• vaguerant@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      Something that bothers me about a lot of people’s sense of empathy is that they’re only able to employ it by directly relating events to themselves. It’s like a stereotypical “How would you feel if this happened to your daughter?” thing, where people can only extend empathy as far as a situation that it’s possible for them to get into.

      I also hear this a lot around disasters, whether they be natural, terrorist attacks, etc. If you’re around somebody who has been anywhere near the location of the event, get ready for the “Gosh, that’s so awful. I was only there six years ago, it could have been me.” Can’t you just fucking care about the wellbeing of things that aren’t you? Feel bad because a bad thing happened, not by making it about yourself.

      • brrt@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        where people can only extend empathy as far as a situation that it’s possible for them to get into.

        I wonder if there is a distinguishing term for this.

        Empathy = The ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes (no matter how different they are from you)

        ? = The “ability” to imagine yourself in a situation that someone else, who’s very similar to you, experienced.

      • carg@feddit.org
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        2 months ago

        I don’t see what’s wrong with that. That’s also empathy, just not everybody follow the same way to feel it.

      • nomad@infosec.pub
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        2 months ago

        In guilty of this. I usually know what they want to say at word 3 or 4. Waiting it out is exhausting. Not waiting it out is rude. Hard either way, not talking to people, way easier.

  • wieson@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    Imagining the potential of a prototype.

    “So with this prototype I want to explore aspect A”

    “I don’t like it. I don’t want this as a final product.”

    “Ok. Do you like aspect A? Imagine all other things were finished as you like it.”

    “No, I don’t like this product.”

    • fakeaustinfloyd@ttrpg.network
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      2 months ago

      Same for apps and sites. Having to explain to someone multiple times that I’m not trying to force their users to be bilingual just because there is “lorem ipsum” text on the page is rough.

  • Mothra@mander.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Math, and I mean basic math: adding, subtracting, multiplication, division. Basic understanding of fractions, basic understanding of percentages.

    I’m not amazing at math but I consider this basic and with relatively regular day to day application. I’m not saying people should be able to make these operations without a calculator on the fly, I certainly couldn’t in many cases. But I would expect people to know what math you need to apply to, say, calculate a 20% discount. I would expect people to know if, say, two thirds is more or less than three quarters. But no. Nope

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      I frequently do blatantly inaccurate math just to spitball, and when I say the numbers that I’m computing out loud, people get amazed that I can keep track of so many numbers when I’m only tracking the result of the previous calculation and the operator that I’m about to perform.

      I’m like, dude, if you accounted for the rounding errors, you would realize how fucking wrong I am, but this math is not precision-important, and so I’m just trying to get an idea of the scope of the numbers that I need to address whatever problem I’m working on.

      For instance, if you asked me to spitball how far it is from Los Angeles, California to Atlanta, Georgia, and how long it would take you to drive that, I would assume you would average about 50 miles an hour after breaks and whatnot that you would be able to drive approximately 12 hours a day, which means you could clear 600 miles, and off the top of my head I would guess it’s about 3,200 miles between Los Angeles and Atlanta, assuming that you stay on the 40 as much as you can once you get to Amarillo, TX, so I would assume that the average driver would take five days and approximately four hours to drive that distance.

      This is very off the cuff, off the top of my head, I could be 600 miles off on the distance in either directions, I could be 10, 12 miles an hour in drive time off in either direction, and I could be off 4 or 5 hours or not even account for a co-driver on the trip.

      You can do the trip in like 2ish days. I have done the trip in like twoish days.

      But, reality and guesstimation are two separate things, and there’s no reason to be amazed by somebody’s guesstimation capabilities. It’s very basic math that doesn’t require any skill greater than your multiplication tables.

      I don’t know why more people aren’t good at it.

    • Landless2029@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      People being bad at math isn’t a new thing but it is getting worse now with everyone having a calculator (phone) in their pocket.

      Also. Great time to dust off this old gem.

      • Mothra@mander.xyz
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        2 months ago

        I’m not sure if having a calculator available makes it worse. The calculator only does the operation. It doesn’t reason which operation needs to be done, it just does what you tell it to do. And that’s where people fail at, understanding the concept behind the operation.

        • Landless2029@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Yep. I agree. Knowing the logic behind math, namely what values need to be where in a formula and processing it in order, is a problem.

          I think this is one of the reasons a bachelors degree in comupter science is so highly valued for too many jobs. The degree has a good amount of math requirements even though they’re not needed for programming. I think the reason behind that is succeeding in that much logical thinking means you can learn/follow the rules/syntax of coding languages.

          In the business world they hope people with that much understanding in math have a good head on their shoulders.

    • nomad@infosec.pub
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      2 months ago

      I’m an engineer by training which includes a lot of higher math training. Also have been running my own company for years. But still learned this basic stuff way later. This is something that should taught in school.

      • Mothra@mander.xyz
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        2 months ago

        … you got an engineering degree not knowing basic percentages and fractions?

        … isn’t this taught in schools? I definitely learned it before age 12

        • nomad@infosec.pub
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          2 months ago

          Applications in daily things like taxes, rebates and the like. It is, but somehow it only sunk in late in life.

    • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Eh, it depends. I don’t know how to sew, except to fix a hole in my sock. Couldn’t make a coat, never needed or wanted to.
      My mother can’t use a computer besides checking her emails and finding a movie to watch, which is all she needs and wants to know.
      Now, if it’s your job to use one effectively and haven’t got a clue? I expect you’d end up in management in no time.

  • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    How to cook? Or even follow a recipe. Not like hard stuff either, a simple casserole recipe or cookie recipe. Not even find a good recipe, that’s actually very hard online these days what with bullshit generators and stuff. I hand you a recipe.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Makes me remember that old boomer joke “My wife cooks water in the evening so that the next day I just need to warm it up for my tea”

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      With something like cookies there’s actually a bit of assumed institutional knowledge, like what “cream together sugar and butter” means. Sometimes the devil is in the details and those details you kind of need to have seen every episode of Good Eats to get.

  • ambitious_bones@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    To do very basic home repair and DIY. I keep wondering how people get through life without being able to drill a hole, fix a clogged drain or even change a light bulp. Do they get some sort of service technican for all these things?

  • Wahots@pawb.social
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    2 months ago

    Knowing how to swim or ride a bike. It’s not too common, but when someone tells me they can’t, I’m quietly kinda shocked.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      socioeconomics plays a large part here. I learned to swim at the ymca, but schlepping my silly ass to and from swim practice meant parental involvement.

      bikes? learning to ride a bike in the suburbs is natural; learning to ride a bike when you live in an apartment building - hell keeping a bike from getting stolen is difficult when you don’t have a garage.

      imho, these are both easy to understand when you view through a larger socioeconomic starting point: we don’t all have the same opportunities and resources.

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Race also plays a large part of it. In most cases, if your parents know how to swim, you do too. But many black people don’t know how to swim, even if their parents know how. Not because of a lack of transport or means, (though that could certainly play a part) but because their parents didn’t want to get their hair wet to teach them.

        For those who don’t know, ultra textured hair is a very special beast, and takes a lot of specific care to keep it looking nice. And getting it wet tends to be a big sin unless you’re specifically washing it.

        So all the black parents never took their kids to the pool to teach them how to swim. Not because they couldn’t afford it, but because they physically didn’t want to get wet. So swimming knowledge gets broken from one generation to the next. So the black people who know how to swim are typically the ones who go out of their way to learn on their own, or who have non-black friends who taught them.