Are you trying to say that there is no human endeavor which cannot fit within a single person's mind, or is there some relationship between calculus and a car here?
I'm saying that understanding things thought up and formulated by others is orders of magnitude easier than doing them from scratch. This simple property gets most of us through the schools and to the workplaces.
It is certainly possible to fully understand a car down to minute detail. It's even easier if you get briefed on design decisions.
Do you think it's possible to, say, understand the entire Linux kernel? Because these cars have that, and other kernels besides, just as one example of complexity.
Sure, a single human can have a decent understanding of everything in it, but not down to the deep details. There just isn't enough time to learn all of that.
Since the topic here is the teardown, thought we were discussing the mechanical side of it. As of the Linux kernel there are actually a few people who have very, very thorough understanding of near every design aspect there, even if they didn't memorize every line of code. Linus Torvalds is certainly one.
That's excessive for automotive software, however; you do some device drivers here and there but ain't going to modify the memory allocator or process scheduler. How much detail Musk keeps on to here is open to speculation. On my part, I can say the industrial products I developed I understand really well. Starting from where and why ejector pins on diecasting molds go, the particular conductor plate used for spot welding, wire gage in the cable bundles, through kernel drivers, FPGA programming, EMC compliance issues in PCB layout to how many units fit on a euro pallet.. and am no Elon Musk. Don't sell your ability short.
If you use broad enough definition, where making a car entails mining your own iron ore and building lathes, presses and milling machines from scratch, sure. Otherwise plenty of people have built cars (including engines) and other vehicles from start to finish.
The question was not about building however, but understanding the design of the whole thing down to a fine detail.
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There's no way any one person understands every aspect of a car that takes hundreds or thousands of people years to develop.
Most students are able to understand calculus without reproducing the work of Abel, Cauchy or Lagrange..
Are you trying to say that there is no human endeavor which cannot fit within a single person's mind, or is there some relationship between calculus and a car here?
I'm saying that understanding things thought up and formulated by others is orders of magnitude easier than doing them from scratch. This simple property gets most of us through the schools and to the workplaces.
It is certainly possible to fully understand a car down to minute detail. It's even easier if you get briefed on design decisions.
Do you think it's possible to, say, understand the entire Linux kernel? Because these cars have that, and other kernels besides, just as one example of complexity.
Sure, a single human can have a decent understanding of everything in it, but not down to the deep details. There just isn't enough time to learn all of that.
Since the topic here is the teardown, thought we were discussing the mechanical side of it. As of the Linux kernel there are actually a few people who have very, very thorough understanding of near every design aspect there, even if they didn't memorize every line of code. Linus Torvalds is certainly one.
That's excessive for automotive software, however; you do some device drivers here and there but ain't going to modify the memory allocator or process scheduler. How much detail Musk keeps on to here is open to speculation. On my part, I can say the industrial products I developed I understand really well. Starting from where and why ejector pins on diecasting molds go, the particular conductor plate used for spot welding, wire gage in the cable bundles, through kernel drivers, FPGA programming, EMC compliance issues in PCB layout to how many units fit on a euro pallet.. and am no Elon Musk. Don't sell your ability short.
According to freakonomics, not a single person in the entire world can make a pencil from start to finish.
Now a car? NO WAY, not even Musk.
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/
If you use broad enough definition, where making a car entails mining your own iron ore and building lathes, presses and milling machines from scratch, sure. Otherwise plenty of people have built cars (including engines) and other vehicles from start to finish.
The question was not about building however, but understanding the design of the whole thing down to a fine detail.