Just finished the Youtube talk on degrading technology / knowledge. Really liked that perspective, although I disagree with quit a bit of Jonathan Blows points.

Just finished the Youtube talk on degrading technology / knowledge. Really liked that perspective, although I disagree with quit a bit of Jonathan Blows points. About the challenge: I had the feeling, that you and a good chunk of readers here could go explain good deal of it all. But my point goes further: We all hit the wall of understanding sooner or later and all what is truly required is to know how use the technology. And that's exactly the same in information technology. I use databases daily. Do I know how they work? A bit, just enough for work and that is all what is needed. That's why I like to disagree with Jonathan Blow. Some people abstracted a great deal of complexity away, because it's simply irrelevant. As a result, we've seen an explosion in tech, just not in the nieces where he's looking. The modern ecosystem in tech is the normal way of economics, where everyone specializes him or herself further and further, understanding the specific domain better at the cost of everything else. Today, the average Joe can code as a result of all this simplifications. But Jonathan Blow compares the elites of coding, people who build engines, with Joe. That's misunderstanding what has happened, the level of analysis is wrong. Also, people like John Carmack are not gone, they simply work on new problems. And as you mentioned yourself, there is so much technology surrounding you that you have no idea of how it works, like chemistry. Still, you use it to your benefit because other people who know this stuff simplified its use. And not just for you and me, also for other chemist, like coder for other coders. Now a bit of a rand, skip it if you like: The school system, including university, killed so much of my curiosity, it's insane. I had to learn so much bullshit that I'm almost glad for one of my least great attributes, my bad memory. Because there was really no point remembering most of it. It's just too bad that I can't control my own garbage collector. Last year, I learned a great deal about machine learning (again, as I did it in college, too) and now can remember almost nothing. Despite really enjoying the course and throwing myself into it. What I don't use, I forget and of course I use only a tiny bit of skills and knowledge at work. I'm not happy with the way it is, but it simply is. I also learned so much about databases and liked that subject, but the only thing I really retain is what I use in my work. That brings me to my final thought tidbit: My brain obsesses with ideas that you would put more in the category of philosophy. It's what you think about when you have nothing to do or start daydreaming that's probably where your brain is best at. I never asked people in tech what they think about in those moments. I'm really, really curious about the answer.