[jmwilson]

> The space of possible subjects is huge, so on average your discernment is terrible, relative to what it could be. This is a serious problem if you create a machine that does everyone's job for them.

It's a problem if you're building systems as a dilettante. There are enough individuals on the planet that people can specialize so we need not be at the mercy of systems built by people of average discernment.

> If their art dies out, maybe nobody will know how bad all the pianos are. And then we'll all have slightly worse pianos than we would otherwise have. And I mean if that's the way things are going to go, then let's just steer the Earth into the Sun, because what's the point of any of this.

One counterexample to this viewpoint is Damascus steel. The exact art of making it has been lost (although now effectively reproduced), but modern steels surpass the qualities that made Damascus steel prized. It turns out those ancient masters didn't know bad their steel was. Maybe modern piano tuners don't know how bad their technique is, once the process of "finessing how the overtones interact with each other" has been thoroughly characterized by present or future technology.

[Loughla]

I thought that it was precisely because ancient masters knew how poor their steel was that Damascus even became a thing. Is that not correct? I have always read that it was a technique to overcome bad base metal.

[bluGill]

Pretty much. We know how it was produced, but we have better steel available and so nobody is willing to go through that much work to produce an inferior product. If you want a good sword you start with good modern steel and treat it like the book says - which includes give it as little time in the furnace as you can get by while shaping it. If you want a sword that looks pretty you can cheat to apply decorations that look like Damascus from a distance and that is good enough (you might or might not start with good steel, but if you do it is better than a real Damascus sword). Nobody has the patience to do things the old way as there is no advantage to it.

If the old way actually had advantages someone would do it. In the case of Damascus we have enough science to know it wasn't as good. There are other areas where people to go through the effort to create something the old way - either it isn't much more work (it may be more work, just not too much more), or the old way is somehow better.

[BlueTemplar]

Wait, I thought those Indian wootz ingots also were blessed with being able to start with better than average magnetite ?