Such an incredible write up, the piece about the importance of flying less technological planes to get a "sense" of what flying really is hits like a brick, specially in the world of LLMs producing code.

How do you get this "sense" of writing code and building systems by yourself if all you do is instruct some agent to do it? Are we all going to be like Bonin in the future where we just don't understand anything outside of the agent box?

This is both terrifying and sad.

▲

ottobonn 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm a software engineer and recently got my pilot's license, and the training for the pilot's license increased my (already-high) respect for the aviation profession. All pilots learn to fly basic airplanes and have to do everything by hand (often on paper, but an iPad is allowed) to show they know the basics. The result is that by the time you work up to more advanced planes you have climbed the ladder of abstraction and know what underpins the automation.

The other piece of the picture is that pilots acknowledge that their skills are perishable, and they have to commit to ongoing training. This would be analogous to writing code by hand and getting a licensed engineer to sign off on your currency periodically even if you use LLMs for work.

▲

altmanaltman 4 hours ago | parent [-]

But I mean flying a cessna vrs something that has fly-by-wire like Airbus jets, its not really about understanding abstractions or anything, since the plane is basically a fundamentally different machine no? Basic principles of gravity and physic apply sure, but the flying experience is 100% different and not like a levelling up thing right? Like i would not trust someone with a Cessna pilot license to fly the airbus i am on.

▲

WalterBright 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A Cessna has very different aerodynamic issues than a jetliner. Multi-engine also has its own issues (such as if one engine dies, the airplane tries to turn around it).

Setting a Cessna down on the runway is fairly strait forward. A jetliner, on the other hand, is quite complex to land.

▲

VBprogrammer an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know if you can claim one is more straightforward. Sure a Cessna flies slower and has relatively simple aerodynamics. However, you could also be operating it out of a 400m sloping grass strip with a mountain off one end.

An A320 might be flying 3 times faster but is generally flying between relatively flat, straight runaways several miles long with approaches typically flown on a stable instrument approach from several nautical miles away. It's control laws mean flying straight or maintaining a particular bank is as simple as letting go of the control stick. If anything the stick and rudder skills in normal circumstances are much less involved. Systems management, obviously the autopilot, but also environmental, hydraulic, navigation an the operational concerns are obviously vastly more complex.

	▲	defrost an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> you could also be operating it out of a 400m sloping grass strip with a mountain off one end. Why? Not as a regular thing I hope, that's about 90m short of "tight". If you're intent on proselytizing PNG at least get a PAC STOL ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAC_P-750_XSTOL )

▲

raverbashing 11 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I see where you're going here but no

A Cessna an a big jet fly by the exact same principles and they stop flying due to the exact same principles as well

Sure the procedures and parameters and automations are different (as well as things like wing positioning, engine positioning, swept wings, number of engines, sure)

But you raise the nose of both of them enough they will both stall. If you lose speed they will both stall. They will behave similarly (or maybe weirdly) enough in curves.

And I think this is what was forgotten here. Having a fancy cockpit does not make it less than a dual-engine swept-wing fixed-wing aircraft. The principles are the same

▲

thrownthatway 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’ve flown a couple single engine aircraft.

I put it this way:

Commercial aviation pilots don’t really fly the plane as such. It’s more like a 1:1 real-time flight sim. They’re sort of up there having a LARP.

They’re flying in a similar sense that a DJ creates music.

▲

cladopa 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Actually there are more planes flying today than ever and the number of accidents is very very low, thanks to technological planes and protocols that lean from mistakes.

So low in fact that the majority of the recent "accidents" look like suicides from the pilots. The pilots know exactly what they are doing when crashing the planes.

	▲	thrownthatway 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Boooo!

▲

deepsun 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Novella "Profession" by Isaac Asimov.

	▲	riffraff 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Profession" is often cited with regard to LLMs, but honestly, in reminded more of (and scared by) "The Feeling of Power".

▲

altmanaltman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The irony of not understanding almost 100% of the code on modern airplanes is actually done by instructing a program to actually generate the code. It is neither terrifying nor sad. You expect humans to write millions of lines of code? At that scale, procedureally generating code is much safer and smarter.

	▲	hunterpayne 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not flying anymore if that's the case.