21–30 of 47 posts
Excellent article, just wanted to point out that I’ve seen most of the stuff described by it in non-geeky social groups, too.
With the possible exception of GSF1, I'd say all of them are done by some people from all groups.
It’s a common response to social bullying, and not limited to geeks — though it tends to manifest in marginalized social groups, for obvious reasons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This just seems like an attack on an entire group of people that I'm guessing have annoyed or belittled the author at one time or another. It's an attack on an entire group of attitudes/behaviors. Unless people that exhibit them are entirely defined as personalities by those attitudes (which I don't think is the case), it's not an attack of a "group of people", and even less so, an attack on particular persons. > F…
All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping, and seems to me to be reflecting the authors own poor experiences with a subset of geeks coupled with a lack of exposure to the same problematic elements in other social groups. I believe the author meant well, and these are social fallacies, but attaching them to “geeks” seems more out of bias than fact…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping, and seems to me to be reflecting the authors own poor experiences with a subset of geeks coupled with a lack of exposure to the same problematic elements in other social groups. I believe the author meant well, and these are social fallacies, but attaching them to “geeks” seems more out of bias than fact…
"geek" is a meaningless genericized hypervague word, like "smurf".
This is a shining example of old web content we've lost in the current era of walled gardens and social graphs. People writing honestly about their journey and observations. Sure people still do in some form or another, but I personally don't see, or it's hidden in the flood of memes, tweets, shares and likes.
https://www.google.com/search?q=link:http://www.plausiblyden... revealed 370 results, including social networks, blogs and the like.
What may be true is that the global signal to noise ratio is lower than before. A consequence of the web being cheap and accessible. However, that kind of content is not only present but there is more than before. And while it is buried under piles of noise, we have much better tools to deal with it.
Search engines like Google, Wikipedia, Hacker News, etc... will get you loads of quality content. Platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc... can get very instructive if you follow the right accounts, or give you some mindless fun and memes if you so choose. The two are not exclusive.
This is a shining example of old web content we've lost in the current era of walled gardens and social graphs. People writing honestly about their journey and observations. Sure people still do in some form or another, but I personally don't see, or it's hidden in the flood of memes, tweets, shares and likes.
It is not lost. 15 years later, it is still up, and it is even featured on Hacker News ;) https://www.google.com/search?q=link:http://www.plausiblyden... revealed 370 results, including social networks, blogs and the like. What may be true is that the global signal to noise ratio is lower than before. A consequence of the web being cheap and accessible. However, that kind of content is not only present but there is m…
The pyramids are an example of this distinction.
However I think, from your examples, that you see the world in a fairly similar way to @le-mark and your distinction is more one of labels than anything else.
I don't get it. This just seems like an attack on an entire group of people that I'm guessing have annoyed or belittled the author at one time or another. For what purpose? I don't believe he is genuinely trying to advise and help here. The tone isn't right for it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This just seems like an attack on an entire group of people that I'm guessing have annoyed or belittled the author at one time or another. It's an attack on an entire group of attitudes/behaviors. Unless people that exhibit them are entirely defined as personalities by those attitudes (which I don't think is the case), it's not an attack of a "group of people", and even less so, an attack on particular persons. > F…
All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping, and seems to me to be reflecting the authors own poor experiences with a subset of geeks coupled with a lack of exposure to the same problematic elements in other social groups. I believe the author meant well, and these are social fallacies, but attaching them to “geeks” seems more out of bias than fact…
There's no such thing as "stereotyping" geeks.
Geeks are already a stereotype -- they refer to specific category of people with specific traits (not everyone having exactly the same, but in a "family resemblance" kind of way).
If you want, you can say that invoking geeks is already stereotyping. But I don't think it's valid to say this is "stereotyping" geeks, as if geeks themselves weren't a stereotype.
So, "Geeks" already implies certain traits, and a narrow set at that.
In other words "geeks" is not like saying "programmers" (which is a much more varied group with hardly much in common). Attributing something to programmers in general would not be very successful (though, even programmers, are statistically more alike in some aspects between them than between the general population: e.g. for one, all of them use computers).
Stereotypes serve a purpose: they are ways to refer to collective traits and behavior shared by groups of people. It's expected that not everybody called an X is an X (we might mislabel someone). But it's not very logical to never make collective observations about groups. We do them all the time, in polling, in business, in politics, in medicine, in social studies, and so on. People are not exactly unique snowflakes, they also tend to have certain traits, and can be categorized into groups by the traits they have.
(And again, nobody expects the categorization to be 100% perfect. It's enough that it's close enough to be usable).
Excellent article, just wanted to point out that I’ve seen most of the stuff described by it in non-geeky social groups, too.
With the possible exception of GSF1, I'd say all of them are done by some people from all groups.
These become fallacies when someone starts taking them for bedrock principles they can rely on without considering other factors. People do this because they are overwhelmed and flailing, or because they can't stand the uncertainty of not knowing how their friends will act in a potential situation. Geeks like taming confusion and uncertainty with knowledge, but instead they should choose the path (which is also appealing to geeks, if they get enough confidence) of developing skills and trusting their skills to see them through unpredictable situations.
This is a shining example of old web content we've lost in the current era of walled gardens and social graphs. People writing honestly about their journey and observations. Sure people still do in some form or another, but I personally don't see, or it's hidden in the flood of memes, tweets, shares and likes.
What you say is quite a common complaint. I was looking at a moderator's thread on a self-help subreddit this morning and people there were annoyed that the only items that got heavily upvoted (and therefore ever appeared under "top") were memes and pictures instead of the sort of deep thinking that could help people on this subreddit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping, and seems to me to be reflecting the authors own poor experiences with a subset of geeks coupled with a lack of exposure to the same problematic elements in other social groups. I believe the author meant well, and these are social fallacies, but attaching them to “geeks” seems more out of bias than fact…
> All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping There's no such thing as "stereotyping" geeks. Geeks are already a stereotype -- they refer to specific category of people with specific traits (not everyone having exactly the same, but in a "family resemblance" kind of way). If you want, you can say that invoking geeks is already stereotyping. But I d…