I know thats a dumb question, but my desire to know what mods are about outweighs my fear of being rideculed for asking a question so dumb.

To my limited understanding Skyrim Mods are basically a form of hacking into the game's programming and modifying it in a way that it was not meant to be played or viewed. I'd assume this can only be done on PC versions of the game, but could someone please elaborate on this? Are my thoughts accurate?

Mods are pretty much the same thing as DLC, except they are created by the community and it's players rather then by Bethesda. Player made content, nothing more nothing less.

Bethesda released the creation kit for PC so that the community could make mods as mods have been a major part of TES games since Morrowind.

Cheap and sometimes decent alterations to gameplay.

There's no "hacking" involved if a mod is properly made, unually with the Creation Kit which is essentially the same tool Bethesda uses to create the game and DLCs. Technically, there's no difference between a Bethesda made DLC and a mod other than the fact that DLCs are official and made by Beth while mods are not. Mods are additives, allowing one to add to, take away from, or augment/customize the game however one sees fit, affording the PC version the game extra elasticity.

If I change my desktop wallpaper to an M.C. Escher drawing, does that qualify as something Microsoft/Apple "never intended"?

Correct. While many mods would run without issues on the consoles, provided MS/Sony allowed 'em, there are many mods which would add too much overhead given modders, aptly, aren't as restricted when it comes to resource consumption given PCs tend to have much more RAM, VRAM, PCU power under their hoods. There are, evidently, ways to use mods on consoles, however not without breaking MS'/Sony's EULA, thus discussion of such is not permitted here.

Just like with any creative medium (whether officially made or not), there are hits and there are misses.

thank you for the replies. Your answers are actually along the lines of what i originally thought until i talked to my know-it-all friend who tried to suggest that mods were a form of changing the original programming.

The closest thing i've done to MODS would be using a mission editor with the PC version of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and that was a blast! Although i've kind of switched over to XBOX from PC, i am envious of PC users when it comes to Skryim stuff.

Like others said, it's simply player created content. Like DLC (Dawnguard, Hearthfire) but made by players. Some are silly and pointless, some are really good. For example, there are no cloaks in the game so someone made a mod to add cloaks for the player to wear and also the NPC's. The map shows no roads, so someone made a mod to show roads on maps. There are graphics mods to enhance textures, the night sky, etc. There are mods to add new armour, new weapons. Some mods add houses and even villages full of NPC's out in the wilderness, to give the world a more "lived-in" feel. There are hundreds of thousands of mods for Skyrim and previous TES games.

They're nothing to do with hacking or making the game play a certain way that it wasn't meant to be played - nothing like that at all. They're just content created by players of the game.