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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

It really depends what you're referring to as tech work here... Low IQ people in my opinion are almost incapable of tackling certain technical problems – generally those which require complex maths or reasoning ability.

That said, most tech work isn't that. In fact, most tech work isn't even technical. Designers or product owners are tech workers, but don't necessarily need to be "smart". And even the technical roles tend to be basic UI work or building a CRUD backend in which case you're 100% correct.

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99% of IT problems in the world doesn't require brilliance in any way, just consistency and effort put in.

Anytime some good junior tries to put the brilliance into place it doesn't require it, its a sad story about literal technical debt down the line.

But good luck explaining this to most smart folks who are running around with big hammer trying as much new stuff as possible.

In my humble opinion, it actually requires a lot of intelligence to do really stupid things...

reminds me of the saying that every year, the intelligence threshold needed to end the world drops a bit more - cannot for the life of me find it again...

Found it!

Moore's Law of Mad Science: "Every 18 months, the minimum IQ to destroy the world drops by one point." - said by Eliezer Yudkowsky at the At Singularity Summit 2007.

youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEt1Wfl1jvo&t=1230s&ab_chann...

Can you give a concrete example of tech work that a "low IQ person" would not be able to tackle?

Writing an embedded C program using ESP-IDF that polls a Bosch BME688 sensor, feeds it Bosch BSEC library (compiled for ESP32, of course) and then pushes the response to an AWS mqtt queue.

Why, in all that, would you use an AWS mqtt queue?

In case you have multiple sensors and your organisation is already on AWS?

Also, in this particular case, it adds complexity to task (https on embedded, for example, it's not as straight forward as on a normal server, for example)

"ChatGPT, write me an embedded C program using ESP-IDF that polls a Bosch BME688 sensor, feeds it Bosch BSEC library (compiled for ESP32, of course) and then pushes the response to an AWS mqtt queue."

good luck with that, ESP-IDF + BSEC is one of my go to tests for evaluating LLMs; it's such a niche topic, and complex too, that there is (probably) no training data covering it and all LLMs hallucinate when asked for a solution.

I can think of a few examples that often pose challenges for less experienced Devs, some of whom don't overcome these challenges, whether due to lack of motivation, capacity, or any other reason:

- Handle DateTime in different timezones consistently, according to the expectations of each customer and their geography.

- Proper use of caching, basic search algorithms and data structures.

- Thread synchronization / race condition.

- Anything that requires recursion.

- Database and query tunning.

"Which Voltage do i need to cut Styrofoam with a resistive wire"

240V, that's an unfair example. As a low IQ person, I sidestepped trying to actually calculate the heat generated by different resistive wires (has to be above the melting point of styrofoam) and thought linearly about what I wanted to do, which was cut styrofoam, so google styrofoam cutter hot wire, got me to amazon.

Correct answer would have been "I don't know, whats the resistance of the wire".

1.2 Ohms per meter, 45cm (which was what i had) would burst in a flash of liquid metal when connected to 240V.

the correct answer is to cut the styrofoam.

https://www.amazon.com/Foam-Electric-Cutting-Machine-Control...

A form of "Use other people's solutions"

have you ever heard of steam tables?

Do I need to give you a number?

Can I just build something that allows me to control voltage and turn it up until it cuts, then measure?

The voltage in your wall sockets is a given, so the question should be "Which resistive wire do I need to best cut Styrofoam with electricity?"

The low iq solution would be to steadily ramp up the voltage until it cuts.

Hah, apparently I am low IQ but still getting it done.

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