I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)
It's worth noting that, while 12 volts won't normally penetrate dry skin under most humidity conditions, you really do need to be careful. Pressure increases surface-to-surface contact, which decreases resistance, which lowers the voltage threshold. So can moisture, like even small amounts of sweat. And a car battery does have sufficient current to injure or kill a human being quite easily. (Voltage penetrates insulators, current actually does damage. The zap you get from static electricity is in the range of thousands of volts, but the current is negligible.)
And a car battery does have sufficient current to injure or kill a human being quite easily. (Voltage penetrates insulators, current actually does damage.
Fortunately current and voltage are not independent features of a power source - and in the case of current not even something that can be meaningfully measured without specifying the load! A car battery does not "have sufficient current to injure or kill a human quite easily" because of the human part of the (I=V/R) equation.
Yeah, car batteries can do about a kiloamp into a dead short so we can treat them as ideal voltage sources for this 'application'. However, even with wet hands and solid contact, 12 volts is too low to get much current flowing.
Soaking my hands in saturated salt water got my hand to hand resistance down to 10-20kohm (0.5-1ma), which is still at least a factor of 250 above the 40 ohm resistance you'd need to draw 300ma, which is the lower figure wiki gives for DC caused fibrillation. Putting one hand on either terminal didn't get me so much as a tingle.
I know tingle levels are possible when soaking for longer (hours) and 9v will tingle your tongue (2-4milliamps), but it seems exceedingly hard to get to a dangerous level, considering that most models I've seen had the internal resistance of people at hundreds of ohms (350 is the number that sticks in mind). Also nerves are somewhat AC coupled, which brings the fibrillation limit up and makes people push away from the source instead of clinging on.
I guess it might be possible for someone with thin skinned thoroughly soaked hands making good contact and having a poorly shielded sensitive heart, but I'd call it a 'freak accident'.
I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)