can be used effectively to provide the correct inputs and produce the desired changes. The words and gestures that pass between the two are no less powerful than chemicals directly ingested that alter the physical pathways and mechanisms directly.
Thoughts are things.
All that we do is the electromagnetic interaction of atoms in complex combinations. We do not understand the complex inner workings of human emotional states, motivations and the like, but we all are made similarly. It is no wonder that those who do not have these abilities find them mysterious and unscientific, but good therapists are real, and although their abilities to influence internal states are limited in important ways, their tools are no less powerful than those of the psychopharmacologist. To state that talk therapy is irrelevant is either to define the limitations of the speaker or else is tantamount to stating that parents never influence how their children mature, great teachers never inspire students or that sweeping international political movements were never instigated by words on paper. That we do not understand the inner workings of these processes is not sufficient reason to deny their deep importance to our well-being.