Computer programming is like building, modding, or repairing your car — you can learn but it’s an activity done basically only by hobbyists and professionals.
Troubleshooting computer issues is like car maintenance. Everyone can fill the tank with gas, most people can change a tire, fewer can change their oil, and fewer still can jump a battery.
The bad news is that a lot of people will never attain the formal operational stage, and what is even worse is that the percentage of people that do is falling.² The results of this study are not surprising.
The take-away should be that it is pointless and counter-productive to try to dumb down the user interface for applications in domains that require a high level of cognitive development. No amount of picture icons and hamburger menus is going to make up for an inability to reason abstractly. What it will do is make it impossible for anyone to ever use the application efficiently.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget%27s_theory_of_cognitive... ² https://oneofus.la/files/flynn2018.pdf
I guess the equivalent in computing would be spreadsheets? You can automate and build awesome things but god help you if you wanna move it somewhere else
Similarly with spreadsheets. Sure, they get ugly. But they allow to get work done better and faster that it would be otherwise (if it was done at all). The alternative usually involves finding a ready-made domain-specific application and adjusting your (or your company's) workflow to it, or pestering someone to make it for you, both of which are frequently bad trade-offs. It takes time to arrange, often siloes you off your data, you have lots of irrelevant stuff to learn besides your task, and it prevents you from iterating on your workflow. I'd say the last one - iteration on workflow - is the biggest source of Excel (ab)use. Hard to lock down your process in a domain-specific tool if the details of that process are fuzzy and subject to change.
Everyone may not need to know how to repair their car, but to perform basic, routine maintenance on it and to learn driving technique as intended is something that, when neglected, can cause major inefficiencies.
Economics 101 says just the opposite, that you create inefficiencies when you don’t specialize. Why is car maintenance anything that everyone should know and not plumbing, electrical work or carpentry?
That's simply bullshit. If you specialize on only installing tires on cars, but not removing them, you have specialized more than a business that swaps your tires, but you have created massive inefficiency by requiring your customers to somehow move around vehicles without tires for you to install tires for them.
There are particular circumstances where specialization increases efficiency, and there are (obviously) other circumstances where specialization decreases efficiency, so it's nonsensical to just say that specializing is always the more efficient choice, which is why all your analogies fail: You use an example where specialization (arguably) increases efficiency, then you completely fail to explain how computer skills fall into the same category as that example, and then you conclude that therefore it is in the same category.
Every specialization is about knowing the level of integration and specialization.
Well, then that's simply the claim that markets solve all problems optimally ... which is equally bullshit?
> Every specialization is about knowing the level of integration and specialization.
So ... specialization is always better, except when it's not? Yeah, duh!? How exactly does that help us with determining what the right level of integration and specialization is?
On a broader scale that’s the entire idea of the value chain.
People are expected to know SOMETHING about cars because they are frequently a huge expense that you are required to expend to be able to exist in a lot of places.
Econ 101 in this case assumes that time and money are fungible in any particular increments and that the money they earn doing whatever they are optimal at is greater than the cost of the specialists services.
Example someone making 20 bucks an hour needs a professional service that requires 3 hours of work for a professional at a cost of $900 learning to do so ineffeciently for 5 hours then spending 6 hours seems like a, huge waste but consider.
- Just because their labor is worth $20 an hour doesn't mean that they they can trivially in the context of their current obligations convert a day off into extra pay right when they need it.
- 11 hours x 20 hours will furnish 1/4 of the money required. Even given an immediate alternative it will require 45 hours of additional work.
Incidentally if you own a home you probably ought to learn at least enough basic maintenance to fix simple things.
This is often effecient in practice.
Every time you go out to eat, you are paying a markup over something you can do yourself - do you go out to eat?
Would it be more efficient for me to cut my own grass and maintain my yard on the weekend than pay someone else since I can’t convert that time I save on the weekend to cash - of course. But that’s time I can spend with my wife or relaxing. I also haven’t washed my own car, preferring to go to the car wash since I got my first real job out of college.
My maternal grandfather was a “man’s man” he built his own house, could fix cars, he took his pigs to the slaughterhouse and had a ranch with cows that he maintained until close to the time he died. On the other hand, my father isn’t as mechanically inclined, always looked up to his father in law and it took him years of convincing that it wasn’t emasculating to pay someone to do something that you’re not good at.
Doing a bit of maintainence can take you 2 minutes, having it done by an expert could take 2-3 man hours once all the inefficiences are considered (getting to the mechanic's shop, setting a price, waiting for things to be done, all the overhead of running and advertising the shop).
Based on my experience with talking to clients and observing them while doing B2B, if the average office worker had decent Excel and Googling skills (let alone the skills of the average vim user) they'd save a couple of hundred hours a year.
Still, numeracy is not being able to multiply a bunch of 3-digit numbers on a piece of paper. Numeracy is primarily knowing which numbers to multiply, or add together, or subtract from each other to learn something you need, and that you can do this in the first place.
On the simple side of things, is your check engine light on, are you dragging your air dams, are your lights on, do your tires have any tread.
Slightly more complex, recognizing that your car is over heating, recognizing burning oil, brakes on the wear pad.
More complex, is the suspension connected to the body?
What's scary is the number of ride share drivers (and taxi cabs) that continue (are allowed to?) drive with some of these serious issues happening. even in states like California with vehicle inspections.
Most problems with cars (except maybe tread), you get some combination of an indicator light, something smells funny, sounds funny, or your car drives differently. In either case, you either take it to a mechanic or if it can’t be driven, you get it towed.
Where a single light can mean everything from you're losing 10% fuel efficiency to your car will seize and light on fire if you keep driving for 10 minutes.
Relevant fact: there were on average 152,000 car fires each year in the U.S.A and most crashes do not result in fire.
But, without cursory knowledge of car issues, that decision is unwise, negligent at worst. A car breaking down in the center of traffic has negative externalities. A car fire (152k/year) has negative externalities. A tire or brake failure resulting in an accident has negative externalities.
Even the seemingly innocuous check engine light being on from emissions equipment has negative externalities.
Your expertise is someone else’s “undifferentiated heavy lifting” no matter what field you’re in.
Plus the point is that as cars became more ubiquitous, once esoteric skills became the norm, such as checking oil, filling up gas. At some point the baseline has to advance.
Yes and no. On the one hand, as early cars become more common, more people had to deal with them. But on the other hand, cars became simpler to use over time.
Tinkering with your car used to be a hobby of many people and a necessity. These days, there's not much user servicing left. (I don't even know whether you still have to manually check the level of oil? Don't they have sensors for that these days?)
Gas station pumps have also become much easier to use. It requires some intention and a minimum amount of skill to overfill your tank these days. Similar considerations apply to using computers.
Starting your spreadsheet by typing something in the DOS prompt used to be how things were done. These days, vastly more people are expected to be at least somewhat familiar with spreadsheets--it's no longer something to highlight in your CV--but starting the program used to do so has become simpler.
Similar countervailing developments have been common since at least the industrial revolution. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskilling
Most cars do have sensors for this, but they often fail, and even if they're working fine, tell you at a warning level, not at a full level. If you want to be a prepared driver you'd check your fluids regularly, but especially before long trips; The bonus is that the sensors can't tell you that your oil is prematurely dirty, so just by looking at it, you get more information.
This reminds me of Obama recommending people check their tires; yes, modern vehicles have tpms, but if they heed the warning, it often doesn't come on until a tire is significantly low ~20%.
Speaking of which, that’s yet another thing we pay for other people to do. If it’s a trip longer than about five hours we are flying or if we are being cheap and it’s not too far (around 6 to 7 hours) and if possible, taking the MegaBus.
Then there is the fact that about half those places specialize in making up stuff that is wrong with dumb peoples cars to rip them off.
Or even rental car companies.
If we put our minds to it, these days we can often make sensors that are much better than humans for these kinds of applications.
Btw, you are talking about the former US president Obama? Seems a bit weird for him to care about car maintenance?
Why wouldn't the President care about the safety of millions of potential death traps driving to work daily?
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/aug...
Estimates were that 25% of American tires were underinflated, wasting 2.8 billion gallons of gasoline every year.
Wow, -2 in 40 minutes. I knew unpopular but is it that controversial a view??
That said, I know how to do all of these things, I actually service my car and a motorcycle myself despite the apartment complex's "rules", but I think for a lot of car owners they're not in "safe" space to do their own maintenance. There's also the up front cost of buying tools. I think a lot of car owners in similar situations are relegated to taking the car to a shop for simple repairs as a result. Any advice?
Being able to transform money into convenience is a great benefit of living in a modern inter-connected society. But it's only great while it lasts, and relying on always having this ability is a risky move. When my parents ran into hard times they raised and slaughtered hogs. When things got better we stopped. I don't think I'd be alive today if they didn't have that know how.
If the hard time is temporary, that’s what credit is for. If it is systemic, I’ve got bigger fish to fry - downsizing our house, getting job training, moving near a bus line to save money on car insurance, etc.
It’s just like the BS “Latte Factor”. People are not unable to save for retirement because of $6/day Latte. It’s usually because they have high fixed costs relative to their income.
As many dry cleaners that I see even in the less affluent parts of the city, people are able to afford to do that too.
Most less affluent people who do own their own home (as well as many who could afford it) do cut their own grass.
On the other hand these jobs do take space in my life and in my mind. It is questionable whether we should "force" people to do simple car maintenance. Our society runs on division of labour and everybody places their cutover to experts somewhere else. You say they could benefit a lot from gaining some mechanical understanding of their car's operation. And I feel the same. But they may wonder why they should learn a skill that takes time away from other things important to them.
Sure I may question how they spend their time. But now we've moved away from how knowing basic maintenance is good for you to a more general outlook on life. Watching a tutorial will improve one's future life. But we can't say that watching a car maintenance tutorial will be the right thing. Maybe it's a tutorial on Excel? Which would be more in line with the topic of the article anyway.
So I agree with you in general but not in specifics :-)
Current subthread started with this: "Yes, unpopular opinion these days, but car owners should really know how to do at least the bare minimum of basic car maintenance"
It's probable that Bezos has to give zero fucks beyond what brand he prefers. People living in their car are probably just praying it doesn't break down. In between there is a giant middle ground that composes 80% of the car owning population whose benefit derived from car know how is inversely proportional to their wealth.
Most car owners should learn the basics of how their car works and how it is maintained even if they intend to outsource that labor to others just so they aren't trivially taken advantage of. If we assume that MOST people aren't born into wealth most people could stand to learn the basics during the time when they have more time than money and then they could make productive use of this know how later.
I'm not sure how you can even argue this point.
I don't think your existential proof is a good one. It's like proving Cigarettes are OK by noting that billions use and only millions die.
Most Americans are as knowledgeable about how to operate their automobil e as they are about software. That is, not very.
Making a pencil is a highly fragmented industrial process, even at the 19th century level. Just making the "lead" is quite sophisticated.
There is much satisfaction in being a maker - or at least being more than just a consumer.