Special Edition - My Dad Beat ChatGPT With a Hammer

Wisdom Has Calluses

My lawnmower wouldn’t start.

I checked the battery. Checked the oil. Everything looked right. The engine wanted to turn over. It just wouldn’t quite get there.

So I did what any resourceful person living in 2026 would do: I took a video and sent it to ChatGPT.

Usually, this works remarkably well. I have used AI to troubleshoot equipment, explain error messages, identify strange noises and walk me through repairs I had no business attempting. It worked awesome with dishwasher error code just last week.

This time, it gave me several sensible suggestions. None of them worked.

So I sent the same video to my 73-year-old father.

He listened for about four seconds and said, “Sounds like the starter might be stuck. Bang it with a hammer.”

Now I had two competing schools of thought. On one side: the aggregated information of humanity, processed by one of the most sophisticated technologies ever created.

On the other: an old man with a hammer.

I went back to ChatGPT. “My wise old pops says I should bang the starter with a hammer. What do you think?”

ChatGPT, in its measured and responsible way, advised me not to do that.

So what did I do? I banged it with a hammer. And what do you think the lawnmower did? It started immediately.

Information Is Getting Cheaper

We are living in an age when information is increasingly free.

(We all use AI now. If you say you don’t, you are probably lying, or someone who works for you is using it and not telling you.)

Nearly any fact, process or explanation is available within seconds. We can summarize books we haven’t read, diagnose problems we don’t understand and generate confident-looking plans for work we have never done.

That is extraordinary.

It is also not the same thing as wisdom.

Information can tell you how starters work. Wisdom remembers the sound a stuck starter makes because it has heard that sound before.

Information can list the recommended troubleshooting steps. Wisdom knows when the recommended steps are not going to be enough.

Information wants complete certainty before acting. Wisdom has spent enough years getting grease under its fingernails to recognize when a carefully placed tap might save you three hours and a repair bill.

My pops did not know more facts about small engines than everything ChatGPT had access to.

He knew the sound. That is different.

Wisdom Has Calluses

We often talk about wisdom as if it is simply a larger collection of information. Learn enough, read enough, accumulate enough expertise and eventually you become wise.

But wisdom is not just information stored in a human body. It is information tested by time, failure, consequence and repetition.

Wisdom has made the wrong call before. Wisdom has taken something apart and had to figure out how to put it back together. Wisdom has learned which rules are essential, which are situational and which occasionally need to be introduced to a hammer.

That kind of knowing is difficult to aggregate because much of it cannot be cleanly explained. It lives in instinct, pattern recognition and experience. It is the difference between knowing the instructions and knowing what to do when the instructions stop working.

Information can describe the problem. Wisdom recognizes the sound.

Don’t Throw Away the AI - But Be Ready with A Hammer

I am not giving up ChatGPT. That would be ridiculous. It is useful almost every day, and it will keep getting better.

But its usefulness may make it easier to overlook the people who know things differently. The longtime employee who can feel when a project is beginning to drift. The grandmother who knows a child is not misbehaving but overwhelmed.

The mechanic who hears the engine once and reaches for the right tool.

The 73-year-old father who has started enough stubborn machines to know that sometimes the starter does not need another diagnostic procedure.

Sometimes it needs a tap.

We should use every bit of information available to us. But we should be careful not to confuse access to information with the wisdom to interpret it.

One gives us more answers. The other helps us recognize which answer the moment requires.

From here on out, I’m listening to the old man.

At least when he’s holding the hammer. :)

Kevin