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Compared to you, most people seem dumb

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Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#31

Post by lancewiggs »

boredguy8 wrote: post #26

I've found a fairly useful analogy that helps most tech people. If you're into cars and the analogy doesn't work, just think of something you need to know about at some point, but probably don't know much about at all. Mostly this helps when a customer feels guilty about needing help, or someone in IT thinks "me > all" because they can enter a command line. I think of my role like this: Your average non-tech person p…

If you are changing your oil every three months then you are almost certainly wasting money. You should trust the integrity of the oil change shop about as much as you would trust an 'SEO expert.' There might be good ones, but most are looking to maximize profit at your expense.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#32

Post by num1 »

This reminds me of the mixup a few months ago where a site other than Facebook was the top Google result for "facebook login" http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/11/facebook-login.

I find it rather depressing that while we've built up all these layers of abstraction there are still people who don't understand what the address bar is.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#33

Post by eof »

boredguy8 wrote: post #26

I've found a fairly useful analogy that helps most tech people. If you're into cars and the analogy doesn't work, just think of something you need to know about at some point, but probably don't know much about at all. Mostly this helps when a customer feels guilty about needing help, or someone in IT thinks "me > all" because they can enter a command line. I think of my role like this: Your average non-tech person p…

I agree with the take away, don't get superior.

However, the relevancy of being an expert in emerging technology isn't really captured by your metaphor.

Also it's definitely not that you're smarter, rather you are just familiar with the technology. And of course, tech draws a lot of smart people (as it's interesting and has probably the highest potential for financial reward for the most people).

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#34

Post by asimeqi »

My programming language professor once told us the history of when he was assigned in a committee to produce a brochure about the college. At one point a publication specialist came to the committee meeting to talk about possible brochure arrangements. The specialist was using too many jargon words from the publication world so my professor wasn't really able to understand what the specialist was saying. At one point the professor had an epiphany: "My god, this is how we sound to people that work in other areas when we talk about our own area!"

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#35

Post by jdietrich »

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…

My grandma calls me up and says "I want to move my computer into the other room, will you come over and plug everything in for me?".

I tell her "the plugs will only fit one way round into the correct sockets, you literally can't go wrong".

She calls me back, saying that her mouse isn't working.

I go over and take a look. She'd forced the USB connector on her mouse into an Ethernet socket with such force that she cracked the network card.

The lesson? Elderly women are strong.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#36

Post by eof »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #30
tgriesser wrote: post #8

I wish I could wrap my head around the size of the subset in relation to the larger set of users of the internet. I think that those are able to accomplish this have a huge leg up in product design, and this ability is something that is incredibly taken for granted. One time my non-technical partner was attempting to access something I had been working on for a day or so and he told me that it wasn't working at all (…

99th percentile? I'd say HN audience is in 99.9 percentile of the world when it comes to computer knowledge. (0.1% of the world is still 6.6 million people).

Certainly higher than 99.999 for just a random sampling.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#38

Post by pjscott »

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…

Exactly. I think the fundamental disconnect is between people who see an unfamiliar user interface and immediately try to figure it out, and people who see an unfamiliar UI and think "Oh no what the hell is this, I don't remember it! Panic, panic, panic!". Obviously it's not as sharp a dichotomy as that, but it definitely exists.

A lot of people learn to use computers by memorizing a sequence of steps which, if followed exactly, will produce the right result. To send an email, first double-click on the "internet", then click "bookmarks", then "send an email", then press "compose", then type the email address of the recipient into the field, and so on. This is a very brittle kind of knowledge, and if the computer goes off-script, people who've been trained to interact with computers this way tend to just fail, hard.

I'm not sure what the answer to this is, because for most of these people, learning how to figure things out on a computer would be a lot of work for not much immediate gain.

Maybe the problem will go away on its own. How many younger people read the manual for their cell phones, or a video game? And yet they figure it out anyway, by exploring.

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#39

Post by hasenj »

seiji wrote: post #28
hasenj wrote: post #22

Hmm, how do you get to the special characters on the iPhone?

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?

Re: Compared to you, most people seem dumb

#40

Post by eof »

lancewiggs wrote: post #31
boredguy8 wrote: post #26

I've found a fairly useful analogy that helps most tech people. If you're into cars and the analogy doesn't work, just think of something you need to know about at some point, but probably don't know much about at all. Mostly this helps when a customer feels guilty about needing help, or someone in IT thinks "me > all" because they can enter a command line. I think of my role like this: Your average non-tech person p…

If you are changing your oil every three months then you are almost certainly wasting money. You should trust the integrity of the oil change shop about as much as you would trust an 'SEO expert.' There might be good ones, but most are looking to maximize profit at your expense.

To be fair, oil changes are basically the best deal you can buy from a 'mechanic'.

Besides, he may be commuting 25 miles to and from work in a 98 civic, in which case that would be a fine schedule.

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