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There must the a name for this phenomenon. Like, the more you know, the less faith you have in it actually working. I'm pretty sure everyone feels this way about their work. I just asked my partner if it's the same with her (non-tech) job and she said yes, she can't believe it works at all. Arthur C. Clarke's Travel by Wire comes to mind too.

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I would say it doesn't just work. That's why being a programmer isn't a one-off job. You're still there to glue things back together when they inevitably break unexpectedly.

Is this just Gell-Mann amnesia, but for reliability?

It's more like disregarding all of the advantages and only focusing on the negatives or when incidents happen.

People routinely clown on companies for downtime but do not celebrate sending multiple MB pictures and videos over cell networks in remote locations from a super computer in their pocket.

Even 95% reliability is relatively good for networks working across the globe relative to what we've had through most of history.

The average person easily plays into the trope that no one appreciates IT when it works, but readily has opinions when there are problems.

Every time I see someone FaceTime in an elevator and complain about a little choppiness - I think of this ^^

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