# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/81 "2013-06-08T21:51:11Z")
> [@Engineer\_Dude](#): > > And after you take it out, you should put it in some kind of protective case. Even if it’s a thin paper case. But if you don’t, you should put the data side up, not down. That way, if you end up dragging it a little when you pick it up, you’ll only scratch the label and not the data. I suspect most people don’t even know which is the “data” side. The data side is what most people think of as the top. A CD is paper label (sometimes) some kind of painted coating aluminized layer \<== That’s the one you don’t want to scratch dye later (this is where the data is) \<== well this one too transparent layer(s) This is whopping big compared to the others \<== not so bad if this is scratched, but probably many people think it’s the worst part to scratch. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/82 "2013-06-08T21:52:34Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > You may want to re-read the OP title and the OP, **TOTIDO**. This isn’t a rant thread. > > Um, what? Go sit in the corner somewhere and cool off, man. Your temper is showing. You’re the one who ranted. The person you are responding to was actually answering the question. He can’t understand anyone who thinks not reading or writing for recreation is acceptable. He apologized for offending you, even though he had no reason to do so. If you have a problem with a poster, pit them. * * * And now to actually contribute to this thread: I can’t understand people who don’t think morality informs every single thing you do. It’s the foundation of who you are. If you are not attempting to be moral as you understand it, you are not human. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/83 "2013-06-08T22:02:46Z")
Wow, what an irritating thread! I am a very bright, literate person with an apparently shrunken piece of my brain where things like numeracy go. I CANNOT understand many things which come easily for people of significantly less wattage. I have little directional sense. I cannot imagine objects in space well. I cannot, despite being a trained lyric soprano, grasp music theory (flunked the class three times and gave up.). I am “incurious” about everything which involves numbers (like economics and chemistry and boy, a whole lot of things), because fifty years of frustration has taught me that there is not a chance I will be able to even hold the concepts in my head for a second. It’s like water through a sieve. I am not lazy. I am stupid. I can seriously can barely figure out a tip. I’ve come to see this profound deficit as something of a gift (well, occasionally) because it helps me to have compassion for people who can’t match pitch, who can’t tell the difference between its and it’s, who can’t spell and don’t even try to learn, who fail to grasp concepts I find obvious, who are incurious about parts of the world I find fascinating, who never opened a book for pleasure – who are, according to these measures, stupid. I mean, stupid is what this whole thread is about, isn’t it? I think people who aren’t stupid don’t understand stupid. They even call it lazy! Stupid people aren’t lazy – they have given up trying because trying doesn’t work. They fall back on doing the things that come easily – much like everyone else. Smart people are good at learning things. They know how to learn, they’re good at it. Stupid people aren’t. Any given stupid person may in fact be a lot kinder, more generous, more deeply spiritual, more self-sacrificing, more of a gift to the world than any given smart person. But all you smartypants see is the stupid and you can’t understand it. If you’re so smart why can’t you understand stupid, huh? Give it a try sometime. It’s called empathy. Grrrr. ---
**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:** [June 8, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/84 "2013-06-08T22:20:55Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I question this advice. [The label side _is_ the data side](http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cd1.htm), and I’ve been told that a scratch (as opposed to a mark or smudge) on the label side can be more destructive (or nonrepairable) than one on the shiny side. 😕 Open tray, take disc - put label side up, laser reads from the bottom. How is the label side the data side? Even in my homemade lightscribe discs - open tray, put in lightscribe specific disc shiny side down, make recording, flip disc over, make label in program and burn on the future top side of disc … So, label side up, data side down for bottom side read/write laser to function. And I grudgingly do math - I apparently enjoyed it up until 3d grade. In 4th grade I moved to a new [public] school. In the previous school I had just learned addition and subtraction. In the new school they were just starting fractions and decimals. Guess what I had never learned … everything _between_ basic addition and subtraction and fractions. So my new teacher, the fucking biyatch Mrs Blank decided that I was refusing to do any work and spent about a week punishing me in class before bothering to send me to the [dreaded] Office, where my mom got called in for the dreaded Conference. Where suddenly it was finally discovered that I was missing a whole bunch of mad math skillz. And being punished for not being able to do said skills, and being punished for mentioning that I didn’t know how to do “these simple problems that you already did last year” that I actually _hadn’t done_ last year. Yup, great job, using negative reinforcement to learning a basic skill I would need in the future. I had to be forced to go to class and even crack open my math book to do homework. They popped me into a montessori school the next year where I got to work in a very small remedial math class [5 students] until I was actually caught up and able to do math voluntarily again [well mostly voluntarily, I still detest math and only use it when I absolutely can’t get out of it.] ---
**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 8, 2013, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/85 "2013-06-08T22:28:41Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > I suspect most people don’t even know which is the “data” side. The data side is what most people think of as the top. A CD is > > paper label (sometimes) > some kind of painted coating > aluminized layer \<== That’s the one you don’t want to scratch > dye later (this is where the data is) \<== well this one too > transparent layer(s) This is whopping big compared to the others \<== not so bad if this is scratched, but probably many people think it’s the worst part to scratch. I don’t think people are all that worried about scratching the actual data. The idea is, if you scratch the label, all that’s getting scratched is the label. But if you scratch the other side, you are making it harder for the laser to see through the transparent plastic to the data. If you draw on the back of a picture frame is doesn’t matter, and if you draw on the glass it doesn’t hurt the poster, but it makes it harder to see. ---
**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:** [June 8, 2013, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/86 "2013-06-08T22:29:50Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I once spent half an hour trying to explain the difference between “Save” and “Save As.” > > The guy never did get it. One of the most frustrating experiences of my life. And he was not a dummy, by any means. > > For my part, I’ve never been able to figure out what an “Addressograph Multigraph” is. I’ve looked it up dozens of times, and it just doesn’t work. My father had one, and I asked him, to the point of absurdity, “But what is it.” It was clear to him…but never to me. OOOO I know the answer! The idea was that you wanted to stamp the addresses of your subscribers on invoices, envelopes and publications, so it had a series of plates that you could link together and swap in and out of all the addresses of your subscribers/customers so you could just run the paper through and it would automatically stamp the mailing addresses and advance to the next plate as it was inking the plate for stamping. When I had my first job ever they had an old one stuck in the corner of a warehouse that I screwed around with on break. Sort of like having every address in the billing office on a series of rubber stamps, but not having to individually grab and stamp each envelope. The plates for it were stored in what looked like a miniature library reference drawer. When industry went to computers for printing out billing they retired the adressographs. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/87 "2013-06-08T22:39:28Z")
> [@kjckjc](#): > > Well, I get what you are saying about the emphasis, and I agree with that part completely. However, I would say “I REE-cord music on the reh-CORD.” So the letters don’t make the same sounds when I say it. 🙂 Just sayin’. …and apparently you don’t pronounce the emphasis right when you say it, either. 🙂 FYI, it should be “I ree-CORD music on the REH-cord.” ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/88 "2013-06-08T22:45:06Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Regarding programming: Taught it at the college level for years. Forget loops, it is astonishing that some people don’t understand the idea of one statement followed by another. I.e., the computer executes the first statement, then it executes the second statement. I’ve had people who are completely baffled by this idea. “How does the computer know to do the next one?” Haven’t these people ever followed any sort of step-by-step instruction? A recipe at the very least? Wow. Yeah, but generally the problem I find with those people is that they simply won’t accept abstraction of any sort. **They** can follow instructions, but they freak out because they don’t know how the **computer** knows. And after all, if they don’t know how the computer knows, they’re afraid they’ll “do it wrong” and mess up something so that the computer doesn’t do things in order. (It admittedly doesn’t help because if statements, for loops, functions, and jumps at the assembly level obviously break the whole “step by step” thing pretty handily). You could explain the program counter and instruction pipelining, but they’d want to know how the physical CPU “knows” what to do, and so on until you’re describing how to mine the raw materials to build your own computer. In the greatest irony, I understand this one perfectly fine. I just can’t do biology for the same damn reason. “When the cell does this it produces energy”, well, great. Kinetic energy? What’s moving faster? Something else? Why do I have to memorize all these names and interactions? Why can’t I just understand 10-20 basic principles and understand everything in terms of that? Intellectually I realize it’s silly, and the answer is that biology is so complex it’d be a lost cause trying to derive my digestive system from first principles of quantum field theory, but whenever I try my mind just goes “I can’t memorize all this stuff. Shutting down.” > [@Ulfreida](#): > > Wow, what an irritating thread! I am a very bright, literate person with an apparently shrunken piece of my brain where things like numeracy go. I CANNOT understand many things which come easily for people of significantly less wattage. I have little directional sense. I cannot imagine objects in space well. I cannot, despite being a trained lyric soprano, grasp music theory (flunked the class three times and gave up.). I am “incurious” about everything which involves numbers (like economics and chemistry and boy, a whole lot of things), because fifty years of frustration has taught me that there is not a chance I will be able to even hold the concepts in my head for a second. It’s like water through a sieve. I am not lazy. I am stupid. I can seriously can barely figure out a tip. Have you considered that perhaps you have [dyscalculia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia)? In which case you’re not stupid, you have a learning disability. Anyway, I find the notion that intelligence is innate in a given field toxic, at best. [This](http://i410.photobucket.com/albums/pp183/Jragonmiris/954762_10151388299211680_2054178315_n_zps4f0e856c.jpg) is a graph showing the correlation between the number of female PhDs in a given STEM field and the how much professors and students in the field believe that it requires innate talent to excel in it. “Professors in each field were asked about how much they agreed with these two statements: (1) Being a top scholar in [professor’s field] requires a special aptitude that just can’t be taught. (2) When it comes to [professor’s field] the most important factors for success are motivation and sustained effort; raw ability is secondary” As the graph shows (granted it’s very poorly labeled) is that fields in which (1) was a more common response had far fewer female PhD recipients (proportionally) than those that answered (2). And, in fact, [the concept of “being smart”](http://alexisohanian.com/fantastic-advice-on-why-its-better-to-be-hard) can cause smart people to suffer crises and not fulfill their potential as well, because they think they can do anything without trying (and no, I’m not calling you lazy. I take you at your word that you’ve tried and failed many times). I understand that you have trouble learning numerical and spacial things, just like I can’t draw for the life of me and any attempt to correct that is met with “well… yes, I know that, but it doesn’t work”. But I don’t think the rhetoric that things require innate intelligence is the way to go, and is harmful (not to mention cultural). Learning disabilities exist, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid if you have one. Or hey, maybe you’re just not interested, that’s perfectly fine too. > [@](#): > > I’ve come to see this profound deficit as something of a gift (well, occasionally) because it helps me to have compassion for people who can’t match pitch, who can’t tell the difference between its and it’s, who can’t spell and don’t even try to learn, who fail to grasp concepts I find obvious, who are incurious about parts of the world I find fascinating, who never opened a book for pleasure – who are, according to these measures, stupid. I mean, stupid is what this whole thread is about, isn’t it? > > I think people who aren’t stupid don’t understand stupid. They even call it lazy! Stupid people aren’t lazy – they have given up trying because trying doesn’t work. They fall back on doing the things that come easily – much like everyone else. Smart people are good at learning things. They know how to learn, they’re good at it. Stupid people aren’t. Any given stupid person may in fact be a lot kinder, more generous, more deeply spiritual, more self-sacrificing, more of a gift to the world than any given smart person. But all you smartypants see is the stupid and you can’t understand it. If you’re so smart why can’t you understand stupid, huh? Give it a try sometime. It’s called empathy. > > Grrrr. Certainly a lot more people were value judging people in this thread than I intended, but I said in the OP that I hoped there wouldn’t be any judging in the thread. So no, it’s not **intended** to make fun of stupid people. And in fact my entire OP was lamenting that I wish I understood exactly what it was about their mind that was giving them trouble so that I **could** help them understand it. And please understand that in the context of the OP, the people I’m talking about are people who deliberately tried to seek out programming courses, but still couldn’t do well. I’m not trying to force people who don’t care to learn programming. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/89 "2013-06-08T22:45:42Z")
Actually, I’m curious about this. Do you grasp this concept intuitively without grasping it intellectually, is that’s what’s going on? Because if you didn’t grasp it intuitively, either, I’d have to imagine that would mean you’re mispronouncing words all the time, or even pronouncing them inconsistently (sometimes you say “I listened to that REH-cord” and sometimes “I listened to that reh-CORD”), and communication would be really difficult. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/90 "2013-06-08T22:51:31Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > 😕 > > Open tray, take disc - put label side up, laser reads from the bottom. > > How is the label side the data side? > > Even in my homemade lightscribe discs - > open tray, put in lightscribe specific disc shiny side down, make recording, flip disc over, make label in program and burn on the future top side of disc … > > So, label side up, data side down for bottom side read/write laser to function. What you think of as the data side is just a thick clear hunk of plastic with the data quite far (relatively) from it. A scratch here will not necessarily cause permanent damage and can often be buffed out. What you think of as the label side is a very thin label with the data layer of the disc right up against it. Scratch the label and in almost every case you’re also going to scratch the data, and this sort of damage cannot be fixed by any method. ---
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/91 "2013-06-08T22:59:54Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > 😕 > > Open tray, take disc - put label side up, laser reads from the bottom. > > How is the label side the data side? > > Even in my homemade lightscribe discs - > open tray, put in lightscribe specific disc shiny side down, make recording, flip disc over, make label in program and burn on the future top side of disc … > > So, label side up, data side down for bottom side read/write laser to function. > \ [Here](http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cd1.htm) is a picture (and good article) that shows how it works. Recordable discs work differently. ETA: Spanked by TBG, but my post had pictures. ---
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2013, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/92 "2013-06-08T23:04:02Z")
I once met someone who had owned her computer for 10 years, but had no idea how to install a program. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/93 "2013-06-09T00:03:13Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > When someone sings out of tune, they aren’t singing the whole song a half step flat or anything nice like that; the notes are all off by different amounts. I can’t see how a person would be unable to hear the dissonance of their tune. I can often (though not always) tell that I’m singing the right note. Problem is, by the time I know it’s the wrong note, it’s too late to do anything about it - I’ve already sung it. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/94 "2013-06-09T00:07:34Z")
> [@Wolf333](#): > > I once met someone who had owned her computer for 10 years, but had no idea how to install a program. Only once? I bet I know scores. Far more people than you apparently realize, wish computers were like telephones used to be: there’s one obvious function which anyone can grasp easily, they all work the same way, they don’t break, and you do not have to understand how they work in order to use them perfectly well. And, they stay exactly the same year after year. What is this “installing programs” of which you speak? I just want to see pictures of my grandchildren, is that too much to ask? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/95 "2013-06-09T00:09:17Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > It’s an address stamp that changes addresses automatically. . . . > [@aruvqan](#): > > . . . The idea was that you wanted to stamp the addresses of your subscribers on invoices, envelopes and publications, so it had a series of plates that you could link together and swap in and out of all the addresses of your subscribers/customers . . . Is it possible that the Addressograph Multigraph company made other things, too? What my dad had was sort of like a check embosser…except that it wasn’t. Oh, this is so frustrating! I can’t describe what it was like, because that’s at the very soul of this terrible blind spot I have! Anyway, it was a little thingie, maybe six inches by four inches by two inches, and, it didn’t have address plates… And… And I don’t know what the bleep it was! Anyway, I will never hold anyone in contempt for having conceptual blind spots, because I know I have 'em too. Judge not, lest ye be judged! I watched lots of students drop out of Calculus I classes, when they couldn’t grok “Delta-Epsilon” proofs. I watched many students drop out of Calculus II classes, when they couldn’t get “Integration by Parts.” I watched many students drop out of Calculus III classes, when they couldn’t dig “Line Integrals.” And…I dropped out of a Calculus 500 level class, when I couldn’t cope with [“Green’s Theorem.”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green%27s_theorem) What kind of fool would I be to sneer at those who dropped out earlier than I did? ---
**Author:** ![SchwaD\_Vivre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/da6949/32.png) [@SchwaD\_Vivre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SchwaD_Vivre)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/96 "2013-06-09T00:27:07Z")
. My wife continues to point at group photographs and say “Which one is me?” and look on in amazement as I patiently explain my inability to recognize her in photos. [/QUOTE] 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! I wish my brain functioned normally, in this regard at least, but it’s just part of who I am. Pet Peeve of Incomprehension: People who don’t know what I think are the bare minimums of cultural literacy such as that New Mexico is in the U.S. and is not a foreign country. That tides go up and down. That presidents serve for 4 years, etc. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/97 "2013-06-09T00:41:43Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > I can often (though not always) tell that I’m singing the right note. Problem is, by the time I know it’s the wrong note, it’s too late to do anything about it - I’ve already sung it. Arrrrrgh. I of course meant to say that I can often (though not always) tell that I’m **not** singing the right note. What’s the idea behind this stupid rule that we can’t edit our posts?? ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/98 "2013-06-09T00:45:18Z")
I am also face blind. I can recognize close friends and family members in expected context. But if my husband or mother walked up to me in a place I wasn’t expecting them, there is a good chance I wouldn’t recognize them. I rely on other appearance clues and context, as well as a number of coping techniques. For example, I rarely say “nice to meet you,” as I often cannot be certain if I’ve met that person or not. It’s always “nice to see you.” FWIW, some of the brightest people I know are not recreational readers. It’s completely possible to learn through experience, experimentation, and socialization. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/99 "2013-06-09T00:58:29Z")
What exactly is the difference between a learning disability and stupidity? Also, besides dyscalculcia I suffer from a lifelong belief in the entity theory of intelligence. This is a hindrance I am sure others share, perhaps contributing to their “stupidity”. It is not easily overcome. relevant description: [http://www.learning-theories.com/self-theories-dweck.html](http://www.learning-theories.com/self-theories-dweck.html) ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360/100 "2013-06-09T01:26:58Z")
> [@TOTIDO\_Aka\_Manto](#): > > I find terribly upsetting that the majority of the American Nation under the age of 40: can not, are able to but only at the literacy of a 3rd grader, if not inexplicably disdain the act of writing. I am not saying my shit doesn’t stink… writing hard. However, I am trying to illustrate that it bothers me to no end that people, of all nations, races, societies do not strive to better themselves and further enrich their character. Literacy, man… So you are complaining about people who can’t write well, huh? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-you-cant-fathom-people-not-understanding/660360.md?page=6)