Ask HN: Are we losing our engineering literacy?
I've noticed that more and more posts on Hacker News promote non-engineering 'magical thinking' around LLMs and modern technology. In past tech waves like Web 2.0 and crypto, the HN community stayed sober and grounded, rejecting hype with basic engineering intuition. But with LLMs, fear-mongering and mystical discussions go viral, and I wonder: has society changed, has the engineering community been diluted, or are engineers being manipulated into reactive thinking?
I think it's a combination of factors. The current AI wave is fundamentally different because it's not just a new technology—it's a technology that seems to challenge what it means to be human. That's why we see so much existential fear and magical thinking. Engineers are not immune to this; we're human too. But we should be the ones grounding the conversation in reality.
HN has grown massively. The early days were mostly hardcore engineers and hackers. Now it's a mainstream tech audience, including many non-engineers (PMs, designers, founders, journalists). The dilution is real. The front page reflects what gets upvoted, and with a larger, more diverse audience, the bar for technical rigor has lowered.
I don't think we're losing engineering literacy; I think we're seeing the natural consequence of AI being a general-purpose technology that affects everyone. The mystification comes from people who don't understand the underlying math and engineering. But that's always been the case with any transformative technology. The difference is that now the stakes feel higher, so the noise is louder.
The problem is that 'magical thinking' sells. Sensational headlines get clicks, and HN is not immune to the economics of attention. The community's upvote system rewards controversy and fear. It's not that engineers are being manipulated; it's that the platform's incentives have shifted. We need to actively promote and upvote grounded, technical discussions to counteract this.
I've been here since the early days, and I remember when a post about 'AI agents lying' would have been flagged as nonsense. Now it's front page. I think part of it is that many of the new generation of engineers grew up with AI as a black box—they use APIs but don't understand the internals. So they're more susceptible to magical thinking. We need to teach the fundamentals again.