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My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

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Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#221

Post by burgerbrain »

ZeroMinx wrote: post #13

While I agree with this to some extent, I'd just like to comment on the the skateboarding analogy; You were probably taking it one step at a time, learning to stand on the board, increase your speed, make turns. Once you got all that done, you might move on to try some tricks, perhaps trying to learn the rock to fakie trick. What you _didn't_ do was, on your 2nd day, to scream out "why am I not sticking my 720 kickfl…

I suspect the reason why hackers are harsh compared to skateboarders probably has something to do with the fact that when skateboarders fuck up, it tends to hurt. Bad hacking rarely carries such a strong disincentive, so we have to create one.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#222

Post by xiaoma »

DanI-S wrote: post #67
MrJagil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone please explain the logic behind "condescending feedback = insecurity"? And I mean that sincerely. I have been thinking about this for a long time now, and I just cannot come up with any supporting evidence to explain the corelation. It might sound like a stupid request, but I think it is a hard argument to make totally water proof.

I see it this way: The only reason to give condescending feedback is to demonstrate your superiority over the person you're criticizing. If you truly wanted to be helpful, you'd be giving helpful feedback. If you were truly confident in your own abilities, you wouldn't feel the need to demonstrate your superiority.

I'd say that analysis is missing one important group-- the truly arrogant.

These are the people with an unshakable belief in their own superiority, at least in some field. It's not that they feel a need to demonstrate superiority over others through condescending feedback. It's that their superiority is implicit in their world-view. They don't necessarily even realize they're being condescending. It's just the natural order of things.

I can say this with full confidence because I've been that person. As a teenager, I was insufferable. Not only was I a freakishly good at bowling at 15 (making hundreds of dollars per weekend from "pot games" and with multiple 300 games in a single league), but two years earlier, I had also become the youngest person in my state to enroll in college classes. I tried to be nice to people and everything, but I just assumed I had more intelligence, dexterity, constitution and possibly other D&D stats than they did. If people didn't like my attitude, sometimes I actually felt sorry for them, assuming that jealousy was the reason.

Now in my 30's after not having done anything amazing since growing up, I've become less confident and also less condescending. Rapidly picking up coordination based sports isn't really that important in daily life as it was as a teenager. And I certainly don't assume or even believe that I'm any smarter than other people. On the contrary, I'd say I've become tangibly dumber. I might still be condescending from time to time in my weaker moments, but nothing even remotely like what I did unconsciously half a life time ago.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#224

Post by roc »

elptacek wrote: post #77
edw519 wrote: post #36

Condescending feedback says more about the speaker than the listener. It is almost invariably about their own insecurity. This is true is almost all fields of endeavor, not just programming. Just a few examples of my own: Insecure bridge player: The queen of spades was a stupid play. What's wrong with you? Excellent bridge player: The queen of spades would have been a great play against a 4/2 split. But since you had…

It has taken me half a lifetime to grow a "thick skin" against comments like this. It's lame to admit, but I've abandoned half a dozen really cool projects in the face of feedback like this. Being a parent has made me realize that there's a word for people who react this way: bully. In teaching my kids to cope with it, I'm teaching myself, too. They were pretty surprised to hear that bullies act out of insecurity.

> They were pretty surprised to hear that bullies act out of insecurity.

"We hate in others what we see in ourselves."

I find that old chestnut rings more true every time I find my ire rising.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#226

Post by ahoyhere »

dkarl wrote: post #162
ahoyhere wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a good argument until you realize that the people the geeks most love are all level-headed and good-natured, people who promote the good of all. Often these are men/women who inspired the geeks to be geeks to start with. Example: Carl Sagan. So for all the geeks who were inspired to become geeks by Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Spock, etc., to fall so short of their ideal... clearly there is insecurit…

Feynman is an example of a guy who would be ruthless in a technical discussion but charming in a personal context. (Well, charming towards your wife, anyway.) Context is everything.

Einstein, then. I have heard no tails of the biggest physics brain being a jerk, in public or private. Have you?

If Einstein can be nice, some sadsack .Net developer (or Erlang developer) can be, too.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#227

Post by chrisrhoden »

arcwhite wrote: post #218
chrisrhoden wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-hipster culture is hilarious. It is impossible for me to read this without pointing out that after a very well-reasoned and largely accurate argument against the completely irrational spite, you close with a (admittedly small) taste of the very disgust you just denounced. "I luckily rarely come across 'hipsters'." It's pervasive, even in the group itself. Hipster doesn't actually mean anything specific to an…

Well, by that logic, we should abandon all labels altogether. Down with identification of groups of people! Cast off the oppressive shackles of classification! Down here in Australia, "Hipsters" are an easily recognizable and quite specific cultural subgroup: Thick-rim glasses, no actual vision impediment to justify them, Impractically skinny jeans, Borderline offensively cliched facial hair (ie. Hercule Poirot-esque…

Frankly, we have made efforts for quite a while to eliminate classifications which are used solely to put people down. While it is true that hipster is not as offensive as some other classifying words and carries none of the historical baggage, it has become a slur, nothing more.

What you've described sounds like a caricature. While it is possible that the more nuanced culture formed elsewhere and was made extreme on it's way to your shores (and, indeed, there is evidence of this having happened in many other cases), I am not sure that is what is going on here. The specific attitude you describe is one I see commonly attributed to hipsters, and only in very rare cases a fair characterization. I think that The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Radiohead (to throw something out there) are examples of incredibly commercial, mainstream bands which most of the people you are describing would be into.

Saying that you don't like the new Shins album because it is very mainstream doesn't actually mean that you don't like it because people are buying it (they aren't), it means that it doesn't seem challenging or interesting to you. It seems designed for mainstream appeal.

In the US, the word is not applied solely to the group that you describe, either. It's used to describe people who live in particular areas, people who ride bicycles, people who shop at thrift stores, people who listen to public radio, people who see lots of live music, and people who listen to records on vinyl, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. The most important thing is that people seem to have flipped your description of the attitude on it's head; It's not about whether or not you dislike "mainstream" or "commercial" things, it's about whether or not you like something which doesn't fall into one of these categories.

I agree that your description of this group doesn't make me want to hang out with anyone in it, but it certainly doesn't make me feel like I shouldn't tollerate it. If there is a group of people who want to be very bad at conversation at parties, more power to them.

If I believed that most people made these judgements on a case by case basis, that would be one thing, but that's not the case in my experience. The assumption seems to be that if you match one of these very superficial and general categories, I can mantle your personality and judge you (with little/no other justification, see what I did there?)

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#229

Post by digitaltothem »

roc wrote: post #224
elptacek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has taken me half a lifetime to grow a "thick skin" against comments like this. It's lame to admit, but I've abandoned half a dozen really cool projects in the face of feedback like this. Being a parent has made me realize that there's a word for people who react this way: bully. In teaching my kids to cope with it, I'm teaching myself, too. They were pretty surprised to hear that bullies act out of insecurity.

> They were pretty surprised to hear that bullies act out of insecurity. "We hate in others what we see in ourselves." I find that old chestnut rings more true every time I find my ire rising.

Good point. I kinda like the one that goes: "We are what we speak". If I don`t have something nice and encouraging to say, then I just don`t anything. I give my best to accomplish this.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#230

Post by danssig »

stcredzero wrote: post #90
ahoyhere wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should learn it themselves. There are books & training courses on the subject. But people rarely seek these out because they are so defensive about their deficiencies that they turn even those into a contention -- they say "this is just the way I am, take it or leave it."

Think of it as evolution in action. (And I shall take this whole post as a call to clean up my act.)

You seem to imply that being an asshole is genetic. Surely it has a large social aspect (i.e. can't be "bread out")?
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