Which has little to do with how he & his simplifications were remembered by scores of millions of Americans. Don’t you remember when he died, all the news coverage and blog posts and comments? It made me sick.
Meh, I thought of him as a brilliant but heavy-handed and condescending jerk long before I heard of his health problems. I refused to help my family and friends with iTunes (bad for my blood pressure) and anything Mac. My line was: if it “just works” for you, great, if not, you are SOL. Your iPod does not sync? Sorry, I don’t want to hear about any device that does not allow straight file copying.
Heh. I have been known to engage in “What do you mean you are having problems? That’s impossible, there’s the Apple guarantee It Just Works (tm) (r) ” :-D
Actually, no, I don’t remember because I didn’t read them. I’m particular about the the kind of pollution I allow to contaminate my mind :-)
I am too, but I pay attention to media coverage to understand what the general population thinks so I don’t get too trapped in my high-tech high-IQ bubble and wind up saying deeply wrong things like private_messaging’s claim that “Jobs’s one-button mice failed so ordinary people really are smart!”
Yeah, that’s so totally what I claimed. Not. My point is that a lot of people overestimate how much smarter they are than ordinary people, and so they think ordinary people a lot dumber than ordinary people really are.
Also, the networks operate under the assumption that less intelligent people are more influenced by advertising, and therefore, the content is not even geared at the average joe, but at the below-average joe.
Yeah, that’s so totally what I claimed. Not. My point is that a lot of people overestimate how much smarter they are than ordinary people, and so they think ordinary people a lot dumber than ordinary people really are.
Free free to elaborate how your one-button mouse example and all Jobs’s other successes match what you are claiming here about Jobs being a person who underestimated ordinary people’s intelligence. (If Jobs went broke underestimating ordinary people’s intelligence, then may heaven send me a comparable bankruptcy as soon as possible.)
The original quote itself is a fairly good example—he assumes that the networks produce something which is exactly what people want, whereas the networks should, ideally, produce something which the people most influenced by the advertising want; a different, less intelligent demographic. If he was speaking truth in the quote, he had to have underestimated intelligence of the average people.
Secondarily, if you want to instead argue from the success, you need to outline how and why underestimation of intelligence would be inconsistent with the success. Clearly, all around more complicated user interfaces also enjoyed huge success. I even give an explanation in my comment—people also tend to massively over-estimate the willingness of users to waste cognitive effort on their creations.
As for what lessons we can learn from it, it is perhaps that underestimating the intelligence is relatively safe for a business, albeit many failed startups began from a failure to properly explore the reasons why an apparent opportunity exists, instead explaining it with the general stupidity of others.
edit: also, you could likewise wish for a comparable bankruptcy to some highly successful but rather overcomplicated operating system.
The original quote itself is a fairly good example—he assumes that the networks produce something which is exactly what people want, whereas the networks should, ideally, produce something which the people most influenced by the advertising want; a different, less intelligent demographic.
Why’s that? Why aren’t the networks making most profit by appealing to as many people as possible because that increase in revenue outweighs the additional advertising price increase made possible by narrowly appealing to the stupidest demographic? And why might the stupidest demographic be the most profitable, as opposed to advertising to the smartest and richest demographics? 1% of a million loaves is a lot better than 100% of one hundred loaves.
So you’re making at least two highly questionable economics arguments here, neither of which I accept.
Secondarily, if you want to instead argue from the success, you need to outline how and why underestimation of intelligence would be inconsistent with the success. Clearly, all around more complicated user interfaces also enjoyed huge success.
Apple’s success is, from the original Mac on, frequently attributed to simplification and improving UIs. How is this not consistent with correctly estimating the intelligence of people to be low?
I even give an explanation in my comment—people also tend to massively over-estimate the willingness of users to waste cognitive effort on their creations.
You’re absolutely right about this part. And this pervasive overestimation is one of the reasons that ‘worse is better’ and Engelbart died not a billionaire, and Engelbart’s beloved tiling window managers & chording keyboards are unfamiliar even to uber-geeks like us, and why so many brilliant techies watch other people make fortunes off their work. Because, among their other faults, they vastly overestimate how capable ordinary people and users are of using their products.
As for what lessons we can learn from it, it is perhaps that underestimating the intelligence is relatively safe for a business
If one deliberately attempts to underestimate the intelligence of users, one may make less of a mistake than usual.
Why’s that? Why aren’t the networks making most profit by appealing to as many people as possible because that increase in revenue outweighs the additional advertising price increase made possible by narrowly appealing to the stupidest demographic? And why might the stupidest demographic be the most profitable, as opposed to advertising to the smartest and richest demographics? 1% of a million loaves is a lot better than 100% of one hundred loaves.
Seen any TV ads lately? I’m kind of wondering if you’re intending to win here by making an example.
Since you’re on to the markers of real world success, how does your income compare to the median for people of your age, race, sex, and economical status of parents, anyway?
and why so many brilliant techies watch other people make fortunes off their work
I don’t think making fortune is that much about not overestimating other people. Here’s the typical profile of a completely failed start-up founder: someone with a high narcissism score—massive over-estimate of their own intelligence, massive under-estimating of other people’s intelligence all across the board. Plus when they fail, it typically culminates in a conclusion that everyone’s stupider.
edit: also with regards to techies watching others walk away with their money, there’s things like this Atari story
There’s a lot of cases of businesspeople getting more money, when the products are not user interfaces at all, but messy internals. Tesla and Edison are another story—Edison blew so much money on thinking that other people are stupid enough to be swayed enough by the electrocution of the elephant. He still made more money, of course, because he had the relevant money making talents. And Tesla’s poor business ability (still well above average) can hardly be blamed on people being too stupid to deal with complex things that happen in enclosed boxes.
Seen any TV ads lately? I’m kind of wondering if you’re intending to win here by making an example.
Yes. Ads vary widely in the target audience, ranging from the utter lowest-common denominator to subtle parodies and references, across all sorts of channels. The ads you see on Disney are different from the ads you see on Fox News which are different from the ads you see on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block, which are different from the ones on the Discover channel. Exactly opposite of your crude ‘ads exist only to exploit stupid people’ model.
Since you’re on to the markers of real world success, how does your income compare to the median for people of your age, race, sex, and economical status of parents, anyway?
Below-average, and my own website is routinely criticized by readers for being too abstract, having a bad UI, and making no compromises or helping out readers.
Oh, I’m sorry—was I supposed to not prove the point about geeks like me usually overestimating the intelligence of ordinary people? It appears I commit the same sins. Steve Jobs would not approve of my design choices, and he would be entirely correct.
I don’t think making fortune is that much about not overestimating other people. Here’s the typical profile of a completely failed start-up founder: someone with a high narcissism score—massive over-estimate of their own intelligence, massive under-estimating of other people’s intelligence all across the board. Plus when they fail, it typically culminates in a conclusion that everyone’s stupider.
And what does this have to do with Steve Jobs? Please try to stay on topic. I’m defending a simple point here: Steve Jobs correctly estimated the intelligence of people as low, designed UIs to be as simple, intuitive, and easy to use, and this is a factor in why he died a billionaire. What does his narcissism have to do with this?
Tesla and Edison are another story—Edison blew so much money on thinking that other people are stupid enough to be swayed enough by the electrocution of the elephant. He still made more money, of course, because he had the relevant money making talents.
As I recall the history, this had nothing to do with UIs or people’s intelligence, but with Edison being in a losing position, having failed to invent or patent the superior alternating current technologies that Tesla did, and desperately trying anything he could to beat AC. Since this had nothing to do with UIs, all it shows is that one PR stunt was insufficient to dig Edison out of his deep hole. Which is not surprising; PR can be a powerful force, but it is far from omnipotent.
Thinking that average people’s intelligence is low != thinking every PR stunt ever, no matter how crackbrained, must instantly succeed and dig someone out of any hole no matter how deep.
he assumes that the networks produce something which is exactly what people want, whereas the networks should, ideally, produce something which the people most influenced by the advertising want; a different, less intelligent demographic
I’d be astonished if resistance to advertising increases linearly or better with IQ once you control for viewing time. Marketing’s basically applied cognitive science, and one of the major lessons of the heuristics-and-biases field is that it’s really hard to outsmart our biases.
I’d be astonished if resistance to advertising increases linearly or better with IQ once you control for viewing time.
Why do you think you should control for the viewing time? As a marketer, it makes no difference for you why the higher IQs are less influenced. Furthermore a lot of advertising relies on outright lying.
Why do you think you should control for the viewing time?
Because I’d expect high-IQ populations to consume less media than the mean not thanks to anything intrinsic to IQ but because there’s less media out there targeting them, and that’s already factored into producers’ and advertisers’ expectations of audience size.
Similar considerations should come into play on the low end of the distribution: the IQ 80 cohort is roughly the same size as the IQ 120 and with less disposable income, both of which should make it less attractive for marketing. Free time might have an impact, but aside from stereotype I don’t know if the lifestyles of the low-IQ lend themselves to more or less free time than those of the high-IQ; I can think of arguments for both.
Exposure to marketing tactics might also build resistance to them, and I’d expect that to be proportional in part to media exposure.
“No one in this world, so far as I know-and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me-has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”—H.L.Mencken
I think there’s a great many apes that under-estimated the intelligence of a tiger or a bear, and haven’t contributed to our gene pool. There’s also all those wars where underestimations of the intelligence of enemy masses cost someone great deal of money and, at times, their own life.
Yep. Respected and admired at a distance, certainly. But a lot of people who knew him personally tend to describe him as a manipulative jerk.
Which has little to do with how he & his simplifications were remembered by scores of millions of Americans. Don’t you remember when he died, all the news coverage and blog posts and comments? It made me sick.
Meh, I thought of him as a brilliant but heavy-handed and condescending jerk long before I heard of his health problems. I refused to help my family and friends with iTunes (bad for my blood pressure) and anything Mac. My line was: if it “just works” for you, great, if not, you are SOL. Your iPod does not sync? Sorry, I don’t want to hear about any device that does not allow straight file copying.
Heh. I have been known to engage in “What do you mean you are having problems? That’s impossible, there’s the Apple guarantee It Just Works (tm) (r) ” :-D
Actually, no, I don’t remember because I didn’t read them. I’m particular about the the kind of pollution I allow to contaminate my mind :-)
Anyway, we seem to agree. One of the interesting things about Jobs was the distance between his private self and his public mask and public image.
I am too, but I pay attention to media coverage to understand what the general population thinks so I don’t get too trapped in my high-tech high-IQ bubble and wind up saying deeply wrong things like private_messaging’s claim that “Jobs’s one-button mice failed so ordinary people really are smart!”
Yeah, that’s so totally what I claimed. Not. My point is that a lot of people overestimate how much smarter they are than ordinary people, and so they think ordinary people a lot dumber than ordinary people really are.
Also, the networks operate under the assumption that less intelligent people are more influenced by advertising, and therefore, the content is not even geared at the average joe, but at the below-average joe.
Free free to elaborate how your one-button mouse example and all Jobs’s other successes match what you are claiming here about Jobs being a person who underestimated ordinary people’s intelligence. (If Jobs went broke underestimating ordinary people’s intelligence, then may heaven send me a comparable bankruptcy as soon as possible.)
The original quote itself is a fairly good example—he assumes that the networks produce something which is exactly what people want, whereas the networks should, ideally, produce something which the people most influenced by the advertising want; a different, less intelligent demographic. If he was speaking truth in the quote, he had to have underestimated intelligence of the average people.
Secondarily, if you want to instead argue from the success, you need to outline how and why underestimation of intelligence would be inconsistent with the success. Clearly, all around more complicated user interfaces also enjoyed huge success. I even give an explanation in my comment—people also tend to massively over-estimate the willingness of users to waste cognitive effort on their creations.
As for what lessons we can learn from it, it is perhaps that underestimating the intelligence is relatively safe for a business, albeit many failed startups began from a failure to properly explore the reasons why an apparent opportunity exists, instead explaining it with the general stupidity of others.
edit: also, you could likewise wish for a comparable bankruptcy to some highly successful but rather overcomplicated operating system.
Why’s that? Why aren’t the networks making most profit by appealing to as many people as possible because that increase in revenue outweighs the additional advertising price increase made possible by narrowly appealing to the stupidest demographic? And why might the stupidest demographic be the most profitable, as opposed to advertising to the smartest and richest demographics? 1% of a million loaves is a lot better than 100% of one hundred loaves.
So you’re making at least two highly questionable economics arguments here, neither of which I accept.
Apple’s success is, from the original Mac on, frequently attributed to simplification and improving UIs. How is this not consistent with correctly estimating the intelligence of people to be low?
You’re absolutely right about this part. And this pervasive overestimation is one of the reasons that ‘worse is better’ and Engelbart died not a billionaire, and Engelbart’s beloved tiling window managers & chording keyboards are unfamiliar even to uber-geeks like us, and why so many brilliant techies watch other people make fortunes off their work. Because, among their other faults, they vastly overestimate how capable ordinary people and users are of using their products.
If one deliberately attempts to underestimate the intelligence of users, one may make less of a mistake than usual.
Seen any TV ads lately? I’m kind of wondering if you’re intending to win here by making an example.
Since you’re on to the markers of real world success, how does your income compare to the median for people of your age, race, sex, and economical status of parents, anyway?
I don’t think making fortune is that much about not overestimating other people. Here’s the typical profile of a completely failed start-up founder: someone with a high narcissism score—massive over-estimate of their own intelligence, massive under-estimating of other people’s intelligence all across the board. Plus when they fail, it typically culminates in a conclusion that everyone’s stupider.
edit: also with regards to techies watching others walk away with their money, there’s things like this Atari story
There’s a lot of cases of businesspeople getting more money, when the products are not user interfaces at all, but messy internals. Tesla and Edison are another story—Edison blew so much money on thinking that other people are stupid enough to be swayed enough by the electrocution of the elephant. He still made more money, of course, because he had the relevant money making talents. And Tesla’s poor business ability (still well above average) can hardly be blamed on people being too stupid to deal with complex things that happen in enclosed boxes.
Yes. Ads vary widely in the target audience, ranging from the utter lowest-common denominator to subtle parodies and references, across all sorts of channels. The ads you see on Disney are different from the ads you see on Fox News which are different from the ads you see on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block, which are different from the ones on the Discover channel. Exactly opposite of your crude ‘ads exist only to exploit stupid people’ model.
Below-average, and my own website is routinely criticized by readers for being too abstract, having a bad UI, and making no compromises or helping out readers.
Oh, I’m sorry—was I supposed to not prove the point about geeks like me usually overestimating the intelligence of ordinary people? It appears I commit the same sins. Steve Jobs would not approve of my design choices, and he would be entirely correct.
And what does this have to do with Steve Jobs? Please try to stay on topic. I’m defending a simple point here: Steve Jobs correctly estimated the intelligence of people as low, designed UIs to be as simple, intuitive, and easy to use, and this is a factor in why he died a billionaire. What does his narcissism have to do with this?
As I recall the history, this had nothing to do with UIs or people’s intelligence, but with Edison being in a losing position, having failed to invent or patent the superior alternating current technologies that Tesla did, and desperately trying anything he could to beat AC. Since this had nothing to do with UIs, all it shows is that one PR stunt was insufficient to dig Edison out of his deep hole. Which is not surprising; PR can be a powerful force, but it is far from omnipotent.
Thinking that average people’s intelligence is low != thinking every PR stunt ever, no matter how crackbrained, must instantly succeed and dig someone out of any hole no matter how deep.
I’d be astonished if resistance to advertising increases linearly or better with IQ once you control for viewing time. Marketing’s basically applied cognitive science, and one of the major lessons of the heuristics-and-biases field is that it’s really hard to outsmart our biases.
Why do you think you should control for the viewing time? As a marketer, it makes no difference for you why the higher IQs are less influenced. Furthermore a lot of advertising relies on outright lying.
Because I’d expect high-IQ populations to consume less media than the mean not thanks to anything intrinsic to IQ but because there’s less media out there targeting them, and that’s already factored into producers’ and advertisers’ expectations of audience size.
Similar considerations should come into play on the low end of the distribution: the IQ 80 cohort is roughly the same size as the IQ 120 and with less disposable income, both of which should make it less attractive for marketing. Free time might have an impact, but aside from stereotype I don’t know if the lifestyles of the low-IQ lend themselves to more or less free time than those of the high-IQ; I can think of arguments for both.
Exposure to marketing tactics might also build resistance to them, and I’d expect that to be proportional in part to media exposure.
“No one in this world, so far as I know-and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me-has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”—H.L.Mencken
I think this is happening with Hollywood, but that would be a longer story.
I’d be interested in hearing the longer story… It seems to me that Hollywood is doing very well with a low estimate of average intelligence.
I think there’s a great many apes that under-estimated the intelligence of a tiger or a bear, and haven’t contributed to our gene pool. There’s also all those wars where underestimations of the intelligence of enemy masses cost someone great deal of money and, at times, their own life.