"Bill D: I'll bet you assumed ..." etc.

*grin*...you lose.

As to "a naïve user", I assume that the essay would have gone on far to long for anyone if he had bothered to examine several other classes of users...for example Arthur_itus, whose wife is rather locked into a certain system....and John in Kansas, who also has explained that he can't take many chances with varieties of software because of work.

Now, I know personally a few perfectly competent, intelligent people who, on some level, just do not care to dig into the morass that modern software has spawned. I have my opinions about what puts them off, but *shrug*.
My own wife was a highly competent programmer who wrote complex stuff before the 'internet' and when DOS was THE rule. She now relies on me to make the PCs work...she CAN, she just doesn't care to know until the answer is 'needed'. I resisted learning that DOS stuff...DOS still give me chills. I was a woodworker, but once GUIs were created, I took to it immediately...wow...what fun! You just look at the menus and gadgets and it's like learning to drive different vehicles and deciding which one are more 'driver friendly'.

I LOVE the idea that *I* can control 90+% of what appears on my screen and tell to behave...and look... like *I* want.
(how many even know that the toolbar can be at the top(or even at the side) of the screen? Or that you can give a browser many different 'themes'/skins?..(I use a woodgrain pattern)

So... some of that is why I suggested it is about 'psychology' when some people don't bother to experiment. They're not wrong, they just have different priorities.

Even so, I wonder why some people either cannot or WILL not learn to make hyperlinks (blue clickies). I suspect that in many cases it's part of the same mindset that says "use what Microsoft gives you!"