I don't think we're talking about a human learning/understanding everything from first principles, but I agree with you that our collective distance from understanding even the basic structures of what makes these things work is getting way too large. I'm probably jaded because I'm a millennial, so I grew up during the transition from analog to digital and understand both worlds. When I encounter or work with young people today they are actually much closer to geriatrics than to my generation in that, to many of them, so much of the technology they rely on is indistinguishable from magic. I think this is bad.
>It means that many of us would be in for a very difficult time if the zombie apocalypse happens
People grossly overestimate the amount of knowledge you'd need to learn and retain to survive one of these. Mostly, we're just lazy and don't do it because we think our computers will do it for us.
> People grossly overestimate the amount of knowledge you'd need to learn and retain
There are whole shelves of books on how to grow food, and other shelves on how to build shelter. I haven't watched a lot of Survivor or Naked and Afraid, but what I have seen makes me think there's more to survival than can be learned in a few months, let's say. And that's just basic survival. If we want to retain even an 18th century standard of living, we'd need to understand how to build steam engines, a cotton gin, etc., etc. I don't like our odds. To be clear: some people would survive. But my half-assed guess would be that the human population might drop to less than a million.
>It means that many of us would be in for a very difficult time if the zombie apocalypse happens
People grossly overestimate the amount of knowledge you'd need to learn and retain to survive one of these. Mostly, we're just lazy and don't do it because we think our computers will do it for us.