??? 06/04/11 08:24 Read: times Msg Score: +1 +1 Good Answer/Helpful |
#182475 - Don't confuse realism and lazines. Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Richard said:
That's because few low-level employees feel it necessary to do anything beyond the minimum they can do, and seldom fail to do even that. You haven't evern thought about the reverse? That maybe they don't do anything extra because they are experienced? Maybe because they have already had a couple of years doing the same kind of work, and knows that if they do report a problem, that report will be ignored at the next level? So they aren't lazy but realists. It's a known fact that most people adapt to the system, instead of trying to fight the system to get it to change. And when people design dumbing systems, then the users of the systems figure: If that's the way they want it - why not. The end result is that you can have very intelligent people, but they don't see any gain from using that intelligence working that dumbed down system. So they do what they have to do, while spending their time thinking about other things. People aren't more stupid now than they where 20 years ago. But 20 years ago, more people were expected to make own decisions at work. So they did behave differently on the work because it was meaningful to be proactive and pick up problems early. But today, companies want to pay the least amount of money so they don't want the employees to think or take responsibility for things. When a company sends the message to the employees "spend the time, but don't think", they get staff that will just count time instead of walking the shelves and see what can be improved. But that doesn't mean the people working there are less intelligent. It just means the corporations have management that either are prejudiced or unable to think about cause and action. Maybe US have a larger percentage of citizens who can't read/write/count well. But that is still no metric of intelligence. Knowledge and intelligence are two completely separate dimensions. You can have educated people that have read all classic litterature but can't think for themseles. And you can have people unable to read/write that can rip you to pieces using pure logic. But it's the sordid view of some people that tries to cement the we/them view in society. If everyone can't have the same right to a good education, how will our society be able to function? When we design systems, they should help the user. But don't try to dumb down the user. Dumbed down systems just sends a signal that we don't want people to think for themselves and take own decisions. I don't know if US is special, but if you find all gas station attendants to be stupid, it indicates two things: That you have stupid management and stupid system designers. Or that you have an inability to communicate with people and see who they are, and what they are capable of. After all, the average human intelligence is not rapidly dropping. But peoples ability to socialize seems to be going down the drain. |