Yeah I know the book. Yet: your comment made it sound like this idea is universally applicable (which as I demonstrated it isn't).

Knowing which thing is meant to be an everyday thing and which is meant to require some domain specific knowledge is key. Trying to make some specialized tool easier to use than it should be, can harm the usability of the specialized thing. Treating an everyday object as a specialized thing when it is clearly not and pushing the burden of reading the object onto the user is also bad. Both problems can be observed (just think about documentation that starts with "this is completely trivial to use" and then it isn't).

As Dieter Rams said: Good design is honest. That means also that it should not hide the complexity of the actual problem people try to solve with this in a bad way.

> Yeah I know the book. Yet: your comment made it sound like this idea is universally applicable (which as I demonstrated it isn't).

The comment might read so if you don't have the context, but the context here is everyday things, as is obvious by the title (and the book).

The book also talks (which probably you're familiar with already then) about discerning what is a everyday thing vs not.

Dieter Rams is also mentioned in the book if I remember correctly, as examples of good user experience, especially since Rams mostly created designs for everyday things.