'A blog in support of stupid people's rights (probably the most important...)' blog

dtsazza

tagq2 wrote: »

A more revealing question might be, "Do you read and fully understand..." and the answer would of course be "no". You can have a layperson's approximation of an understanding of what a term means, assuming your intelligence and knowledge are sufficient to parse each often horribly-worded term. Even a lawyer's understanding will be the result of questionable interpretation. Even a court's will be, one of the main reasons we have an appeals system.

That's the crux of this issue as I see it.


Say I go out walking in the woods, I'm hungry, and I come across some mushrooms. I don't know enough about mushrooms to know if they're safe to eat. I have three options:

• Educate myself about mushrooms to the point where I can judge if these are toxic
• Get an expert (either a friend or a hired professional) to inspect the mushrooms for me and tell me
• Leave the mushrooms alone

Now I suppose there's the fourth option of "eat the mushrooms anyway and cross my fingers", but that doesn't seem very prudent. And if I did do that and was poisoned, I certainly wouldn't kick up a fuss and demand that nature labels her mushrooms more transparently - I'd correctly put it down to my own imprudence.


So you walk into a bank, you want a mortgage (etc.), and they're offering such a product. Should you take it?

Analogous situations, in my opinion. Others may differ of course, but consider that it's up to everyone to educate themselves about the situations they encounter if they want near-guaranteed success, rather than guessing their way through and feeling entitled to a good outcome regardless.

JimmyTheWig

dtsazza wrote: »

Implied by who, though? And on what grounds?

Implied by many, many people.

Not by you. Not by me.
By my mum to some extent.
By my nan to a large extent.
By millions of otherwise reasonable people who don't realise that we live in "an adversarial consumer society".

People trust banks and the people who work in them (to the extent that they're allowed to sign passport photos!). Why, my nan would say, for example, would the bank lie to me?
People trust products advertised by the likes of Carol Vorderman and Jonathon Creek (slightly dated references, but you know what I mean).

I don't like the fact that people trust the banks, but it happens.


And as for reading the terms and conditions on Acrobat Reader, while I have no doubts that your position is correct, you must accept that you are in the minority there, don't you? I'm sure that the majority of people who want to view a pdf document do so with Acrobat and do so without reading the terms and conditions each time.

Scarpacci

dtsazza wrote: »

Now I suppose there's the fourth option of "eat the mushrooms anyway and cross my fingers", but that doesn't seem very prudent. And if I did do that and was poisoned, I certainly wouldn't kick up a fuss and demand that nature labels her mushrooms more transparently - I'd correctly put it down to my own imprudence.

In this situation, I think many people would eat the mushrooms and then sue the council, in whose area the deadly mushrooms lay, for gross negligence and demand thousands of pounds in compensation.

When something bad happens to people in Britain these days, the default train of thought seems to be "Somebody must be to blame ... and it sure ain't me!".

turbo.jet

dtsazza wrote: »

I use SumatraPDF instead of Acrobat because the latter is so fussy and has so much cognitive overhead for the simple task of displaying a PDF. Prompting for updates and restating the EULA each time is a part of this.)

Hear hear! Adobe drives me crazy. How many updates??? A reboot... really??

(a little off topic I know but that really struck a chord)

Butti

Errata,
I think Martin is using 'stupid people' in the same way as I refer to unaffordable 'affordable' housing i.e. they aren't stupid.

Some people like anonymity as it allows them to throw crap and abuse at others. Think of it as therapy for them. You are providing therapy for them Martin.

Ignore them and toughen up a bit. Look at how many people follow your advice, you can cope with a few trolls / semi-trolls.

B

p.s. Always hated Mr Branson's card. It goes from 0% to 32% APR and lists the APR as monthly so without a calculator you can't see that's what it is....and they used to bombard you with handy credit card cheques at 29% APR during the free period.

JimmyTheWig

dtsazza wrote: »

Say I go out walking in the woods, I'm hungry, and I come across some mushrooms. I don't know enough about mushrooms to know if they're safe to eat.

How about this scenario...

Say I am sitting in a restaurant, I'm hungry and they've got mushrooms on the menu. I don't know enough about mushrooms to know if they're safe to eat.

Do you take the same approach as you did with the mushrooms in the woods? Or do you trust the restaurant would only sell edible mushrooms and assume that they're ok.

I think that's a similar level of trust that many people have in their banks.
Martin (correctly) teaches us that we shouldn't trust our banks in this way. But there are only so many people that Martin can get through to. Sometimes we need a bigger picture response to these companies to protect everyone.

Errata

If Martin Lewis had written 'This is my list of people who some other people think are stupid' he would have made his meaning clear. He didn't, it wasn't.

tagq2

dtsazza wrote: »

And if I did do that and was poisoned, I certainly wouldn't kick up a fuss and demand that nature labels her mushrooms more transparently - I'd correctly put it down to my own imprudence.

So you walk into a bank, you want a mortgage (etc.), and they're offering such a product. Should you take it?

Analogous situations, in my opinion.

A mushroom is not sufficiently rational to be able to comprehend rights or responsibilities, nor even sufficiently developed to be able to feel joy or suffering. It would be fruitless (fungusless?) to develop a society which grants the mushroom rights or burdens the mushroom with responsibilities, and meaningless to show empathy toward the mushroom. That's just the way the mushroom is, and you can't change the mushroom.

A bank manager, on the other hand, is usually more advanced than a mushroom. He has a social standing in a social species, so the tribe grants him rights, burdens him with responsibilities, and takes account of his emotion. If he harms the tribe for personal gain, the tribe will castigate him.

And that's really the basis for all law, including regulation.

Others may differ of course, but consider that it's up to everyone to educate themselves about the situations they encounter if they want near-guaranteed success,

Education is more likely to increase the chance of success, certainly. You're absolutely right that we should all strive to educate ourselves as much as we can. But how much each of us "can" varies substantially: even those of us who consider themselves extremely smart (who are already unusual enough not to represent the lot of the average man) will be trivially outwitted by someone yet much smarter.

rather than guessing their way through and feeling entitled to a good outcome regardless.

The "entitlement" word has come into economics and politics a lot over the past decade, usually in the sense, "I am entitled to protections to continue behaving as I do, whereas you are not." The huckster who uses complicated language in the knowledge that his clients are too trusting and ignorant has no more natural "entitlement" to protect his gains than the flashy idiot who bought a luxury car on credit and can't afford the repayments.

It's simply up to the tribe to decide which sort of behaviours the tribe will protect and which it will prohibit. And if the behaviour harms the tribe but its prohibition does not cause suffering then the tribe would be degenerate not to prohibit it. The best way to proceed is with a scientific understanding of the abilities and limits of man rather than an ideal of man as either a hero or a helpless pawn.

Errata wrote:

If Martin Lewis had written 'This is my list of people who some other people think are stupid' he would have made his meaning clear. He didn't, it wasn't.

Forgive me for using you as an example, but I think you've illustrated well how some writing which has one obvious meaning to some people can be understood completely differently by others. To me it is quite clear that ML was referring to what "stupid" often means, but to you it was not at all clear. You accept now (or possibly not?) that your interpretation was wrong, but how would you have known if others hadn't been there to point it out?

tl;dr How confident can a man be in his own judgement?

aliasojo

dtsazza wrote: »

The terms are laid out in front of you, stating what the institution is proposing to do. If you sign a document, to agree to be bound by something without knowing or understanding what you've just signed up for - well, I just can't see an excuse for that.

Or rather, I'm sure there are lots of excuses, but it comes down to taking responsibility for your own actions. It's my view that trying to wrap the whole world in cotton wool, so that people are now told that coffee is hot, is both incredibly wasteful and condescending, and gets in the way of the crux of humanity: actions leading to consequences.

If you don't understand the terms of what you're signing up for, or you can't be bothered to read them, don't sign it until you do. And if you choose to do it anyway, you can't expect to have any recourse if they differ from what you assumed they'd be.

My adult son has learning difficulties. His Father took him away for a few days and whilst Dad was in a queue to pay for things at a station kiosk, son was approached by someone who got him to sign up for an MBNA credit card.

He was told to 'just sign here, get the card and stick it in a drawer and don't use it if you don't want to'.

Son is as gullible as they come and his difficulties are obvious as soon as he opens his mouth so the chap knew fine what kind of person he was touting this card to. Son had no understanding of any of this but the chap told him to sign, so he signed.

An account was opened and a card was issued. Needless to say I complained to MBNA but it's shocking how easily this happened.

Many people with learning disabilities will have support so will hopefully be 'minded' so they don't fall foul to 'opting out', but there are also many who will be affected by it.

Yes, I do think too many people simply dont take enough care (and I dont feel much sympathy for that group tbh) but there are sections of society who do find things difficult and I think that should be acknowledged.

I'd like to believe that an ethical approach is always taken when selling to us, but the reality is, it's not. For that reason, I think Martin has a point with his comments.

Btw Martin, I'm not usually the type to get too hung up on the terminology of things but I question the wisdom of using the term 'stupid' in your article. And yes, I did note the inverted commas. :undecided

dtsazza

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Implied by many, many people.

Not by you. Not by me.
By my mum to some extent.
By my nan to a large extent.
By millions of otherwise reasonable people who don't realise that we live in "an adversarial consumer society".

True, although what I was getting at was who the source was for an individual person. I wanted to highlight what rationale people were using as a basis for the trust - which especially in banks isn't really based on anything.

I do realise a lot of people think like that.

People trust banks and the people who work in them (to the extent that they're allowed to sign passport photos!)

(Incidentally, that's always annoyed me - along with the "bring a utility bill as proof of address." They're absolutely terrible protocols that achieve nothing, as they're trivial to bypass if you want to, given that they add no actual security and so just obstruct normal functionality.)

People trust products advertised by the likes of Carol Vorderman and Jonathon Creek (slightly dated references, but you know what I mean).

I don't like the fact that people trust the banks, but it happens.

Yeah, that's what I don't understand.

Do people generally think that Carol Vorderman goes on an advert to express her own unbiased preference in something? It's clear that she's paid to do it, so the only thing you can conclude is that the company isn't so self-evidently abhorrent to her that she would refuse to advertise for the money they're prepared to offer. (But even then, since people's experiences and attitudes differ, they can "shop around" and get a different celebrity with equivalent star status but with no problems
doing the ad.)

And anyway, celebrities are very rarely famous for their acumen in choosing a cereal/bank/car/etc. Why would someone think "he's good at acting, so I bet he is better at choosing a breakfast cereal for my life, than I am"? It boggles the mind...

And as for reading the terms and conditions on Acrobat Reader, while I have no doubts that your position is correct, you must accept that you are in the minority there, don't you? I'm sure that the majority of people who want to view a pdf document do so with Acrobat and do so without reading the terms and conditions each time.

I do accept that I'm in the minority.

What's interesting is that if everybody realised that it was OK/sensible/socially acceptable to refuse T&Cs that you didn't understand, the problem would disappear very quickly. Companies wouldn't be able to release products with confusing T&Cs, else they'd lose market share to other companies that were more up-front.

But for some reason people let companies "get away" with complex terms and conditions by not exercising their right to choose, to the point where it's now commonplace - and judging by the blog post, even those who really don't understand are being swept along with it.

I wonder if a campaign to change social attitudes to this (similar to drink driving a few decades ago) would be more effective than a campaign to force more legislation through? The former has the advantage that it doesn't require any specific compliance or regulatory bodies, and the shades of grey are dealt with very effectively via market forces (ultimately the customer decides whether they can understand what's put in front of them), rather than being debated through the courts.