Al: middle class, unassuming, regular joe.
Azriel: All mighty servant of Yahweh. He who cleaves soul from body, angel of death. Archangel.
American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
161–170 of 175 posts
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it’s great to point an AI at a very detailed and specific engineering manual and have it distilled down into bullet points. There’s certainly no room for information loss in that plan! /s
I hate AI as much as anybody, but claiming that it's not useful for "distilling volumes of data into a short list of places to look first" is silly.
It’s very good at that, but aeronautical engineering and maintenance is the last place you’d want that.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even if stuff is written down you have to know where to look. That's one of the things I love about AI: It's excellent at figuring out where to look, because it can digest so many documents so much faster than a person.
Yeah it’s great to point an AI at a very detailed and specific engineering manual and have it distilled down into bullet points. There’s certainly no room for information loss in that plan! /s
GP did not suggest anything of the kind, though. They talked about "figuring out where to look" which very different. In that kind of use, it doesn't really matter that the model might hallucinate or draw faulty conclusions, as you're not using it figure out what to do, how or why. The only thing it is telling you is where some information is located, after which you go check it out from the actual source of truth. If the reference turns out to be wrong, you'll notice immediately.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#164How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every…
I work in a mid sized engineering organization, and the older engineers (and engineer-adjacent people like me) mentor the younger ones all the time. One thing that can't be codified in procedures is what I call "situational awareness" for lack of a better term. I don't think you can learn how to work in a machine shop safely from a book. Or recognize when a complex design is heading towards being unworkable. In my or…
I think “older drivers” pay less primarily because of risk aversion, not hypothetical driving wisdom.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#165How many apprentices did this guy managed to put through the pipeline before his career was over? It always shocks me how low this number tends to be for highly skilled craftsmen. They spend their century maintaining/creating some of the best work on the planet but when they disappear, unenumerable amount of knowledge, tips and experience silently disappears as quickly as it was gained, and it's sad to observe every…
I work in a mid sized engineering organization, and the older engineers (and engineer-adjacent people like me) mentor the younger ones all the time. One thing that can't be codified in procedures is what I call "situational awareness" for lack of a better term. I don't think you can learn how to work in a machine shop safely from a book. Or recognize when a complex design is heading towards being unworkable. In my or…
I think “older drivers” pay less primarily because of risk aversion (naturally increasing with reducing hormones production etc), not hypothetical driving wisdom.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is relative. In two generations, the concept of "master craftsman" and longevity will have been forgotten and short term thinking will the be "norm". It is only because we know and can compare that we judge. Remember, when we were hunter & gatherers, before becoming bound to the land and tilling that land, we had different gifts and talents that have all been lost. For better or worse. Or closer to home: barely…
Black and white TV left enough of a cultural impact that despite not living through that era, when I got a black and white e-ink smartphone recently I joked that if I were to watch the snooker on it I'd have to judge the green by its proximity to the pink. Also the BBC still issue black and white TV licences, I suspect my phone is eligible for one! Still about 3.5k of them working apparently.
B/W TVs is still the reason why football teams (the soccer kind) have two different jerseys - one light and one dark.
So when two teams play, one in their light and the other in their dark jersey. Hence also stripes are important.
Gotta ensure backward compatibility!
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is relative. In two generations, the concept of "master craftsman" and longevity will have been forgotten and short term thinking will the be "norm". It is only because we know and can compare that we judge. Remember, when we were hunter & gatherers, before becoming bound to the land and tilling that land, we had different gifts and talents that have all been lost. For better or worse. Or closer to home: barely…
> barely anyone remembers black and white television I feel like some "old" people have the weird idea that "young" people are just clueless about anything older than themselves. Just because some technology is no longer in use, does not mean that you don't get in touch with it. You don't grow up in isolation. There are always museums and of course the appliances of your parents and grandparents, in this case their p…
I didn't mean whether folks know the technology, I meant more whether folks interacted with that technology. And even better, thought that the technology was absolutely amazing!
The feeling of B/W TVs being the bees-knees is not something anyone of us can experience simply because our expectations have been "influenced" by colour devices. Those that experienced those moment of absolute amazement will have a different appreciation for technology, simply because of that experience.
The same goes with "master craftsman", everyone will know of the concept but to have experienced it and learnt with a master craftsperson is completely different. Just because I know of something does not mean that I understand what it is like to interact with that something. And that has nothing to do with "old" or "young", that's just how life is.
What is truly like to have watched the moon landing on a B/W TV in a world where no one had a mini-supercomputer in their pocket. Or an internet connection providing more information and knowledge than the library down the road. I can't experience that moment, no matter how many devices I remove from my life - my experiences and expectations have already been too influenced by my previous experiences.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in a mid sized engineering organization, and the older engineers (and engineer-adjacent people like me) mentor the younger ones all the time. One thing that can't be codified in procedures is what I call "situational awareness" for lack of a better term. I don't think you can learn how to work in a machine shop safely from a book. Or recognize when a complex design is heading towards being unworkable. In my or…
I think “older drivers” pay less primarily because of risk aversion (naturally increasing with reducing hormones production etc), not hypothetical driving wisdom.
risk aversion is driving wisdom.
Rule #1 - never go if you can’t see.
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
You speak of tacit knowledge[1] Worse is that they who have the knowledge don't realise that others don't know what they know, it's completely automatic and ingrained to the owner. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge
I think they're touching on multiple things that typically happens between an apprentice and master, not just tacit knowledge. Also implicit learning, procedural / nondeclarative memory, expert intuition and metacognitive feelings, all very hard to quantify into a written document, but put two people together where one learns from the other, and all these somehow gets transferred over time.
"Always two, there are. No more. No less. A Master and an apprentice."
Re: American Airlines mechanic Azriel “Al” Blackman has died
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is that profit is not the only reason people do something. Some people just like their profession, I would argue that this is kinda a requirement to actually become really good. So in order to actually matter for a good skill you must lack the very argument you argue with. The leading of companies with people not actually skilled at the craft is still a historic anomaly.
Money is not the "only" reason people do things. But it sure helps. Would we have nearly as many slime-balls scheming up ways to plaster ads upon everyone's eyeballs and record our every movement and click if not for the money in it? At a societal level almost nothing ever gets done at scale if there isn't money in it. You remove the financial incentive and things atrophy, new investment stops replacing old, etc.
Much of today’s world run on FOSS that says exactly the opposite. Gnu, emacs, Linux weren’t created for money.