> I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, build a car, build a toaster, design a transistor, make an ASIC, or write an OS.
Why not? I mean that, quite literally.
I don't know how to make an ASIC, and if I tried to write an OS I'd probably fail miserably many times along the way but might be able to muddle through to something very basic. The rest of that list is certainly within my wheelhouse even though I've never done any of those things professionally.
The peer commenter shared the Heinlein quote, but there's really something to be said for /society/ of being peopled by well-rounded individuals that are able to competently turn themselves to many types of tasks. Specialization can also be valuable, but specialization in your career should not prevent you from gaining a breadth of skills outside of the workplace.
I don't know how to do any of the things in your list (including building a web site) as an /expert/, but it should not be out of the realm of possibility or even expectation that people should learn these things at the level of a competent amateur. I have grown a garden, I have worked on a farm for a brief time, I've helped build houses (Habitat for Humanity), I've taken a hobbyist welding class and made some garish metal sculptures, I've built a race car and raced it, and I've never built a toaster but I have repaired one (they're actually very electrically and mechanically simple devices). Besides the disposable income to build a race car, nothing on that list stands out to me as unachievable by anyone who chooses to do so.
> The peer commenter shared the Heinlein quote, but there's really something to be said for /society/ of being peopled by well-rounded individuals that are able to competently turn themselves to many types of tasks
Being a well-rounded individualist is a great, but that's an orthogonal issue to the question of outsourcing our skills to machinery. When you were growing crops, did you till the land by hand or did you use a tractor? When you were making clothes did you sew by hand or use a sewing machine? Who made your sewing needles?
The (dubious) argument for AI is that using LLMs to write code is the same as using modern construction equipment to build a house: you get the same result for less effort.
ok - but.. here in California, look at houses that are 100 years old, then look at the new ones.. sure you can list the improvements in the new ones, on a piece of paper.. the craftsmanship, originality and other intangibles are obviously gone in the modern versions.. not a little bit gone, a lot gone. Let the reader use this example as a warmup to this new tech question.
Why not? I mean that, quite literally.
I don't know how to make an ASIC, and if I tried to write an OS I'd probably fail miserably many times along the way but might be able to muddle through to something very basic. The rest of that list is certainly within my wheelhouse even though I've never done any of those things professionally.
The peer commenter shared the Heinlein quote, but there's really something to be said for /society/ of being peopled by well-rounded individuals that are able to competently turn themselves to many types of tasks. Specialization can also be valuable, but specialization in your career should not prevent you from gaining a breadth of skills outside of the workplace.
I don't know how to do any of the things in your list (including building a web site) as an /expert/, but it should not be out of the realm of possibility or even expectation that people should learn these things at the level of a competent amateur. I have grown a garden, I have worked on a farm for a brief time, I've helped build houses (Habitat for Humanity), I've taken a hobbyist welding class and made some garish metal sculptures, I've built a race car and raced it, and I've never built a toaster but I have repaired one (they're actually very electrically and mechanically simple devices). Besides the disposable income to build a race car, nothing on that list stands out to me as unachievable by anyone who chooses to do so.