3 ms·

This is part of the things that I list under "human-built things I technically understand (more or less) but are still completely baffling if I stop and think a

This is part of the things that I list under "human-built things I technically understand (more or less) but are still completely baffling if I stop and think about it". Amongst these: - same example with Google Instant: the fact that what I type goes to Google and back that fast and that I never get somebody else's page is pretty amazing; - CRT monitors: a flow of electrons is bent with electric current to hit a specific point on the screen, for millions of dots at least 30 times a second and it never misses its targets; (leaving aside that we were able to get a constant flow of electrons in the first place…) - car engine: fuel is injected, compressed, lit up in cylinders at 3000rpm to make a 4,000 vehicle move at 65mph and the engine barely ever have hiccups. - cell phones: I'm driving in California and can talk to my Dad who is in a high-speed train in France. It works and you can't even notice a significant delay. And there are obviously so many more things like these… It's like this Louis C.K. bit about people who complain about being stranded 40 minutes on the ground before taking part of "the miracle of flight". We should spend more time amazed at when it works than pissed at when it doesn't.

tim_church 15y ago
For those who don't know the Louis CK reference, here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
realugglan 15y ago
For me it's plumbing. Flush the toilet, get rid of waste through a hidden underground network and it just works in the middle of a city with millions of people doing it every day. It also gives me perspective of the enormous debt I owe to (hundreds of) thousands of people "just doing their job" for me to be able to sit where I am and do my part of it. Just from the vantage point of my office chair, the things that surround me have been touched my so incredibly many people during their production and delivery to here.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  Plumbing is also one of those things that you don't really think about until something goes wrong with it (in my case, a backup ... ugh).
Cushman 15y ago
I think that's a red herring. I mean, isn't that just the marvel of abstraction? I can show you how it works, on a basic level: See, it goes around like this. This connects here. That switch opens. This moves back, and that's the behavior that we're looking for. Easy. Why is it that when that same thing happens a hundred times a second, the emergent behavior suddenly becomes mind-boggling? It's just the same thing, faster. You already understand it. Your brain cant work fast enough to see what's going on, but thats exactly why we built the machines: to translate very fast things into things slow enough to understand. The complexity of the speed is illusory. It strikes me as like a small child, watching the cars go by-- Zoom! Zoom! Surely that is the most amazing thing that exists. But when she grows up, she learns that everything has a velocity, which has to be some number, so it might as well be high. The interesting things are still interesting, moreso even, when it's going very slow. Just going fast is kind of boring. What's cool are the things that emerge when you abstract. You have a car, and you know why that works. The connection between gasoline and forward motion is straightforward enough. But as soon as you have three cars on a road, you have traffic, and that's something fundamentally new. And you can analyze the traffic, figure out how it works-- but can you see how traffic is fundamentally dependent on the behavior of gasoline? And gasoline on the behavior of a refinery? And what happens when the refinery is run by people who drive to work? Now you have a recursive system. Can you still understand it? Maybe today. By tomorrow it will have changed itself. Can you understand the change? What happens when you think you understand the change, so you make a prediction, but your prediction affects what happens, making you wrong? But you take this into account when you make your prediction, becoming right again, except now you're a part of the recursive system, and there will never be a right answer. Understanding has become impossible. Now that's baffling. (And not to get all political, but this is also why a properly functioning government is not merely a hard, but an intractable problem. No matter how much you know what you're doing, you can't control something that controls you... But that doesn't stop us from trying.)
- suivix 15y ago
  >>But when she grows up, she learns that everything has a velocity, which has to be some number, so it might as well be high. It's annoying how you say 'she' because it distracts me from your content into thinking about feminism.

tim_church 15y ago

For those who don't know the Louis CK reference, here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

realugglan 15y ago

For me it's plumbing. Flush the toilet, get rid of waste through a hidden underground network and it just works in the middle of a city with millions of people doing it every day. It also gives me perspective of the enormous debt I owe to (hundreds of) thousands of people "just doing their job" for me to be able to sit where I am and do my part of it. Just from the vantage point of my office chair, the things that surround me have been touched my so incredibly many people during their production and delivery to here.

X-Istence 15y ago
Plumbing is also one of those things that you don't really think about until something goes wrong with it (in my case, a backup ... ugh).

Cushman 15y ago

I think that's a red herring. I mean, isn't that just the marvel of abstraction? I can show you how it works, on a basic level: See, it goes around like this. This connects here. That switch opens. This moves back, and that's the behavior that we're looking for. Easy. Why is it that when that same thing happens a hundred times a second, the emergent behavior suddenly becomes mind-boggling? It's just the same thing, faster. You already understand it. Your brain cant work fast enough to see what's going on, but thats exactly why we built the machines: to translate very fast things into things slow enough to understand. The complexity of the speed is illusory. It strikes me as like a small child, watching the cars go by-- Zoom! Zoom! Surely that is the most amazing thing that exists. But when she grows up, she learns that everything has a velocity, which has to be some number, so it might as well be high. The interesting things are still interesting, moreso even, when it's going very slow. Just going fast is kind of boring. What's cool are the things that emerge when you abstract. You have a car, and you know why that works. The connection between gasoline and forward motion is straightforward enough. But as soon as you have three cars on a road, you have traffic, and that's something fundamentally new. And you can analyze the traffic, figure out how it works-- but can you see how traffic is fundamentally dependent on the behavior of gasoline? And gasoline on the behavior of a refinery? And what happens when the refinery is run by people who drive to work? Now you have a recursive system. Can you still understand it? Maybe today. By tomorrow it will have changed itself. Can you understand the change? What happens when you think you understand the change, so you make a prediction, but your prediction affects what happens, making you wrong? But you take this into account when you make your prediction, becoming right again, except now you're a part of the recursive system, and there will never be a right answer. Understanding has become impossible. Now that's baffling. (And not to get all political, but this is also why a properly functioning government is not merely a hard, but an intractable problem. No matter how much you know what you're doing, you can't control something that controls you... But that doesn't stop us from trying.)

suivix 15y ago
>>But when she grows up, she learns that everything has a velocity, which has to be some number, so it might as well be high. It's annoying how you say 'she' because it distracts me from your content into thinking about feminism.