I have had to do tech support, but I find that most of the time people's problems were more on the side of profound ignorance than stupidity. The on/off switch thing is always funny, but I chalk that up to oversight, senior moment etc.
I have to reiterate that timidness and ignorance tend to go hand in hand. I just can't see a significant amount of the people who don't know that they need a heatsink not being aware enough to see 2 or more well placed warning labels.
Actually an easy way for all of this to be avoided is to require that 2011 motherboards have a circuit that will only complete when the metal from a heatsink is screwed into the mounting holes. If nothing's detected it'll only boot into the UEFI with the same warning and some instructions.
I hope you're right. I think most people will have the sense to be cautious and the rest probably would have screwed something else up anyway. But just as an example, take the problem of choosing the right cooler. How many people are going to be able to distinguish between 2011 and some other socket size. Hell, I don't even know which coolers are compatible with which sockets and even a place like Newegg doesn't always spell this out. Now if that particular example is bogus, then what about distinquishing between an AMD and Intel mounting system? That's an easy mistake for a noobie to make. Then we get into issues of applying thermal paste, plugging the fan into the correct header, etc.
All this stuff is obvious to us (well, mostly anyway) but I think even the cautious noobie will be lost unless they decide to buy the Intel recommended heat sink. I'm sure many will do that, but i have to wonder if "many" will mean "all" or even "most."
Like I said, I hope you're right and maybe I'm being unduly pessimistic. It won't be the first time I've been wrong but it will be one of the few times I'll be happy about it.