Nobody here seems to know what a "mental model" means. Wikipedia has it as "an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real wo

Nobody here seems to know what a "mental model" means. Wikipedia has it as "an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world", which I think is a good and succinct definition. Anyway, the important part here is "how something works". I am reminded of being in the 4th grade (about 10 years old) when a student made a comment about being fat meaning that a person eats too much food and it just collects in their belly - such an idea makes sense of the idea of someone being fat, but it isn't accurate. The real science behind being overweight involves a lot more. In technology, inaccurate mental models abound because these days most people use technology while few are completely familiar with how the technology works Browsing through the top comments though, it seems most here don't know or don't care what a mental model is. Or maybe they just followed OP's lead, which is more like a personal philosophy or a personal code of ethics, rather than a mental model. Ethics is a valuable pursuit in its own right, but I was rather disappointed to come in here expecting some interesting mental models of different technologies, just to be met with a discussion of ethics.