# Things that you can't fathom people not understanding **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 7, 2013, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360 "2013-06-07T05:50:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/281 "2013-06-20T13:38:11Z")
People are funny. I had a high school friend who helped me succeed, by asking me to tutor him in physics before every test. He’d open the book to the page, I’d read it and then work through the problems with him, showing him how and having him do it, catching him when he got misdirected, or answering questions. He thought he was stupid, so I asked him to explain to me, again, the reason for the infield fly rule. He wasn’t stupid, he just wasn’t a natural at symbol manipulation. Note that it wasn’t an issue of abstraction: understanding the infield fly rule requires abstraction. And he did end up doing well enough on the physics tests. So did I, thanks to him. My son is intelligent but his mind just doesn’t work the way most of the rest of ours does, for reading and writing. Seriously dyslexic (or something), in 5th grade tests showed his ability to decode or spell was 1st grade, his comprehension level was high school, and his vocabulary collegiate. But he totally couldn’t get parts of speech (despite speaking with very good grammar). When asked to spell a word of more than 3 or 4 letters, he’d pause for a long time, and then say the letters slowly at an even pace (not as most of us would do, spelling syllables or common groups at a time). His brain just doesn’t work the way mine was, and it was frustrating to try to help him (for us both). ---
**Author:** ![SpeedwayRyan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@SpeedwayRyan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpeedwayRyan)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/282 "2013-06-20T14:44:24Z")
I used to work with a girl who would get a cost estimate from a vendor that would say, for example: 100 pieces, total cost $1200. She would then ask us how to calculate the per-piece cost. Eventually, we made her a cheat sheet on a post-it note that she could place on her monitor so that she wouldn’t have to ask us every time. We tried explaining the concept…it just didn’t stick. It absolutely blew my mind that this girl had graduated from both high school and a well-known university without understanding the basic concept behind division. It’s like a second-grade story problem. ---
**Author:** ![Blackberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/283 "2013-06-20T15:08:28Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > I get about one call a week from someone who can’t get the key to turn in the ignition. They are stumped for what they should do. > Really? Locking steering columns have been here in the US since 1968, and you have never come across a stiff key that requires you to move the steering wheel a bit so you can turn the key? > You must have led a charmed life. I did this before. I never came across it until I did. How would I know before that? I really don’t know anything about cars though. I wouldn’t even know where to start if I wanted to learn. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/284 "2013-06-20T15:24:35Z")
> [@Blackberry](#): > > I did this before. I never came across it until I did. How would I know before that? I would bet the vast majority of the world doesn’t know anything about a car at all. Having never been in one. ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/285 "2013-06-20T19:35:55Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > It helps to realize that everyone is going to have a first time to find out that unpleasant fact of modern cars. The ones that call for help just found out about it. If they call again with the same problem, well, then it might be hard to fathom. When I’m talking to someone who tells me they have been driving for 30+ years and have never experienced this I have to assume that either they led a charmed life or they have memory issues. Either way how hard is this to figure out? ---
**Author:** ![Rick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9f8e36/32.png) [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/286 "2013-06-20T19:39:41Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > I would bet the vast majority of the world doesn’t know anything about a car at all. Having never been in one. Need more straw for your man? I was talking about people that are licensed to drive a car which would leave out people that have never seen a car. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/287 "2013-06-20T20:04:52Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > I would bet the vast majority of the world doesn’t know anything about a car at all. Having never been in one. I’d be quite surprised if more than half the adults in the world today had never been in a car. Never owned one, sure, but the global population is pretty urbanised these days. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2013, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/288 "2013-06-20T21:40:33Z")
People with no sense of direction. Like they can drive from home to the mall and then from home to the store but not go from the mall to the store. What do they have to drive home 20 times when they are out running errands? ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/289 "2013-06-21T00:27:48Z")
> [@Napier](#): > > It irritates me that people get this wrong, but I can see one reason it might be an easy mistake to make: there are hundreds of thousands of nouns that form a possessive using an apostrophe plus an s. How many words do otherwise? “Its”, “his”, “hers”, “yours”, “ours”, and “theirs”, which still use the “s”. And “mine”. I don’t think any other words act this way (unless I’m missing something dumb – if I am, you may mock me). Given the fact that there IS a word spelled “it’s”, grabbing it because it fits the overwhelmingly common pattern is forgivable in my book. So, why is “one’s” apostrophized? Why doesn’t it qualify according to the rule “do not use an apostrophy for a personal pronoun”? > [@Frylock](#): > > Face Blindness was mentioned above. [http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff.phpHere’s](http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff.phpHere's) a test for it. > > I’ve always half-wondered whether I may have a weak form of it, but I passed this test with flying colors. There was one person I couldn’t identify, but I was a lot less familiar with them than any of the others. > > I found identifying faces without hair to be kind of challenging. For a few of them I had to think about it for several seconds. Is it challenging for everyone? Interesting. I thought I had a weak form too, but I got 90%. As a kid, the worst was black and white movies, because all the men (of the 40’s and 50’s) had the same haircut and wore a similar suit, and looked the same. The Maltese Falcon was OK, because the fat man and the snivelly guy were pretty easy to tell from the hero, who talked funny. My wife will often ask me to describe how someone looks, and I’m at a loss. I start saying stuff (people I know pretty well sometimes, too) and later when I look at them I realize what I said was totally wrong. If the cops ever come at me with an IDentikit, I’ll just roll my eyes and tell them not to bother. I also have trouble identifying people until I know them pretty well, unless they have unusual features or hair. I do tend to recognize people by haircuts, and will often get mixed up when someone changes they style or color. I’ve called out to a friend and called them the name of a different friend, much to their chagrin, them thinking they look nothing alike (but their hairstyles are vaguely similar). Generally that was when I wasn’t really paying attention, or saw them peripherally, but I definitely make that mistake more than people I know. But evidently I’m not “face blind”. It was very easy identifying those famous people whom I’ve seen many many times. > [@Blackberry](#): > > I did this before. I never came across it until I did. How would I know before that? > > I really don’t know anything about cars though. I wouldn’t even know where to start if I wanted to learn. Come to think of it, this used to happen a lot in the 70’s and possibly 80’s, but I don’t remember the last time it happened. Maybe it’s a sign of age; that newer cars are just engineered better and it happens less. Or it might be a matter of habit. I know I used to be able to make this happen on purpose; I’ll have to see if it still works (just park and turn off the car, remove the key, turn the wheel slowly until it locks, and release it. It’ll relax back applying pressure against the locking mechanism.) ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/290 "2013-06-21T01:35:28Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Face Blindness was mentioned above. [url=[http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff.php](http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff.php)]Here’s a test for it. > > I found identifying faces without hair to be kind of challenging. For a few of them I had to think about it for several seconds. Is it challenging for everyone? Well, this confirmed what I already knew: GREAT with faces. SUCKASS at names. A few of them I had to look up by what movies I knew them from. Otherwise, I got 100%, if you’re counting by knowing exactly who they are, but often not being able to bring the name to mind. ---
**Author:** ![kaylalala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e19b73/32.png) [@kaylalala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylalala)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/291 "2013-06-21T03:06:41Z")
I don’t really know how to explain this correctly, but I’ll give it a go. I don’t understand how people can have a complete lack of sympathy. Like when people explain a situation to someone, they don’t seem to really get it. For example, let’s say a husband and wife recently divorced because the man cheated. The woman tries to vent to her friend about how the cheating has hurt her so much and the friend says “I’m sorry” before changing the subject. For me, I would feel genuinely sorry for the woman because I can, very clearly, picture myself in her shoes. I can kind of feel how she would feel. It baffles me that other people can’t do that. How some people can look at those pictures of the Boston bombing and make jokes almost immediately after. I couldn’t do that because I can almost imagine how they felt about it. I’m not saying I actually felt what they did, but I could imagine how emotionally destroyed they were. It also baffles me that when I tell someone to imagine how they would feel about a certain situation, they don’t. I’m not sure if it’s simply because they don’t want to or if it’s because they can’t. I’m sorry if that was kind of hard to understand. I tried 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/292 "2013-06-21T04:16:58Z")
Evolution. It’s such a simple model when you get down to it. Yet I know so many people, who are otherwise bright, but never manage to get a good intuitive idea of it, and have all kinds of misconceptions. ETA: I should give at least one concrete example. e.g. That altruism is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. Or the idea that there must be a part of the subconscious that knows that our purpose is to reproduce, and so drives us to ask out the girl at the coffee shop, or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/293 "2013-06-21T05:55:29Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Or the idea that there must be a part of the subconscious that knows that our purpose is to reproduce, and so drives us to ask out the girl at the coffee shop, or whatever. Are you saying that the urge to reproduce/have sex isn’t an evolved behavior? 😕 ETA: From an AI reinforcement learning standpoint, I can kind of see it not be **literally** evolved, but rather an emergent behavior that comes from the “reward” conferred by the pleasurable sensation of stimulating sex organs and the good feeling hormonal rush that comes with kissing/hugging/flirting etc. Still, that seems like splitting hairs to me. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/294 "2013-06-21T06:22:00Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Are you saying that the urge to reproduce/have sex isn’t an evolved behavior? 😕 > > ETA: From an AI reinforcement learning standpoint, I can kind of see it not be **literally** evolved, but rather an emergent behavior that comes from the “reward” conferred by the pleasurable sensation of stimulating sex organs and the good feeling hormonal rush that comes with kissing/hugging/flirting etc. Still, that seems like splitting hairs to me. No. I’m saying that organisms do not need to know _why_ they do something, at any level. There doesn’t need to be (and probably isn’t) any instinctive idea of sex = reproduction. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/295 "2013-06-21T21:57:41Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > There’s some evidence that you can tell pretty easily who will learn programming by giving them a [simple test](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html) before they start studying it. > > It had questions like: > > After this program > > x = 10 > y = 20 > x = y > > What are the values of x and y? > > With choices all over the place. > > What’s important is not that you know how a given programming language works, but that you establish and stick to a consistent mental model. Like, maybe you think that x = y means to average x and y, so they’re now equal (each with value 15). As long as you _consistently_ apply the variable = variable operation resulting in both being equal to the arithmetic mean, then you can learn to program. > > A significant number of people can’t seem to do so. And didn’t learn to do so after several weeks of the class, either. That doesn’t mean it can’t be taught, but it does mean that some deeper understanding needs to be achieved before you can start talking about syntax and iteration. This is an interesting example for testing whether people can grasp the idea of a consistent mental model for what some atomic bit of a programming language is doing, in part because equals signs are used in so many ways. If the machine can parse the code, then the usages are unambiguous using the machine’s logic, but we don’t necessarily have access to that. There are things reasonable people will deduce are counterexamples to consistency that look like this. In the same programming language the equals sign may imply assignment, or a test of equality (so “x=y” evaluates to “1” or “0” depending on x and y), or subtraction (so …=… resolves to the difference between the two sides, because some other agent in the environment is going to try to adjust variables to minimize this difference iteratively). In other words it may essentially be context sensitive – and there may be more meanings that we haven’t yet come across. Once upon a time we thought of computers as deterministic systems, but they are complicated enough now that literally nobody on earth understands everything in a desktop computer from the level of opcode all the way up through the user interface. Computer experts shrug away mysteries all the time as not worth chasing down, and they don’t have ten thousand extra lifetimes to spend doing it. I suspect people could take reasonable approaches to computers and not form a consistency dependent mental model of how they work, and still have the capacity to form this later and learn programming. ---
**Author:** ![Troppus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a587f6/32.png) [@Troppus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troppus)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/296 "2013-06-21T22:10:08Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > No. > I’m saying that organisms do not need to know _why_ they do something, at any level. There doesn’t need to be (and probably isn’t) any instinctive idea of sex = reproduction. Well, duh. It works better when we don’t think about it. You think every single pregnancy is planned? ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2013, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/297 "2013-06-22T00:10:31Z")
I kind of feel bad for people that have to teach body movement. I imagine some of them must wonder why people have such a hard time. But whatever part of the brain can see someone else do several movements, and then reverse it so its facing my direction, remember it and repeat it, just hasn’t been developed yet for me. Above a certain level of complexity, and I either need a cheat sheet, a verbal walk through, or to drill it like twenty times in a row. ---
**Author:** ![moejoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@moejoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moejoe)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2013, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/298 "2013-06-22T01:22:09Z")
I’ve always had trouble with the idea that some people just don’t believe they’re being total assholes when they clearly are behaving very badly. It bothers me because I see it all the time, people cut in line or are rude to service workers or gossip at work and they just seem to think it’s fine. If you ask them about it they’ll have some reason or excuse like they were just kidding or the old lady in front of them was too slow and they have to get to a meeting or McDs cashiers are mouth breathers so it doesn’t matter. It’s just baffling, they really don’t seem to get it. ---
**Author:** ![misterW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@misterW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/misterW)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2013, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/299 "2013-06-22T05:12:30Z")
> [@Rick](#): > > For those if you that think riding the wrong way is a good idea check desertmonk’s link. Over a 10 year span riding the wrong way was the leading cause of bicycle accidents. Not number 2 or 3. #1. > Get a clue, ride with traffic. Long Beach is a city environment. The counter arguments were more relevant to non city environments, although I’m sure there would be cases where they might apply in cities as well. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2013, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/300 "2013-06-22T06:47:38Z")
> [@Troppus](#): > > Well, duh. It works better when we don’t think about it. You think every single pregnancy is planned? I have no idea what you’re talking about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360.md?page=16)