[vsareto]

>Doesn't seem like that much of a stretch that people would be able to use a little critical thinking when looking at computer error messages too.

Users' critical thinking skills can be fine, but sometimes they choose not to apply them for things they don't want to think about. That's totally normal if computers are outside their purview or they just want technology to work.

No small amount of people just take their car to the shop and don't try to interpret the errors. Knowing when to make your users think comes with the product territory and knowing your audience, and also considering "how important is surfacing that error detail, really?"

If you want the dirty secret for why, it's because we can be lazy about things we don't care about and/or critically thinking about everything is exhausting and sometimes you have more important things to do. They just want it fixed.