# 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:** 17
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/321 "2013-07-01T08:00:46Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > WAG: Because they’ve heard that people have lost money with stocks and they don’t want to lose money either. They have no idea what stock even is, but they’ve heard lots of bad things about it and don’t want to be associated with that bad thing that’s always on the news for losing money. I don’t know, all my life all I’ve heard from people is that companies only give people “free shares in the company” when they lack the funds to pay for other benefits/direct cash bonuses. I’ve always gotten a sense that unless you work at a really, really well off company giving employees stocks is like giving somebody a 50 dollar bill for their birthday present. Nothing logically wrong with it, but considered tacky. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/322 "2013-07-01T10:54:13Z")
> [@vontsira](#): > > I forget quite when I heard about this supposed horrible practice, but it was a fair few years ago. I seem to remember it being one of the stories in one of _The Faces of Death_ movies from many moons ago, before the internet was around to provide “things you won’t see on TV!” - approximately half of which are fake. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/323 "2013-07-01T11:01:52Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I don’t know, all my life all I’ve heard from people is that companies only give people “free shares in the company” when they lack the funds to pay for other benefits/direct cash bonuses. I’ve always gotten a sense that unless you work at a really, really well off company giving employees stocks is like giving somebody a 50 dollar bill for their birthday present. Nothing logically wrong with it, but considered tacky. Fwiw, I was working for a really, really well off company. Their 2012 revenue was in excess of 50 billion dollars (Australian). ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2013, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/324 "2013-07-01T23:07:16Z")
> [@vontsira](#): > > I forget quite when I heard about this supposed horrible practice, but it was a fair few years ago. I just received the general impression that it was a Chinese-type “colourful custom”, more – thank heaven – from times past, than today. > > This spoof being perpetrated in Singapore – unless it happened many decades ago, to be honest I’d have trouble seeing it taking place in that location. Independent Singapore strikes me as an unpleasantly repressive place, with all kinds of things forbidden on pain of draconian punishment. On the credit side, though; I’d think that the Singapore government would take a very dim view of the eating-live-monkey-brains routine, and would rigorously enforce the prohibition. I admit to doubt, about the new chum’s failing to spot that hole in the story – through no matter how thick an alcoholic fog ! Yes it did take place many decades ago, you must bear in mind that I’m an old git ! ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/325 "2013-07-02T06:58:37Z")
I have a good sense of direction, but can pretty easily get my head around the fact that plenty of people don’t. It’s a bit harder to understand something I see reasonably often: a directionally challenged person who says “The park? Just go north on Main Street” - while pointing southeast. And a pet peeve (becoming less of a problem in the age of GPS navigation) is the person whose phone duties include giving driving directions many times a day - and who has not the first clue how to give them. You’d think either that person or his/her boss would work up a crib sheet that contains accurate directions in succinct form, but this seems rare, whereas bad to useless directions are not. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/326 "2013-07-02T12:14:21Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > I have a good sense of direction, but can pretty easily get my head around the fact that plenty of people don’t. It’s a bit harder to understand something I see reasonably often: a directionally challenged person who says “The park? Just go north on Main Street” - while pointing southeast. > > And a pet peeve (becoming less of a problem in the age of GPS navigation) is the person whose phone duties include giving driving directions many times a day - and who has not the first clue how to give them. You’d think either that person or his/her boss would work up a crib sheet that contains accurate directions in succinct form, but this seems rare, whereas bad to useless directions are not. ROFL - I have a great head for directions, and spent almost 8 years living in Tidewater Virginia - where you would think that the ocean being east would make things easy… when you are buried in a morass of traffic and can’t see an ocean it crews with your sense of direction. As you can[see](http://www.norfolkrealestate.nefla.com/maps/tidewater_region_map.gif), much of the time the ocean is actually pretty much north:smack: You end up having to think about the Norfolk and Va Beach area as a sort of square, with the ocean north, as Norfolk is oriented along Ocean View, Virginia beach is oriented along Atlantic Avenue. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/327 "2013-07-02T13:58:26Z")
> [@voltaire](#): > > I seem to remember it being one of the stories in one of _The Faces of Death_ movies from many moons ago, before the internet was around to provide “things you won’t see on TV!” - approximately half of which are fake. I distinctly remember reading a description of the monkey-brain scene in a _Reader’s Digest_ story on “video nasties” in the 1980s. I don’t recall which video it was referring to though. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/328 "2013-07-02T14:40:57Z")
I’m deeply puzzled by people who repeatedly lock themselves out of their car. This is embarrassing, enormously inconvenient, often expensive, and _really_ easy to avoid (Rule: Lock your car only when holding in your hand the device that will unlock it.) But I’ve known people who do this multiple times per year, and seem to accept it as one of the normal problems of life. Why, I couldn’t say. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/329 "2013-07-02T15:41:06Z")
> [@SchwaD\_Vivre](#): > > I’m fascinated to “meet” another prosopagnostic (person with face-blindness). I’ve had the problem all my life but just recently came across the name and a quick test to diagnosis it. My case isn’t severe; I can recognize my kids and other family members, but I’m a teacher and it can be very embarrassing not to recognize my students even after seeing them twice a week for 8 months! It can take me years to learn a face. I can recognize people through their voices, glasses, hair, clothing styles, facial hair, mannerisms, and context, but if those things change, it’s a struggle to identify them. There’s a business I’ve dealt with for ten years. There are two women there that look similar (same height, build, hair color, hair style…), and I still have to really focus to tell which is which. The last class that I taught (about 10 years ago) I had very few students in the classroom – most were connected by videoconferencing at other campuses. It made life _far_ easier for me because I wasn’t expected to know their faces. > [@Ulfreida](#): > > What exactly is the difference between a learning disability and stupidity? With something that matters (e.g., a job skill), I think the distinction is easy: If you try to learn it and can’t, that’s a learning disability. If you refuse to even _try_ to learn, that’s stupidity. > [@Blackberry](#): > > If you have face blindness, can you tell if a person’s face is attractive or not? Absolutely. > [@Jragon](#): > > for(int i = 1; i \<= 10; i++) { > system.out.Println(i) > } When I was teaching programming, I found this kind of a loop _very_ difficult to explain to non-programmers. Then I’d rewrite it in BASIC FOR I = 1 TO 10 PRINT I NEXT I and they would get it almost immediately. It’s not the _concept_ that they couldn’t grasp, it’s the syntax. Languages like Java were not designed for teaching computer concepts – they were designed for computer scientists. > [@desertmonk](#): > > I don’t understand why some people on bicycles ride facing traffic. I grew up in Colorado (USA) and that was what bicyclists were taught to do. Even in driver education class in 1976, we were told that on a bicycle we should _face_ danger so we’d see it coming. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > I hate to say this but I wonder if it is worth the bother. Programming is basically a talent that you have or you don’t and I don’t think you can teach it in any real way. No more than reading, writing, math, riding a bicycle, driving a car, or playing a piano. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/330 "2013-07-02T17:08:04Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > WAG: Because they’ve heard that people have lost money with stocks and they don’t want to lose money either. They have no idea what stock even is, but they’ve heard lots of bad things about it and don’t want to be associated with that bad thing that’s always on the news for losing money. Depending on where you live the tax laws might work against you for accepting stock. In Canada there are rules around what needs to be claimed as compensation, and what can be claimed as capital gains. It could be that people declining stocks as a benefit did the math and thought they wouldn’t come out ahead that year after taxes. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/331 "2013-07-02T23:41:31Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:329, topic:660360”] When I was teaching programming, I found this kind of a loop _very_ difficult to explain to non-programmers. Then I’d rewrite it in BASIC FOR I = 1 TO 10 PRINT I NEXT I and they would get it almost immediately. It’s not the _concept_ that they couldn’t grasp, it’s the syntax. Languages like Java were not designed for teaching computer concepts – they were designed for computer scientists. [/QUOTE] Nope, I would do that and they’d still freeze. I’m not a complete teaching novice, I know how to explain it in multiple ways. It’s typical for one or two of the ways to explain a for loop and/or its syntax to fail. I’m talking about people who you can spend 2-3 hours trying different examples, syntaxes, and the like and it just never clicks. Perhaps I shouldn’t have even said “for loop”, because that obfuscates the point, perhaps it would be more precise to say that they couldn’t grasp the concept of **iteration**. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2013, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/332 "2013-07-02T23:59:28Z")
> [@Troppus](#): > > Well, I’ll give him this: society would be healthier if we each assumed reproduction will happen each time we have sex. That’s ok with a fertile man and woman, but what about the rest of us? > [@Frylock](#): > > I can recall one person in particular who makes a very similar claim: **ITR Champion** believes that evolutionary psychology entails that when we have sex, our _intention_ is to reproduce. (Since this is not in fact always our intention, he concludes that evolutionary psychology is false.) I see this all the time. Someone misinterprets facts of reality, sees that reality doesn’t match his ideas, so concludes that reality must be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/333 "2013-07-03T01:51:53Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I’m talking about people who you can spend 2-3 hours trying different examples, syntaxes, and the like and it just never clicks. > > Perhaps I shouldn’t have even said “for loop”, because that obfuscates the point, perhaps it would be more precise to say that they couldn’t grasp the concept of **iteration**. I understand what you’re saying. There are (a) people who can’t grasp the concept, (b) people who _won’t_ grasp the concept (they’ve convinced themselves they can’t), and (c) people walking into a programming class that haven’t taken an algebra class so they don’t have the fundamentals of working with numbers and variables. Since I taught elective programming classes, I had no (b) people and very few (c) people. I did get some (a) people, and I’m guessing that’s what you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/334 "2013-07-03T04:41:43Z")
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:333, topic:660360”] I understand what you’re saying. There are (a) people who can’t grasp the concept, (b) people who _won’t_ grasp the concept (they’ve convinced themselves they can’t), and (c) people walking into a programming class that haven’t taken an algebra class so they don’t have the fundamentals of working with numbers and variables. Since I taught elective programming classes, I had no (b) people and very few (c) people. I did get some (a) people, and I’m guessing that’s what you’re talking about. [/QUOTE] I think (b) is rather common too. My ex, for instance, who I tried to teach programming to (at her request). I really think she could have gotten it, but she got bogged down in the boilerplate. Even when I tried Python she was convinced that it was “too hard” or whatever. She couldn’t even grasp “print” because she felt like she needed to know **how** the computer prints. I’m sure I could have gone all the way down to describing a basic ALU to her and she’d still be asking “okay, but how do the electrons know where to move?” It’s not that she’s dumb, but she’s convinced that programming is hard in a “special” way that she couldn’t get past. She handled basic 100-level biology just fine, which IMO is at least (if not more) as arbitrary as programming as far as being told “this is a thing and this is what it does” with no real functional description of the **how** behind it. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/335 "2013-07-03T05:18:59Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I think (b) is rather common too. The reason it wasn’t in my classes is that people who don’t think they’ll understand programming don’t take more difficult elective classes (what I taught). They take the minimum required for the degree. Thus, the (b) people ended up in someone else’s class. Probably yours. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/336 "2013-07-03T05:32:01Z")
Programing language loops. Some teachers (and textbooks) seem to not even have the concept that high-level loop constructs (like the _for_ loop) can be broken down into simpler steps. They describe the construct as a whole, which is obscure and abstract, and don’t seem aware of the lower-level discrete steps that they could be describing instead. My loop story, just for the funuvit: I took a COBOL class about 20 years ago, taught by an old-school programmer who, nevertheless, couldn’t teach, and a textbook written by authors who obviously only knew Pascal (if even that). They explained COBOL loop constructs in a high level like this. I helped out one guy in the class, who was clearly bright but he was having a hell of a time getting clear on this. The example was a loop that read and processed successive records from a file. At one point, I tried walking him through it, step by step: Read one line. Process it. Check for end of file. If not, go to top of loop. Read next line. Process it. . . . Suddenly the light came on. He said: OH! So it just reads and processes one line at a time! Turns out, he had the vague notion that the program somehow kinda-sorta-vaguely, read and processed all the records at the same time, like some sort of parallel processing, but it was totally vague in his mind. As soon as he grokked that it did _one iteration at a time_, he got it! ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/337 "2013-07-03T06:29:41Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > He said: OH! So it just reads and processes one line at a time! I’ve always included a discussion of this sort of basic rule at the start of any class for beginning programmers. Some things are so obvious to those with even the most trivial level of competence that it can be hard to realize that anyone might not understand them. ---
**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:** [July 3, 2013, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/338 "2013-07-03T06:48:18Z")
For procedural programming, for beginners, I find a nice analogy is a cooking recipe. Most recipes will involve some iteration, both of the “for (each dumpling)” and “while (the center is still moist)” types. You can explain function calls too as references like “See page X for how to make a cheese sauce”. Yeah it’s pretty patronizing, so you have to hold it in reserve for those that didn’t grok the more typical explanations. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2013, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/339 "2013-07-03T07:19:49Z")
The problem with any example is that for any example, people overly familiar with the task will poke holes in it. “For each dumpling”, for instance, will almost inevitably have **someone** say “well, I just grab a handful of dumplings and do them at the same time!” (or “I have two hands, so I can do two cherries at once when I’m garnishing a cake” or whathaveyou) And then get confused why the **computer** can’t grab a handful of dumplings (absent a discussion of concurrency or parallelism, of course). Which isn’t a screed against using examples, just that some people… I don’t want to say they **want to be confused** , but they seem to be proficient at finding the one flaw in the example that allows them to be confused. ---
**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:** [July 3, 2013, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/340 "2013-07-03T07:39:15Z")
Usually when I’m explaining the analogy it is a machine doing the cooking: the Cookbot 2000. If you want it to grab a bunch of dumplings at a time, you’re going to have to write a recipe for that because it doesn’t know what you mean. At this point, where I am literally talking about programming a machine, you may question the point of having the analogy. The main thing is to get away from scary words like program and function that make some people give up before they’ve even tried. Obviously at the point where you’re having to go to this level of analogy, it is unlikely you’re talking to someone that will ever embrace programming. But occasionally all that is needed is to get past that wall of “I’ll never understand computers because I’m old” or whatever, to unleash the inner geek. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360.md?page=18)