4 ms·

There's also the classic, "Nobody knows how to make a pencil." That kind of "nobody knows" is about the complexity of many large interconnected systems, and th

There's also the classic, "Nobody knows how to make a pencil." That kind of "nobody knows" is about the complexity of many large interconnected systems, and the deep wells of knowledge, theory, and history in each of the various domains. I argue it's different from your washing machine type because the domains of computing are vast. Sure, you can dive in and figure some things out when necessary, but you can do that with pencil production too.

freeopinion 3y ago
You can figure out _a_ way to make a pencil, but it may not be as efficient or clever as they did it the first time. Or it might be a lot more practical with modern abilities that were impossible at the time of the first pencil. If you started today, you might not use graphite, or wood. That's ok for pencils. But it might mean we've forgotten a technique they used for making pencils that's also useful for tiny gear shafts. But we don't use it for gear shafts anymore because somebody invented the Swiss lithoscropy process.
- sfn42 3y ago
  I thought the whole point was that nobody knows how to make the pencil we think of as a regular pencil. There's the graphite core, the wood handle, the yellow paint, the eraser and the little metal ring holding the eraser. No one person knows how to find, extract and refine the raw materials, then turn them into those components and put it all together.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Agreed, there's a difference between "nobody has the time or money to care" and "no human mind has the capacity to hold the whole model at one time." I was fortunate to get a computer and electrical engineering education that ran the gamut from making basic organic semiconductor structures in the lab and up the pyramid through logic gates, adders, a custom processor on an FPGA, writing a custom RTOS, patching the Linux kernel, and writing a userspace application. There are no black boxes anywhere on that stack - someone somewhere knows or knew how it worked - but the last time that some systems engineer could claim comprehensive understanding of the stack was probably no later than the early 80s. Individually, one can build broad competence, comprehension, and a career at some height in the pyramid, and can have limited comprehension of things directly above and below your zone, but the whole pyramid is superhuman.

freeopinion 3y ago

You can figure out _a_ way to make a pencil, but it may not be as efficient or clever as they did it the first time. Or it might be a lot more practical with modern abilities that were impossible at the time of the first pencil. If you started today, you might not use graphite, or wood. That's ok for pencils. But it might mean we've forgotten a technique they used for making pencils that's also useful for tiny gear shafts. But we don't use it for gear shafts anymore because somebody invented the Swiss lithoscropy process.

sfn42 3y ago
I thought the whole point was that nobody knows how to make the pencil we think of as a regular pencil. There's the graphite core, the wood handle, the yellow paint, the eraser and the little metal ring holding the eraser. No one person knows how to find, extract and refine the raw materials, then turn them into those components and put it all together.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

Agreed, there's a difference between "nobody has the time or money to care" and "no human mind has the capacity to hold the whole model at one time." I was fortunate to get a computer and electrical engineering education that ran the gamut from making basic organic semiconductor structures in the lab and up the pyramid through logic gates, adders, a custom processor on an FPGA, writing a custom RTOS, patching the Linux kernel, and writing a userspace application. There are no black boxes anywhere on that stack - someone somewhere knows or knew how it worked - but the last time that some systems engineer could claim comprehensive understanding of the stack was probably no later than the early 80s. Individually, one can build broad competence, comprehension, and a career at some height in the pyramid, and can have limited comprehension of things directly above and below your zone, but the whole pyramid is superhuman.