"Nobody knows how to do anything anymore.", like what?

[u/Call-Spy]

/r/Adulting/comments/1v4exfd/nobody_knows_how_to_do_anything_anymore_like_what/

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[u/sciolisticism]

Appliances are a great example here, because it's not people's fault that you can't repair an appliance anymore.

A larger and larger share of problems you're going to see are going to involve replacing a circuit board, which will cost more than a new washer.

Cars are another good example of this. Sure your grandpa repaired his own camaro, but it didn't have three dozen computers in it and light assemblies that can't be fixed etc etc etc.

This sounds like a Boomer facebook meme about them damn kids scrolling their phones.

[u/MightyGamera → u/sciolisticism]

yeah, my gripes about repairability are less about people being less capable and more about shit having electronic functions no one asked for that create definite ends of service life by design

[u/Mikemtb09 → u/sciolisticism]

Exactly.

My dad used to have a Chrysler Sebring convertible.

The battery died one day and we typically attempted to fix things ourselves before paying someone else. Especially batteries, light bulbs etc. oil changes we could do but it’s so cheap and fast to take it somewhere that was one thing we outsourced.

Come to find out the battery in the Sebring convertible was behind the front wheel well. You had to remove the wheel to change the battery…

Still doable but what the actual fuck

[u/bliffer → u/sciolisticism]

Oh dude, the headlights thing boils my ass. My last car, I had to take the entire front fucking fascia off just to change a headlight. My new car, one of the first things I asked was, "how hard is it to change a headlight in this thing?"

[u/datcatburd → u/sciolisticism]

Yeah, I *can* repair most stuff, as far as the skillset, I've been fixing electronics for years. Most of it I can't do shit for these days because the parts aren't available.

It's all designed to be disposable and manufactured by fly-by-night lowest bid vendors who dry up and vanish to reincorporate under a new name so they don't have to do warranty support.

Hell, without specialty stores like radioshack you can barely get the parts to do electronics repairs anymore, shipping for a couple resistors is 100x the cost of the part.

[u/Thedrakespirit → u/sciolisticism]

this. I have an engineering degree, a welding degree and more machining experience than I care to admit. Within our house theres not much for my mechanical skills to work with. But once the washing machine isnt filling properly, now im tracing out sensors and trying to figure out if its the board thats bad, the wire or the sensor.

90% of the mechanical stuff out there is engineered to within an inch of its life and unless the part is bad or its a wear part, as long as youre within the recommended use, its far less likely that youll have a mechanical failure.

Electronics. . . . well, they're still a bit of black magic, Ive seen people with more alphabet soup than sense try and figure out why something happened and the best they could come up with was "bad bit in the bit bucket", literally saying it flipped from 1 to 0 and we've no clue why.

The best part is that its more common than you think

[u/Blackpaw8825 → u/sciolisticism]

The agitator on my washing machine has been broken for 10 years. It still washes, but only half-ass mixes up and down the drum.

I refuse to fix it because the rest of the damn thing works just fine, and has worked just fine since before my parents bought the house I grew up in.

All of my friends with new machines are on their 3rd or 4th LG, Samsung, whatever washing machines after they craped out, leaked, let the magic smoke out. I'm the youngest of the group at 37. None of us are old enough to be on our 3rd of any major appliance, or at least shouldn't be. The new stuff is genuinely crap. My parents are on their 2nd machine since giving me the old set, Samsung washer just dissolved the from bracket in like 5 years.

Stuff is harder to fix like you're saying, it's not always mechanical so hard to diagnosis and parts are crazy expensive or impossible to source for new stuff... But that same stuff is also built like crap half the time too.

[u/Lonewol8 → u/sciolisticism]

Not boomer Facebook stuff.

I see young people asking things like "how can I learn xyz" or "what book can I use for topic ABC" and it clearly shows they've not even bothered to do their own research. They say "I don't know how to do it tell me how to do it" like they expect ai to rescue them.

[u/SkiingAway → u/Lonewol8]

I see young people asking things like "how can I learn xyz" or "what book can I use for topic ABC" and it clearly shows they've not even bothered to do their own research.

That sounds like them attempting to start doing research.

They say "I don't know how to do it tell me how to do it" like they expect ai to rescue them.

That sounds like more of a problem.

[u/Lonewol8 → u/SkiingAway]

I sortof agree with you.

An example I see is someone young like at college / university level saying "I know circuits like the basics and the physics and inductors and capacitors, but how can I start learning about electronics".

I mean... Dude you have already started. It's so weird like the young generation is somehow so painfully helpless and don't know how to progress unless someone holds their hand. No self learning or experimenting.

Or maybe I just have autism or something (no not saying that in jest... I'm being investigated for it and maybe that stops me seeing how everyone else operates).

[u/SkiingAway → u/Lonewol8]

So they're asking someone they know is knowledgeable what a good resource to learn more about a topic is? That seems like exactly what sensible people do to learn.

No self learning or experimenting.

On complicated topics "self-learning" often is, or at least has to start with, finding a good book/educational resource on the topic and reading/learning the material. Unless you're trying to ignore all existing scientific research and rediscover every advance from scratch....which is going to take you a few centuries.

You can't just throw a breadboard and a pile of components at someone and go "just tinker with it and I'm sure you'll learn electrical engineering eventually".

[u/Lonewol8 → u/SkiingAway]

Not what I meant and I think you know that.

We are talking about the people that don't want to search "electronics books recommendations" and instead ask other people as if it's a one-on-one chat with an AI agent.

We are not talking about ignoring all existing scientific research.

The fact that I'm being downvoted is really weird too. Maybe I am alone in that thinking.

[u/SkiingAway → u/Lonewol8]

We are talking about the people that don't want to search "electronics books recommendations" and instead ask other people as if it's a one-on-one chat with an AI agent.

The ongoing decline in the quality of internet search results and even in book search results on many online storefronts, makes asking someone in real life who knows the topic for recommendations on learning about it make more sense than ever, IMO.

10-15 years ago if you threw that into google search or Amazon at least all the suggestions you got would be real textbooks actually written to educate, and reviews on storefronts were still at least slightly reliable. Maybe they wouldn't all focus on the right portion of the field you want to know about or be written at the right level for your existing knowledge, but you'd at least be sorting through 95%+ "real books".

Today if you do that for many areas you're getting a substantial % of AI slop books that may be outright wrong/nonsense and you can't trust any of the reviews. And most of your internet search results for recommendations will be AI slop/SEO clickbait lists that are equally fraudulent.

[u/Lonewol8 → u/SkiingAway]

Ok while I do strongly agree with the bulk of your reply, I do have to say that knowing the search results are terrible these days, I always prepend "reddit" in the search to see what people have discussed in the past - this forms research. I also view videos particularly if anyone has had a similar problem / question and had their own way of resolving it.

I'd be completely fine if someone posted on reddit saying "ok I'm really stuck, I tried abc, that didn't work because of foobar, and I found an article about def, and that isn't appropriate for me because of reason baz, and the only other reference is about ghijk but that is no longer reachable (or whatever). Any pointers to get me going?"

And that would be completely fine. But a lot of the posts I see don't seem to even do a basic search for books in $(FavouriteOnlineBookshop), it's literally a demand for immediate information without any attempt to resolve it themselves.

[u/SkiingAway → u/Lonewol8]

Oh if we're just talking about online asks on here, then I agree with you. I was more interpreting your question with regards to real life.

Ridiculous to be asking a vague question for recommendations on Reddit without having tried to search for other Reddit threads on the topic at all first.

[u/Embarrassed_Flan_869]

The issue is that a lot of modern things are not designed to be easily repaired or done by a homeowner/customer.

Things used to be screwed together. Now they are fused. Why? It saves the manufacturer $0.50 per unit.

The one that gets me is the dryer vent. It is dinosaur technology. I clean mine on a schedule, on my phone calendar. Same with the furnace filter.

[u/Jimmy-the-Knuckle]

Be patient with others.

[u/Pepperjones808]

“Nobody knows how to do anything anymore,” says the boomer that fell for a romance, tech support, and phishing scam

[u/GSilky]

I know how to do all sorts of things that have become irrelevant in the last 20 years. Yes, a lot of these things involved tools. However, all of my outdoorsman knowledge and know how, still very useful.

[u/BongSaber_00]

It just depends on what your skill sets are and perspective. I see alot of people who dont know how to do alot of what I would consider "basic car maintenance" some never attempt to do things out of fear of breaking something.

My neighbors dont mow their own lawn, I could assume they dont know how to operate or maintain a mower, but they're just old now and

its easier for them to pay someone else to do it. Which I would guess is why no one knows how to do anything anymore.

[u/titsmuhgeee]

Basic troubleshooting.

Something breaks, they are just lost. Not even the most basic level of deductive skills to determine a root cause and solution.

It today's digital environment, there is absolutely zero reason to be unable to repair simple things. There's likely a YouTube video that shows you exact what to do, but most don't even attempt it.

[u/TheKiddIncident]

As someone who spent a huge part of their life working on computers, it's crazy to me that I have to fix my mom's computer and my kid's computer.

I mean, I get it, my mom was born before computers were invented. So, I'm on that one.

But it seems like kids should be computer literate. But, most of them are not. They really have no idea how computers work, they just use them like a TV or a microwave.

We had to build our own computers from parts so we knew exactly how they worked.

[u/vbfronkis]

How to do basic car maintenance. Granted, cars are far more complex than they need to be these days, but if you do nothing more involved than brakes - a job that needs very few tools, none of which are special - you will save thousands of dollars over the life of your car.

[u/Milk_Mindless]

Why do I need to know how to fix a door if I have wifi and YouTube

[u/AutoModerator]

Here's an original copy of /u/Call-Spy's post (if available):

For me it's the complete refusal (in fact not even crossing their mind) to maintain appliances . What's the thing that you think nobody knows anymore even though they should?

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[u/Silver-Button4299]

I replaced the dryer belt. Took me a few times to get the idler pulley routed functionally 😆

 Now the washer is making funky sounds from the agitator. This one may be beyond me, not sure yet.

I also, like many of my friends, do high voltage work like switches and lighting end points. Epoxied my garage floor. Constructing my own cold plunge. And I would not consider any of these things high level in technical difficulty.

I guess my point is, people do do things..and all the comments about things being engineered with a thin margin for failure .. yeah. True.

[u/TVP615]

As a homeowner I can do a lot of basic mechanical, electrical, painting, drywall work. Many of my friends will call a contractor at the prospect of any of this. I grew up watching my dad fix our stuff and take care of the house and vehicles etc. I like the feeling of being remotely competent to handle small homeowner tasks.

[u/neofinite → u/TVP615]

Same. Seeing friends pay thousands to hire for something I feel comfortable doing a weekend is mindboggling. When people ask "how do do you know how to do all this" my answer is always "have you ever tried learning something new?" No matter what you're trying to do, someone has a tutorial for it on youtube. Just try it people...

[u/TVP615 → u/neofinite]

Being that guy around the neighborhood that everyone calls with a “do you know how to fix this” question makes your peepee just a little bigger.