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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

"Most people who drive cars now couldn’t find the radiator cap if they were paid to, and that’s fine."

That's not fine IMO. That is a basic bit of knowledge about a car and if you don't know where the radiator cap is you will eventually have to pay through the nose to someone who does know (and possibly be stranded somewhere). Knowing how to check and fill coolant isn't like knowing how to rebuild a transmission. It's very simple and anyone can understand it in 5 minutes if they only have the curiosity.

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This reminds me of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". One of the themes Pirsig explores is that some people simply don't want to understand how stuff they depend on works. They just expect it to be excellent and have no breakdowns, and hope for the best (I'm oversimplifying his opinion, of course). So Pirsig's friend on his road trip just doesn't want to understand how his bike works, it's good quality and it seldom breaks, so he is almost offended when Pirsig tells him he could fix some breakage using a tin can and some basic knowledge of how bikes work.

Lest anyone here thinks I feel morally superior: I somewhat identify with Pirsig's friend. Some things I've decided I don't want to understand how they work, and when they break down I'm always at a loss!

You just realistically can't know everything. I have a tankless water heater. It's almost a magical black box to me, but I know a little bit more about it now that I've taken pictures of it and asked LLMs to explain it to me. I'm still not a water heater technician, but I feel more knowledgeable.

And on the topic of motorcycles, I recently got a crappy bike that barely starts, and I partially got it because I feel capable of fixing it. And now it runs pretty well because I used lots of "video chats" with Gemini (and the owner's manual as context) to fix it!

James Burke's old TV show Connections was all about this, how many little things that surround us in day to day life and on which we absolutely depend for our survival are complete black boxes to most of us most of the time. Part of modernity is that no single person, however intelligent, can really understand the technological web that sustains our lives.

Paying money to abstract over lower level concerns is civilization.

This is a bizarre analogy.

For one thing: if your car is overheating, don't open the radiator cap since the primary outcome will be serious burns.

And I've owned my car for 20 years: the only time I had to refill coolant was when I DIY'd a water pump replacement, which saved some money but only like maybe $500 compared to a mechanic.

You could perfectly well own a car and never have to worry about this.

Yes and no. For one thing the radiator/reservoir cap is clearly marked "Do not open when hot." But the general point really is that if you have no idea how something works, you will be helpless when it doesn't work. If (at some time in the future) the only thing you know how to do is ask an AI to do something for you, then you'll be not only helpless without it, but less and less able to judge whether what it is telling you is even correct. Like taking your car to a mechanic because it's overheating, and him saying you need a new water pump and radiator when maybe all you needed was a new pressure cap but you never even knew to try that first.

Of course you can't know everything. There a point at which you have to rely on other people's expertise. But to me it makes sense to have a basic understanding of how the things you depend on every day work.

Ironically, many cars don't have radiator caps, only reservoirs.

Modern cars, for the most part, do not leak coolant unless there's a problem. They operate a high pressure. Most people, for their own safety, should not pop the hood of a car.

I have had this new car for 5 months. I haven't learned to turn on the headlights yet. It just turns itself on and adjusts the beams. Every now and then I think about where that switch might be but never get to it. I should probably know.

What the hell? There are plenty of reasons to pop your hood that literally anyone competent to drive should be able to do perfectly safely. Swapping your own battery. Pulling a fuse. Checking your oil, topping up your oil. Adding windshield wiper fluid. Jump starting a car. Replacing parts that are immediately available.

Not requiring one to pop the hood, but since I've almost finished the list of "things every driver should be able to do to their car": Place and operate a jack, change a tire, replace your windshield wiper blades, add air to tires (to appropriate pressure), and put gas in the damned thing.

These are basic skills that I can absolutely expect a competent, driving adult to be able to do (perhaps with a guide).

I mean, I don't disagree that these are basic skills that most anyone should be able to perform. But most people are not capable to do them safely. Whether that's aptitude or motivation, doesn't matter.

Ask your average person what a 'fuse' even is, they won't be able to tell you, let alone how to locate the right one and check it.

Just think about how help the average person is when it comes to doing basic tasks on a computer, like not install the Ask(TM) Toolbar. That applies to many areas of life.

Aren't radiator caps supposed to let excessive pressure escape?

You fill up the reservoir, but the cap is still there.

You literally cannot become a legal driver in Poland without popping the hood, showing and explaining random two refillable tanks and oil level check. It’s a part of the driver’s license exam.

Are you able to code with 1s and 0s, as well as be able to reconstruct a computer from raw minerals? If not, that's not fine IMO.

I have never cared for decades and now my car doesn't even have a radiator. Seems to have worked out well for me.

What kind of car do you drive that doesn't have one?

Literally any ev?

No. My EV, for example literally has servo-controlled shutters that route fresh air to the radiator when needed.

An EV with a heat pump. I know literally there is a heat exchange/radiator, but there is not a separate radiator system with its own fluids and pumps.

You don’t get to decide whether a radiator is a radiator just because the coolant can internally shuffle heat to the A/C. I’m assuming that you drive a Tesla, in which case your car still has a big fat low temperature radiator. If you’re driving virtually any other EV on the market, it still has a big fat low temperature radiator, or even multiple.

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