Comment by starkparker
3 days ago
> I'm personally cultivating my fear for power tools.
I get what you're saying, but to get there you have to willfully conflate an irrational fear of unknown consequences with a rational fear of known consequences. The barrier for many adults to power-tool use is the former, which blocks them from acquiring the latter.
> The barrier for many adults to power-tool use is the former, which blocks them from acquiring the latter.
I don't know such people, and I don't know any research of the motivation of such people. But I can suggest an alternate hypothesis explaining their behavior. They just don't want to deal with power tools, have no interest in acquiring the skills, and they use their fear to explain their unwillingness causally.
A lot of people didn't even try to learn how to use musical instruments, and oftentimes they explain it by their tone deafness. But a good ear is not something people are born with, it is a result of training. Genes probably play their role, but for the most people it all boils down to practice. They didn't practiced, they cannot know about how good their ears are, but they use tone deafness as an excuse. What is really happening, they are not interested enough, or lazy, or have not enough time, but they use their inability to sing karaoke perfectly as a sign of tone deafness and as an excuse to not learning how to play music.
Tone deafness as an excuse is better than others, because it doesn't allow for persuasion, it is a full stop. The fear of power tools seems to me like that. So my hypothesis, this fear not the reason, but an excuse. I'm sure it is not true for some people, at the same time I'm sure it is true for some, the question is how many people use it as an excuse. I don't know, but I'd bet that more than 50%.