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Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

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Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#41

Post by thribbler »

zackattack wrote: post #22
thribbler wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They lack social skills because they lack emotional intelligence. To take it further: nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have learnt to ignore the relevant emotions. That is why bullies are able to bait nerds; they both feel that the nerds' denial of group emotions makes them culpable.

"They lack social skills because they lack emotional intelligence." --> I agree "nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have learnt to ignore the relevant emotions." --> Maybe. "That is why bullies are able to bait nerds; they both feel that the nerds' denial of group emotions makes them culpable." --> I would love to hear you expand on this, and I loved that you invoked a concept of "group emotions", which I…

Part of my explanation would be that you can only insult a person with their compliance. If they become offended or defensive then they are implicitly conceding that you have a point.

So, although nerds are consciously unaware of their denial, it lurks beneath the surface and effects their emotional response in ways that other people can detect.

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#42

Post by Avshalom »

trominos wrote: post #5
zackattack wrote: post #2

Lots of bizarre rationalizing. "Nerds" tend to be unpopular because they lack emotional and social intelligence.

What? I mean, of course, if you define "nerds" to be "people without social intelligence" you're gonna see that nerds are unpopular. The premise beneath PG's essay (and this one, I think) is that if you instead define "nerds" to be "people with a lot of interest in some academic subject, and/or people who are quantifiably 'smart'" you still (seem to) find that nerds are unpopular. So are you saying that that's not ac…

>So are you saying that that's not actually the case, that smart people aren't disproportionately unpopular?

That's been my experience.

Not to say there were no unpopular smart kids, but I never noticed a higher percentage than dumb kids. Though even then most of the smart people I knew who were unpopular globally were popular locally (that is within what ever group they ran with).

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#43

Post by redeyeglasses »

Avshalom wrote: post #35
njharman wrote: post #3

Is the common perception of "nerds" (as in socially awkward/inept unpopular people) is that they are universally smart? Cause that's not been my experience at all. Some nerdly hobbies require (at least some) intelligence, programming, building robots, etc. Other nerdly activities that I'm part of don't require nearly as much, RPGs(pen and paper), and fandom as in trekkies, browncoats etc. And boy am I here to tell yo…

This has pretty much been my experience too. My high school wasn't enormous, but it was ~2000 kids, big enough for subcultures to form and as many (if not more honestly) of the outcast were dumb as the popular kids. Heck actually in that school most of the really intelligent ones, the AP/Dual enrollment kids and the like, while not necessarily popular, were treated very well by everyone because a smart peer was alway…

That's what I have observed. The smart kids weren't popular in the sit-com or movie way, but people came to them with questions or to settle some debates.

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#44

Post by apsec112 »

This seems to basically be:

Paul Graham: X, Y and Z are generally true, except under conditions A and B.

These guys: But X, Y, and Z aren't true all the time! And they aren't even true most of the time, given conditions A and B!

The only substantial part of this appears to be "nerdiness is becoming cooler", and I find that highly questionable.

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#45

Post by apsec112 »

tokenadult wrote: post #29

I learned a lot about my cultural assumptions on the meaning of high intelligence when I traveled from the United States to Taiwan to study the Chinese language twenty-eight years ago. Here in the United States, I had imbued the idea that high-IQ people are disliked because they are smart, and that above a certain IQ, a person has no hope of having a friendship relationship with a person of average IQ. (I especially…

I think there's a bit of confusion here. People up to roughly 90th percentile or so intelligence will be able to use their smarts to make more friends, get along better with others, etc. The problem that Paul Graham is talking about is the 10% above the 90th percentile, who are sufficiently different from the average as to make relating to normal people difficult. Not coincidentally, the intelligence of Congressmen averages around 90th percentile.

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#46

Post by shadowsun7 »

Qz wrote: post #9
njharman wrote: post #3

Is the common perception of "nerds" (as in socially awkward/inept unpopular people) is that they are universally smart? Cause that's not been my experience at all. Some nerdly hobbies require (at least some) intelligence, programming, building robots, etc. Other nerdly activities that I'm part of don't require nearly as much, RPGs(pen and paper), and fandom as in trekkies, browncoats etc. And boy am I here to tell yo…

Don't confuse 'nerds' with 'geeks'.

I find this Venn diagram useful, as a rough definition: http://azahar.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/nerd-venn-diagram....

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#47

Post by toby »

pauldirac137 wrote: post #39

Nerds are unpopular because people don't like to hang out with anyone who is much more intelligent than they are. This transcends any arguments about social ineptness or pursuing popularity. If you're 30+ IQ points above your peers, you would need an awful lot of social skills to make them feel comfortable being around you. Let's say you're a theoretical physicist and you meet someone who has an average intellect. Th…

I'm pretty sure answering the question "what do you do?" in that manner indicates social ineptness.

A physicist could instead say "I do physics research" and potentially entertain an "average" person with stories about departmental feuds or something else he might relate to.

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#48

Post by shadowsun7 »

lukev wrote: post #10

I wonder why people spend so much time deconstructing and perpetuating a classification that has absolutely no meaning outside of highschool.

It sometimes matters to think things through. If, for instance, you want to help students get better - it would do to take some time to understand the social dynamics of the world they're in.

Articles like this are potentially useful for teachers, or student counselors. Besides, even if the article's off-base, it's still helpful to search for truth, even in topics as mundane-seeming as this.

Re: Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

#49

Post by araneae »

Why do we believe that intelligence and nerdiness go hand in hand? Not to be all anecdotal or anything, but the top 6 GPA ranked people in my high school class were normal. They weren't popular, but they certainly weren't nerds. I was 7th, and I didn't really count as a "nerd" until college, when I started going to anime club. In high school, I was so socially awkward that even the nerds wouldn't let me play DnD with them. The nerds were all kind of middle-of-the-pack intelligence.

I suspect that we believe this because there are some powerfully intelligent and powerfully nerdy folks out there. But if you just look at academic performance, I bet the reality isn't so strong. There are a lot of dumb nerds out there.

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