Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This “encouraging learned helplessness” you talk about is in fact the opposite. > and when they break they should be taken to professionals to fix That's precisely "learned helplessness". You can't do anything, take it to the professionals, is the lesson you're supposed to learn. Example of cars is apt. The owners manual of a car these days doesn't tell you anything useful, anything that needs works is just "take i…
The analogy is apt, yes, and the reasons are the same. Cars decades ago were simple physical systems. I could take apart my 1980 Mercedes with one box worth of tools. A modern Mercedes can’t even be tuned without special software. Even more modern cars — EVs — are basically laptops with wheels. The old world is gone, and we’re never going back to it. It’s not learned helplessness for me to realize that I can’t debug…
And these trends are a tragedy, for all kinds of products not just computers and cars.
Sure, most people didn't care to repair their widget even in the 70s they just took it an applicable professional. Which is fine. But some people wanted for various reasons. Some of these people got so interested that it became their career and went on to great developments. Nearly every engineer can tell stories of tinkering with some products as a kid and it drove their career.
A lot of that is lost when products are un-tinkerable. Think of the generations growing up today for whom a computer is a hermetically sealed device from apple where they can't do anything but consume, tightly within the guardrails apple enforces. That's not bringing up a generation of computer tinkerers.