State of Optical Preservation?

[stan423321]

I genuinely don't think it is possible for a human mind to know about everything it interacts with to the detail level you're expecting. There is no encouragement from society required - I'm not saying there generally is none of such - there's simply too much to remember. Even undertaking an understanding of bodily functions is something typically split between multiple people, and not for lack of jobs. Regarding jobs and their questioned necessity, you could spend your life studying sociology and not stumble upon an explanation of particular happenings in area you live in. If you're a Renaissance human who instantly gets sociology, medicine, and a dozen of sciences and humanities that you don't happen to consider detached from reality and thus dismissable, firstly, you're not everyone else, secondly, I am absolutely sure there is still something important you don't have an understanding of for one reason or another, or at the very least the level of knowledge you possess about one of the important disciplines is too shallow to actually make use of it.

You could argue that electronics are made up by humans, so they should be significantly simpler than something like medicine. Well, they are. It's not a low bar to limbo.

Generally people seem to get interested in workings of systems that either fascinate them, or get blamed for something they dislike. If the (possibly hidden) reason people don't engage with your phone tracking subject is that they don't mind being tracked, explaining how phones work and facilitate tracking is not going to be particularly productive. Sending a hitman after them who would use their phone to track them, now that would be an idea - but ignoring the obvious moral ramifications, who knows if they'll pick the phone tracking as the culprit, as opposed to hitman, you, or someone unrelated they deeply dislike.

I don't think there's necessarily "blind faith" involved here. People know their computers can break. People know their bodies can break. They just don't care enough to remedy it, or dislike the remedy even more. I know there are things I'm not doing that would probably improve my health, but I hate them so much that a long life full of them sounds like a downgrade to me. I can imagine learning about computers is similar for some people.

[segaloco]

Well the flip side is then does a society that *doesn't* bother to understand things get to complain about it? I educate myself also so I'll have the language to explain what I see wrong with things. Half the time I try to explain something I'm upset about to a friend I also have to define like half the language I'm using because I gravitate towards precise language, whether it is common or not. I want to describe something correctly. But when people don't even know the terms, being "correct" doesn't matter because they literally don't have the vocabulary to know whether you are or not. This shortcoming only serves to benefit the person who doesn't engage while stymieing those who actually put in effort. Where, then, is the motivation to care? For instance, part of why I'm wishy washy about the subject of trying to make my own disc backup format is that I know it's generally not going to matter to most folks, including folks who would stand to benefit directly or indirectly from the improvements implied in that action. It's the old issue of how do you help people who don't want help when you *know* there is a gap, there is a need, there is something missing, but those missing it can't even conceive of missing it because they simply don't know. There is a certain bliss in ignorance, sure, but I for instance don't want to be completely un-able to dress a wound because a doctor isn't available. I don't want to have to die of dehydration because some chemical plant isn't able to function. I don't want to starve because our society has decided only someone somewhere else on different land is going to be supported in growing food.

And yet it's not the people who are ignorant who suffer, they seem to not even recognize that they're suffering under the weight of an onerous world. The more I learn, I would assume the more enabled I would feel, but I generally find that on many subjects people seem to really just not care at all and somehow are better for it...