Do you ever get wound up by knowledge you think people should have?

I'm amazed at the lack of general knowledge of the younger generation.
Basic geographical knowledge of the country they live in really gets me the most though. They can navigate the Web easily enough but ask them where large cities are and they have no clue.
 
There are some things which are just beyond my intellect but most things can be worked out by background knowledge, reading, careful observation and an analytical mind.

It can be infuriating dealing with people who can't go from a to b without being shown how but I don't consider myself superior just because of the way I think, just as I try to not feel inferior to people who 'get' pure maths :(
 
Tone1979 said:
Was I brought up different? I generally understand most common daily tasks or technology..
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Well, yes, you were brought up differently to 'older people' as the technology just didn't exist at the time.

I'm 49 and at the time of leaving school computers were not mainstream and the internet wasn't available, as it is now.

Just because someone doesn't understand something that you consider the norm, doesn't make them any less intelligent.

My dad is 80 and is a very good photographer, but i know very little about the tech side of photography and he could wipe the floor with me with his knowledge.
 
Yes I am constantly amazed how little people know about anything. So many must just take the world around them for granted and have absolutely no interest in being inquisitive.

There is a guy at work in a senior position who brought up the old "what came first the chicken or the egg?". He was explaining how hard it was to solve. I cut in and said yeah it's good but it's the egg isn't it. Eggs have existed since before the dinosaurs, fish lay eggs....everything else evolved after. He looked at me like I was talking a completely alien language.

I had to explain to someone the other day that we used to naturally wake up with the light of the sun or possibly the sound of birds or farm animals once we started farming. They were a gasp and had never really thought about a time before alarm clocks. But how did they know when to get up for work?!?!

I do feel like a I live in a different world to a lot of the people around me. They do seem to be happier in their own little world and show far less existential dread.

Young people are in a bubble for sure. I was away on a business trip the other week and one of the guys had grown up in East Germany prior to 1989. A younger colleague was absolutely baffled when he said he grew up speaking Russian. He knew basically nothing of the Cold War or Iron curtain.
 
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What never ceases to amaze me is just the lack of common sense and basic sound judgement people display which result in bizarre opinions and decisions that I scratch my head wondering how they ever reached. Also, instead of making a basic attempt to find out the solutions to a problem, how people just seem to shut down and give up.
 
Something popped up on facebook this morning and one of the comments was along the lines of "Well it's a flammable material and that's a flammable liquid so if you put one on the other they're obviously going to burst into flames".

The complete lack of common sense and basic general knowledge shown by a lot of people does leave me quite confused sometimes.
 
My GF annoys me in this respect. She has a law degree, has a good job and is fairly bright. However she comes out with some real classics.

1) We were at heathrow airport to get the train to Hayes (West London). So the next train was going to Paddington, via Hayes.

Her: "This train is the wrong one, it's going to Kent."
Me: "What?"

Her: "Hayes is in Kent" (There is a place called Hayes in Kent)
Me: "Look... it's going Hayes, to Paddington"

Her: "Yes but it's going to Kent first"
Me: "So you think the train is going from Heathrow... all the way across London to Kent... then all the way back across London to finish at Paddington?"

Her: "How am I supposed to know where Kent is?"
Me: ... just got a bit frustrated and said "How do you NOT know where Kent is having lived round here for years?"

......


2) She also once got confused when I started mentioning about DAB radio. Ended up with her saying "Why would I know what a DAB radio is?"

I said ... "it's on loads of adverts... people talk about it in general conversation... they get it in cars, etc..."

...

It seems it's Geography and general observation she is just a bit blind to. She can live in our area for years and not know where a local park is, or what the name of a shopping precinct is called that people refer to all the time.

I don't get it - I'm not that bright, but I am very aware of things like this and just think it's part of life, and find it really odd when some basic things like this she just doesn't get.
 
People who come to me complaining of chronic back pain.

I will usually assess their workstation to see how they're working and it's not uncommon to find a bog standard office chair with multi-adjust support.

The question which stumps them: have you tried adjusting the chair at all?

If I had a £1 for each time I've been met with a :confused: face, I'd have retired long before amigafan2003 (;)). They simply see the adjustment levers and consider them "too technical" to have a go. I'd say fair enough if there weren't pictograms on most adjustment levers, but they bloody well know how to operate the coffee machine and the 1432 types of filter paper.

Yesterday, I saw a woman with RSI whose workstation had folders, diaries, keyboard, scanner, tower, laser printer, monitor and phone in a 1m2 area. Amongst other things, I asked her why she didn't use an electronic diary (to save space) and it was like I told her I killed her dog with blunt force trauma to the snout. Her answer "I like to write it down, but I just don't have the space... look *mashes keyboard*, if I put my diary on top it messes up the booking system".

Derp.
 
MookJong said:
There is a guy at work in a senior position who brought up the old "what came first the chicken or the egg?". He was explaining how hard it was to solve. I cut in and said yeah it's good but it's the egg isn't it. Eggs have existed since before the dinosaurs, fish lay eggs....everything else evolved after. He looked at me like I was talking a completely alien language.
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I think you've misunderstood the question - a perfect example for this thread!
 
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touch said:
I think you've misunderstood the question - a perfect example for this thread!
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Quite.

The question is the egg, not a egg.

It's still egg of course, as per the theories of evolution and genetic inheritance, but it does go to show it doesn't pay to be too smart, it just makes the eventual fall harder.
 
touch said:
I think you've misunderstood the question - a perfect example for this thread!
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Guilty as charged, I read the part about not understanding how a kite works which reminded me of the guy from work and I went off on a rant from there.

Try again...

I told one of the Finance managers who was asking about CD players to try Spotify the other day. Just said get the free version and see what you think. I said for the cost of buying a CD per month you could have access to all the new music coming out. They liked the sound of it but as soon as I mentioned downloading it from the Play store they basically shut the conversation down and said it was too technical.
 
Tone1979 said:
THIS TOO!!

I get to the crossing, before I press the button I look to see if there is a gap in the traffic to cross. I don't want to slow anyone down..
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The amount of people I encounter standing by a pelican crossing, that's not on a junction (i.e. won't change lights unless they press the button), waiting for the lights to change having not pressed the button.

It's not like they're even looking for a gap in the traffic... just staring patiently at the red man, waiting for it to be a green man.
* and and the the crossing lights/units are new, so the button surround lights up red once it's been pressed, as well as the "WAIT" light coming on.
 
We've bred at least 2 generations without teaching them basic general knowledge.

Additionally, by making almost everything remarkably safe, people can wander around oblivious with the situational awareness of a rock and not die by their hundreds every damn day.

The slippery slope that child-proof medicine and cleaning products bottles have brought us down into the Valley Of The Stupid.
 
Brizzles said:
Just because someone doesn't understand something that you consider the norm, doesn't make them any less intelligent.

My dad is 80 and is a very good photographer, but i know very little about the tech side of photography and he could wipe the floor with me with his knowledge.
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Though I take the OPs statement as one of general knowledge, not specific technical details, so things you just have to be sentient to be aware of.

Like talking to a girl at work (early 20's) and she didn't know where Scotland was....seriously, she didn't know where ****ing Scotland was, she looked at me confused when I was talking about the weather map on the news, and you know, it's the bit on top of England....nope, nothing...

So yes the above is an extreme example, but I come across the same type of thing often and yes OP, it winds me up every time.

Just recently I was talking to someone and mentioned the LHC, Large Hadron Collider, now I don't expect people to know how it works, or even any technical information about what it does.....but really, they had never even heard of it at all...it's not like it's been massive headline news many times over the last few years....

Terminal_Boy said:
We've bred at least 2 generations without teaching them basic general knowledge.

Additionally, by making almost everything remarkably safe, people can wander around oblivious with the situational awareness of a rock and not die by their hundreds every damn day.

The slippery slope that child-proof medicine and cleaning products bottles have brought us down into the Valley Of The Stupid.
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Agreed, apart from the 'teaching them General Knowledge' - it's not taught, it's gained by being sentient, looking at the world around you and not having your nose in Facebook/Social Media 24/7

We really do seem to be socially devolving into the lowest common denominator.
 
A couple of things recently that symbolise this perfectly:

The story about a child swallowing a button-cell battery (e.g. CMOS battery), prompting a BBC article about how it's not a good idea to leave them lying around in the company of children

The recent addition to all washing powder/capsule adverts "Always keep out of the reach of children"

Just me, or are both blindingly obvious to all but the millennial narcissistic generation? Or is it the companies covering themselves against injury lawyers?
 
It's common sense I find people lack...

-Need to change a car tyre but you don't know how? How do you think I know how to do it? I was either shown, or looked it up.

-i don't know how to do x/y/z on a computer. How do I know how to do this? I've either looked for it or looked it up!

-i don't know what setting to use on the washing machine...try it!!!!

It's the same with everything...either try and figure it out or look it up / ask someone then magically you'll know!

Or a recent one from wifey. Someone called to make an appointment and she took the first date given because she djdnt have her calendar to hand....which is on her phone....why didn't you just put them on mute then check the calendar??? Arrrrgh
 
Rilot said:
I wonder this on a daily basis. I can only assume that some of the people I work with must sit in their houses in darkness or spend a fortune on electricians based on their inability to switch on a monitor.
I was trying to explain to an acquaintance the other day that miles-per-hour means how many miles you travel in an hour. He was quite adamant that you could travel the same distance in the same time but at a lower speed.
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I don't even understand that?
 
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