# People who will just never get what you're talking about. Never. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 17, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179 "2011-05-17T04:20:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/41 "2011-05-18T14:08:50Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > Just kidding. There were no brains. šŸ˜ƒ ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/42 "2011-05-18T15:01:00Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Just reading these anecdotes is making me all tense and frustrated. Leslie??? [sub]Leslie is Mrs. Homieā€™s name.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/43 "2011-05-18T15:25:15Z")
Iā€™m guilty of one of these. I have zero ability to understand how computers work. I donā€™t get bits, bytes, packets, gates, passcodes, squls, addresses or anything else even remotely related. I KNOW i possess the intelligence required to understand but my brain shuts down as soon as someone tries to help me with this. As far as Iā€™m concerned, magical internets goblins bring me my message boards, videos, and other media. I have an extremely low threshold for patience with malfunctioning equipment. When something breaks I either yell at **Nashiitashii** to fix it, or: Plan A: Try all the usual fixes Iā€™ve memorized from the various companies and yell at them, B: Set fire to it and run. ---
**Author:** ![boozilu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4da419/32.png) [@boozilu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boozilu)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/44 "2011-05-18T15:53:47Z")
You know, when I first started working at a big company I thought the people in management must be really smart. Then one day I realized they had just been there longer. Boy, that was liberating. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/45 "2011-05-18T16:12:19Z")
One of my work worlds is a strange sort of Alice-in-the-looking-glass place where we have small teams drawn from two large groups of workers who then cooperate to make the product. But each group understands almost nothing about the otherā€™s real duties or worldview. And the two groups have totally different psychological / emotional profiles. And one group is about 98% male and the other is about 80% female. And we swap co-workers from the other group every week to make a new team. So at the outset of each team engagement I have a canned conversation I go through to identify the ones I can communicate with vs. the ones like **tdn** ā€™s project manager or the OPā€™s pal. My script is cleverly (I hope) designed to look to them like idle chit-chat, but itā€™s really an IQ/EQ/Cluefullness test. From this quiz I pick the one person Iā€™ll deal with and let her be the spokesperson to the rest of their side of the team. Sometimes the failure to get it, it burns. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/46 "2011-05-18T16:15:47Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > My script is cleverly (I hope) designed to look to them like idle chit-chat, but itā€™s really an IQ/EQ/Cluefullness test. Is there any way you can post it? Or give us the Rdrā€™s Dgst version? ---
**Author:** ![SandyHook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dec6dc/32.png) [@SandyHook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandyHook)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/47 "2011-05-18T16:22:50Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > It doesnā€™t even have to be someone whoā€™s dumb - itā€™s just that sometimes two people happen to be very firmly on the two sides of one of those Universal Divides (like drafters vs non-, pet-lovers vs non-, visual vs verbalā€¦) and at most they can agree that ā€œok, this is something in which we donā€™t even disagree, we think in different frequenciesā€. > > My cousin wasnā€™t particularly dumb, but he died without comprehending how can anybody want to have a 9-to-5 job. He knew he didnā€™t comprehend it. But to him, the idea that someone might want to have the kind of job whose mere thought made him want to run away, through the walls if need be, was just incomprehensible. > > We explained that some people arenā€™t _satisfied_ with such jobs or _can withstand_ such jobs, some people actually _enjoy_ making sure that the monthly balance is perfectly balanced and get enormously excited when they discover a new kind of financial product. Actually, my youngest brother (this cousinā€™s godson), who happens to be one of these people, was the one who explained it. Our cousin said something along the lines of ā€œI believe you, I just donā€™t _understand_ how can it be!ā€ > > If you ask me, a world where everybody wanted to spend the whole day climbing mountains would be as dull as one where we all wanted to spend it calculating compound interests, but hey - he just did not get it. I think thatā€™s me. I just canā€™t comprehend how people can take religion seriously. Itā€™s so obviously drivil. I can comprehend how theyā€™d like it to be true. I wish it was. I can see why they want it to be true. I see the comfort of belonging to a large club of like thinkers. But every time I talk to a believer (which I try to keep to a minimum as I find it painful) in the back of my mind I keep thinking, ā€œYou donā€™t really believe this, do you?ā€ ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/48 "2011-05-18T17:33:56Z")
Iā€™m going to point my finger at myself. The thing I donā€™t get is[Haskell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_%28programming_language%29). In college I took several classes from a particular professor who had a love for this language. He would always work Haskell into the course in some fashion. I was always able to follow along in the lectures, but when it came time to create something original with Haskell, I could do nothing but sit there and watch the cursor blink. In the intervening years since college I have installed a Haskell interpreter on every machine I have ever owned and have purchased just about every book on Haskell ever published. Iā€™ve worked thorough most of these books. Iā€™ve toyed with online tutorials. But still, ask me to write something in Haskell from scratch, I got nothing. Haskell is the bane of my existence. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2011, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179/49 "2011-05-18T17:40:30Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > One of my work worlds is a strange sort of Alice-in-the-looking-glass place where we have small teams drawn from two large groups of workers who then cooperate to make the product. But each group understands almost nothing about the otherā€™s real duties or worldview. And the two groups have totally different psychological / emotional profiles. You work for Congress? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-will-just-never-get-what-youre-talking-about-never/582179.md?page=2)