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Internet Explorer Users Have Low Risk Intelligence
First time accepted submitter benne2011 writes "A hoax report earlier this year claimed that people who used Internet Explorer had a lower IQ than those using other browsers. Inspired by this bit of fun, Projection Point decided to carry out a real study comparing the risk intelligence (RQ) of people using different browsers. We found that Internet Explorer users performed worse than everyone else; they had lower RQ scores and were grossly overconfident."
Don't slurp the graveyard fog off of my cheeks...
Don't slurp my bootyass...
Please, no! I beg you!
So first we called them stupid, and now they are grossly overconfident according to another study.
I predict the next study will show that their mothers are fatter than average, and ugly.
...Of my lack of faith in these studies.
I was sure this would be first post.
This study would be a lot more believable if they didn't use phrases like " users of monopoly software" and actually linked to the test they gave.
(For the record, I'm not an IE user either. But the article isn't too far from spelling Microsoft with a dollar sign)
What if some of them also watch FOX News?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Of the people that bought cars this last year, the ones that bought electric cars are more educated on environment issues than those that bought sports cars.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
firefox users think they are smart,
chrome users are the douchebags of the internet,
opera users are superficial,
safari users are fashion hippies with deep pockets or high credit bills
and ofcourse....
netscape users are still on dial-up and
bbs users have something naughty to hide
IE Users who also watch Fox News are more likely than most to be in a coma and on life support, but on their own dime... cause even in a coma, they didn't need no damn government assistance!
Of course IE users are dumber than users of FireFox, Opera or Chrome. If you look at the demographic of these other browsers they are used by "early adopters" and similar personalities that exhibit high levels of intelligence. At the same time, this is completely meaningless as IE does not cause the dumbness either and there are plenty of other items or activities that separate out people with a high IQ.
For example, you could also say the same thing about C/C++ coders since they compared to the public at large are smarter. (Not that they are so smart but rather that the general population is not.) It would be hard to argue that everybody should write code in C/C++ -- including your hair stylist -- because those who code in C/C++ are smarter than those who don't.
Most of your Window users are technologically illiterate. IE is there it works why fart around with it. To use a sort of car analogy how many people look under the hood of their car? Never mind improve it beyond stock. Now I bet the guys that heavily modify their cars have higher intelligence than the average stiff. Any person inclined to tinker with or improve things most likely is smarter than the average Joe. Average Joe is most likely to push the largest shiniest button with a flashing red light whatever the case may be, especially is the button say "Do not touch".
From Wikipedia: The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. Dunning-Kruger Effect Study was done in 99, so they are only 12 years late on this one.
Zoinks! They've discovered my secret room behind the bookcase containing a large gallery of ASCII penises! Why, even the furniture is made up of ASCII penises constructed from legos!
You cannot fight the swarm of ASCII penises, do not even try.
IE = Windows = overconfident.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
so is this like saying people who don't know anything about cars who think their cars don't need regular maintenance will make bad decisions about their car? (yay first car analogy!)
If you look at normal people, not geeks, it is very easy to understand why it is like this.
IE == I do not care, I use whatever is default
Safari == I have heard that an Apple computer does not need antivirus, so I am taking less risks if I buy a such.
Firfox/Chrome == I am using Windows with antivirus, but I have heard Firefox/Safari is more safe choice
The difference is pretty small between each group as not everybody thinks like that. For example some buy Apple products just because they are expensive and they want to show to the rest of the world they have money. But in general i think the reasoning applies in many cases.
there's no such thing as "risk intelligence". It's a fucking made-up word by the idiot blogger in TFA. Go ahead, TRY to look it up.
I'm sure Opera is missing because all 17 users saw no point in taking the test. -posted from Opera Mobile
A sample size of 351 and the scores are 57.5, 59.8, 60.2, and 61.8. That proves what exactly?
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From their website: "We define Risk Intelligence as the ability to estimate probabilities accurately."
Are they not aware of the pioneering and Nobel prize awarded studies of Tversky and Kahnemann in the 70's which demonstrated beyond any doubt that humans are terrible at estimating any kind of probability (especially risk-related ones)?
What about the 10-step percentage scale they used? Seriously, is any person able to differentiate between being "70% sure" and "80% sure" regarding any statement?
What about latent variables like the OS used? How can one possibly compare any feature of a Windows user with features of Mac or Linux user?
I can't locate any samples of the questionnaire used and I don't need to see any, because I'm 89.345943% sure they don't know what they're talking about.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is perhaps the most useful effect to use when trying to make sense of modern politics. Listen to any die-hard politico, and the more sure they are of their response, the more certain you can be of how inexperienced they are.
In today's politics, a sure, unwavering certainty is almost a sure sign of success: a "flip flopper" will get nowhere, (Mitt Romney, John Kerry take note) while idiots who never change their opinions (EG: George Bush Jr) get lots of press for "holding true" despite all the evidence to the contrary.
So, the loudest political advocates are either the idiots, or somewhat less loudly, those who actually have some idea what's going on. For those who just want to "do the right thing", without a lot of effort, it's damnably difficult to tell the difference.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
In another study, most people have low risk intelligence.
Low Risk Intelligence? That means that their intelligence is pretty safe, right?
...or they are just causal users, following advice given in consumer protection TV shows: Just yesterday I zapped into Planetopia yesterday (show in Germany), where they "compared" browsers and came to the conclusion Chrome for speed, Firefox for customization, Explorer for security. Sponsored report, or just a clueless reporter?
If there is any validity to this kind of study, it is merely detecting that people who use IE tend to be late adopters to new technology and that late adopters have many other properties, including low "risk intelligence". I'd also expect them to be outside of the 18-49 demographic.
The study size was 350 participants.
If you break down the percentages, they are variations of two or three people in each sample.
This is so far from statistically significant, it's laughable.
So they're on Slashdot too?
Ok, it's not strictly instead of Firefox and Chrome, but it's my default browser on my primary work machine. I'm currently running VMware Player, with a Linux machine on it, and that runs Firefox, which crashes Way Way Too Often, usually because of Flash. I do most of my web browsing there, and have NoScript, Ghostery, and AdBlock Plus, and usually a couple of other safety tools. And I keep another Virtual Machine around, with a stripped-down Linux distro with Firefox in Private Browsing Mode, which I use to read Facebook, because I don't want Facebook contaminating anything else, stealing cookies and history files, or whatever. (If there's a way to keep VMware Player paged in, using the whole 1GB I have allocated for it, instead of swapping itself out when it's not busy even though there's spare hardware RAM left, I'd appreciate pointers; I haven't found them.)
I'm also running Chrome natively, mostly for a bunch of electronics blogs like Hackaday, and occasionally for Gmail, and it's really bloated - burns almost 2GB if I have it turned on with my usual set of tabs. I'm not sure I entirely trust Google to behave themselves with Chrome, but they already know everything about my Gmail account (which I don't use for anything sensitive), and the electronics stuff doesn't get much personal information except when I'm buying equipment.
I used to run Firefox natively as my default browser, but there are a couple of problems with it - it Crashes Way Too Often, and it's also a memory hog (though better than it used to be, and not as bad as Google), and there are a couple of work applications that don't run cleanly except on IE. Until recently, it was my default browser, so if I clicked on a link in an email message, FF would either start from scratch or open another tab, spin the disk for a while while it sucked down memory, and then run, hopefully without crashing itself or crashing something else by hogging memory, and then be its usual friendly self. But I found that usually when I'm clicking on links from my work email, they're either sites I trust, or else they're work related sites like the HR website or web conference bridge that are happier running in IE, and I got tired of that.
That takes us to IE. It's IE7 because the Desktop Support department at work finally let us use IE7 instead of IE6, but is too scared to go to IE8, at least on Windows XP, and they made their saving throw against Windows Vista a couple of years ago - my next set of hardware will run Win7. And it has tabs, so it's not totally obnoxious to use, and it really doesn't crash much, so it's less obnoxious than Firefox, and it usually doesn't use a lot of memory, because I don't usually let it keep more than a couple of tabs open at a time, though it would happily be a memory pig if I let it.
(And then there's Safari and Opera, which I used to have installed - the IT department run little scanning robots that rat you out within a day if you install them, for reasons that sound more like the Software License Police rather than the IT department's normal reticence to have useful software running on our machines, and you get a call from some guy in India who's going to walk you through uninstalling them whether you like it or not. So I no longer run them.)
I suppose there's also Konqueror or other Linux-oriented browsers that I could be running in the Linux VM - are there times it's worth using them instead of Firefox?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Reading the comments in this thread it seems Slashdot users don't fair too well in the 'clicky linky' stakes.
The link to the test is at the bottom of the article.
Problem with the test however is that it is American centric, lots of stuff a non-American is less likely to know like the starting line of the decleration of independence. I guessed that the given sentence is not it because that is what everyone thinks and in these kinds of things, what everyone thinks is always wrong but it was a guess, not something I actually once learned in school or read because it was relevant to me... oh wait, that is just like an American. Never mind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just saying "Droid" (vs. "Android") is enough to start a flamewar in this unstable day and age. A "Slashdot Spring" if you will.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Has nobody posted this yet?
No sig today...
In my company we have all sorts of computer users, from multiple doctorates (not tech or science related, though) right to straight-out-of-school and temp workers (holidays). My experience is that intelligence or education has very little to do with the general ability to understand the computing environment, but age has a lot to do with it - the younger generations are (in general) simply more used to using computers, and thus more savvy.
It is an almost impossible task to explain the most basic things about safe passwords (which they get to choose, and often leave empty or make same as their name) to the BC (before computers) crowd, let alone why some other browser might be better than the stock one they have been using since they first switched on a computer, what a browser actually does, that there ARE different browsers, and that you can download and install various good ones for free.
Heck, just this morning I had to help Dr. So-and-so because she couldn't even type "pa$$w0rd" correctly in the little dotty box (yeah, I know, but it's a default on a third-party-system, which shall remain unnamed).
AC for obfuscation reasons.
...different browsers on different websites for a given platform. On my current XP box, I use Firefox, Safari (replaced Flock, which I used previously) and IE8 (9 is not supported). On my Linux laptop, I used Flock, Opera (for a while before it got screwed after an update became an upgrade, messing up the Opera system), Konqueror and Firefox. On my sister's laptop, I've used Chrome as well. Essentially, I use different browsers for different purposes altogether - Firefox/Chrome for things like e-mail, maps and such things, Safari/Chrome/Flock for YouTube and forums (although not this one), IE/Konq/Opera for websites related to OSs (as well as /.) Oh, and Firefox if I need to do things like check my router settings.
So how did I do, according to this study? I try out every browser I can get my hands on, and unless it's badly unusable, I typically mark a few websites that I'd browse using that browser.
Other places tend to have low sulpur in their crude oil simply because of when the stuff was laid down and what was or wasn't in the water at the time. The US ended up with a lot, but that's not a big deal once the infrastructure to keep it out of the fuel was built.
It's not IE users, it's users who don't change their default browser.
The quoted article says "We do not claim that the results presented here are scientifically permissible." - lol, what a waste of bandwidth.
I do not see how you can judge people using internet explorer by this, it was only done on a small group.
I don't even use internet explorer, yet i still find this offensive...
> they had lower RQ scores and were grossly overconfident."
That does sound like creators of IE
How does Risk Intelligence abbreviate to RQ?
Why? because i'm not joining the bandwagon and using Chrome? Again this is so BIAS,Chrome has a sandbox, are people more intelligent by using chrome? NO, most dont know what is the sandbox for and that it exist, second, it uses IE and cant work stand alone( LOSER), Firefox used to be great and i use it for the feature but it's been degrading as fast as they get the new versions out.
That's like saying that owning Apple product makes you more intelligent,,,,ouf!!!!
Behind the impressive web facade of "Projection Point" is former university lecturer Dylan Evans, who demonstrated staggering risk ignorance resulting in his suspension for sexually harassing a female colleague. Whatever the amusement he provides (e.g. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/96641), I doubt any so-called "research" originating from this pseudoscience is worth printing on real paper.
I do not believe that his anything to do with users' IQ.
I believe it has everything to do with this.
I think it has to do with conformity in general. If you've made a study which compared people listening to radio-friendly, readily available pop with other more open minded subjects who like to customise what they listen to, the pop group would most likely be dumber.
Are you saying that firefox actually takes memory away from a needy app?
Yes, namely the next app I'm going to start. Unlike classic Mac OS, modern operating systems have no well-known way to mark blocks of memory containing cached resources as "purgeable" (to drop when about to swap and to reload from cache next time it will be used) in case another application wants the memory. So instead, the cache gets swapped out to usually the same disk that the other application is trying to load itself from.
they had lower RQ scores and were grossly overconfident.
Sounds like your typical suit user.
The truest sign of a lack of intellect, still following and commenting on these stupid browser stories. I mean seriously who gives a shit what browser you use, and if you think it makes any difference I got a bridge in Arizona to sell you.
It's a browser which renders html, it doesn't make you cool, make you smart, make you pretty. It renders web pages, who gives ashit, do you still argue over the best calculator?
IQ = Intelligence Quotient
RQ = Risk Quotient
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Does "risk intelligence" have a strong correlation with general intelligence?
I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
All it proves is that their PC's are being used by people that don't bother with other browsers. IE is working and there's been no reason to explore alternatives. This conclusion is flawed (no dhuh) and senseless...move on. (I use Opera, FF and IE)
End of Line.
That would assume that they thought about it. They have not. a Windows user does not assume any real risk or threat. In fact, anybody on Windows is simply not bright enough to think things through.
Thankfully, they missed me. I guess all studies are flauwed to some degree.
Yes, Chrome really is a much bigger memory hog than Firefox inside a VM - it was also a bigger memory hog than Firefox running native on Windows. I usually give the VM about 1GB of RAM, sometimes 1.5, and for reasons I don't understand, VMware usually uses a lot less than that - I've been assuming that Firefox's memory management must be better on Linux than on Windows. Meanwhile, I've got a similar number of tabs open in Chrome, and it's burning about 2GB of RAM. Firefox occasionally crashes (usually it's the Flash plugin rather than the browser) and often gets into confused-swapping for a few minutes, but it's still better.
The reason I'm using VMware isn't just for privacy, or for getting to run Linux on my IT-supported-Windows laptop. The big motivator for me was that the IT department changed their policy from "Firefox is unsupported" to "Firefox is Supported! This version only! No extensions or add-ons! Maybe we'll update it annually!", and running without Adblock and Noscript is too unsafe and unstable. And while Chrome is really nice when it's working, it isn't stable enough for the way I read news on news-aggregator sites (open a bunch of links as separate tabs, like today's articles from fark.com or BoingBoing. Watch Chrome crash most of the tabs!)
Maybe having a separate VM for Facebook is a bit paranoid, but I got really tired of reading the newspaper online and having the Facebook ad on the side of the page showing me "Here's what all of your Facebook Friends have been reading in the news today!" I could probably have implemented it as a separate Firefox profile, but a separate VM is clean and easy and guaranteed not to leak information all over.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Of course it is, and so is Swap Space, and when you've filled up your physical memory (4GB, in my case) and want to start something new or switch to an paged-out process, you have to wait for the disk to spin for a while paging out the least-used program so the new one can run. And it's not like browsers are the only bloatware I run on my system, there's also Microsoft Office and Adobe PDFs (and I frequently open PDF files that are bigger than 10MB, because they're vendor documentation for equipment I use.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The VMware is running Ubuntu, so it gets whatever Firefox and Flash versions Ubuntu uses (currently Ubuntu 11.04; I may eventually upgrade to 11.10.) Chrome is running on native XP, using whatever flash that gets, and unlike IE and Firefox, our Corporate IT folks prefer to have us running current Adobe software for security reasons so that's unlikely to be bad. The real problem is that Flash isn't a great product, and many many websites have bad Flash code on them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If Microsoft hypothetically bought out Mozilla and bundled Firefox instead of IE, you'd start seeing those numbers shift towards Firefox users. The real issue is simply that the people who are not as net-savvy (and thus possessing less knowledge about internet risks) tend to use the browser that is shipped with the OS. I would posit that the numbers would be somewhat different in areas where users are presented with a browser ballot.
They should do a similar study of only Mac users who use Safari. I would posit that the numbers would be higher with Safari than with Firefox or Chrome (albeit maybe not quite as high as with IE, due to market share). I realize they covered Safari, but they list no breakdown of OS, so it's possible that some of that includes users of Safari on Windows.
FC Closer
In other news, bear shits in woods.
There's a low risk they have intelligence...
My sister-in-law has sent their computer to me five times with viruses. I give them all the typical talks, install firefox/chromium, remove IE links etc. But it's their kids seem to always fall for the social engineering tricks. About a month ago, she asked me is there anything they can do? I asked exactly what do they use their computer for, most importantly, do they watch Netflix and do they use any windows specific software? When the answer was no I switched them to linuxMint.
So far they love how fast it is. I stifled a laugh, linuxMint is a beached whale compared to something like Puppy! Of coarse, as most of us know, Linux works very well but if something goes wrong it's often more difficult to fix. Hence, it's not a perfect solution so I welcome others ideas on how to protect a computer from children?
This IE user bashing is complete nonsense.
We have overconfidence and low RQ because IE is one of the safest browsers out there and we dont need to worry about security
Source: slashdot