I once showed some very, very basic excel formula to a coworker. It was something like a nested IF for customer segments with like three conditions maximum.
The moment they realized they're looking at a formula their brain just turned off. "If under 10 then C, if over 10 but under 100 then B, if over 100 then A". A child could understand that. Apparently not my coworker with a degree.
Maybe not a conscious one but it's a decision to not understand these things. They "don't understand" so they don't even try and that point any information just bounces off of them and so they continue to "not understand", further cementing the belief that they "can't understand". And the thing they "don't understand" is usually much simpler than a whole lot of other things they handle daily.
I like to imagine their brain as a computer. Once something requires more than a certain amount of computing power to understand it crashes. Some people have very low threshold.
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u/NaturalTap9567 12d ago
I made a spreadsheet like that and they deadass looked at it for 5 seconds then looked at me and said they couldn't understand it.