I know a couple of people who don’t quite grasp the idea that clicking on random links on the internet can be a bad thing, even after I’ve explained it a few times.
There is no spoon.
I’m not sure what you are getting at here. Regardless of the reason of their non-singing, I can’t imagine not being able to hold a tune. It doesn’t mean I have any justification in in my thought process; it is my opinion.
I mentioned two of the many things I am clueless about because I realize we all fall on the other side of someone’s “can’t fathom your lack of understanding” moments. 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.
I don’t get how people think they are so smart because they understand one thing, and totally ignore their ignorance and inability to grasp so many other concepts.
Sorry folks, get over yourselves.
Let’s keep this thread on the rails…
Gukumatz
IMHO Moderator
People who clap on the one and four make my head hurt. They honestly have zero sense of basic rhythm. It sounds petty, I know. But I’ve understood rhythm since I was a small child and thought it was innate up until I saw people on TV clapping on the downbeat. I remember laughing and my mother asking what was so funny. “They’re doing it wrong!” She had no idea what I was talking about.
Trust me lots of them can’t tell you what kind of car they drive. I had a phone call yesterday from a guy claiming to drive a Hyundai Acura. He actually has a Hyundai Azera. How you get that sound out of that spelling is beyond me.
This is pretty much how I feel. Everyone has their own talents that they excel at and things they just can not do. That’s the way the world works and that’s actually a good thing. Humans would have never gotten anywhere if we all understood the same thing.
On the flip side, I don’t understand how people can speak multiple languages and think it’s no big thing, I failed German in high school. I’ve never understood chemistry, and I was married to a woman with a Ph. D in chem.
So I’ve never understood why people can’t understand why I don’t want to do the thing that you enjoy. I might try it, but if I don’t enjoy it then I don’t really want to do it. I doubt that many people would just up and take a cross country trip on a whim, I have and would again. I’ve learned to get along a lot better with people when I learned that people just can’t do what I can do and I can’t do what they can do. I’ve learn to accept my limitations.
I just…don’t hear it. The same way some people just…don’t taste that godawful soapy rot flavor cilantro has. Or that horrifying piss taste asparagus has. Oy, you wanna talk about things you don’t understand someone not getting. I try to be polite, but on the inside I’m totally screaming “WTF! Do you not have any goddamn taste buds?”
I’m with you, brother. That sort of non-curious, accepting mindset is utterly foreign to me. I can understand being mildly curious, but having bigger priorities at the moment than researching exactly how and why something works- it happens to everyone.
It seems though, like 98% of people just assume things operate by some kind of magic that’s beyond their understanding, and leave it at that. Normally I don’t care, but it does frustrate me somewhat when various sorts of advertising hoodwink friends, family and acquaintances because they’re not skeptical and aren’t curious enough to investigate. They buy crap like those stupid woven necklaces and bracelets like some credulous baseball players wear, because they’re not curious or skeptical enough to either find out or realize that wearing a bracelet isn’t going to “even out” blood flow, or induce anything other than a placebo effect.
Just the tiniest amount of curiosity and skepticism would make them look it up and realize that it’s crap whose main effect is to separate you from your money.
My pet peeve is not understanding that exchange rate doesn’t necessarily correlate to buying power. I can’t tell you how often I hear people say “The exchange rate is 5.6 Kroner per dollar? This is going to be a cheap vacation!”
Yeah, good luck when you buy your first 50 Kroner cup of coffee.
(FWIW, I have plenty of my own shortcomings. Heck, I can barely do long division!)
Proper procedures for handling optical discs (CD, DVDs, Blu-rays).
When you take them out of a player, you should put your index finger through the center hub and your thumb around the outside. There’s no need to grab the disc with your hand, especially not on the data side.
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 don’t think he’s criticizing your contribution to the thread (unable to imagine not being able to carry a tune); he’s pointing out that you seem to be conflating two separate issues. You said
(blooding mine)
The two bolded sections are completely different issues. Researchers have tested people on both their ability to discriminate between musical notes and their ability to sing accurately.There was no relation between ability to perceive music and produce music… What bad singers don’t seem to have is the coordination between music perception and music production.
Basically, most people who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket can tell they suck but (for various possible reasons) can’t fix the errors.
I think he meant it as more of a friendly FYI than criticism. That’s my intention, anyway; I find this stuff really interesting. 
Some music is designed to be clapped on the two and four (swing, for example) and some on one and three (rock, typically).
I have never heard anyone clap one and four. WTH?
The cilantro thing is in your genes, baby! People who taste soap (or worse) have a genetic variant that makes them more sensitive to the aldehydes that make up cilantro’s flavor.
So TECHNICALLY, you could say people without that variant really don’t have [del]any[/del] those specific goddamn taste buds. 
As one of those lucky people, I can’t imagine the wonderfulness of cilantro tasting soapy. That makes me so sad!
+1
This is one of those things that’s frustrated me a lot in the past and, as a computer scientist like the OP, I’ve had that frustration, along with other things like mathematical and scientific concepts. Ultimately, though, one of the truths I’ve found about these sorts of things is that, generally, if I’m not able to adequately explain a concept to someone, chances are I don’t actually understand it as well as I think I do.
Knowledge builds upon other knowledge, and our ability to understand it is to see those relationships between the concepts that are needed to understand it and then how it relates to other concepts at a similar conceptual level. So, to use computers as an example, a lot of people are immediately scared of programming because they only understand the user experience, and all they know other than that is that computers are a bunch of ones and zeros, so they have an unrealistic belief that programming covers all of the layers in between. But, as a computer scientist, you know that it’s all about abstraction. All I really need to know at one layer is a rough idea of the abstracted concepts.
Or as a mathematical example, whenever I run into people who say they hate math, it is almost always something along the lines of “I liked it until…” and then everything afterward was difficult for them. But, really, to those who understand calculus, it seems like really simple concepts, but without a good understanding of more basic math like algebra, it seems impossibly complicated. Similarly, algebra seems like a really simple concept, but lacking a thorough understanding of arithmetic, it’s all but impossible. Of course, why someone may lack at one level or another varies, but it really does seem that people just don’t understand why they’re doing something. That is, it’s easy to work with a “black box”, a math formula is exactly that, plug in some values, get some other value out, but not understaning why you’re doing it, which means exploring the innards before getting used to it, it’s impossible to place it in the overall system.
So, I guess the best analogy would be like doing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle face down. It’s a whole lot harder because you lose the localized context in connecting one piece to it’s neighbors, like putting all the edge pieces together, or all the blue or green ones together as sky or field pieces. Worse, even if you can manage to put the puzzle together, you lose the big picture, all you have is a big brown rectangle.
Anyway, in all of that, I do realize there are some things that I just have an intuitive level of understanding of, and I guess I just haven’t gone through trying to figure out the more basic aspects of, and I’m just flabbergasted that people don’t understand how they don’t understand, especially when they’re generally very bright people. For instance, I’ve had discussions/debates/arguments with some people that devolve when they say something that is completely illogical, I call them on it, perhaps citing a counterexample or naming the fallacy. I’ve actually heard, more than a few times, when pointing out a logical fallacy that “logical fallacies don’t apply to me”. What does that even mean? Clearly, they think they’re making a logical argument, when they follow a basic pattern of “Z because of Y because of X”. Do they think that logic rules are like game rules, where you only have to follow the ones for the specific game you’re playing? Do they not realize that perhaps that perspective they have is much more emotional than it is logical?
Another one that I just cannot understand would be related to stereotypes. I can completely understand someone who has limited or zero experience with a particular group or concept having incorrect notions about them. I can even understand how people who might love or hate certain groups will hold onto stereotypes that reinforce those ideas. What I don’t get is when people are corrected in some manner, have no apparent vested interest in it, and then just can’t seem to resolve that contradiction. As an example, I’m a musician and one of the scenes I’m heavily involved in is metal. I don’t blame people who are unfamiliar with it having stereotypes about it being all about death and just people playing really loud and screaming and stuff. But then I’ll give them something that is outside of that mold, they really like it and seem surprised that it’s in the same genre, but then go back to the same stereotype of the genre, sometimes even minutes later.
I had similar experiences as a math teacher. How do people function with no concept of how fractions or percents work?
I don’t mean to pick on you but after twelve years of public school I couldn’t understand why our English teachers were still complaining about our poor grammar skills. Every year we got the same lecture: “You should all have learned this already. Well, we don’t have time for that now, we have to get through Milton.” What we all learned is that grammar is something we should be ashamed and afraid of.
I can’t fathom not being able to, or at least trying to, fix things. Not going to name names but there are some people in my life who just shut down if a device doesn’t work. Doorknob won’t turn correctly - nothing to be done but wait for someone to fix it. For some reason the sound isn’t on on the TV - watch in silence until someone comes along to fix it. Button came off a shirt - throw it away and get a new one. It’s so passive.
Ah. I figured they couldn’t tell. Otherwise why would they insist on joining a choir?
How a home thermostat works.
Many people I know think that if it’s cold in the house (68 degrees) that turning the thermostat up to 85 will warm it up more quickly, than just setting it to 72.
The thermostat setting just turns the unit on, and tells it when to shut off, it doesn’t make it cool or heat more quickly.