I daresay, if something I am not familiar with pops up with an error message, I would at least read it!
Are you really that positive that there is no subject which is so baffling to you that you wouldn't even attempt to diagnose something related to it? 'Cause I've met plenty of programmery-types that don't know a fuel pump from an alternator, and when their car breaks down, they're as stuck as everyone else.
You're ignoring the fact that computers are filled with text. Menus, window titles, commands, icons, etc. etc. -- your brain has already been trained to filter through all that. You do it without even thinking about it.
Lots of other people do not. So, to them, the directions, or that pop up, is just more words on the screen.
It's one of the main problems with user interface for the really tech-inept. It's a fundamentally hard problem, because you don't know what they're expecting, and you can't predict it 100% of the time.
That said though, most programmery-types are problem-solvers at heart, and would be looking for information when their car broke down. Many people don't even look for the word "help" when stuck on a computer, they just make a fuss and wait / storm off because they fully think it's incomprehensible to them (usually because they haven't tried learning anything about it).
As complex as computers are, take a look at OLPC and similar projects, where a supremely back-water pocket of a society is introduced to computers for the first time. The kids look, poke, and are up and running within minutes because they're learning how to use it. Adults who try achieve the same in roughly the same amount of time. Many non-tech people though won't even approach it as something new, they expect it to be a "magic box" that does what they want, not what they tell it to do (like employees?). Nothing in the world works that way, why expect this to be any different?
I've even noticed myself getting to be that way, which I don't like. For example, when Windows 7 was coming out, I didn't think, "Oh neat, something new to try!" I thought, "Oh goody, a whole new batch of problems coming my way."
It's laziness. There's no other excuse. When that sets in for too long, it becomes denial of being capable of learning. Learning the newest stuff, being an early adopter etc? Hell no, you can't know everything. Other things in life are important too, and should be more important than computer-stuff for most.
But knowing something isn't just good for you, it's essential. Getting from zero to 0.1 should be at the top of their priority lists.
(I should point out that I really love working with UI/UX stuff, and I in no way believe that things can't be easier, even by far. I even enjoy fighting that perpetually-hard problem. But there's no helping the intentionally-ignorant, and I don't believe in making excuses for them.)
The truth is that people are learning constantly whether they want to or not. It's what humans do. We take input from the world and turn it into cognitive models of the world. The only question is what input and how accurate the model is--things which the designer of a thing can always influence.
What you're seeing when you see laziness is people who have developed a cognitive model of computers (or whatever) that involves a lot of pain and confusion relative to the reward. Some of this is just absorbed from the surrounding culture, but much of it is gleaned from their actual experience in using them. They have learned that learning about the computer = pain, and that's what they avoid. A common element of that pain is feeling stupid and lazy for not yet understanding. (After all, that's what people who do understand computers keep telling you.) But who can blame a person for avoiding painful experiences?
Learning always involves at least a trace of confusion, but it doesn't have to be painful in a way that people want to avoid in spite of the rewards. Eliminate the unnecessary pain from these experiences and you'll find that "laziness" seems to disappear along with it.
One of them previously had a computer tech that actually did berate them for not knowing computer basics. Another one constantly refers to herself as "stupid" (or, "I feel so stupid") for not understanding how to use the computer.
Look at it from further away, and it's behavior based on fear that's become harmful. It's identical to people afraid of flying, driving, swimming, going out in public, etc. But those are seen as disorders, and how does society handle them? By pointing out they're harmful, and offering help.
How does society handle computer fear? By saying it's ok? But it's not, it's harmful. These are the people who are hit for phishing scams and identity theft. Millions upon millions of dollars of damage. That's worse than many other fears that people aggressively seek treatment for.
So, why don't people get help for their fears? That's more person-to-person, but at a super-broad view they're not fixing it because they're ignoring it; "they have better things to do". Sometimes that's true, for things they don't believe to be harmful (sometimes incorrectly, sometimes not), but most of the time it's because they're afraid of it. That's an extremely poor excuse for not fixing things that you know to be a problem, and in every other situation everybody acknowledges this. Difficulty != excuse.
To summarize: if a fear is harmful, get it fixed or you are implicitly accepting the consequences of your fear. Fear of flying means you don't fly. That means you'll never get a job that requires flying, and you'll put more miles on your car.
It isn't wholly irrational fear, either. Computers are uniquely fragile and prone to disrupting expectations. People looking for Facebook who wound up on ReadWriteWeb got there by doing something that had worked the day before. Ideally, they would have an understanding of what was going on and what assumptions had been violated. In practice, they had no intrinsic reason to until that moment.
(In fact works even better now: Google has added a link to the Facebook login within the suggestion box for the search "facebook login".)
It's identical to people afraid of flying, driving, swimming, going out in public, etc.
These are all things in which much effort is made to eliminate painful experiences and prevent feared things from happening. You can never get 100%--there are practical limits to what you can do or need to reach a level where people will use them. I don't believe that we have reached the limit of what can be done from the creation side to make computers less painful to use on the consumer side.
Which goes to show throwing money at a problem isn't a good way to fix it.
People don't see each popup with fresh eyes, they associate them with most of the other popups they've seen; overly technical, they didn't understand them, the options made no sense, and they had to call for help.
People ignore all the cruft on screen and only scan for the one thing they're familiar with in order to get by, this is the behaviour that the Windows operating system has conditioned them into adopting. They know from experience that you shouldn't touch things you're not familiar with, because often enough things go wrong. Suspicious behaviour is a sign of malware.
A lot of this is Microsoft's fault. Really.