We Are the Last People Who Know How It Works • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by hparadiz » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

esikich wrote: post #109

vladms wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think there is a difference from "knowing how it works" and "reproducing every aspect of it at the level of the state of the art" ? Also, your example seems flawed if you restrict to a certain product. Can I build a compiler from scratch? Yes. Can I reproduce in a year a compiler with LLVM/GCC performance level? No. Can I build a compiler from scratch in a year from a room if I need to starting mining from…

Not really, at least not in this discussion. An assembly programmer gets logic gates, a C programmer gets assembly, etc etc. And each one can say to the one above "well you don't really get it if you can't bang out some meaningful work". Otherwise idk what we're even talking about here. Having a vague understanding of something isn't "knowing how it works".

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0137909101

Explains how to build an 8 bit calculator with wires, switches, and light bulbs and then keeps on going.

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

#132

Post by VorpalWay » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

rapidaneurism wrote: post #94

VorpalWay wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I took software focused computer engineering around 2010, we still had courses that took us all the way down to transistors and even the physics of P and N junctions and how that applies to CMOS. (And even some basic analog electronics.) Did I end up an expert at those layers? Of course not, but I know the basics and I know enough that if I need to I know where to start learning more. Just like I wasn't a C++ or…

Similar experience in the 90s, but we don't really know the intricacies of doping silicone, or smelting metal to make the pins. And what about mining it? I think the last time people knew how things were made was in preindustrial societies because they had to build everything themselves (whatever little things they had)

I partially disagree. I know the basic high level concept of all those. Would I be able to reproduce state of the art results on my own? Obviously not.

But a core part of the engineer or scientist mindset is curiosity for the sake of curiosity. Just the fact that I don't know something is enough reason for me to poke at it or otherwise learn more. Same reason I still take apart broken electronics as an adult and try to find the fault (and sometimes even repair it).

By the way, mining silicon is particularly easy: it's basically sand. The difficult part is purifying it, especially to the levels needed for modern nm scale chips.

A more useful question than making high end silicon would be: could you with reasonable tooling reproduce basic electric components? I'm talking things like light bulbs, resistors, generators, perhaps capacitors even? Just the basics crappy versions, not modern highly optimised surface mount components. And I think the anwer is yes (for me personally) if I had access to metal wire and sheet stock and industrial revolution era tools.

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

#133

Post by legobmw99 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:26 PM UTC

pseudosavant wrote: post #105

I can't help but think this type of step function change has happened with computers before. The change from punch cards to magnetic storage certainly made it so you didn't have to "know how it works" for every single bit. The change from machine code to a language like Fortran brought about such an abstraction that a Fortran dev didn't "know how it works" at that same level anymore. At this point, the layers of abst…

It's hard to articulate why, but 35 layers of deterministic abstraction feels very different from 1 layer of nondeterministic one.

In particular, I think every developer has experienced the need to jump "down the stack" to debug or understand something (even if not all the way down). Certainly, I think any senior developer should be at least conversant in the first few levels below wherever they "live". But this seemingly ends up looking fundamentally different in the interaction mode of an LLM, because you'd just ask it to jump down the stack for you

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

#134

Post by biotinker » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:26 PM UTC

mghackerlady wrote: post #35

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is already shocking to a certain degree seeing very young people not being able to use a vehicle in the narrow sense because all they ever learned were the mechanical controls of the so-called automobile. We could do this forever.

the difference is that an automatic transmission doesn't make the car work worse. The modern UX landscape would rather board up a room because the door has a sharp handle than figure out how to make the handle less sharp ETA: Or, to put it in car terms, we were all forced to take cabs (except for the people who were interested in driving, who became cab drivers) because car crashes happen or my sand eating neighbour…

It wasn't all that long ago that automatic transmissions had significantly worse reliability and fuel efficiency than manual transmissions.

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

#135

Post by Melatonic » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

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'm not sure that's true - you may be over generalizing

Probably not many here know the processes needed to turn sand into silicon and the expertise needed for hand grinding fancy lenses used in lithography. But we do know those things are needed and the approximate philosophical concepts behind these needs.

I think the danger comes when or if we fully automate a lot of the low level infrastructure tasks to the point where future generations do not even have the conceptual framework for how the tech they use is created

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

#136

Post by zephen » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #130

staindk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think there's something to be said for the big difference in the current abstraction layer jump - the loss of determinism. It is meaningfully different.

If there is something to be said, I have to ask. What specifically is there to be said?

Non-determinism is not inherently bad. We have had useful non-deterministic tools for (in computer years) several generations.

Non-determinism combined with bugginess?

That's a terrible combination. It is impossible to gradient-descent your way into a working prompt.

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

#137

Post by xpct » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:30 PM UTC

apsurd wrote: post #119

xpct wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> checking out emotionally and spiritually just means more life lived What exactly about checking out makes it 'more living'? I sense a false dichotomy here

easy: we all need breaks. breaks are not bad. living doesn't only mean "doing actions"

I don't think OP argued for any type of relentless work.

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

#138

Post by LEDThereBeLight » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #123

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is already shocking to a certain degree seeing very young people not being able to use a vehicle in the narrow sense because all they ever learned were the mechanical controls of the so-called automobile. We could do this forever.

A person dies every 26 seconds in a road traffic incident somewhere in the world. A big part of that is people using machines they do not understand.

Almost no part of that is due to people using machines they do not understand.

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

#139

Post by jfengel » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #123

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is already shocking to a certain degree seeing very young people not being able to use a vehicle in the narrow sense because all they ever learned were the mechanical controls of the so-called automobile. We could do this forever.

A person dies every 26 seconds in a road traffic incident somewhere in the world. A big part of that is people using machines they do not understand.

In what sense do they not understand it? What could we teach them that they don't already know?

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

#140

Post by mikewarot » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 7:34 PM UTC

>The knowledge is not in danger, in fact, it has never been safer. The AI models have read every manual that no human reads. They will recite, flawlessly and forever, exactly how all machines work. If this were only about competence, it would be the most secure moment in the history of computing.

Obviously this person doesn't have enough experience with the current crop of AIs. This is the exact reason why we should be concerned in the first place. Someone has to design and build the next version of everything, and AI isn't qualified to do the job, and might never be.

>What is dying is acquaintance. The plain, unglamorous intimacy of having fought a particular machine, and lost, and gone back, and finally felt the thing give.

This is true. But then again, who among us had to get up in the middle of the night, and trudge out to an outhouse? Who had to shovel a bit more coal into the furnace? Who had to pump water, and heat it on the stove? Who had to split wood, and stack it for the winter?

There are many, many things we're no longer acquainted with, and that's sad, but still ok. What's not ok is losing the competence required to maintaining the infrastructure and supply chain supporting society and civilization.