> I think there's still a problem in our society or species in general that people simply do not read things thoroughly.
We're overwhelmed with shit to read. Most of it poorly written. Almost none of it important. Combine with the tendency (in some societies—notably, the US is possibly the most like this) to post rules and notices and disclaimers on everything, and we become blind even to things that look like they might be important—because they almost never are.
WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including arsenic, which is known to the State of California to cause cancer. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.
I've heard a tinfoil take that this is intentional malicious compliance to cause banner blindness. If you put the warning on everything then you can sell dangerous materials because people won't be checking the label. If you label everything "WARNING: Contains Dihydrogenmonoxide" then people will ignore it when it says "WARNING: Contains Lead"
I've had exactly one time where prop 65 notified me of lead in food. Everything else has been histrionic. I can't help but wonder if there was a concerted effort to make these warnings as useless as they are.
Also, documentation is almost always written for the beginner, with lots of boiler plate. Which means trying to separate the wheat from the chaffe is quite difficult, and I don't want to read your back ground on "what are containers?" If your software is just like another piece of software, and 18 of the components do the same thing they do in another piece of software, and the 19th is named the same as something else and works completely differently, I'm going to get frustrated if there's no straightforward easy to find explanation.
It’s funny because I usually run into the exact opposite. All documentation seems to be like Unix man pages. It only makes sense if you’re already an expert at it. If you’re not, then it makes no sense and if it does have the answer, you’ll never be able to understand it.
Then that points to another problem: that the people who have this adaptation aren't doing anything to eliminate its necessity (e.g. contacting their representative about dumb labels on things, or sending negative feedback to a website that has a bunch of useless text on it).
Because those are completely ineffective ways to get anything accomplished, and have no reward even if they are successful.
It's important to remember that activists are people who are working for free. The economic incentives for me to get a website or product to e.g. remove intrusive ads or pointless warnings are completely negative: it's a waste of my time and/or money.
That's the purpose of government, so we don't have to take on these things as atomized individuals. There's no economic incentive for me to build an inch of highway.
Fixing it's probably as much cultural as legal. On the legal side, a full fix would probably involve moving away from common law, which is a tall order.
We're overwhelmed with shit to read. Most of it poorly written. Almost none of it important. Combine with the tendency (in some societies—notably, the US is possibly the most like this) to post rules and notices and disclaimers on everything, and we become blind even to things that look like they might be important—because they almost never are.