this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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One of my favorite examples of the difficulty in idiot-proofing things comes from a national park ranger talking about the difficulty of designing a bear-proof garbage can. He said "There is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans."
Lmao, yeah.... You can make a can so secured a bear definitely won't get in; but will people go to the effort to use it then?
Definitely some overlap there.
And I think that hits on the truth, which makes this less "iamverysmart". It's not that the tourists are dumb, it's that they're new and not willing to pay much attention to things like trash can design. 1% of a normal person's attention presents a lot like a really dumb person.
Is it 1%? Maybe when they first try to open it they're distracted But when doesn't open and now they're concentrating on the problem and still fail, then we have to kinda own up to the fact that a lot of people aren't smarter than a bear.
I can’t believe this comment chain is this long and no one has pointed out that drunk and stoned humans are terrible at figuring stuff like this out.
You’re not planning for the dumbest human trying in earnest. You’re planning for humans who are tired, distracted and/or chemically altered. A 80 IQ person can figure out a weird trash can eventually if they are trying.
These comments (not just yours) feel misanthropic. I haven’t been to a campsite in ages so I don’t know what sort of trash can puzzlebox we’re talking about, but I work somewhere with alcohol so I can guess what the true issue is.
I'd be pretty distracted by the bear waiting behind me for his go.
I think if they can score 100 on an IQ test, they can figure out any reasonable trash can eventually, assuming the moving parts are visible. Many people would rather just litter.
100 is the average, implying half the population is lower than that, but otherwise, sure
Yup. The ranger did say "stupidest", I guess, but I feel like at 70 or something you still know to pull on stuff in a few set ways until it moves.
And bears around 130 probably know that too.
That makes me wonder what designs they were considering. The ones I've seen use a sort of pinch motion under metal hood. Maybe the idea there is to require dexterous forelimbs, rather than any intellectual ability.
At the risk of pedantry, if 100 is the average (the mean), we're saying "most people are at 100". If it were the median, then we're implying "100 is the middle score of those sampled". A subtle, but important difference.
i’m not really sure what IQ has to do with this. it was originally designed to measure people’s proficiency in school. it was not designed to be a general measure of intelligence. that was something that was co opted by eugenicists.
here’s a quote from Simon Bidet, the original creator of the IQ test, about his thoughts on the eugenicists using his test:
you can read more about this stuff on his wikipedia page. (the quote is from wikipedia)
even to this day, there is quite a bit of doubt as to how accurately IQ measures “general intelligence”
I know. It's a shorthand quantitative measure everyone's familiar with, though, so it's useful for communicating. Thanks for adding a disclaimer for me.
Yah, that's possible too. But I can't say I'd figure anyone that litters is much smarter than a bear either.
Ecology (or just waste management) is even more complicated and boring than a garbage can.
It's apathy all the way down.
Stupidity is a moral flaw after all.
A bear has time and motivation to keep trying over and over again to get into the garbage. People are generally much less determined to figure it out.
I used to see people charitably, much like you do, until very recently. After witnessing for myself people staring into the sun and injuring themselves after being repeatedly warned, I now realize there are a substantial number of people who simply have rocks clattering around inside their skulls instead of brains
I genuinely had someone stop and ask me why you can't see the moon during an eclipse because "it's got light in it right".
They're soon to replace our HR manager.
Answer: Light travels in straight lines (well, for this purpose) and the moon is roughly an opaque sphere. Maybe you could see it with earthshine, but I get the impression the corona is still much brighter.
I've heard dumber.
There was a listener question on a science podcast recently that asked about how the temperature changed on the moon during the recent solar eclipse.
They almost got what a solar eclipse was, but not quite. During a solar eclipse, the moon gets between the sun and the earth, blocking the light getting to the earth and casting a shadow on the earth. The side of the moon facing the earth is completely dark because the thing that normally lights it up (the sun) is completely behind it. But, the back side of the moon is getting full sun and just as hot as normal.
I think part of the problem with understanding all this is that the sun is just so insanely bright. Like, it's a bit hard to believe that the full moon is so bright just because it's reflecting sunlight. It's also amazing that the "wandering stars" (planets) look like stars when they're just blobs of rocks or gases that are reflecting the insanely bright light of the sun.
It's amazing if you think about it. Light comes out of the sun in every possible direction. A tiny fraction of it hits the surface of Mercury, and only some of that light is reflected back out. The light reflected from Mercury goes in almost every direction. A tiny fraction of it hits the earth. But, even with that indirect bounce, it's bright enough to see with the naked eye.
A solar or lunar eclipse?
The solar eclipse from Monday.
Holy shit this. And not even "educated" people. Where I work is about half degree holding engineers... many of these engineers were seen outside staring at the partial eclipse Monday.
Sounds like your typical engineer. I passed fluid dynamics, I deserve to look at the big ball of plasma.
My eyes haven't hurt this bad since studying for differential equations theory..... Have I told you I'm an engineer?
"Pfff I have a master's degree I know what I'm doing"
There was a solar eclipse when I was in grade six. One of my classmates was riding his bike home, and was stupidly looking at the eclipse, and got hit by a car. The irony.
So you're somewhere between 18 and 58 than
Ladies and gentlemen, we gottem.
Omg that’s so messed up but so incredible haha, was he okay after?
It was pretty bad. He missed a lot of school. I think he ended up repeating grade six. I never saw him much after that, but I did hear that he got married to another person I went to school with eventually, so presumably his life wasn't ruined or anything.
I'm curious if he was okay before.
What do you mean? Sun is blocked = no sun rays = not blinded when staring directly. The logic is sound! Just like in programming.
I've seen people carelessly throw away their garbage right next to garbage bins, because they couldn't be bothered to get a little closer or aim.
The bear has more determination, because it has an incentive to get to the tasty, high calorie food that doesn't require the energy expenditure of chasing it down and tearing it apart. Throwing away garbage into a designated container on the other hand is a chore that some people believe they can skip, because they are the sole protagonists in their own stupid little world.
Can you put your computer in a bear proof garbage can?
You could, but who is worried a bear will use their computer?
The QA engineer obviously.