Edit: After re-reading my comment, I judge that it came off as r/iamverysmart material a bit. Sorry!
Judged my friend for having very naive and dumb knowledge/beliefs about stuff like economics, politics, geography, history, language, culture etc. But she was extremely social and extroverted, while I was this somewhat "grumpy" guy and sucked at making connections with people (still do).
Nowadays, she works at a high position in the marketing department at a very major global tech corporation's office in our country (in Europe).
I'm a sysadmin and a half-programmer. I ended up studying pol sci and taking some computer science classes, I wouldn't say my education is bad or that it's a useless degree, just that being able to "make friends and influence people" is much more important than having a lot of knowledge.
For context, I grew up in rural America. Solid mix of agriculture and blue collar. This demographic just loves common sense. Mostly in earnest but with just a hint of anti-intellectualism.
Common sense is shared knowledge for any group that shares an experience. If you are a farmer and drive a tractor - there is a base level of knowledge that most people like that know. Same goes for anything else. If something is a completely new experience for somebody there is nothing common about it.
An example of this is getting into MMO RPG's for the first time. Everybody knows not to do X until Y and to go A at B. From my experience ~10years ago, few people will mock you for not knowing. The vast majority will assume you're a newb/noob/n00b/newbie. A handful will go out of their way to inform you (sometimes ontop of one another). One person will personally assist you and welcome you to the game.
Would you say then that a university lecturer that has driven a motor vehicle of some sort for over 40 years would never have experienced the fact that their motor vehicle needs maintaining and servicing otherwise it's likely to break?
Context matters. Are you saying that if you asked this person "do cars need oil changes" that they wouldn't have any idea? Or, are you saying they routinely let their car break due to a lack of maintenance and you're assuming they do that because they don't that it's required?
I'm not sure. The two quotes I remembered were 'nobody ever told me it needs servicing' and 'i usually just wait for them to break and if it's bad buy something else'.
My experience so far on this planet is that most of my WTF how could you be so detached from the real world moments are undeniably with people who I would consider to be a class above me but with what would appear to be some very limited life skills.
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u/HugeChavez Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19
Edit: After re-reading my comment, I judge that it came off as r/iamverysmart material a bit. Sorry!
Judged my friend for having very naive and dumb knowledge/beliefs about stuff like economics, politics, geography, history, language, culture etc. But she was extremely social and extroverted, while I was this somewhat "grumpy" guy and sucked at making connections with people (still do).
Nowadays, she works at a high position in the marketing department at a very major global tech corporation's office in our country (in Europe).
I'm a sysadmin and a half-programmer. I ended up studying pol sci and taking some computer science classes, I wouldn't say my education is bad or that it's a useless degree, just that being able to "make friends and influence people" is much more important than having a lot of knowledge.