Ask HN: Do you also marvel at the complexity of everyday objects?
Maybe it was the solder fumes, but I started thinking about what it actually took to create that spool of wire -- everything from the geologists and miners extracting ore, through all the metallurgy, industrial engineering, and plastics work. And I started to marvel at all the work and expertise it took to make something that I normally would've just considered a semi-disposable consumable item. It made me wonder whether that spool of wire was actually a piece of technology on par in sophistication with all the software that I build every day.
It was such an odd moment, but it's has caused a lasting perspective shift. almost every day I'll look at some commonplace object I took for granted and think "this is actually so complex, no single human has all the knowledge or expertise to create it".
I'm curious if anybody else has had a similar experience and/or what are some simple everyday objects that give you pause when you stop to think about their complexity
328 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 536 ms ] threadhttps://chat.openai.com/share/3bad8272-c632-4659-8c0b-59578e...
There is also, based on this definition of the stack trace, what are the most simplest objects. the simpleness of an object is defined by the height of that stack trace
1. https://www.howtoinventeverything.com
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...
If you like that thought experiment though (reinventing society from scratch) I recommend the anime Dr. Stone and the YouTube channel Primitive Technology.
The deterioration of the online environment in recent years has made me turn my eyes to the world of tangible things. Reality has a reassuring character. In the last few years I have become a maker of real things[0] and I have been happy that way. I am also enchanted by the beauty of certain forms created by human industry.
(!)This links to my blog, so I’m breaking the url so as not to be accused of spamming the board.
[0]h\ps://voxleone.com/2024/03/05/3d-printing-im-making-a-500c-ceramic-hot-end/
https://cdn.mises.org/I%20Pencil.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws
http://www.rstengineering.com/rst/articles/tsodpencil.pdf
It hasn't even been 200 years since invention & usage of standardized parts. We've come a long way.
https://www.nord-lock.com/insights/knowledge/2017/the-histor...
This is true for cars, electricals, furniture ... everything really. It's only the very simple base elements that are standardized.
But the current financial/capitalist system does not incentize modularity, or creating open standards.
It was here on HN where I learned about a city in now-Cambodia (I think) revealed by ground-penetrating radar. I found it fascinating, and I love the idea that awhole city could leave so little evidence.
You can find cars from different brands with the same light covers.
A lot of manufacturers use the same base system for their daughter companies.
It is not uncommon for parts that are made by third parties will be used in cars by different makers. Aisin makes transmissions used in many brands. This can backfire when the third party maker has a production problem which affects a wide range of cars in multiple makers. The Takata air bags were used in many brands of cars until they were found to blast shrapnel into the faces of occupants. Takata has been struggling for years to produce enough replacement parts to fulfill all of the recalls.
You want metric? You would think 2mm, 3mm, 4mm would be enough, but no! There are 2.5 mm, 3.5 mm, 4.5 mm etc. Are these 'necessary' even if they can be produced as 'standard'?
It's the old saw about Standards -- there are so many to choose from.
Source?
A cursory glance [0] at a few 2020 model year cars from many brands (Volkswagen Golf, Genesis G70, Ford Mustang, Toyota Corolla, Honda CR-V) show a multiple of aftermarket parts for most common items (ignition components, brake components, steering and suspension components). I’ve owned a dozen cars that I’ve repaired almost 100% by myself, and it’s very rare to be unable to find aftermarket parts; usually only in cases where the car is sufficiently old and uncommon that the manufacturer is the only one interested in making parts anymore (as was the case with my RX-7).
Some brand-new (2023+) cars may not have aftermarket parts available, but this is almost always because they’re too new for the aftermarket to have made any yet.
About the only parts that are hard to find third-party are those that are too low-volume to be profitable: modern headlight and taillight assemblies, which usually last for thousands of hours and may only need replacing in a collision; body panels that generally only need replacing in a collision; specialized controllers such as for adaptive suspension or pseudo-limited-slip-differential-through-braking. ECUs are commonly brought up as an example (“the manufacturers don’t want people modifying the cars they own!!”) but this really boils down to both the manufacturer and aftermarket companies not wanting to be held responsible by the EPA/other environmental agencies, as well as the fact that ECUs very rarely fail relative to, for instance, brake rotors or fuel pumps.
[0] https://rockauto.com
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35068671 (in my market it's actually titled "Exactly", with the same subtitle)
Screws are also found in nature, like this weevil uses a screw 100 million years ago, to move a joint allowing it to cling onto plants more robustly.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonopterus
For instance, "If we had the sun at night then it wouldn't be so hard to see things!" (Fire, Lightbulbs, LEDs...)
Standards!
Nails can vary in size, hammer them in. Even screwing into wood really doesn't care terribly much as long as the drill and the screw are roughly the same width.
But machine work, those need to be precise.
But it's a great way to view the world. The next time you see an object, ask yourself how it all comes together. The table your laptop is sitting on? Think about the screws, the joinery, the glue. Think about the screw itself, the washer, the nut. The precision tooling for the screw's teeth. Think about the glue and the packaging it came in and how it was applied. Think about the machines that cut the wood, the assembly, the material used to polish it. The complexity in packaging it, storing it, picking it, transporting it, shipping it, all of it. And in each one of those transitions, consider the complexity of the cars, ships, shipping containers, cranes -- how much went into all of it. It's a beautifully complex world.
We take a lot of things for granted, but slowing down the speed of our daily routine/duties and looking a tad closer gives us a different perspective.
An idea that stuck with me was that everything around you that isn't natural was made by somebody. Buildings, roads, sewer grates, televisions, whiteboard markers, candy wrappers, all of them were made - directly or indirectly - by humans. That's a lot of things!
We stand on the shoulders of giants, working for thousands of years. And it’s quite interesting what the ancient world had already figured out.
Marcus du Sautoy has a series about the history of math. They were studying it and had taxes already in ancient Sumeria.
James Burke’s Connections is a great series on the haphazard progression of technology. And Cosmos is great as well.
> It’s tempting to think ‘So what?’ and dismiss these details as incidental or specific to stair carpentry. And they are specific to stair carpentry; that’s what makes them details. But the existence of a surprising number of meaningful details is not specific to stairs. Surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal with reality.
Yes, it's a marvel how the world functions at all. I speculate even a simple toothbrush is a result of coordination between dozens of supply chains. Even a safety pin is a marvel of engineering. Of course, it can easily be explained by humans' ability to specialize and coordinate in really large numbers. Yet, it doesn't take away the fact that how far we have come.
[1]: http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
It’s absolutely stunning to think about the number of humans involved in making my process of acquiring food simple. Not just the farms and processing centers and canneries, etc. but the sum total of human knowledge required to make it all happen.
I started to pay more attention to “mundane” things, and started to realize mundane is just a label that limited my perspective.
We live in this push-button world where most of what we interact with is an abstraction on top of an abstraction on top of an abstraction. The fact that I can literally push a button and food shows up at my door makes it easy to lose touch with the reality of how utterly incredibly that is.
I’ve started to intentionally spend time each day paying closer attention to the basic things. Making dinner can be a mind blowing experience if you bring your full attention to it and ponder the reality of how dinner is possible. The sheer number of other humans we each depend on without realizing it is staggering. There are unlimited opportunities for this kind of exploration.
I’ve some to see it as some kind of “spiritual awakening”, although I think those are really loaded words. But in essence a cultivation of a broader awareness of the inherent complexity and interconnectedness of everything we interact with.
It brings a kind of awe and wonder that has deeply shifted my perspective and worldview, and has made me want to engage more fully with everyday things.
And it’s fun as hell.
A couple weeks ago, some idiot wandered into /r/farming with a question and immediately pissed off everyone by referring to "the simple process of growing food."
It really is unfortunate that most people don't think about where food comes from beyond it somehow showing up at the grocery store.
During a state visit to Johnson Space Center Boris Yeltsin decided to make an impromptu stop at a supermarket. He was floored by the selection and prices. Apparently that was the moment that inspired him to leave the communist party and begin economic reforms in Russia.
> I’ve some to see it as some kind of “spiritual awakening”, although I think those are really loaded words. But in essence a cultivation of a broader awareness of the inherent complexity and interconnectedness of everything we interact with.
Imagining the hordes of humans and machinery behind the simplest of products is truly awe inspiring.
Of course there's an XKCD for that. https://xkcd.com/676/
You'll get less done :-P but you'll be more zen about it.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarket_scanner_moment
Perhaps, but I suspect “read my lips, no more taxes” and Ross Perot taking a large chunk of republican voters might have more to do with it.
Perot got almost 20% of the vote which is huge amount for a third party candidate, and being a succesful buisnessman and outsider as opposed to the government bureaucrat Bush made him appeal to many traditionally republican voters.
Your analysis is correct, but the quote was slightly different:
"Read my lips, no new taxes"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law?useskin=vec...
OK, obligatory joke: "How do you know a Politician is Lying?" "Her/His/Their/Its Lips are Moving!" ok, maybe 1% of a joke.....
How far we've come. Today, politicians use lies to win elections.
It’s clear he introduced his bloodbath metaphor in the context of talking about the auto industry. But it seems as he was saying it he had this thought - that the bloodbath wouldn’t just be confined to the auto industry. “… it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it.” The ‘bloodbath’ he expects in the auto industry is in his mind an example of a more widespread threat. A ‘bloodbath for the country’.
Pretending his use of this language isn’t connected to a larger apocalyptic narrative he’s selling is disingenuous.
You seem very convinced that the NYT pulled this notion from thin air and Bush was experiencing a moment of wonder towards everyday technology (the theme of this thread).
After reading the article, I believe this is the first electric scanner Bush saw. Bush is quoted saying "This is for checking out?" "I just took a tour through the exhibits here," "Amazed by some of the technology."
"Some grocery stores began using electornic scanners as early as 1976, and the devices have been in general use in American supermarkets for a decade."
This tells me that he hadn't been to a grocery store with this technology, which seems very plausible for many politicians, then and now. They have people to do that for them, they're out of touch (at least to some degree).
1: and it is elitist to a degree, if you believe these people will never develop the interest. I live in the knowledge that they will, and that we're all late bloomers in some certain respect.
Man, there is a lot of thought and tech in those things!
So yeah, sometimes I Marvel.
I have similar thoughts occasionally. Like how amazing common materials are like plastic or fabric or aluminum foil. YouTube channels like Primitive Technology make you appreciate how difficult it is to refine materials from nature as a "solo dev".
Machining for me, is the particular course I took... I find the whole subject fascinating, especially making gears, and gear shaped objects, which I did for 5 years. I hadn't realized until that point that properly made involute gears have a rolling contact, they never slide against each other. That's how they last so long.
Look into Precision, especially Gage Blocks, for some fascinating things.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA
He's better known by the name of his channel, Primitive Technology. Most viewers probably don't know his name. Unlike most YouTubers, he never speaks to the camera (or speaks at all), and rarely writes about himself.
I would like to add "measurement" to high precision as well to these lists. Our ability to do accurate measurements allowed observation of phenomena otherwise hidden. (e.g. with a 4.5 digit DMM, you'll get a solid, stable reading. With a 9-digit DMM, you'll see a 'random walk' in the LSDs - caused by all sorts of interesting phenomna)
Can you elaborate on this some?
To make cars, it not only requires technical sophistication, but also needs to be reliable enough to be operated by ordinary person everyday and be extremely affordable. The more i think about it, the more it sounds like a miracle.
But you're right about the reliability aspect: cars really are a lot more reliable than airplanes, in that they don't need lots of frequent maintenance. If you compare modern cars with cars from 50+ years ago, the difference is staggering. Ask your grandparents sometime about how long their cars lasted, and how much maintenance they needed. You can see it in old advertisements from those times: cars needing lubrication every 1k miles, for instance.
This - even 30 years ago, if you were doing a 4 hour+ journey, there was a pretty decent chance your car would break down at some point. It would be on your mind. Nowadays, it’s really almost unheard of, to the point where people don’t even think about it.
Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw
Sometimes it's equally surprising to me that some people have so much time on their hands to pursue things like this...
Time into which they have to fit eating, cooking, cleaning, showering, laundry, shopping, commuting, exercising, childrearing, family, professional development, dating, socialising, home maintenance, personal paperwork, pursuing hobbies, and relaxing.
You can have a lot of time for one of those - if you're willing to prioritise it over all the others.
and the difference between that diy contraption and this fancy old toaster is like a difference between a skateboard and a car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfxlSG6q5Y