[ninetyninenine]

I'm the author. To be clear. I referred to myself as "the author."

And no I did not say that. Let me be clear I did not say that there is "no difference". I said whether there is or isn't a difference we can't fully know because we can't define or know about what "understanding" is. At best we can only observe external reactions to input.

[mannykannot]

That was just about guaranteed to cause confusion, as in my reply to solarhexes, I had explicitly picked out "the author of the post to which you are replying", who is cultureswitch, not you, and that post most definitely did make the claim that "there's no difference between doing something that works without understanding and doing the exact same thing with understanding."

It does not seem that cultureswitch is an alias you are using, but even if it is, the above is unambiguously the claim I am referring to here, and no other.

As for the broader issues, we have already continued that discussion elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503027

[ninetyninenine]

My mistake. I misread and thought you were referring to me.