Anyone else remember the Idiot’s Guide and For Dummies series of books? I do, and they’ve sadly become impossible to find where I’m from, to the point that I thought they’d discontinued them.
These are some of my copies from those series – the ones I had closest at hand, anyway – and they are all quite old and well-read. While the naming was a little strong, I found them to actually be quite empowering. Normal goobers like you and I could be expected to comprehend even the wildest things out there. The books are written in a conversational and casual style, allowing highly qualified authors to distill complex topics down to simple bits that the average person can understand. As anyone who’s read me for a while knows, I think that’s a great thing.
That they aren’t so common anymore is a damn shame. Not only does that mean fewer fools like me educating ourselves, but it also signifies a dangerous shift in expectations. We are expected, now more than ever in the era of fake news and misinformation, to trust the experts in a state of learned helplessness, because we need to learn more to a greater depth than ever before. For my full thoughts on this matter, refer to the articles below:
Suffice it to say that I think it sucks. It takes away our agency and puts our fate in the hands of people that don’t have our best interests at heart. Worst of all, however, is the implication – that there is no point in idiots and dummies studying, and as though general intelligence is the only thing that determines one’s ability to learn.
By the way, I think that is incredibly untrue. Knowledge and expertise are incredibly specific to a person and a lot less transferrable than you’d think, so while someone with high general intelligence might learn things faster, without training, experience with similar systems beats out high general intelligence, every time. See my Thumbtack Model of Knowledge below:
https://whynotthink.substack.com/i/140641964/the-thumbtack-model-of-knowledge
It is in this spirit that I write the Layman’s Guides. I want to bring back that optimism, the idea that we regular goobers can get a good enough grasp of things to get conversant in the things that matter to us. Be it gardening, cooking, accounting, or the electrical grid, I want to make it so that we believe we can do it.
For those of you who found me through The Layman’s Guide to Electricity and wondering where it is, I apologize, but it’ll be ready when it’s ready. There’s a lot I need to distill, and I will likely need to run it by people who are better-educated in the field than me. If you really need to scratch the itch for Layman’s Guides, you can try the ones for accounting that I’ve already written – helpful for anyone who wants to read financial statements or understand what’s happening under the hood when their accountant is doing their taxes.