Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
Do you know this quote?
Have you ever noticed how stupid the average person is?
Now imagine... half of them are stupider.
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In the US, that quote is attributed to comedian George Carlin.
Quote:
In my own case, I've noticed two opposing trends.
1. If someone tells me he's going to do X, I sometimes respond with: "It doesn't work." Then, when asked WHY it doesn't work, I can't fully explain it because I've raced through most, if not all possibilities in a fraction of a second and came to the conclusion that X doesn't work, but without many of the intermediate steps. Then it takes me quite some time to explain my entire TGV of thought, and people lose me somewhere down the road.
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A lot of that comes down to how you perceive the world.
We make a mental model of the world around us, based on what we perceive through our senses. But while we have a number (13, the last I looked, though some of those are concerned with our internal state), we generally have one that is our primary sense, and which that is affects how we perceive the world.
My primary sense is visual. I see patterns. In many cases, my "It won't work" response is because the pieces simply don't fit together in my model. I can usually reproduce the chain of thought embodied in that gestalt, but explaining it may depend on the primary senses of those I'm explaining it to.
My SO, for example, is extremely nearsighted, and needs prescription glasses to see anything a foot beyond her face. (I'm increasingly far sighted, and need reading glasses.) Her primary sense is hearing. When she asks a technical question, my impulse is to grab pencil and paper and draw a diagram, but that will convey nothing to her. I need to find a different metaphor to get across the concept.
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Their conclusion: I'm a party pooper who always sees only the problems.
End of story most of the time: X doesn't work, exactly because of the reason I was unable to explain quickly.
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And they discover it the hard way. The question is whether anyone has gotten back to you after the fact and said "You were right."
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2. Something is so extremely glaringly obvious and easy to understand that even my six year old niece gets it, and I go "Oh... right" 3 minutes later. Sometimes, I feel like Data, who gets a joke like 6 years after it's made (when he got his emotion chip), or makes a joke and doesn't understand why it's funny (Guinan: "The joke didn't work because your timing was wrong." Data: "My timing is digital.")
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See above about sensory frameworks and modes of perception. What we find glaringly obvious will differ depending upon who we are.
One of the characteristics I subsume under the concept of "intelligence" is the ability to foresee likely future outcomes of present actions. A lot of my "It Won't Work" opinions are based on considering what is likely to happen as a result of something being done now, and concluding the result will not be what the people doing it expect or want.
But those are where a lot of "Don't
want to believe something" responses get triggered. There are any number of cases where I just keep my mouth shut, because opening it would require saying "Everything you think you know is
wrong. The world simply doesn't work the way you assume, and never has."
If I'm going to waste time, I want how I waste it to be fun, and having that sort of discussion isn't.
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Dennis