Reading a map.
GPS is great & all, but I know people that if you put a paper map in front of them they’re still lost because they can’t correlate the map with reality.
I can read a map (and hate letting the car navigate) but map has to be aligned with the world. Before the cell phone, I used to spread the map out on the ground, with north pointing north.
Thank you! You know what you need to do to make things work, and you’re not one of the people who think “North” = “The direction I’m facing”
searching for things in the internet.
i think LLM/PISS now has a bigger place because people dunno what to look for / what they want specifically.
there’s some legit use for LLMs, but to help you ‘search’ feels like you’re giving away some freedom for an unknown set of weighted biases.
Financial literacy
Empathy
Patience.
I’ve taken up several hobbies (game dev, gardening, woodworking, etc) where results aren’t always well seen until weeks, months or even years after starting a project.
Everyone seems too interested in getting results fast and now, and the world seems all too keen to sell you something to try and make that happen.
Sewing. Learn to sew! It’s very helpful!
My mom said “never learn to sew. You will look at clothes and say ‘no way I am buying that, I can make it’ and then you won’t make it, and you will have nothing to wear”.
I did sew costumes for my kids for Halloween, stuff that doesn’t have to last, but get what she was saying.
I do, however, cook much better than she did and am not sorry, still like going out to eat. And can make cocktails better than most I’d get at a bar but still find joy in going out for a drink. I think she was right about clothes though, they aren’t an experience like going out to dinner.
Driving. Most people know how to operate a vehicle, but a lot don’t know how to actually drive properly.
And yet the state gives them a license to drive. And doesn’t bother enforcing traffic laws. To me that’s the real problem.
For something very relevant to health: cooking, knowing how to measure food, and how to read a nutrition label. Obesity would be much less common if people were able to cook their own food more often, and knew how to actually measure out accurate portion sizes.
I totally get that time, upfront costs like cookware, and access to decent ingredients are MAJOR factors in whether or not someone can learn how to cook, but anyone can and should know how to read a nutrition label and know how to measure accurate portion sizes for the things they eat. If you are trying to lose weight or work on healthy habits, a food scale is infinitely more valuable than a body weight scale. Most people do not know what 28g of chips looks like.
Basic math. I don’t talk about solving differential equation. But if you don’t want to get scammed you need to understand what’s a 10% discount, how do interest work, price per kg, or price per m^2
Understand and knowledge that they are not an island. That the things they do, even if they believe it only affects them, affects those around them.
Basic sewing
Also empathy
Number 1 by far is knowing how to separate your opinions from your identity.
I’ve been thinking about this for years and I can’t shake the thought that identity politics is the root of most major problems in western society (esp. US). It means people interpret criticism of their opinions as personal attacks instead. This overblown defensive reaction leads to turning around and conflating the opinions of others with their worth as human beings.
Yes, there some truth to that. If you hold hateful & bigoted opinions, I would say that makes you a shit person. But you’re not necessarily condemned to that forever, because opinions can potentially change. This is tied in with Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance”, i.e. ideas should be tolerated unless they themselves are so intolerant as to undermine the wider marketplace of ideas.
When we equate (potentially temporary) opinions of others with immutable value, that’s what leads to dehumanizing them and taking away their fundamental rights. And as has always been the case throughout history, the burden falls primarily on vulnerable groups (immigrants, ethnic or social minorities, children and the elderly, etc).
People need to understand that YOU ARE NOT YOUR OPINION. Others can and should criticize your opinions, but that doesn’t mean they are attacking you personally. Defend the opinions, but don’t turn around and go ad-hominem in response. And for fuck’s sake, unless an opinion is so abhorrent or intolerant that it threatens someone else’s existence (e.g. Nazis), you don’t get to take away the holder’s rights to citizenship, food, shelter, healthcare, etc.
EDIT: And yes I do consider this a skill that people have to learn. I think most should be capable by maybe… age 7.
Having a basic idea of how a car/engine works. Most people waste so much money on basic repairs they could just do themselves. Feels like majority of folks couldn’t even put on their spare tire. Plus, mechanic is job that less and less people are willing to do over time so the cost of their labour will only keep getting worse
I’m like a few year older the driving age and I don’t even have a driver’s license 💀
I feel like I’m being called out 🥲
Depends where you live, maybe your life is just fine without it
This only applies if having a car is a requirement in your city/country tho. Nothing could be more useless for me than car knowledge.
I mean, this isn’t helped by the odd proprietary bolt patterns and specialty OBD communications required by some brands.
My wifes car has a bad pcv system, turns out it’s built into the valve cover and intake manifold so instead of unbolting a part and putting the new one on I have to take apart a heafty amount of the engine to fix what should be a basic repair.
I drive a golf and can’t even change my battery without updating my ecu to readapt to the new battery. If I don’t it starts frying sensors and the alternator because of voltage irregularities. Have to have the $80 dongle with the yearly subscription to access the necessary code input.
Car companies over the past decade have built cars that are harder and harder to maintain yourself. I don’t blame people for not knowing how to do some of the basic stuff when that basic stuff has become more complex, expensive, and unreasonably difficult for the layman to parse.
My dad has ran an auto repair shop for 40 years and it stopped being any sort of fun like 15 years ago.
That’s not even the biggest problem though. It’s customers and their entitlement. Worse every year.
Parts took longer to ship than promised? Mechanics fault
Car needs to go to the dealer? Mechanics fault
Something plastic piece broke on your car during disassembly because it was designed to break? Mechanics fault
Job supposed to be 10 hours labour but took you 15 because it’s not easy? Guess you just lost money helping someone cuz you have to eat the cost of those 5 hours
Some of this just isn’t worth the time or effort. Time is money, and sometimes it’s cheaper and easier to pay for warrantied work rather than do it yourself.
I can pay someone to change the oil and the oil filter and it takes them 15 minutes. I don’t enjoy doing it and it’s worth the money for me to pay someone else to do it. I don’t have to crawl under the car, or gather all the parts, or get filthy, or worry about disposing of the used oil properly.
Oil change is one of the things not worth doing yourself, agree
Cooking. I don’t mean heating up prepared food. I mean taking raw produce, spices, herbs, and starches to make your own food. Doesn’t need to be extravagant. Start with an omelette or maybe properly made scrambled eggs. Move on to other “easy” dishes like grilled cheese sandwiches and spaghetti. I am constantly amazed when I hear fully grown adults saying shit like, “I could never make anything like Beef Wellington.” Yes you can, just try and fail a few times!
The issue is I don’t want to
It’s great to learn because after a while you can start experimenting and making things you don’t have a recipe for. I kinda have a “memory” for tastes so I can just think about how things might go together so I just kinda make up dishes now. I mean I’m sure I’m not making something unique, but it’s all without a recipe. Or if you are lazy and are craving something you can just make it instead of having to go out lol I’ve made many “cakes” because I was craving something sweet but didn’t have anything around just by knowing how it’s done having done it before.
I always keep some easy prep boxed meals or whatever on hand for when I’m feeling really lazy.
Use those as a base and spruce them up with spices, veggies, meats, or even just swapping out one thing on the instructions for another to give some added richness or texture.
Half from scratch can be just as good as from scratch, especially when you’re tired and hungry AF and you’ll still have the satisfaction of making the dish “your own”.
I feel that if people knew how much effort it takes to create their food products, they might be more hesitant to waste them. Even with things as simple as making bread! It’s not just something that appears on a shelf, it’s the result of whole process and should be valued as such.
I agree, but bread and noodles were damn near the first stable foodstuffs we discovered. I suppose beer would be the next stable food we discovered worldwide. I only have an issue because you’re talking about a food that literally every single civilization discovered independently, so bread as we know it, isn’t bread as an all encompassing concept.
Critical thinking.
They should teach basic philosophy in schools; common formal fallacies and such.
They teach it at Turkish schools.
But then the eletorate would actually be making good decisions, how would the rich afford their 10th yacht?
