People aren't bad at "unpacking". They haven't made any effort to think about things.
I had a coworker ask a nephew in high school to sit with me at work to show them a software job. They said they wanted to be a game developer. It turned out they had never seen software code in any form, and had no idea what programing was generally. I asked them if they had any art skills, and they were baffled why that was relevant.
They had no concept of the job at all. They just liked video games. Apparently, I crushed their dreams.
> People aren't bad at "unpacking". They haven't made any effort to think about things.
I feel like the author made it pretty clear that's exactly what he means by "bad at unpacking."
The article describes it in relation to the limitations of human imagination. That's only relevant if you've made an attempt to think about it.
> Apparently, I crushed their dreams.
Why does your post make it sound like you dunked on some poor high school student? Maybe you could have been a tad more supportive? Not everyone is fortunate enough to understand what goes into engineering in high school. I am personally really grateful that when I had my "I wanna make games" moment, and I didn't know engineering at all, that I had the right influences in my life to guide me in the direction of understanding how to get there.
No, you're just making an assumption. I happily showed them the code I was working on. I was told afterward that I crushed their dreams by their aunt.
the internet has a habit of making everyone seem flat and cynical