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There is no doubt that not all facts are known by all people, and that all people are incapable of some things. The contention here is a matter of degree. O
by catalogia 6y ago
There is no doubt that not all facts are known by all people, and that all people are incapable of some things. The contention here is a matter of degree. One one extreme, one might say that any person is capable of performing brain surgery without training. Anybody who takes that position is clearly optimistic to the point of derangement. On the other extreme are statements like "most people can't tie their own shoelaces" or "most people don't know how to bookmark a webpage". These are excessively cynical outlooks on humanity. It's misanthropy.
If you were stranded with a punctured tire in an area without cell service, would you have died from exposure? Or would you have figured out how to change your tire? I don't think you're an imbecile, so I think you would have figured it out. It's an easy sort of problem for an adult human to solve using little more than common sense, even if you've never been taught how to do it and never cared to learn anything about it before. The general population is capable of much more than you give them credit for.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago> The general population is capable of much more than you give them credit for So yeah, you indeed never worked in IT then. Never mind, this discussion is already beyond ridiculous.
- catalogia 6y agoReflect on what I said about selection bias.
- zentiggr 6y agoCapable, yes. Unafraid to try something new in an area they believe they can't understand? Much more rare. You introduced the shoelaces level unnecessarily at the start of this whole debacle. Computers are, to the people we're holding under discussion here, a BAZILLION times more complicated. You can't make your shoes vanish by holding a lace slightly wrong. You can make your work 'disappear' in any of myriad ways, by accidentally mistaking a single keystroke, or leaving out a step, or doing something 'extra' as one person put it to me. And the tire analogy is also skewed. Tires are another thing that's phenomenally less complicated than computer use, to someone who hasn't studied it yet. You're holding up much simpler concepts and saying that if people can figure out a 10^3 complicated situation, they can figure out a 10^50 complicated situation.