Computers and their human vulnerabilities

There's an old computer world joke about a bit of automated kit that comes with a person and a dog: the person is to top up the oil as needed, and the dog is to stop the person touching anything else (or maybe the person was to feed the dog, and the dog was to stop the person touching the kit).

Arrogant in its assumptions about the reliability of devices, the limitations of people, and who a dog would feel more loyalty to, but it also has a point: people can be the weakest part of a digital system. 

I'm reading "Zero Day: The Threat In Cyberspace" by The Washington Post, Robert O'Harrow, and it's good to read of thinks like the need for password (and social media) discipline, but it also includes this: 

"Social engineering works because it targets a vulnerable part of cyberspace that cannot be patched with technical fixes: human beings. People want to believe that their communication is safe."

I would put a slightly different slant on that. In my opinion, it seems to be that it's feeling deeply, personally, even mortally affronted by the occurrence of a cyber problem with anything they are connected to - almost as is a cyber problem is like a disease that only came into their home because they failed to keep their home clean enough, whereas it is really more akin to not being able to perform a heart transplant because they didn't get the right people involved instead of trying to do it themselves (any heart transplant surgeons reading this [you're a long way from Kansas!] will have to change that to something else - launching rockets, perhaps, or plumbing?).