I’m actually impressed how aptly that reference applies.
The legend of John Henry is that he beat a steam engine at the task of drilling through a mountain. John and his assistant (a shaker) had the advantage of being able to finely tune how the steel driver was placed, struck, and chips of rock moved out of the way. Contrast that with how the steam engine drill just rotely brute-force drilled, but got clogged by the resulting rock chips and could drill no more.
So the moral is the humans beat out the machine due to being able to finesse the situation, even though intuitively a machine should have been able to prevail due to its superior raw strength.
What?
I’m actually impressed how aptly that reference applies.
The legend of John Henry is that he beat a steam engine at the task of drilling through a mountain. John and his assistant (a shaker) had the advantage of being able to finely tune how the steel driver was placed, struck, and chips of rock moved out of the way. Contrast that with how the steam engine drill just rotely brute-force drilled, but got clogged by the resulting rock chips and could drill no more.
So the moral is the humans beat out the machine due to being able to finesse the situation, even though intuitively a machine should have been able to prevail due to its superior raw strength.