Quoting Dan Armak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > But you only memorize the milking process once, right?
Yes, but the point is, you perform the task itself over and over again. It's not that people don't abstract, they just don't abstract in the way you want them to. > Well, by your logic, people could never generalize enough that the process of > milking a cow would deal with the abstract notion of _a_ cow and not with > specific live cows. It's not logic, it's observation, and the observation is that the average person does not abstract in the way a computer science graduate does. You can't find fault in my logic, because I was not trying to prove anything, I was making a statement about how the minds of people work, based on an unscientific observation. > So why can't it be "mark as style = heading3" every time? They don't really > understand what they do or how it works in any case. It's just a matter of > getting used to a different interface - and then there's a big saving of > effort since everyone's output looks the same via a common document class, > and noone spends time manually formatting fonts to reach the same result, or > even thinking about fonts at all. You mean, it's just a matter of changing the way people percieve the world, process the data they percieve, and make decisions according to that? Easy, very easy. Basically computers are more easily programmable than people. Therefore, change the computer program, not the person's brains - especially given that your real expertise is computer programming, not psychology. > Tell the user: when you want a big heading, select 'heading1' from this list. > When you want a small heading, select 'heading2'. When you want normal text, > select 'standard'. Then when you print the file, it will magically all be > correct. Just forget about the fonts. Don't worry about them. "Tell the user"? Do you mean that I have to clone myself for every program I write (Assuming I'm the author of LaTeX or whatever), and kibitz over the head of every user in the world, convincing him that he can think the way I think? Believe me, it didn't even work with my mother and my sister, let alone the less intelligent population of the earth which, despite being less intelligent, still needs to use a word processor. Using a word processor is more complicated than driving a scooter. You can easily train a person to do things by rota - when you see that, you do that. It's much much harder to train people to change they way they think, rather than the way they behave. And asking the average joe to RTFM is not fair either - next time you see an average joe read the manual of his car, I may be convinced that you can convince the user to RTFM. People basically learn practical things - from house cleaning to knitting to milking a cow - not from books but from example and direct training, or by trial and error. Books are for academics, not for everyday people. We are not talking about stupid people here. We are talking about people behaving like the slightly evolved apes that we all are. Some of us are more comfortable with symbols, logic, abstractions, etc. Most of the people, however, work differently. Complaining about it won't help - you have to work with the humans as Evolution made them. Since Evolution is not God, people are not perfect, and certainly are not adapted to anything *you* want them to adapt to. > So you don't think we can or should go for linux on the desktop for > non-programmers? I do. I just think we should start realizing that we are dealing with non-geek humans, and maybe even *W00t!* consult with people who specialize in human perception, behaviour and learning. Yes, I know, social sciences, brrrrrr. Then we should start writing applications that fit humans, not try to fit humans to existing applications! Herouth ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
