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Compared to you, most people seem dumb

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Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#61

Post by vietor »

hasenj wrote: post #39
seiji wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold down a letter and an extended menu pops up.

oh wow, thanks! Now I see where are all these missing letters from my Arabic keyboard are. Seriously, how the hell would anyone discover this feature on his own?

Answering the rhetorical question...

I discovered it when I got momentarily distracted by something while entering text.

On Android letters with alternate versions have ellipsis on the image of the character which pops up when you sweep over it.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#62

Post by [deleted] »

Bored_Bystander wrote: post #45

Tech people, and especially the circle that is absorbed in the startup/techcrunch/combinator thing, have to be the most incredibly self absorbed, solipsistic bunch of twits in creation. Most people are busy earning a living or living their lives doing something that actually matters, and the subtle nuance of details that tech startup types endlessly masturbate over is trivial background noise to most of the normal wo…

[deleted]

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#63

Post by Groxx »

grellas wrote: post #54

People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don’t let knowledge blind you. The points made in this piece are very good ones but it is not primarily an issue of intelligence - rather, it is mostly about one's point of reference. Early in my legal career, I worked at a firm that represented a group of Nob Hill condo owners who had had a series of problems with contractors and who had suffered a v…

In summary:

By being part of X, you are at least somewhat blind to the cost which people who are going through X must pay.

And: no-one can know everything, so everyone's an idiot somewhere.

Not much debatable there. And the anecdotes were interesting, so don't take this as an attempt to cut down your post :)

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#64

Post by drblast »

Mithrandir wrote: post #51
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…

Oh, people can break computers alright. Give them a picture of small kittens or of porn and, believe me, they'll find a way.

When my daughter was two she had a knack for crawling up next to the computer, mashing the keys for three seconds, and causing an unbelievable amount of software carnage.

I think at one point she changed the default language to Swahili. It was impressive.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#65

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

Most people will do this for anything but computers, though, which is weird.

I'm not so sure about that. A majority of people (no data, sorry) confronted by danger or an accident will panic or freeze. People can have extensive familiarity with physical tools but be blind or even reject nonstandard configurations or uses when first proposed.

There are complex problems I can solve in my head and simple ones that make me go stupid; my wife is way faster at abstracting information from a 2d layout like a videogame or a map, I'm much better with 3d or data with multiple overlapping layers. So she kills me at Tetris, Scrabble and reading transit maps, whereas for me Space Giraffe, wire puzzles and tree scheduling come easy. She likes LISPs, I like assembler, and so on.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#66

Post by Bored_Bystander »

[deleted] wrote: post #62
Bored_Bystander wrote: post #45

Tech people, and especially the circle that is absorbed in the startup/techcrunch/combinator thing, have to be the most incredibly self absorbed, solipsistic bunch of twits in creation. Most people are busy earning a living or living their lives doing something that actually matters, and the subtle nuance of details that tech startup types endlessly masturbate over is trivial background noise to most of the normal wo…

[deleted]

I see that I have already been downvoted from my one comment, here so I may as well continue the winning streak.

> Having said that, I meet these people all the time, so maybe I am kidding myself.

You're kidding yourself. To the average citizen, and this will include educated professionals such as dentists, attorneys, and educators, the internet is pure plumbing. A commodity. A public service utility.

And get this... the majority of users have no awareness of the difference between the address bar and the Google search form. They will blithely enter a URL into a Google search. And they will type keywords with no URL punctuation into the address bar. And if either does not work they will stumble around somewhat blindly until it does work.

Given this, how can even the most hardened geeks assume that "everyone" knows exactly how the slashes are arranged in a URL?

End users just don't care about our terminology. They really and truly don't. Because there is no penalty for not knowing and no premium for knowing.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#67

Post by Bored_Bystander »

alexqgb wrote: post #56
Bored_Bystander wrote: post #45

Tech people, and especially the circle that is absorbed in the startup/techcrunch/combinator thing, have to be the most incredibly self absorbed, solipsistic bunch of twits in creation. Most people are busy earning a living or living their lives doing something that actually matters, and the subtle nuance of details that tech startup types endlessly masturbate over is trivial background noise to most of the normal wo…

'Frame of Reference' is exactly the right concept. This is what allows you to make sense of what you don't understand. Even the smartest people with the wrong frames can come up short when challenged. Having a frame of reference is a combination of specific knowledge (typically gained through a program of formal study), and experience (typically gained from operating within a frame for some time, and building a priva…

Yes. It's our collective public relations problem.

Well said.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#68

Post by nikster »

grellas wrote: post #54

People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don’t let knowledge blind you. The points made in this piece are very good ones but it is not primarily an issue of intelligence - rather, it is mostly about one's point of reference. Early in my legal career, I worked at a firm that represented a group of Nob Hill condo owners who had had a series of problems with contractors and who had suffered a v…

As Einstein said: Make it as simple as possible. But not simpler.

This is an art, and it applies to every form of user interface design.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#69

Post by nikster »

hasenj wrote: post #39
seiji wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold down a letter and an extended menu pops up.

oh wow, thanks! Now I see where are all these missing letters from my Arabic keyboard are. Seriously, how the hell would anyone discover this feature on his own?

> Seriously, how the hell would anyone discover this feature on his own?

That's exactly how I expected it to work. Only goes to show I've been working in close mental proximity to the people who made this feature for a long time. Sometimes even physical proximity.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#70

Post by nikster »

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…

It doesn't surprise me people think Google is the internet. But it's still scary!
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