[latexr]

You’re stretching the meaning of understanding to ridiculous levels of uselessness. If you’re slapped across the face, do you need to understand physics and biology to know how the movement and speed of a hand interacting with the tissue of your face and interpreted by your brain and nervous system makes it hurt?

[scheeseman486]

Understanding why pain happens is what allowed for anesthesia and modern medicine, which massively improved the quality of life of our species. Did we need to figure out how to do that? Sure, in the same way we needed to figure out how to create fire, or craft tools.

[pixl97]

>do you need to understand physics and biology to know how the movement and speed of a hand interacting wi

In one sense, no because we get this programmed in for free by our ancient biology. But do note that it did not just pop up full formed and took quntillions of complex interactions over eons of time to get to the point it is now. This is why making robots that behave like biological entities is insanely hard, evolution has spent an epic fuckton of compute on the problem already.

Now, if you're building human like robots, then yes, you need to understand all the above.

[notahacker]

We're downthread of someone moaning about the complexity of a world which requires him to understand sidewalks, strangers and rooms he isn't allowed to enter. Doesn't feel like paper is any more intuitive or 'natural' at any level than those, and tbh if I don't have to understand it well enough to understand how it's made, glass-walled skyscrapers really aren't complicated either...

[scheeseman486]

> glass-walled skyscrapers really aren't complicated either

Until they become a focusing mirror that turns into a gigantic magnifying glass, see: the Walkie Talkie building. Evidently, glass buildings are hard enough that even with hundreds of engineers, there still ends up being second order effects that are unaccounted for in many designs.

Building a skyscraper with glass windows means understanding the physics of light, geography, the spin of the earth and it's rotation around the sun, materials science etc.

[notahacker]

Well yeah, designing them is hard, even making the glass is hard. Similarly, ancient civilization was full of buildings whose constructors did very complex things but didn't understand the second order effects and artisans that spent a lifetime honing their skills to work on it. But anyone that can dismiss them as uncomplicated because they're just stone shouldn't need to worry too much about the engineers and digital models and processes behind the glass ones either.