I’m saying that since we rely on software every day, there are a few concepts that every person should understand on a basic level.
Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong before anything software-related I’d put knowledge of fundamental statistics in the queue for things people deal with on a daily basis that they should understand at a basic level. It’s one of the most critical skills a person can have in modern life and it’s one that almost nobody (including almost all programmers) has any kind of understanding of. If they did have a better understanding of it, to quote the Great Sage Equalling Heaven:
That knowledge would help them make better decisions and probably the world would be better if most people had it.
😉
And that’s just the beginning of the list. I’d also put basic psychology, basic marketing, basic civics even ahead of any degree of software knowledge. Knowing marketing, for example, wouldn’t cause someone to be fooled to the point of saying something like this:
But they should know what cryptocurrencies and AI are, since those technologies are slowly becoming a part of our lives.
But gentle snark aside:
But I think something went wrong in our society if people don’t understand very important concepts that impact our daily lives and which are mostly decades old.
Try tens of thousands of years old. You make it sound like the problem is technology. The problem is the same as it’s always been: people. A better understanding of people, of their motivations, of the tricks they use to further those motivations, etc. is what makes you better able to manage life and society. Understanding the tricks of marketers and advertisers (even before those were words in human language!) is what makes you understand things like “hype cycles” and “if you haven’t paid, you’re not the customer”. You’re focusing on a single channel of abuse. There are MILLIONS of channels of abuse. Learning why people find said channels and how/why they exploit them is a far more valuable skill.
Oh, and statistics. You need that too. You have NO idea just how bad we are at those and just how important that knowledge is for spotting grifters, liars, and other scum.