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Comment by godshatter | Hacker News Reader

It's the type of response a younger me would have said before I found out how wrong I can be even on subjects I think I know a lot about. My response now to such a question would be "That's weird, mySQL should work on all laptops. Let me take a look." From that point on I'm expecting it to be an error the person didn't understand, but I'm open to the idea that it might be a failure of their install script due to an odd configuration of the laptop, or even a symptom of another problem somewhere else, such as limited disk space, incorrectly installed drivers, or even a hardware issue.

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People who know too little about a topic know they are often wrong.

People who know too much about a topic also know they are often wrong.

It's the people in the middle who have unlimited confidence and arrogance.

There's a far more charitable interpretation (and explanation) of this: broadness.

People who know too little don't know how to get to the happy path, let alone stay in there.

People who know too much know extensively where the happy path lies, it's neighborhood, how to go off-road out of the happy path and the dangers that lie therein.

People in the middle know how to get to the happy path and remain there, and know that steering away from the happy path leads to trouble and ambiguity. As they mastered the happy path then they feel unlimited confidence and arrogance.

Exactly.

It's entirely possible that it's correct depending on the specifics. Say for example one is trying to install MySQL 8.0 on a laptop with Catalina, which is still supported by Apple and getting security updates. This is actually unsupported and won't work. A somewhat unlikely situation but definitely not impossible.

https://www.mysql.com/support/supportedplatforms/database.ht...

> Let me take a look

Exactly what the crafty older person wanted. Get you to do the work. "It doesn't work on my computer" or some other claim of trouble or ignorance is an easy way to trick a smart energetic young person to do something for you.

Young smart people don't like to say "I don't know how" or "I can't get it to work." An older person will say that without hesitation if it will prompt someone else to do something that he doesn't want to do himself.

>he doesn't want to do himself.

"want"?

My help comes at a price; they are going to sit there with me and listen to me blather on about what I'm looking at and what I find and what the solution was :)

This is an uncharitably suspicious inferring of the other person's motives. Is it required that the "older person" self-identify their technical limitations every time, before you will read their verbalization of the situation as a basic statement of frustration and/or admission of technical defeat?

For many people, the notion of debugging a MySQL installation on Windows so that it works seems about as plausible as summitting K2 - they don't expect others nearby can simply do it, either. (Also, the suggestion of inter-generational manipulation is not attractive.)

I don’t think it’s uncharitable. It just recognizes that there are always energetic problem solvers out there who will jump at the chance to prove someone wrong.

It’s kind of like the well known technique: “If you want the right answer to your question, confidently post the wrong answer and wait for the replies.”

> This is an uncharitably suspicious inferring of the other person's motives.

Agreed.

The charitable interpretation is a lot more reasonable: a parent/elder wants to spend time with their child/younger, and is even taking an interest in their career/hobbies.

I'd say the implied request for help or at least ideas for troubleshooting or alternatives is so obvious and natural that it doesn't merit this level of suspicion about ulterior motives. It's completely normal to say "I can't reach the top shelf" and mean "can you help me get something off the top shelf?"

As an aside, commonplace implicatures like these are a kind of what's called "pragmatics" in linguistics.

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