Agreed. I seem to see this sort of narrative of users being stupid as less and less prevalent (as opposed to 5-10 years ago) but it seems to still remains in so

Agreed. I seem to see this sort of narrative of users being stupid as less and less prevalent (as opposed to 5-10 years ago) but it seems to still remains in some people's minds, although I'd like to think not in the majority. If discussions like this one can make those people's opinions change even just a bit then it's a net benefit. The cure to this sort of thinking is two spoonfuls of empathy: one for others (truly putting ourselves into other people's shoes or lack thereof), and another one for ourselves (understanding our own issues better). You might think that a GUI is a waste of your time because you can use CLIs, yet non-intuitive flags or help messages lead you to google time and time again the same awk or sed command (or whatever else). You're always someone else's stupid. Meet people where they're at, not where you're at. That is by the way true for users as much as it is for your manager, your sales team, and so on.