Compared to you, most people seem dumb • Hacker News Board

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#11

Post by jbl » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:33 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #6

The underlying issue is that people are afraid to try and explore. They form a mental model of how to do something, look for something that fits into that model, and then are happy. If they guess the wrong model, though, then they are stuck forever. Skilled computer users, on the other hand, don't let a failing model bother them. They just try something else. Most people will do this for anything but computers, thoug…

I've thought about this "you can't break computers" phrase for a while. I suspect, though, that when people say that they're afraid of "breaking" a computer, what they mean is that they'll get the system to a state they don't know how to get out of.

The issue here is not so much that people need to be taught they can't break computers, but what the map of states is. On the other hand, if they don't even want to learn that... well, then I'm not sure what the (software-side) answer is.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#12

Post by sh1mmer » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:33 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #6

The underlying issue is that people are afraid to try and explore. They form a mental model of how to do something, look for something that fits into that model, and then are happy. If they guess the wrong model, though, then they are stuck forever. Skilled computer users, on the other hand, don't let a failing model bother them. They just try something else. Most people will do this for anything but computers, thoug…

I wrote a short essay (http://kid666.com/2009/12/15/your-users%E2%80%99-mental-mode...) about this for "Designing Social Interfaces" (http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Social-Interfaces-Principles...) by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#13

Post by eogas » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:33 PM UTC

frisco wrote: post #5

This is a pretty condescending article. I mean, it's certainly true that your average Silicon Valley engineer or entrepreneur is of far above average intelligence, but things like knowing what a URL is isn't a good way to measure it. For the literal argument of this article, it's a specialization. I'm sure there are military commanders that are strategic geniuses who wouldn't immediately know how to get to special ch…

I think this is a case of "flamboyant headline; reasonable article". He doesn't really argue in the article that people are stupid. It is implied by the headline, but that is clearly just an attempt to get pageviews. The actual content of the article is quite reasonable, and true.

While it would be even more reasonable for him to include a paragraph about how other people probably feel the same way about us with things like "social skills" or what have you, that would be off topic, and overly pedantic.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#14

Post by mixmax » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:36 PM UTC

A good friend of mine recently commented that I always brought up role models that he had no idea who were, and I quoted as known and famous. The people in question were names such as Niels Bohr, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, Richard Dawkins and Einstein.

My first thought was to dismiss him as not very knowledgeable, but then I thought to ask him who he thought were good famous role models. He rambled off a number of names that I'd never heard before, primarily from motoring and sports. A quick google search showed me that these people were just as known as my role models.

It's not so much about being dumb, it's more about simply having different interests and perspectives on life. This is a good thing.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#15

Post by tgriesser » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:38 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #6

The underlying issue is that people are afraid to try and explore. They form a mental model of how to do something, look for something that fits into that model, and then are happy. If they guess the wrong model, though, then they are stuck forever. Skilled computer users, on the other hand, don't let a failing model bother them. They just try something else. Most people will do this for anything but computers, thoug…

I actually recently had a talk with my parents about just that; how, unlike years ago, computers have gotten better to the point where nothing they can do will 'break' them, so they should feel free to click around and try to figure out what they might be looking for. Software tools like CrossLoop have also made my life a hell of a lot easier in maintaining this promise, since anytime anything goes wrong I just tell them to click on the loop icon on the dock and I can usually solve whatever problem they have in ~5min or less.

Then I printed this out and put it next to the computer. http://xkcd.com/627/

I do think that the blue screen of death and similar things of the past have created this idea of the possibility of catastrophic failure on a computer and it is important to make the users feel more confident that their actions will not cause any irreparable damage.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#16

Post by nollidge » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:38 PM UTC

Vivtek wrote: post #10

Two things to say here. First, "dumb" is not the right word. My wife is a theoretical physicist - thus pretty much guaranteed to be "not dumb" - but is not fully cognizant of the fact that URLs exist. She, too, has Google as her default home page and types what she wants into it. And she has Google search on the toolbar and types what she wants into that . Even if what she wants is the name of the site , she goes thr…

I think the key word in the title is seem. People seem dumb if you don't know anything else about them besides this one fact they don't know that you do. The author is arguing that this is a bad thing.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#17

Post by phjohnst » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:40 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #2

See the comments at the bottom of http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo... for a practical example. See also http://xkcd.com/763/ .

That's hilarious. (and sad)

But seriously, every time Facebook changes something we get a reminder of how disruptive it is to change the average users' usage flow. Everyone gets around it eventually, but adjusting isn't pretty.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#18

Post by csomar » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:41 PM UTC

Vivtek wrote: post #10

Two things to say here. First, "dumb" is not the right word. My wife is a theoretical physicist - thus pretty much guaranteed to be "not dumb" - but is not fully cognizant of the fact that URLs exist. She, too, has Google as her default home page and types what she wants into it. And she has Google search on the toolbar and types what she wants into that . Even if what she wants is the name of the site , she goes thr…

The problem is that the speed technology is growing with, made the barrier quite high for people to understand how technology works. The details are tremendous and the story of the web and its' evolution is too long that they should bother and keep up with it.

Same apply for other fields. How much do you know about neurology or physics to explain everyday facts?

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#19

Post by adamesque » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:44 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #6

The underlying issue is that people are afraid to try and explore. They form a mental model of how to do something, look for something that fits into that model, and then are happy. If they guess the wrong model, though, then they are stuck forever. Skilled computer users, on the other hand, don't let a failing model bother them. They just try something else. Most people will do this for anything but computers, thoug…

Absolutely. And they're afraid to try and explore because:

a) they've been burned before, and broken something or lost data

These people need to be untaught that you can break computers, which is much harder. As is writing fault-tolerant software and humane interfaces.

b) mental models are abstractions, and there seem to be a large number of people who just don't cope with abstraction very well.

I'm hopeful that touch-based computing will help some of these people by eliminating a layer of abstraction from systems that already have too many.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#20

Post by megablast » Mon, Oct 25, 2010, 10:44 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #14

A good friend of mine recently commented that I always brought up role models that he had no idea who were, and I quoted as known and famous. The people in question were names such as Niels Bohr, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, Richard Dawkins and Einstein. My first thought was to dismiss him as not very knowledgeable, but then I thought to ask him who he thought were good famous role models. He rambled off a number of…

I would be a bit worried by anyone who has not heard of Einstein.

But you make a great point, and I think the article missed it. It is not that we know more, we know more about our particular areas of expertise, just as others know more about their areas of expertise. My Dad knows a lot more about airplanes than I do, because he worked on them for a number of years.