Post

between passkeys and webp i’m starting to think that software consumers just hate good things

To some extent, its an understandable distrust of everything big tech, on the other hand its a lack of curiosity and care about learning what things even are.

Many people also _refuse_ to just lookup what a passkey is.... and probably would be just as annoyed if given a ten page explanation! And that's not by some personal failing of theirs, but because many parts of our society when this!

It's born out of a societal shunning of curiosity paired with a general i-cant-give-a-fuck-anymore about every new thing the tech world throws at people. It is at the same time quite understandable and _very_ harmful. Like, people get hit with wave after wave of bullshit!

Blockchain!!! Metaverse!!!! GenAI!!!!! All of it sold as the best thing ever, get on or get left behind, all of it scummy and more often then not harmful to most people. So of course, when any _new_ thing comes around, the gut reaction is: "oh no hot this shit again."

This is made worse by our societies problematic tendency to just treat high tech as magic. 'It just works like that' and such. There is a systematic lack of computer science knowledge made available for the general public's consumption.

And that which is easily found, is more of then not, the marketing pitch for something that people actively (and for good reason!) do not want! That sort of document also always doesn't explain things properly, because then it would be transparently bullshit.

No 'crypto will replace fiat currency!!!' type content will ever actually lead to the general public understanding what cryptography _is_. it also leads to a distrust of the term. If i explain a passkey as as 'photographically secured login method,' many are going to think 'blockchain.'

And if my first reaction to something is 'blockchain' my bullshit alarms also go of instantly. Hell, I know about proper cryptography and feel like that every time I deal with the term!

The other part is the societal scale shunning of curiosity. This is not really a problem of individuals, but more of our education system (often intentionally!) pushing against it. Don't ask to many questions, just learn for the test. If you don't do what we tell you, you'll be unemployed for life.

People are simply conditioned to not ask many questions. Don't bother asking why passkeys, or why passwords and emails. Just do as your told. Of course, with it being a whole lot of bogus 'just do as i say' people do so with minimum effort. And aren't happy about it.

That's how you get 'Pasw0rd!' and such things. The rules are just given, no explanation, and compliance is expected without understanding. So people put minimum effort. And at the same time you get conditioned to be intellectually lazy about these things!

I feel its quite easy to blame people for that, but they shouldn't be! Its very quick and emotional to go and think 'they could just google this, just read and article, just _learn_ it!'! But consider: as mentioned above, our society _punishes_ this!

And this doesn't just go for passkeys. this goes for green energy, public transit, economics, medicine, politics, everything! Don't ask questions, just do what your told. Its a deeply ingrained part of fascism to do this. To make people not ask questions!

To condition people to never ask 'why', or worse 'is that even true?' Who would vote Trump if they actually checked what he says and if his reasoning is right? THAT is why, especially in the US - but also the world in general - fascists have been trying to make us incurious!

And while the cause is institutional, getting _better_ is personal. Changing the education system to one that encourages inspection and introspection, only effects those still going through it! Adults - who were raised into this - need to change _ourselves_!

But of course that's no simple matter either. Time is a problem for many, and a lack of good learning resources is as well! That doesn't mean you can't do anything. To those who may find themselves here a little now:

Dig deeper on that news post you just saw. Learn to identify common plants or bird song! Hell, learn about how they make the movies you watch! How do they cook that? Why do they build it like this?

Question whatever you see and don't know about! It'll be hard at first, and you'll probably find that some of those things are boring to you! But I promise you, you _will_ find something you love to learn about. It also gets easier!

So much of learning - and science - is not the details of the topic, but the way we do it. The way we know things, the way we reason about stuff, and that's the _hard_ part. Remembering numbers and facts is easy, just write them down!