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We're not innovating, we're just forgetting slower

(www.elektormagazine.com)
139 points obscurette | 8 comments | 04 Jul 25 14:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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raincole ◴[04 Jul 25 16:04 UTC] No.44465682[source]▶
> They can deploy applications to Kubernetes clusters but couldn’t design a simple op-amp circuit

And the ones who can design a op-amp circuit can't manufacture the laminate their circuit is going to be printed on. And the ones who know how to manufacture the laminate probably doesn't know how to refine or synthesize the material from the minerals. And probably none of them knows how to grow and fertilize the crop to feed themselves.

No one knows everything. Collaboration has been how we manage complexity since we were biologically a different species than H. sapiens.

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cherryteastain ◴[04 Jul 25 17:02 UTC] No.44466133[source]▶
> THE GREATEST IMPROVEMENTS in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

> To take an example, therefore, from a very trifling manufacture, but one in which the division of labour has been very often taken notice of, the trade of a pin-maker...a workman not educated to this business...could scarce, perhaps..make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty. I have seen a small manufactory...where ten men only were employed...Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day.

- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776

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alganet ◴[04 Jul 25 17:24 UTC] No.44466331[source]▶
When you divide and specialize manufacture, you get efficiency.

When you divide and specialize design, you get design by commitee.

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marcosdumay ◴[04 Jul 25 17:30 UTC] No.44466379[source]▶
You clearly don't.

If you design a desk lamp, it wasn't designed by a committee just because a person designed the screws, another designed the plate stamping machine, another designed the bulb socket and etc.

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1. alganet ◴[04 Jul 25 17:42 UTC] No.44466454[source]▶
Let's skip over to a real example, it's better.

If you start designing hardware for AI, together with AI designed to run just on that hardware, and tie those design cycles together, you'll get a design by commitee. It is very likely that requirements will make an overall bad hardware (but slightly better for AI), and an overall bad AI (but slightly better in some hardware).

Eventually, these shortcuts lead to huge commitees. Sometimes they're not even formally defined.

The screw company should make good screws, not good screws for a specific desk lamp model. A good designer then _chooses_ to use those screws _because they are good_, not because they can make specific design requirements to the screw company.

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2. kragen ◴[04 Jul 25 18:24 UTC] No.44466785[source]▶
My left femur is a good femur for my specific height and species. It would be a lot worse if I had to use the same femur as the pit bull next door. Why are desk lamps different? I conjecture that it's only because of the cognitive limitations of the designers.
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3. alganet ◴[04 Jul 25 18:27 UTC] No.44466801[source]▶
I am sorry that you do not see yourself as different from a desk lamp.
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4. kragen ◴[04 Jul 25 19:02 UTC] No.44467030{3}[source]▶
On the contrary, my comment was all about the difference! I see my body as far better designed than any desk lamp I have ever heard of. So I am puzzled as to why you count the characteristics that give rise to desk lamps' deficiencies as advantages on the side of the desk lamp.
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5. alganet ◴[04 Jul 25 19:15 UTC] No.44467116{4}[source]▶
Your comparison with natural organisms _brightens my day_, but it is irrelevant for the context we're discussing.
6. eternityforest ◴[04 Jul 25 21:15 UTC] No.44467944[source]▶
Because you weren't designed on a CAD app.

The desk lamp can be designed around common parts to reduce the total number of unique parts in the world, so everything is reusable, replaceable, manufacturable in larger quantities so there's more resources to optimize the process, etc.

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7. kragen ◴[05 Jul 25 08:34 UTC] No.44471097{3}[source]▶
It sounds like you agree with me?
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8. alganet ◴[05 Jul 25 14:32 UTC] No.44473059{4}[source]▶
The problem is that you used vague sophist dialogue that could turn either way. You could say that T G A C are the designed parts, or any kind of bullshit honestly.

It's bad communication. You need to follow up the vague analogies with real examples to make a message stick. If you don't, people have no idea what you are saying.