Microsoft causes learned helplessness

As someone who knows how to take apart and put back together both computers a day cars, your post is 100% accurate in explaining why people might not want to spend the time to learn something they have no interest in and do rarely.

Regarding the Android bit, it's so cancerous because everything is locked down and users have no control over the OS. They don't have admin rights on their own device. Nothing to do with Linux, that's jus the kernel. Android + GNU utils & root access would be completely different.
People shit on the GNU/Linux meme, but Android actually proves that just the Linux kernel can be put in an OS that's just as hostile to the user as anything proprietary.

Look, unless the people you're talking about are doing tech jobs, there isn't a reason for them to learn the depths of it

Even in tech jobs you can be doing things that don't require you to understand the nitty-gritties of the operating systems.

throw in “wanting to do something” versus “having to do something” – I want to build my own keyboard so I spend the time to learn about them, I have to use Windows at work but as long as it doesn’t catastrophically break I’m not spending any more of my time on it than I have to – if it does break, there’s the paid IT department who’s going to be oh-so-thrilled that Amateur McJones decided he could fix it himself …

This post feels like elitism and gatekeeping to me, as someone who thinks Windows sucks and prefers Linux.

I think it's the opposite. There are, of course, Linux elitists, but they don't want normies using Linux. They love to talk about how Linux isn't ready for mainstream usage, and it's so difficult and only super-smart people like them can use it. They're like those hipsters that don't want their favorite band to become popular because then they wouldn't be underground and cool to listen to anymore. If ordinary folks were using Linux, then they wouldn't feel so smart and special.

It is gatekeeping and elitist to say that Linux is hard to use, you wouldn't understand it, and you should stay on Windows.

People don’t want to learn more because for most people not knowing more doesn’t impact their fucking life. Just like me not knowing more about my car doesn’t generally impact my fucking life. Because I’ve never had trouble finding someone to pay to fix it for me.

Surprise, we’re the people who are paid to fix computers for the people who are just using them as simple tools. Maybe we shouldn’t be so upset about that.

It isn't about every computer user becoming a computer engineer. It's about learned helplessness. It's about being afraid to try anything new, even something that's only slightly different.

To use the car analogy, it's like somebody who will only drive Fords, and is terrified of the prospect of getting behind the wheel of a car made by any other manufacturer.

Yep. This post is largely mixing up cause and effect. The popular programs are like that not as the cause of people not learning underlying logic and such, but as the effect of it.

The only thing that would happen if popular GUI based interfaces had never come along would be that computers in general would still be something only a tiny amount of people use.

Linux is a confusing fucking mess of 30 years of random decisions by lone programmers.

More like 50 years with all the stuff from Unix

man -k will do the exact search you are asking about. Now I have found that some systems aren't setting it up properly lately, but that command and -k option have been there for decades. Maybe you should try: man man to see what all options are available.

I like that you bring up Android. I went with Apple forever ago and kept in the ecosystem as I got my software engineering degree, and still am fully into the Apple ecosystem. I spend my days debugging things for work. I don’t want to spend my nights tinkering with my phone as much. I want it to just work.

I used to jailbreak for that freedom. Now, I have other things to worry about and just want my phone to be reliable and safe.

Ironic isn't it?

Here's the text:

Sure, I'll explain. I must preface this by saying that the following is my own personal theory which I formed over the years I've spent in the higher education system, both as a student, a graduate student and a TA, mostly has. on my experience with promoting FOSS and helping people around computers. I am also a local LUG member, so I have some additional source of observations. So while I cannot quote some Horton McPronton as a mastermind behind this theory, I'm quite convinced in the whole validity of my idea.

So, first thing I noticed Is that MS products hide everything from the entl user in the most bullshit way. MS doesn't want to tell the user anything of value that would help to understand and fix the issue right away, but at the same time they don't want to hide malfunctions completely. That's where one gets the error messages like "ERROR WTF23 in 0x0454234 by 0x13245, please contact your local clergy". What they do is mystification of PC use. All that stuff does for an average user is forcing them think that the computer is some magic, antl there's snowball's chance in hell an average Joe like them would be able to figure that out.

Second thing I noticed that the ubiquity of GUI further obscures the processes going on in the computer. While in UNIX and older OSes one could convey their desires in text (and receive a meaningful answer), Microsoft forces some world of Comic Books unto a user, without telling them what's going on. The result is further mystification of the whole experience. People no longer even try to understand what they are actually doing, they cannot figure out the underlying logic and just memorize where and what to click, and in which sequence. Every small change in the environment can ruin that whole scheme, which makes such people pretty much useless with varying tasks and whenever a degree of autonomy is expected from the PC user.

Third thing I noticed is that "The MS ecosystem" discourages seeking and trying out something new. People get stuck in their established patterns of behavior and have a tremendous inertia against any changes. I struggle to find another sphere where user knowledge would be so limited. Cars? Everyone can name a dozen manufacturers, many models. Food? Same. Electronics? Obviously. But with MS, it's like there is nothing beyond MS Office (and its proprietary formats), Outlook, Explorer (well, this is changing now, but more like to "Google Chrome" and not to a variety of equal options), and other stuff. This is not surprising, obviously, since for any average Joe making something to work in this ecosystem is more like a magic trick, and they hold the results dear. But this also spreads out to other spheres. For example, I've seen people who cannot fathom there's statistical software beyond SPSS, because SPSS was "handed down" from generation to generation, along with other PC wizardry. The vendor lock-in in all the major corporations doesn't help that either. So MS promotes the mode of thinking as ridiculous as "There is no car but Ford, and no model but Taurus" would be.

Fourth thing I noticed is that people don't want to study the underlying principles, at all, even when they need it / would benefit from it. Since the whole thing has been streamlined for them in a series of magical mumbo-jumbo, and any attempt to figure things out Of any, of course) endtd with some fucked-up shit like registry editing or scrapping together a bunch of unrelated files to replace the existing ones, or downloading something cryptic and running it without any clue of what it does, they see the whole thing as a heavy, useless burden on them. They won't learn how to use Office products properly (first and foremost, how to use styles and stuff to get proper formatting), because they expect to be fucking with registry again or something. They don't want to try other statistical software because they fear they'll have to deal with some undocumented shit all over again. They won't move to open formats because they expect it to be a whole clusterfuck all over again, as when they changed from regular GUI to Ribbon or something. Programming, Fuck no, they've seen those "ERROR 233432235 IN MODULE fgdghdfkghdfkj, SHOOT YOURSELF AND REPORT TO THE AUTHORITIES" stuff all too often, and never had to interact with a computer in any way similar to programming on their own (like, say, bash users do).

So in my opinion, MS "ecosystem" makes computer use something mystical/magical and locks people in that line of thinking. Afterwards, people are nigh impossible to retrain, and instead of versatile political scientists we churn out vendor-locked zombies who barely managd to figure out SPSS and Excel. I am pretty certain that if people were brought up in a different manner, say, including communicating with the computer in text orders (imagine me telling you all this in pictures!), seeing the underlying mechanisms in plain form, being exposed to competing options, etc —then they'd behave quite differently, even considering an average person isn't, frankly speaking, quite smart. It's more or less like a language: once you learned the sounds of your mother tongue, you'll face great difficulties in producing the sounds of other languages correctly (thats why Russians or Italians speak English with a notoriously funny accent, for example). Same here: once you learn that PC is magic which is beyond you, you'll unlikely be able to de-mystify it later on.

I don't understand anything that isn't presented in pictures. Also I cannot read.

User is not in the sudoers file.

this incident will be reported

Apple errors be all like

"Operation couldn't be completed (com.apple.mobilephone error 1035)"

What am I supposed to do with this?

Linux error be all like

"System program problem detected. Do you want to report it?"

Who am I reporting this to, Linus himself? He's just going to yell at me.

This stuff isn't intentional. It's just that MS is really bad at handling errors. So they just gave up and put a generic message.

I'm mostly only replying to one part of your message, the reason everyone uses it is not that it's more simple. For 99% of people the only thing they need is the web browser and maybe possibly office depending on what they do for work. At which point the experience between Windows and Linux is like 99% the same

Windows also constantly has issues and headaches as you alluded to with your error codes. People are just used to how to Google and try and sit there and deal with it for a couple hours.

Windows is the default, because it's the default. Because it's what your computer comes with, because it's what everyone grew up using. It's just tyranny of the default and nothing more. I got tired of dealing with Windows issues for my family as the resident Tech person so I gave them an ultimatum they can either let me give them Linux or they can find someone else to call when something goes wrong. Some of them took me up on my Linux offer, and I have happily not had to touch their computers in I think about 6 years now. They quietly do updates on their own on a schedule send me a push notification if it fails for some reason which so far none of them have and those people only ever used to the web browser and office anyway and for their needs LibreOffice was perfectly functional they don't do anything fancy they don't do a ton of macros they just type basic text with maybe some bullet point formatting

How so?

I got a headache reading it

Normally I'd agree, but the idea of copying the text directly for a repost seems a bit weird. The pixels feel slightly more attribution-y to me.

Seriously this. I read it but damn.

https://lemmy.ca/comment/3677924

On the one hand I agree.

I remember when I first learned about Linux, specifically an early version of KNOPPIX. Computers ran Windows. Mac whatever existed but was niche. The idea that I could boot a new fully functional OS from a CD was an absolutely crazy idea. I thought I had an understanding of computers but this changed everything.

This rant talks about users being unwilling to branch out but I think it's more that they're unable to. They lack the understanding of what question to ask. They're not making the choice to not try Foo, they lack the understanding that alternatives exist. If someone told you "Actually cars don't need wheels" and then took the wheels off and drove away you'd be completely flabbergasted. Turns out cars move based on magic not wheels.

On the other hand.

I don't think it's unreasonable for folks to be a little more attentive in the choices they make. When you buy a car you don't just show up to the dealership and grab the first one you see. You choose gas, electric or hybrid. You choose a car, a truck, a van, etc based on your needs. You might pick a specific brand/make/model based on other requirements.

It's fine to choose the most popular option, it's popular for a reason, but you should understand a little bit about your choice. You chose Lenovo. You chose Windows. You chose Edge. You chose Bing.

I'm not asking if you know if you have an HDD or an SSD. I'm not asking if it's an NVME drive. I'm not asking which generation/model CPU it has.

I think the frustration being expressed is the type you see from the classic "The Website is Down".

You don't have to be an engineer to use a CLI. This is exactly the mentality that's being called out here.

i won't rest until every driver in america is forced into a toad of toad hall cosplay for every minute they're on the road

i mostly agree with you. But:

the drivers should at least be able to change a flat tire no?

Same with computer users, they should at least be able to change their software (if the company doesn't lock them down that is). But they can't even do that.

Below is basically just a rant disguised as an argument you may or may not ignore it

I have friends, family and colleagues that cannot grasp things such as the existence of other OS's besides windows, android and macos/ios and that there is other software than they know.

For example, my friends say stuff like "have you cracked/hacked your phone/pc again?" Because i use linux and lineageOS instead of windows/macos and android/ios. No matter what i tell them. They don't care that it took like 10 minutes to do. they don't care that it is basically 4 steps. The fact that i use something different to them makes them think that i am a computer genius even tho i know jack shit.

I do not blame them as they have only known one way/thing their whole life. But i blame the people that are responsible for them only knowing one thing.

What i wanted to say with this whole ass bible is: they don't have to know everything. But they should know something so that they are not helpless when things go south

Yeah like at least windows gives you an error code, Macs basically just say "uh-oh, we did a fucky wucky and your device has failed, contact apple" and now your stuck searching up the exact text and trouble shooting a dozen potential issues and dozens more potential fixes.

Is your workshop is more for tech-oriented people or more for lay audience?

Yes, please. Missed RightsCon this year.

I'm interested in this as well.

Yes, please.

Please do - it seems it was not recorded on the AccessNow's YouTube account

Apple is just as bad in a different way. There is no perfect solution. People need to understand what they do, to do it well. That doesn't mean that the average Joe needs to learn C. He can continue to write down the process on some sticky notes but it would help if he does look beyond the horizon e g. understand what the buttons he clicks all day actually do.

But Apple isn't used nearly as much. Well, maybe in the USA. Those guys seem to simp for Tim Apple.

You can explore a GUI if it's safe to do so. If a user has been burned by easily putting their system into an unrecoverable state, they develop a fear of exploring. "I don't want to change anything; I might break my computer / lose all my work / get a virus!" is a really common fear.

Not to say this is gospel truth or anything. It's just why I virtually always prefer a command line over a GUI. (Within reason.)

• GUIs almost always hides/obfuscates/abstracts things that are going on under the hood in a way that text doesn't.
• Anything I can do from a Bash terminal, I can automate pretty trivially. (Or even just press "up" and then "enter" to quickly redo it a second time.)
• Pointing devices feel awkward and imprecise for a lot of operations. Pretty great for FPSs. Sometimes a necessary evil for image editing. Slow and sucky for setting a boolean value or putting your text cursor between two specific characters in a paragraph of text.
• It's good to be able to use a terminal when your GUI's broken or frozen. Ctrl+alt+f2 or if even that doesn't work, ssh in from another box (or your phone).
• It's a lot easier to paste a Bash one-liner into a chat or text file than describe a series of mouse clicks.
• You learn a lot using Bash that you don't learn using GUIs. And that can come in handy.

“Guessing commands” isn’t the way to go about it. Read the man pages. Read the help for commands. Read a tutorial or some examples.

$ command -h
$ command --help
$ man command

I have a lot of tab completions installed, too, so i can also just hit tab to get a list of all possible options, etc.

The dominance of Office is because it’s better than its competitors, and because getting businesses to change literally anything they do is near impossible. SPSS isn’t even a Microsoft product.

Also, because of the whole Open Office clusterfuck. People still download that shit not realizing it hasn't been supported in years and haven't heard of Libre Office. It leaves them thinking FOSS sucks because of a bad experience.

Most people who can't afford Microsoft Office just use Google Docs anyway.

Yup. It's actually quite ironic that this person is advocating to learn how operating systems work, but has seemingly refused to learn the slightest bit about the Windows ecosystem.

know how to change a flat or put in coolant.

Even just "The tire is the thing that has broken, I see tire flat: should round", or "Coolant is to combat hot. I have the hot. Is coolant ok?"

they should know how to change a flat or put in coolant

and care design, just like ux, is evolving in a way where the service industry takes the role of the user in maintaining their tools

A lot of people in Linux subs seem to be ready and willing to unload their "everything is dumbed down" opinion, with all the ferver of a solider heading out to war. I'm a long time computer user, programmer and hacker, so I understand these points of view, but they come across as very gate-keepy around the idea of using a computer at all. Like... I think it's obscene that so many people would think you need to learn how to use the command-line in order to use a computer.

You guys have it wrong, I love smart GUIs that mean I don't have to spend my life writing complex command line statements, why are there so many people trying to hold back the wonder and marvel of computers from people who haven't spent their entire lives dedicated to learning about the computer? I mean seriously, I don't expect any of my friends or family to be as experienced at these things as I am, and that's okay. I want the computer to be an easy thing to use. Hell, I want the computer to be easy to use so that I can apply my skills to building things on the computer and have people pay money for them, I think that's a fairly reasonable trade.

Death rate per 100,000,000 miles has been dropping a lot over time.

In 1923, when it first started being tracked, it was standing at 21.65. 1970, it was 4.88. 1990, 2.21. In 2021, it was 1.5.

It spiked recently, though, a tiny bit around 2015-2016 but then greatly in 2021. In 2014, the rate was 1.17.

I do agree that the self-driving features are kinda pointless, especially right now, though. GM has gotten especially bad with their marketing, showing ads with people intentionally taking their hands off the wheel and not paying attention to the road while the car's moving.

I would say it applies a lot harder to iOS than macOS which continues to be certified UNIX and you can go hog wild on the CLI if you really want to.

One of the biggest Linux nerds I know is a mac enthusiast because it is certified UNIX.

iOS is indeed pretty locked down.

Getting them to stop and read what’s in front of them is one of the hardest things to do.

Personal opinion, that's not because the errors aren't useful, it's because people refuse to fucking read signs. It's not about Windows/Linux, it's that most people can't be arsed to pay attention to much of anything.

Source: Worked as a pool attendant with a gate. Gate had a sign with rules for the pool and instructions on how to open the gate latch. The number of people confused by the rules and the gate because they failed to look at the sign right in front of them was consistently higher than the number of people who stopped for two seconds to read the sign.

Having learned how to use computers via MS-DOS, then growing to mostly use Windows machines, and then moving to daily-drive Linux in the past handful of years, I think the problem is more about context. If I see an error message, it's not that I don't read them. ‌Rather, if I lack the context to understand what it is trying to tell me—and more importantly, what I‌ can do to resolve the problem I'm having, I'm out of luck and I'd have to ignore it.

It was when I switched to using Linux that I've picked up the habit of searching the error message online, and then browsing the various pages (mostly Stackoverflow, sometimes Arch Linux wiki pages) which might or might not lead me to the context behind the error message. If I get lucky, I could find a clue to resolving my problem on top of understanding what the error message is about. Other times, I end up being even more confused and give up.

And then there's the monstrosity that is the logs. I'm pretty much illiterate when it comes to them, and reading them might as well be reading arcane records of eldritch daemons keeping my machine working (in a way, they indeed are). Copy-pasting some snippets from them into an online search is a crapshoot. I may find something that fits my context, but a lot of times, it's for a different problem. It might not even be for my OS/distro/package/version.

You being up an interesting point. Let's expand electricity a little bit.

If I flip a switch the lights come on. I don't need to understand it but someone does. And because electricity can be deadly of handled wrong, everyone in your proximity handles electricity the exact same way (and this is enforced via law). This means only a few people anywhere need to have the deep knowledge of how it works for the rest of us to get light.

Compare this to computing - sure you click the button and get Facebook but that button could be designed any number of ways. Like electricity the generation who tinkered is past (well passing), but unlike electricity firm standards on how to design your Facebook button have not been written in blood.

I for one am terrified of what the next 10 years of the business IT landscape is going to look like as we need to start absorbing kids who grew up on iPads.

Catering to the corporate is how Microsoft gets their future customers. Office workers learn to function in MS ecosystem to pay the bills. When they are home, they dont want to struggle to make things work - they already know windows and office, so that will be the path of least resistance.

Sun Xerox actually developed it. Then Apple copied them and Microsoft copied Apple.

I think people should have at least general knowledge about the internal workings of the things they use.

Yeah, a lot of people are making this comment, and they're missing the point.

But many people would like to fix there own issues and make there device work for them. Not all but a decent majority.

Just look at peoples wallpapers and apps

Do you realize that those two goals go hand in hand and are not mutually exclusive? For example, there's no benefit in OS usability to putting out a single line error code as opposed to even the slightest detail as to what went wrong. That's not "making their products easier to use to attract customers" as there's not a single person in existence that judges an OS on how little they have to know about an error.

That's mystificatiom of the system.

While it's true that an overall goal of a company like ms is to sell more operating systems, that doesn't mean that learned helplessness isn't in the syllabus somewhere.

The post frames this avoidance as both a result of the fear windows errors cause, and as... Rather than avoiding, streamlining. Simplifying. Being uninterested and lacking curiosity is "easier" for this thought experiment windows user. Because the computer is mystical magic that is beyond them. The OS has manipulated this quality into us.

I've had exactly the opposite experience. I don't use Windows often, but the times that I have, Microsoft's troubleshooter has always been zero help. It's always the most basic shit that a Tier 1 tech support guy will run you through on every phone call. It's like "Have you tried turning it off and then turning it on again?" Yes, yes, and I tried that, too! Oh, what a surprise, it's ran out of ideas, and I have to go on the Web and search for help, just like I would with an issue on Linux.

I find Linux, especially Arch or Arch-based distros, easier to troubleshoot than Windows. The documentation is decent a majority of the time and the community seems more willing to tailor advice to your specific situation.

By that I mean you can post a log and if someone recognizes it they seem more willing to help you out or at least send you in the right direction.

When I have issues on Windows on the other hand a lot of the time I see the same generic advice over and over again and it usually ends with user being told to download software from their obscure site. Maybe that's just my poor utilization of search engines though.

Isn't that making the problem worse though? If you have a tool that resolves your problem for you, wouldn't that make you dependent on it, and thus, be even more helpless when moving to another ecosystem (like, yeah, Arch)?

Arch is built for a particular kind of Linux user though, btw. It's probably the worst choice for a "not a computer person" move into, issues of dependency hell aside.

Don't forget that once the HTML 5 standard was set, they didn't undermine it like Google and Apple did, and still do; but shut down Silverlight and embraced HTML 5.

Seeing that you mentioned MS365 imma just have my mini vent here, my mum is over 60 and her work has just started using MS365, so far run into a bunch of minor frustrations, but two big ones that she wasn't able to figure out herself, and damn near stumped me:

First was trying to create an email group, so it's easier for her to mass email her different classes, go to create the group, realise there's a bunch of other junk like chats and shared files as part of the group thing which isn't needed (and can't be used by non ms emails anyway, over half of them) but whatever, get most of the way through it then realise that two people aren't included in any group... ok that's odd, just says they can't be added to the group, turns out that they've likely had some permission set regarding not being able to be added to groups.

45 minutes in at this point and they cannot be added at all, decide to go back and manage to find the option to create a bog standard email group (list?) hidden away under a drop-down menu, this is what I wanted to and thought I was making in the first place, then realise I cannot import or move over the already existing groups to the simpler email lists, so have to start again...

Finally get all of that done and my mum starts to send her zoom links out except nothing is hyperlinking automatically, try to search links, hyper links, linking, etc via the help and nothing of relevance comes up, turns out outlook Web doesn't support that, only the desktop app does but nothing mentions that. Manage to track down some random forum post that states that automatic linking only works if the email is set to plaintext format, not html...

Absolutely ridiculous

I think that Apple might be worse, but Microsoft gets more of the blame because it has much more usage. To be fair to MS, they stole all of their ideas from Apple, so maybe Apple deserves more blame than they're getting.

Anybody who used "classic Mac OS" (before OS X) can tell you that it was even more cryptic and hid more from the user than Windows did. It didn't usually break, but when it did, you just reformat and re-install.

I do find the idea that "the GUI is a Microsoft conspiracy to use their market share to make people too dumb to use computers" instead of "the GUI is why they have their market share" kind of amusing, though.

I absolutely see the value of explicitly dictating what you want with clear, precise text commands. I love using short simple scripts to get shit done for myself. But I have absolutely no interest in using the command line to navigate directories and files. It's perfectly fine that it's an option, but as the only option it's kind of shit.

MS products are closed-source, so the error messages don't need to be meaningful for the end user, because they can't do much with them, anyway. The error messages are for MS engineers who have books they can look up the secret codes in.

Since Linux is open source, error messages need to be approached from a different angle. Every end user is a potential contributor to the project, so you want error messages that are meaningful so they can troubleshoot it.

Are you saying this is the result of MS policies from the windows 1-3.1 era?

OP thinks Microsoft's ecosystem makes users too lazy to change to other ecosystems

Is there lore that isn't made up?