I think these "lower the ceiling rather than raise the floor" rationales are cop-outs. Yes, I get it, this reasoning does technically provide a justification f

I think these "lower the ceiling rather than raise the floor" rationales are cop-outs. Yes, I get it, this reasoning does technically provide a justification for the design decisions made that will shut some people up. But that doesn't make the product or design decisions anything to be proud of. And, to take it a step further, I don't think UX is putting in honest effort to improve things for unskilled users. All the low barrier to entry stuff is superficially pleasant, but the number of common UI paradigms end users have to learn how to intuit their way around has exploded, while affordances and discoverability have plummeted. People who've spent their dayjobs in front of computers for years - if not decades - are assumed to categorically have bad, less-than-worthless, ideas about what might make interacting with those devices easier. All because "shut up, nerds. Nobody would ever like the things you like" was easier than listening and figuring out the how to separate the wheat from the chaff.