Does anyone else feel like 90% of the population is stupid?
To clarify here, I don't feel like I'm significantly smarter than most people, but I feel like people have a hard time doing any sort of thinking about stuff. Especially when it comes to verifying "facts."
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I've always felt like most people lack problem solving skills. Nobody knows how to use Google or just figure things out themselves. Friends often call me for tech support but it's often very basic things like how to plug in an HDMI cable or how to fix an error that says how to fix it in the error code.
I work tech support too and deal with behavior like this daily. 90% of what I do is simple things that can be found on the first Google result. People open tickets asking how to unmute their microphone in Teams, it's ridiculous.
I feel the same way but I think I'm just socially stunted and can't ask for help so I learned to figure it out myself. I don't have the knowledge, data, or authority to say they're not troubleshooting differently than I do because they socialize better than me.
Never really thought about it that way, but now that I think about it, me too. Don't get me wrong I am naturally curious, but I hate asking for help too. I don't want to bother anyone
For me, it's not that I don't want to bother anyone. It's just that I'm an arrogant pos and I don't like to admit I don't know something until I've tried to figure it out myself. Kinda toxic, but this forced me to learn a lot of things by myself or via tutorials online.
I think I'll just share my point of view, if you don't want to hear it then let me know and I'll delete this comment.
Projecting the image that you know everything seems kind of brittle to me - once someone sees through once, they'll never believe you about anything. Besides, it's okay that you don't know; if you're a good learner (you obviously are), then what you know right now is almost a moot point. "I dunno, but give me a few minutes". That's my perspective anyway
Nope, you're absolutely right. But I'm not projecting that I know everything. I just won't ask for help unless I've tried by myself, and can't do it.
I don't want to be absolutely clueless about hoe something is done when I ask
error messages thing, man.
I had a user complain that they "didn't know what to do" with the error message "Your calendar access has expired, please click this button to reconnect. [Big orange button saying "Reconnect"]"
I said "Did you click reconnect?"
"No"
it immediately fixed it.
I know and have dealt with very highly educated and intelligent people who just can't do proper thorough problem evaluation and solving, and I don't mean just hands on practical things, I mean obtaining information, thinking a situation through and coming out with an explanation and possible solutions.
I think it's really a question of practice in Analytical Reasoning, which people in STEM have lots of because that's what those domains require (try designing a bridge using persuasion techniques from Business Management and see what happens) so they constantly practice it, but most other areas don't so people there have little practice in that mode or reasoning (but lots of practice in other ways of thinking).
You see it here tons of times: people who clearly are intelligent and educated arguing via semantics, appeals to emotion and just about a ton of falacies, all of which are noticeable as obviously flawed in logical terms with just a tiny bit of analytical thinking.
One thing I learned from my period of contact with the Theatre world some years ago (pretty much the opposite of what I do for a living), is that there are many ways of being highly intelligent (it was quite suprising for me the intelligence required to be a good actor) and maybe is better not to judge or, worse, to presume.
To sum up everything you said.
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.