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We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

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Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#61

Post by thinking_cactus »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #22

The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. We might have some understanding of one or two previous levels, but that decreases the farther down you go. We might understand the next level, and some of the next after that, but eventually people will be making things that we don't have the context to understand without hav…

I think it's more that "Some human some time has known how it works", not that "Any given human knows how it (all) works.".

But yea this glosses over a bit trial-and-error designs and, so to speak, "genetic optimization" kinds of designs where we just try random stuff and say "Hey, this works. Not sure why, but it works.".

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#62

Post by gwbas1c »

Two thoughts:

1: This is why I prefer console games. I just want to have fun without fighting with the machine.

2: There are plenty of people who appreciate old techniques and methods; and keep them alive. Think of going to a museum and seeing someone demonstrate an old craft or reenact how a craftsman did their job. For example, in my town there is an old, water-powered corn mill that still runs and sells corn meal.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#63

Post by jjk7 »

saulpw wrote: post #57
101008 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. What? Definitely not. I went to university and my first two years were subjects where I had to understand really deep levels of abstractions. I had to build logic gates, I had to work with hardware, wires, etc. I didnt see the point back then (I never used any of that profes…

You started with logic gates. How much EE did you do, or the actual physics that makes the transistor possible? Those are the previous (deeper) levels that people had to know before they got abstracted away.

Yes, they taught that too.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#64

Post by spacedcowboy »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #22

The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. We might have some understanding of one or two previous levels, but that decreases the farther down you go. We might understand the next level, and some of the next after that, but eventually people will be making things that we don't have the context to understand without hav…

The level of abstraction when I started was that you had to solder the components (resistors, capacitors, chips - well IC holders, chips were expensive) to the PCB board - that was "building your computer", none of this nancy-boy rubbish of "plugging stuff together" with "slots that can only take one type of card".

I'm fairly certain I know how it works. Being a physicist helps with the even-lower-level-details if you want to start talking about transistor doping, or electrical circuit theory, for example

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#65

Post by andai »

@ryancbriggs - 18 Oct 2024

> When I was young I fixed my parents’ computer and now that I’m older I fix computers for my kids. Are we the only generation that knows how computers work?

https://x.com/ryancbriggs/status/1847391612428517844

https://xcancel.com/ryancbriggs/status/1847391612428517844

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#66

Post by esikich »

hatefulheart wrote: post #52
101008 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. What? Definitely not. I went to university and my first two years were subjects where I had to understand really deep levels of abstractions. I had to build logic gates, I had to work with hardware, wires, etc. I didnt see the point back then (I never used any of that profes…

Exactly. Please get used to this sort of depressive, absurd and out of touch tone from HNers, it’s literally all they do now. Don’t bother calling people here hackers anymore, they have checked out emotionally and spiritually.

What's absurd is thinking because you took a logic class and made a flip flop 30 years ago that that is the ground floor and that it means you "understand how it all works". You're not building a CPU from logic gates and you don't know how it works. If I put you or OP in a room for a year I highly doubt you could build an 8 bit Atari-like CPU from scratch. I worked with wires and logic too but I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know how it all works.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#67

Post by Insanity »

AIorNot wrote: post #54
CommieBobDole wrote: post #22

The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. We might have some understanding of one or two previous levels, but that decreases the farther down you go. We might understand the next level, and some of the next after that, but eventually people will be making things that we don't have the context to understand without hav…

Wait a second, its layers all the way down Exactly, I'm over 50 and I remember all the complaints about script kiddies who looked at windows bat files as opposed to all the 'real programmers' who knew C and Assembly and used VIM and linux (which is still going strong) (ie https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/378:_Real_Program... ) but now also as an AI engineer we have to learn how harnesses, sys prompts, vario…

A (sad/funny) anecdote. Someone told me earlier this week "Not using a coding agent today is like using Vim for development instead of an IDE, you're just lagging behind".

As someone who's been exclusively using Vim for my development (and can definitely integrate it with AI workflows), that's just an insanely silly opinion. But I guess it shows how the next generation thinks about these tools that they've heard of but never actually bothered to learn.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#68

Post by jjk7 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #45
zormino wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time is different though (which has also been said every single time). But I'm worried this time it's true (also said every time). Doesn't help with the unease though.

The scale of it is certainly different, if nothing else We have never before seen every single profession disrupted to this degree, not even the introduction of the personal computer introduced such a dramatic shift

(in recent memory). Surely the industrial revolution was a much larger disruption.

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#69

Post by mghackerlady »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #16
tacostakohashi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that things are pretty different. Although the example of interrupts and jumper settings being common knowledge is a bit of a stretch... it's still amazing to recall that MS-DOS was regarded as an end-user / consumer OS, and that, more generally, it really was regarded as totally normal to need to invest some time in learning about the system, files, directories, typing, configuring/customizing settings and ne…

Compare with what the drivers/operators of the earliest automobiles were expected to know vs. what the same category of people are expected to know today. There's nothing new about this particular progression - we've been through it in dozens of technologies already.

I think the difference is that with those technologies, not knowing is seen as a hindrance (I imagine most people wished they knew how their engine worked, that's useful) that one can simply live with, whereas with computers nowadays I see people just not care about these skills. When I do something interesting on a computer that other people see, the response isn't "huh, that's a neat skill" it's "why?". People don't care anymore. They don't see knowledge as useful or something that is beneficial to pursue

Re: We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works

#70

Post by everyone »

101008 wrote: post #46
CommieBobDole wrote: post #22

The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. We might have some understanding of one or two previous levels, but that decreases the farther down you go. We might understand the next level, and some of the next after that, but eventually people will be making things that we don't have the context to understand without hav…

> The issue with this is that we don't know how it works. Generally speaking, we know how the level of abstraction that we were born with works. What? Definitely not. I went to university and my first two years were subjects where I had to understand really deep levels of abstractions. I had to build logic gates, I had to work with hardware, wires, etc. I didnt see the point back then (I never used any of that profes…

Yes, thats exactly what uni is for.. To learn all those previous centuries of stuff before you can either start contributing to the corpus yourself, or go get a job (Where you will pick up more immediately useful stuff)

We really dont understand how AI is working, even the earliest "genetic algorithms" could be incomprehensible, but computer systems in general, they're not really that complicated.. its like an audio mixing desk..it looks insanely complicated until you realise it's just the same few knobs repeated many times for many channels. High level languages, compilers, assembly, machine code, nand, mosfets. A single person really can understand it all.

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