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0 pointsNiksko8y ago0 comments

Your analogy is close but flawed in a major way.

The underlying assumption when hacking is that if you don't understand the internals of something that's ok, but you can rely on understanding the interface, and your manipulation of the interface is skilled enough that you can get the results you need.

In this case, we don't even remotely understand the interface or manipulating it.

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scarecrowbob8y ago

Consider the case of two kinds of users operating on some kind of interface that is unfamiliar, say, MS Word.

One class of user will consult a manual and try to find the right answer, or perhaps will call an expert.

Another class of user will just start pushing buttons to see what happens, because they have a rough familiarity with the system even if the specific interface is not well understood.

It's that second class that I am thinking about when I think about how "hackers" operate.

In that case, I get that it's dangerous to mess around with a system whose internals you don't know about... but at the same time, there is a kind of fantasy that somehow other folks have a privileged knowledge of what our bodies do.

Personally, I quit wheat and dairy (and reduced my alcohol consumption) because it's a specific tree allergy season here. I have a couple possible accounts of why this is working (because I believe that it is) but I don't really understand the interface or even what I am manipulating when I alter my diet like that... I just know that I can breath, whereas historically I have terrible allergies at this time of year. Feel kind of like a hacky solutions... it's not an engineered solution, that's for sure.

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