The Nth Degree
Stupidity knows no bounds, but in my experience is especially prevalent in people who always feel the need to prove their intelligence. If the first thing someone does to defend their position is to point at their license or degree, chances are very good they’re completely inept. Recently I had a discussion with someone who reminded me just how offensive it is to even try to communicate with these idiots.
My very first experience with someone who had a master’s degree in computer science was my first duty station supervisor in the military. This LT (JG) was in charge of the base computer systems, and I was his first and only enlisted staff member. I had never touched a conventional computer before, knew absolutely nothing about them, and was, of course, immediately tasked with building hundreds of computers from parts and then shortly thereafter tasked with being the security point of contact for all the military users of tens of thousands of computers across every military base on the entire West coast of the US.
The problem is that the LT was a degreed idiot. He may have passed a few tests and had a pretty piece of paper with his name on it, but he had no clue how technology actually worked, he didn’t understand the very basic concept of Boolean values and could not even comprehend what a batch file was.
Seeing that I’d get no help or answers from him, I took the manuals home and read them cover to cover, read the entire IETF RFC library and many technical books on the subject over the course of my first few weeks at that assignment. Then I spent eight months trying to gracefully educate him on these basics…and in his gratitude he took every opportunity to treat me like crap for having a better understanding of technology than he did after years and years of his “education.”
Fast forward a few years. When my son was a toddler we spent a lot of time with his friends’ parents. One lady in particular (Maria, a college professor) drove me quite batty. Most of her family were MD’s and many in my family were DC’s, so, knowing only this, she treated me like a pariah. Maria would take her son to urgent care if he slept in late, had a headache or dared to talk back to her. In her mind, these were all major defects and something just had to be wrong with him. As you can expect, this poor child was one of those kids who was branded ADHD before he could talk.
Maria stepped on my every nerve, but one specific incident stands out. She was in the middle of telling me how chiropractors frequently paralyze their patients (a flat-out lie), and I pointed out that MD’s are far more lethal than guns. In point of fact, your MD is about 300x more likely to kill you than a gun. Not wanting to make it personal by suggesting that Maria’s family were incompetent or homicidal psychopaths, I followed that up with this simple statement: “but you have to remember that 50% of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class.”
She stood there glaring at me, aghast, her jaw dropped to the floor, for what felt like a full minute. The other parents and even the children in the room were completely silent while we waited, watching intently for her response. The only sound was the air conditioner chugging away.
Finally, she screamed, “no they don’t!” The other parents and some of the children couldn’t even contain their laughter. This woman was so high-and-mighty, perpetually attacking everything and everyone she disagreed with, but couldn’t do fifth-grade math? Apparently, the reason 7,500 people die each year from pharmaceutical errors is that simple mathematics are beyond the scope of medical school.
But this all pales in comparison to what happened with my latest experience with another degreed idiot. A client’s site had both an email account and an ftp account hijacked within 24 hours. The passwords had both been randomly generated, were not brute-forced, and only this one person, Jane, had access to both of them. I asked the client to talk to her and have her scan her computer for malware so we could ensure the machine wouldn’t be compromised again after a password reset. The client forwarded me a message from Jane where Jane clearly stated that she had not been infected and that it couldn’t have been related to her.
I took the time to be sure and again reviewed the logs. The only tie for these two accounts was definitely Jane, but, she was quite adamant that she had not been infected. I wrote a very civil and respectful message to her asking her to scan again, along with my regular advice for security, and the common compromise mechanisms for the specific hijack I suspected. I even offered to login and verify that the machine was actually clean and safe.
Jane wrote back absolutely livid that I would dare suggest security changes or that she might have ever been infected. After all, and I quote, “My husband and I both have Master’s degrees in computer science…” The most compelling proof of this was that she didn’t use a single carriage return in her 350+ word message. Apparently she obtained her degree before keyboards included a return or enter key.
She also went into greater detail about how she had actually been infected, and it was none of my business, but even though neither of the antivirus programs on her computer could remove it, she was just sure it was gone now. Not interested in keeping it civil, she took several swipes at my character, my skill level and my education – including a statement about how my message to her was a perfect example of why IT workers were justifiably hated.
I wrote her again, maintaining my civil and respectful tone (my professional policy is to “kill ’em with kindness”). I reassured her that it was not a personal attack, and that she was the only one with access to both accounts.
As expected, her response was absurd, and only proved her level of incompetence. Remember: master’s degree in computer science, okay? She explained how there was never an “infection,” though there actually were files detected by both her antivirus programs whenever she opened her browser that both antivirus programs were each incapable of removing…but just because there were infected files detected by both her antivirus programs doesn’t mean she was ever actually “infected.” And because I clearly needed the reminder, “you don’t know who you’re dealing with or what you’re talking about.” Topping it off, her firewall is “locked down tight.” As if firewalls had anything to do with normal browsing behavior. I’ll bet she regularly deletes her browser cookies for her “security,” too. Sigh.
Out of curiosity, and because I “didn’t know who I was dealing with”, I googled her name and location to see just how bad the state of the world was. Not surprisingly, this woman teaches computer science at a university. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t even feign surprise. Abrasive, defensive, ignorant and technologically incompetent. Yep, that sounds about right. She simply must be teaching computer science at a university somewhere. What’s more: her husband manages the campus IT network. It finally makes sense that about 30% of all hacking attempts against our servers are from college and university IP addresses.
The most appalling thing to me is that these people each felt so justified in their behavior that they were prepared to scream it from the rooftops. Not knowing that 50% and half mean the same thing, or that an infection is an infection (but especially when your antivirus is incapable of removing it), is a sign of extremely defective reasoning. These are the “experts” for military, medicine and education, at least in their own heads. They are so set in their opinions that facts, reason and logic are simply vulgar words to them. These people shape the minds of technology today.
And people still wonder why Windows 8 didn’t have a start button.
What I’ve really learned from these experiences is that my policy of being nice “no matter what” is the real source of this problem. Would the LT have still treated me so poorly had I not tried to help him understand the problems with his decisions? Would Maria have still had her abrasive behavior had I not taken the effort to allow her an out? Would Jane have attacked my character had I not offered to help her? We’ll never know.
