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dwjohnston merged 1 commit into from
Jul 25, 2026
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Update human_comprehension_is_still_the_bottleneck.mdx #295

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6 changes: 3 additions & 3 deletions src/routes/posts/human_comprehension_is_still_the_bottleneck.mdx
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Expand Up @@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ meta:
title: Human comprehension is still the bottleneck
description: All this talk about how AI can build a whole whatever with $120 of credits and a day is beside the point - the bottleneck is how fast we can understand things
dateCreated: 2026-07-09
image: knowledge-hose
image: knowledge_hose

tags:
- "ai"
Expand All @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ It means that I'm spending more time creating rules that enforce the patterns, t

It allows me to discover (via asking AI for suggestions) established solutions to a problem I'm facing, and then experiment with them, without fully understanding them, to see if they fit my usecase.

For example: my side project is a geometric art application. I have a facet that takes a series of points, and connects them via a line. But the low granularity of the points means we get jagged lines. AI was able to explain to me what bezier curves are (something I've heard of but not known what they are), but also suggested a Catmull-Rom spline for smoothing, which, although it's going to use a bezier curve under the hood, works for my usecase, because I don't need to determine the bezier anchors myself.
For example: my side project is a geometric art application. I have a facet that takes a series of points, and connects them via a line. But the low granularity of the points means we get jagged lines. AI was able to explain to me what bezier curves are (something I've heard of but not known what they are), but also suggested a Catmull-Rom spline for smoothing, which is better for my for my usecase, because I don't need to determine seperate bezier anchors.

It's worth mentioning that there's possibly a bit of Dunning-Kruger at play here.

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -147,4 +147,4 @@ It occurs to me that insistence on knowing what the AI is doing, would be like a

A different analogy is that the CTO of a tech company doesn't understand every line of code in the company, they trust their subordinates who in turn trust their subordinates. Perhaps it comes down to responsibility - if I'm the CTO and someone below me completely breaks something, some investigation is done, and either someone below me gets fired, or I do. _Somebody_ is ultimately responsible for the screw up.

If I'm a vibe coder... there's no one below me to take responsibility - the LLM isn't going to. So it behooves me to at least understand the potential risks of the application that I'm building-but-not-understanding.
If I'm a vibe coder... there's no one below me to take responsibility - the LLM isn't going to. So it behooves me to at least understand the potential risks of the application that I'm building-but-not-understanding.
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