This is very interesting to me, because of how you both were drawn toward the same point, yet bounced off of each other along the way.
On the one hand, it is necessary to admit that the User must be willing to engage themselves with active thought, learning and asserting control over their machines.
On the other, people are lured to "easy" and "I don't wanna have to even think about how my computer works, I just want it to do things I want it to do, somehow."
I agree fully that users need at least a basic and competent understanding of what is under the hood.
But as this thread demonstrates: Even with active warnings, even with it spelled out - People Do Not Care.
They don't.
They want what they want and if that means everyone else gets thrown under the bus for them to have it - even as Gnome forces its wants on everyone (contrary to FOSS) - Then that is fine with the users. They will ignore all warnings and just keep on stumbling forward.
Maybe those of us that firmly believe that we are responsible for the machines that we own are the foolish ones.
I think it is time we stop buying computers.
We should lease computers and hand all control over to Gnome and to Microsoft. That is what they want and evidently, it is what we Want, Too.