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Nobody knows how the whole system works (surfingcomplexity.blog)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] 22 points 8 months ago (10 children)

Those telephone systems still work because someone knows how each part works.

I'm more than confident that - if you actually went down to AT&T HQ and really dug into the weeds - you'd find blind spots in the network created by people leaving the company and failing to back-fill their expertise. Or people who incorrectly documented this or that, forcing their coworkers to rediscover the error the hard way.

I think we do underestimate how many systems are patched over, lost in the weeds, or fully reinvented (by accident or as a necessary replacement) because somebody in the chain of knowledge was never retained or properly replaced.

I would be very dubious of the theory that anyone at AT&T could recreate their system network from the 1980s, without relying on all the modernizations and digitized efficiencies, for instance. No way in hell they could reproduce the system from the 1940s, because all that old hardware (nevermind the personal) has been rendered obsolete ages ago. But I'm sure there are still lines in the ground that were laid decades ago that are still in use. Possibly lines that they've totally lost track of and simply know exist because the system hasn't failed yet.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    But that's the strength of society to begin with, no one person knows how any given complex system works because its impossible for one person to know, we come together in specialised groups to create these systems over time with the collective knoweldge of many people.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Idk if I'd call it a "strength". Feels more like a weakness.

    But sure. This is the reason bureaucracies exist. Knowledge accrual, organization of specialties, long term investment planning, and distribution of surplus... as critical today as it was 8,000 years ago.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    Agree that it weakens certain things, but I don't see how we can overcome that. It's great to have a knowledgeable GP as your doctor, but their breadth of knowledge causes them to fail at a deep knowledge of specific disease states. So he might be able to determine you have cancer, which then causes him to send you to an oncologist who specializes in that area.

    Basically, there is a limit to the volume of information a human can hold. This was partially what AI advertised it could help overcome, but it's so much worse than expected. If we could somehow increase the volume of information a human could hold and process, you'd be in much better shape for those doctor visits that end in "well, I guess this symptom is just you getting older" when really it's SOMETHING but the doctor completely lacks the knowledge of that area.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    You would be largely correct. Though I was kind of amused with the "Does anyone know how their telephone works?" ca.1994 and then listed a bunch of things that I very much know. So maybe a bad example.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Well, like with the Netflix question, you can keep going deeper until you hit the unknown. At some point, the person asking the question doesn't know the questions to ask to get to that next level, though.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    Many of those questions aren't particularly useful either. They may be interesting from a philosophical perspective but that's the language of thinking, not the language of doing. I've written code in assembly language. I've looked at the output in binary. I can explain in basic terms what is happening there. Does that help anybody?

    I would argue that it doesn't because almost everyone writes code in higher level languages. Even if I can tell you what I know it doesn't provide any practical information for you to use. Similarly, I could explain to you how long division works but the next time you need to divide two numbers you're still going to reach for a calculator instead of a pencil and paper. What then is the point of lamenting the loss of knowledge that no one uses directly? It could be reconstructed from what remains if necessary but since it isn't necessary it doesn't matter.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    I can explain in basic terms what is happening there. Does that help anybody?

    Really depends on where the bug lives.

    I would argue that it doesn’t because almost everyone writes code in higher level languages.

    Most people write mediocre code. A lot of people right shit code. One reason why a particular application or function runs faster than another is due to the compilation of the high level language into assembly. Understanding how higher level languages translate down into lower level logic helps to reveal points in the code that are inefficient.

    Just from a Big-O notation level, knowing when you've moved yourself from an O(n log n) to a O(n^2^) complexity is critical to writing efficiently. Knowing when you're running into caching issues and butting up against processing limits informs how you delegate system resources. This doesn't even have to go all the way to programming, either. A classic problem in old Excel and Notepad was excess text impacting whether you could even open the files properly. Understanding the underlying limits of your system is fundamental to using it properly.

    Similarly, I could explain to you how long division works but the next time you need to divide two numbers you’re still going to reach for a calculator instead of a pencil and paper.

    Knowing how to do long division is useful in validating the results of a calculator. People mistype values all the time. And whether they take the result at face value or double-check their work hinges on their ability to intuit whether the result matches their expectations. When I thought I typed 4/5 into a calculator and get back 1.2, I know I made a mistake without having to know the true correct answer.

    One of the cruelest tricks in the math exam playbook is to include mistyped solutions into the multiple choice options.

    What then is the point of lamenting the loss of knowledge that no one uses directly?

    It's not lamenting the loss of knowledge, but the inability to independently validate truth.

    Without an underlying understanding of a system, what you have isn't a technology but a religion.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    It could be reconstructed from what remains if necessary

    It could be, as long as we have people with the required competencies.
    But now we are seeing said competencies not being valued (it's been happening before AI and I'd say that the current AI usage is a result of it as opposed to the cause), which would cause reduced development of it in future generations and then scarcity.

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