For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
i know, right?! like, a friend of mine was doing a homebrew computer project a year or so ago and had issue with some complex instruction logic in the alu or whatever, and without having done it for over a decade i just sketched up a karnaugh map and struck two terms out. i even confused myself with that one.