
Compared to you, most people seem dumb - zeedotme
http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2010/10/25/compared-to-you-most-people-seem-dumb/
======
grellas
_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 variety of damages relating to roof leaks, etc. This might
sound mundane but these "condos" were (even in that day back in the early
1980s) worth well into 7 figures and the problems had been persistent and
severe. Yet, when it came time to settle the case, we had to prepare a set of
instructions explaining the settlement documents and where they needed to be
signed. We were dealing with perhaps 30 people and they were all ultra-
sophisticated types (former board of supervisors members in SF, top-flight
lawyers, very wealthy business owners, etc.) and nearly every one of them
messed up the execution of the documents in one way or another. When this
happened to me, I learned one very important lesson: maybe _I_ had been so
immersed in this process that the detailed explanations made perfect sense to
me, logically and otherwise, and even appeared to be simple, but, for those
who have busy lives and who don't want to have to analyze in detail a set of
potentially intricate legal instructions, such instructions were not simple at
all. Why? _Not_ because of lack of intelligence (these were very smart and
successful people). Rather, because they were not familiar with the legal
mumbo-jumbo and they didn't _want_ to bother to go down the rabbit-hole of
trying to figure them out. In effect, they simply wanted a "just tell me where
to sign" sort of instruction (which suggested the obvious answer as well,
because the matter did need explanations for them to be able to sign in an
informed way - that answer was to just set up an in-person meeting with them
as a group, give the explanations, and then have them sign).

This same principle operated with the big name partners in this large firm
(some of the best lawyers in the nation), who couldn't be bothered with
computers because "typing is secretary's work" (this was around 1980). These
were exceedingly smart people but it did not fit their point of reference to
bother themselves with trying to learn about some newfangled technology that
seemed like a lot of bother to learn when their life-long habits had taught
them that there is no advantage to investing time in that process.

Of course, with engineering design, one needs to anticipate what a very broad
range of potential users might do with an interface that is developed by
software engineers who may or may not share the point of reference of a great
many such users. Concerning such issues, it is not "dumb" for an older
generation to eschew text messages when they are used simply to picking up the
phone to talk something over and, when they are forced to actually do a text
message, to become frustrated with having to learn something that is not
intuitive to them and that may lie well outside of their point of reference.
Nor is this an issue merely of age and habits. Non-engineers have nowhere near
the breadth of knowledge about such items as engineers do (the main point of
this piece) and there are legendary examples of the boneheaded instructions
that have sometimes been given because of the blind spot that this can create
("how do I sign on with my ISP when I have never had access to the Internet
before [this was in the early 1990s]? simple, just log on to the web at xxxxx
and follow the instructions").

Moreover, this issue can be generalized as well. If I have specialized
knowledge about a given area (such as law), things that seem obvious and even
intuitive to me may very easily not be at all comprehensible to one who does
not share that point of reference. I realized this fundamental truth early on
in my career in dealing with clients: that is, that learning to communicate
effectively and simply about a complex subject matter is an _art form_.

There is no mechanical answer to it except that one must put oneself as best
as one can in the place of the recipient of that knowledge and try to
anticipate what the person does not know about the assumptions you will be
making in giving the explanation.

None of this means that you are of superior intelligence to those with whom
you seek to communicate. It only means that you have a specialized expertise
that they lack and you have a tall order before you in being able to guide
them by the hand, as it were, to make your explanation or instructions (or
interface design) understandable. This is not at all easy to do. Indeed, it is
one of the toughest challenges extant in the design world, and that is
precisely why superb and elegant interface design (among other things) is so
hard to come by.

I would therefore amend the main point of this fine article to say, "People
are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more [about your area of
expertise]. Don’t let knowledge blind you."

~~~
nikster
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.

~~~
rblion
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - da vinci

------
mixmax
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.

~~~
megablast
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.

~~~
aptimpropriety
Does Einstein really hold an important relevance to 'everyman USA'? To nearly
every citizen - and, I would argue, even with those a basic (HS) level of
physics - he's not so different than Heisenberg, Bohr, Bethe, Shrodinger, etc.
Sure, they made great advances for the world of physics, but how relevant is
that to an individual who does not interact with that theory at all? More
specifically, relevant enough to cause worry?

Now, I note that you could argue the Manhattan product is a reason for
Einstein's relevance, but was he really significantly more relevant in that
than any other of the scientists?

People know politicians because they affect taxes, healthcare, laws, etc. They
know sports stars because it's a subject they enjoy following - featuring
impressive feats of human ability. And they probably know a few individuals
closer to their field of work.

Is Einstein really an example of something that 'everyman' should know about,
or could your argument partially be a confirmation of the article's argument?

~~~
edanm
It's not about whether Einstein should be known or not. The point is that he
_is_ an icon, one that the vast majority of people do know about. Not knowing
about Einstein means you're _really_ uninformed.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No, Really Uninformed is a whole nother level of ignorance. When pictures of
Jupiter from Pioneer 10 were on the front page <\dated myself>, a graduate
student in my Engineering school asked me "Jupiter is a planet, right"?
Astonished, I answered politely "Yes, its the 5th planet". Then, and this is
the good part, she asked "So, is Earth a planet?"

~~~
wazoox
There is something called "general culture". Not knowing that Einstein is a
physicist, that Jupiter and the Earth are planets, that Christopher Columbus
landed the Americas in 1492, is lacking general culture, i. e. being dumb.
When you're so specialized you can't be bothered to know the bare "common
sense" stuff, you can't even be a responsible citizen.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...or even a good Engineer. This lady may have helped design that MRI machine
your spouse trusted their life to.

------
jrockway
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, though, which is weird.
If their favorite road to the CHEZBURGER store is closed, they will find
another road. But if it happens online... panic, frozen.

People basically need to be taught that you can't break computers. Programmers
need to provide better undo functionality, so that this is not a lie.

~~~
jdietrich
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_.

~~~
ivank
You've never plugged a USB cable into an Ethernet socket? Often it doesn't
even take any force.

~~~
extension
Yes, and it doesn't help that some nitwit put the ethernet port right next to
the USB ports on the standard ATX layout. DURR. Probably the same guy who made
USB symmetrical, thus forcing me to spend what must be a day or two of my
total lifespan trying to jam the things in upside-down.

------
boredguy8
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 probably feels about their computer the same way
I feel about my car. I know nothing about cars. Usually I get my oil changed,
but only because I have a repeating 3 month appointment based on 10 years of
not getting it changed regularly. Bt even then, I sometimes forget. I now know
I need to check tire pressure, but the place I buy my tires does that for me
when I check in every two months. I know NOTHING about cars.

The reality is, your average person is no more stupid for not knowing
"technology" than you are for not knowing automobiles, or how an airplane
works, or the nuances of ASEAN trade relations. You've specialized, even if it
doesn't feel like a specialization because YOU see technology all around you.
Guess what: someone specializing in US/China trade relations sees the impact
of RMB undervaluation all around, too. And a nutritionist sees daily health
decisions all around. And so on.

So don't laugh because someone clicked a link to a pop-up ad when they thought
they were closing the ad. Instead, help them fix their problem and, if
appropriate, give them a pointer or two so they don't make the same mistake
again. And absolutely have the patience with your customers that you'd want
someone else to have with you, in your area of weakness. And if you don't
think you have a weakness--if you think you're infinitely adaptable--I hope
people around you have god-like patience, because you're probably wrong.

But regardless, don't get superior: our skills are valuable, but so are other
ones. The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be.

~~~
lancewiggs
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.

~~~
boredguy8
This is just multiplying my inhibitions :)

It's a '94 Mercedes 500SL, so...better safe than sorry?

~~~
ars
Every 3000 miles or 6 months.

3 months is quite unnecessary.

And if you switch to Mobil-1 oil you can bump that to 6000 miles, and yearly
(but only starting from the second usage of it, i.e. the first time you use it
stick with 3000 miles). The oil costs more, but you'll save money by doing
less changes.

With newer cars you can go as much as 10,000 to 15,000 miles with regular oil.

~~~
eof
Going synthetic in an older vehicle isn't always good. a small leak into the
piston woudln't be a problem with regular oil, but with synthetics you have an
issue.

------
Vivtek
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 through Google first. Always.

The corollary to the observation that most people don't know what you take for
granted in the computer realm, though, is that _your customers know all kinds
of stuff you have no idea about_.

Think about that a little.

~~~
2arrs2ells
When you google everything, stuff like this:
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php)
happens... (read the comments)

~~~
Vivtek
Oh, I know. When that was news, I laughed at it, and told her about it. That's
why she's now partly cognizant that URLs exist. It hasn't changed her habits
much, although it did allow me to persuade her that setting bookmarks can have
its uses.

------
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!"

------
rodericksilva
I just mailed this post to my partners. We recently merged.

They sold individual accounts to teacher and students. I sold accounts to
schools.

Their users are very web savvy and need no training. My users did not seek out
the app online. They are being asked by their schools to use the application.

We are noticing now how things we took for granted in the UI are now being
questioned. These new users are struggling with the same exact UI that the
others picked up and ran with.

Although it is a much larger sale, we are finding ourselves having to "hide"
most of our options behind an "advanced" button. We are giving the school
admins control to set all of the options and therefore simplifying the app as
much as possible. This will make our new users feel comfortable.

Great post.

------
tgriesser
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
(even though I had confirmed it was before I had left) and I started to panic
as we were close to a deadline for a client. Turns out that when i was telling
him to access dev.somesite.com he was putting in www.dev.somesite.com and it
was screwing up the javascript... because he naturally thought everything
started with a 'www'.

It blew me away that he didn't understand the concept of subdomains, but also
it was a reality check that he sort of knew his way around a computer and
websites, and that it meant there was a much much larger set of users that
couldn't grasp the concept of a subdomain. It can be difficult sometimes when
you have the perception (especially on HN) that so many people out there know
more than you about everything. I guess you just have to take a step back and
realize you are still in the 99th percentile of the rest of the world when it
comes to this stuff.

~~~
dennisgorelik
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).

~~~
eof
Certainly higher than 99.999 for just a random sampling.

------
ben1040
A few years ago I ran a website for a local community science fair. We'd get
about 200 schools participating, and they have to register online before they
can send kids projects to the fair.

190 of the 200 go off without a hitch. But I always get five or ten angry
emails asking how to register a school, because they see no box to type into.
Somehow they can find the "contact" link in tiny print and write out an email
with bad spelling and grammar, but the "Click Here to Register" link in 24
point red text is impossible to locate. Also, these people are educating our
children.

I learned the hard way why most websites have their signup form right on the
front page. Call it A/B testing via angry feedback form.

------
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Because the address bar has become rapidly irrelevant. Domain name is almost
as useless as ip address - its highly coded unrememberable nonsense, often
unrelated to the product or company name.

------
meelash
I think (one of) the biggest difficulties is that it's not as simple as

 _Make your apps, websites and tools as simple as possible_

There are two targets that could be aimed for- (a) some kind of inherent
intuitiveness/simplicity (as in the calendar example), and (b) something the
most similar to past experience (as exemplified by the "Reply" button
example).

One of my lab partners in grad school didn't believe there was such a thing as
inherent intuitiveness. Back when I had more free time for such things, I
remember having lengthy arguments with PC-to-Mac switchers explaining how the
implementation of feature X was inherently more intuitive or ergonomic on the
mac although it seemed a stupid way to do it to them. Some might argue that
even in the calendar example, clicking the date is not more intuitive but
similar to the past experience of writing on a physical calendar.

However, I'd argue there is definitely such a thing as an interface that is
inherently non-intuitive, so by contrast, there must be things that make an
interface inherently more intuitive.

So, I think of (a) and (b) as competing trade-offs that must be compromised.
Going too radical towards (a), especially on a product that people already
have formed associations with, and you end up an awesome, but fringe, product
with a small community of fanatic followers (see NeXT). If you create a
radically new something, or the impression thereof, you have a lot more
leeway, since people are not psychologically attached to previous experiences.

Go too radically towards (b) and you aren't adding anything different with
your product.

If you're making something new to go into battle against existing, well-
established products, the best approach is to start with (b) and then slowly
"fix" things, one at a time, over time, starting with features that give the
biggest bang for the smallest change in user behavior. This applies to user-
facing front ends, only of course.

------
btilly
See the comments at the bottom of
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php)
for a practical example. See also <http://xkcd.com/763/>.

~~~
phjohnst
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.

------
golgo13
My dad is a Master Electrician but he still asks me questions about his
hotmail account and to resend a link to my Picasa albums. He deals with
megawatts of electricity on a daily basis. I would hesitate to call him
dumb...

~~~
pavel_lishin
Ditto for my stepdad, electrical engineer, holds more patents than I own
books, and has put something on fucking _Mars_.

Still can't get his webcam to work, and keeps every document on his desktop.

It's just a matter of different knowledge domains. If you tossed me into the
woods with experienced naturalists, they'd probably laugh every time I wiped
with poison oak, too.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Actually, you'd probably laugh at them because they were naked.

~~~
barrkel
I think you're thinking of naturists, not naturalists.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Thank. You. I'm glad you nipped that in the butt. Could have been very
embarrassing.

I'm feeling snarky because it's 11:29 PM local time, and I'm about to ditch
the trial server software I had planned to use and just write the goddamn
things I need in Python, and keep it all in memory, so I can actually finish
my shit this week. Fuck databases, fuck socket-server middle-ware, fuck best
practice dogma (except when they really matter).

------
starpilot
I went to a talk given by a high-ranking Mozilla employee. He mentioned it was
challenge getting the loyalty of non-techie users, because when asked what
"web browser" they used, most responded, "Google."

------
toast76
I have above average intelligence, compared to me most people ARE dumb.

Said in jest, obviously....

In all seriousness, this is a very common issue for "isolated" developers and
designers. We all work in our little cubicles building what makes sense to us.
We never think that we are our own most knowledgeable users. A feature that is
obvious to us is most likely obvious because we put it there.

It's also why in any company, the people making the product (whatever it is)
should spend some time on the front line dealing with customers. Even better,
they should WATCH people use the product they built.

~~~
epochwolf
> A feature that is obvious to us is most likely obvious because we put it
> there.

Or it's not even obvious to us because it was written years ago. :)

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

~~~
seiji
Hold down a letter and an extended menu pops up.

~~~
hasenj
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?

~~~
nikster
> 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.

------
donaq
It seems to me the problem is that there are many more opportunities for
people working in computing to feel superior because of the way computers (and
the internet, in particular) have become ubiquitous in our society. I mean,
supposing you were a marine biologist. Not everyone is an expert in your
domain, sure, but equally, people just don't normally ask you that many
questions about it. If, on the other hand, a marine biologist gets asked daily
whether a common species of seaweed is safe to eat, she might, after a while,
start wondering why people are so stupid that she has to keep answering the
same question. The problem is that in this hypothetical world, enough people
eat seaweed often enough that this knowledge is required of our marine
biologist on a regular basis, yet any particular person doesn't eat seaweed
often enough that he would remember which species were safe to eat. Of course,
it doesn't help that there are so many species of similar-looking seaweed or
that there are just enough marine biologists around that she meets a group of
them with whom she can feel smug at every party she attends!

------
chrischen
Yesterday someone emailed me saying that they downloaded "Like.fm for Firefox"
and then proceeded to ask me what the site's address was (it's Like.fm).

However cases like this are still the exception. Bad user experience design
usually leads to clueless users. So it's not a matter of intelligence or
technical acuity, it's all about how experienced you are with the interfaces
and how well it's designed to be familiar to you. Obviously if you are the
designer you're going to be more familiar than a new user. But it won't matter
if you're using wormholes for your internet backbone if it's well designed
even Abraham Lincoln will be able to use it.

That being said not all user interfaces should be dumbed down as much as
possible. It just has to be as familiar as possible to your target user base.

------
frisco
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 characters on the iPhone, or
highly skilled pilots who can't answer the question, "what's a browser?"
accurately.

These are pieces of topic knowledge, orthogonal to the question of "smart".

All of this said, having worked in consumer internet, I totally agree that the
vast (read: _vast_ ) majority of internet users are absolute retards (or at
least play them online).

~~~
eogas
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.

------
high5ths
Same idea, but on a bigger scale -- Arthur C. Clarke's third law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."[1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarkes_three_laws>

------
DuncanIdaho
What frustrates me most is that I keep meeting people who seem to know less
about their respective fields than one would expect them to, or they should at
least know more about them than I or some other laic does.

------
shykes
_Apparently you can book tickets, check email and do all sorts of stuff online
without knowing that each website has a distinct address called a URL._

Yes. The days of DNS as a mainstream human interface are numbered.

~~~
ams6110
So we'll be going back to AOL keywords?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Seriously? We've been in that world for the last four years, only it's called
Google keywords now.

------
dageroth
Hmm, I have the opposit feeling, that is compared to me many seem to be more
intelligent. I stumble into many different fields and know some basics, but
whereever I go people can tell me stuff I have never heard of and seem to
comprehend stuff quickly when I explain it, which took me weeks to figure
out...

So I usually go with the opposit approach and believe most people can explain
something to me rather than believing I could figure everything out what they
know by myself ...

------
johnglasgow
Let's say I go to the mechanic with a light on in the dashboard, and he'll
immediately notice the gas cap isn't tightly secured so it set off a car
sensor. He probably went back to his mechanic friends, told them the story,
and everyone laughed.

The computer and everything about it is our profession/hobby/passion and that
is the main reason we know so much more than everyone else about it.

------
bryanh
On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if I see dumb when all I talk about is
my little startups and whatever jazz I'm into today.

------
vineet7kumar
It's just that everyone knows more about their own trade than others. My Dad's
an automobile engineer and he thinks it's kinda funny that I do not really
understand how a 4-wheel drive works...and I find it funny that he doesn't get
why his computer hangs much more than mine (I use Linux :P )

------
cont4gious
This is a really good article when considering use cases for your users.
Sometimes classifying it under 'stupid user syndrome' just isn't good enough,
you have to understand that they are not unintelligent, they just don't grasp
the same domain knowledge as we do.

~~~
thetylerhayes
As Merlin Mann said, we're all nerds (see
<http://www.43folders.com/2010/09/10/my-paladin>). We're just not all nerds in
the same disciplines. E.g. I couldn't care less about lawn mowers but I
wouldn't dare say that to a clerk at Home Depot.

------
istari
Compared to me, most people ARE dumb, in my area of expertise.

What's that you say? Step out of my area of expertise?

No.

------
marknutter
Don't disparage these people: they're the ones clicking on your ads ;-)

------
Locke1689
Well, I wouldn't directly equate technical knowledge with intelligence.

However, the statement "compared to you, most people seem dumb" isn't
necessarily wrong -- 'you' must just be very intelligent.

------
oconnore
I would love to read this, but the website is completely broken for me in
Opera 10.63.

It breaks after one of the many many many cross site plugins is loaded.

------
Gotttzsche
now im curious. how does texting someone back on the iphone work?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I think you just enter another message and Send, and the address is assumed
from context. Cool but definitely not obvious to everyone (me).

------
sublimit
It's a matter of _specialization_ , if you will. Technology literacy is not
the only talent in the world, but if that's what you choose to define yourself
with, then it's easy for you to classify people in a related hierarchy.

Granted, this sort of relativism can only cover so much, since you'll also
come across people who don't seem to know anything at all.

------
nice1
"People are not really stupid, it is just that you know a lot more. Don’t let
knowledge blind you."

No, you dumb fuck. You're the idiot who knows nothing apart from useless
technobabble that nobody will care about in 100 years - sorry, that should
probably be 10 years.

------
Bored_Bystander
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 working populace.

To turn it all around, I have had the experience of explaining a legalism such
as a specific application of labor or copyright law to a deep hard core
techie. It's absolutely outside their universe and their frame of reference...
does not compute... smoke starts coming out the ears... "Illogical! Norman,
please coordinate..."

~~~
alexqgb
'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 private sense of
how it works in practice).

The fastest way to infuriate an otherwise smart, capable person is to (a) fail
to understand that they simply don't share your frame of reference, then (b)
treat them like they're incapable of understanding anything at all while (c)
failing to supply the kinds of helpful clues that can get them properly
oriented, allowing them to use what they do know to make better sense of what
they don't.

Computer people seem especially prone to this.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed. I tried to eat it a Korean soup kitchen the other day. There I sat
clueless with some murky broth and undescipherable dishes of 'stuff' while all
around me Korean students scraped and mixed and ate with happy abandon.

