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Fierce Nerds

paulgraham.com

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Re: Fierce Nerds

#181

Post by 29athrowaway »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

Surprisingly, I'd argue that athletes are an example of fierce nerds. I think people vastly underestimate how nerdy top athletes are. They're people willing to devote their entire lives to obsessively analyzing a single game. Somebody like Jordan had to spend hours, days, years of their life just constantly shooting a ball at a basket. Not to mention the obsession with meta and strategy. We like to see people like Jo…

Once, the YouTube "algorithm" led me to video featuring a bodybuilder that explained that being a professional bodybuilder = being a professional eater.

To bodybuilders (and I assume, also athletes), eating in a methodical and structured way is an important part of their job. The guy grew his own vegetables and spent a lot of time selecting food at markets, ate at very specific times, etc.

That, combined with supplements, experimenting with different training regimes, etc... it's a lot of experimentation and certainly there's a lot of cognitive work behind all of that.

I found this very interesting.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#182

Post by dragonwriter »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

Surprisingly, I'd argue that athletes are an example of fierce nerds. I think people vastly underestimate how nerdy top athletes are. They're people willing to devote their entire lives to obsessively analyzing a single game. Somebody like Jordan had to spend hours, days, years of their life just constantly shooting a ball at a basket. Not to mention the obsession with meta and strategy. We like to see people like Jo…

I think there’s a difference between the sort of subject-matter-preference driven obsessiveness that characterizes nerds and the one-of-the-few-visible-though-high-odds-of-failure-ways-out-of-a-miserable life that drives a lot of black kids to a focus lots of time and energy on basketball.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#183

Post by themodelplumber »

albatruss wrote: post #11

If you're going to be this sort of fierce nerd, make sure you come from money, because you're getting fired if you pursue these traits in the workplace.

Or maybe you keep quitting jobs, because you are the precocious one who can always see why things aren't working well long before anyone else. Yet nobody wants your feedback because it's too something. Too fierce, or scary because it's predictive, or they're just annoyed that you have no social skills.

And socially maybe the people at work can keep you in check without firing you, because you can't respond well in a socially-clever environment for example, no matter how amazing your insights.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#185

Post by HeyImAlex »

marvin wrote: post #142
HeyImAlex wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, born in 92 and his characterization of being nerdy and young seems super antiquated. “Nerdy” interests don’t make you a social pariah, they transcend groupings all together; the star quarterback plays dnd, the head cheerleader builds robots in her basement, the stigma on having unique or “nerdy” hobbies and interests is mostly gone. When I think of what PG is describing, it’s characterized by poor social skills…

I'm just five years older than you and strongly relate to these descriptions of being a nerd, having academic interests not shared by young peers and consequently caring very little for social games. Even in adulthood, unless I carefully choose who I hang out with. And I'm from Europe, not the US, so it's not a thing local to the US either. If it's truly a generational change, that would be a very interesting develop…

I knew many people who fit that description, but with even a little social intelligence it seemed to me their experiences in highschool were pretty great; they weren’t nerds, they were just smart and studious and many were very well liked. Our homecoming king was on the academic decathalon team. Im not saying that smart, introverted folks with underdeveloped social skills don’t exist, just that they don’t exist opposite to bros and jocks and cool kids (and weren’t mercilessly bullied for being themselves).

On the other end, nerd-culture had permeated all levels of the social strata, and my very popular friends who partied every weekend were also semi-pro halo players and avid anime fans and didn’t hide either of those facts.

It’s only six years, but it could have been wide exposure to the internet? Also very possible I’m seeing the past through rose colored glasses.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#186

Post by appleflaxen »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #7

Nobody who knows me would call me "woke", except as part of some joke. But as the father of a kid with Asperger Syndrome, and as someone with a likely diagnosis myself (according to neuropysch testing), I'm a little bothered by the broad brush with which P.G. is painting.

I don't understand what would bother you.

He's talking about "nerds"; a cultural identity.

You are talking about asperger's, a medical condition.

PG doesn't draw any lines between them.

What is your objection, specifically?

Re: Fierce Nerds

#187

Post by riversflow »

HeyImAlex wrote: post #78
helen___keller wrote: post #21

I enjoy reading Paul Graham's musings on nerds / nerdiness, but I can't help but have difficulty relating. Maybe it's a generational thing (born in '92), but Graham often seems to paint a picture of nerds similar to what you might see in movies and TV shows depicting the 80s, like the kids in Stranger Things. Even this article, while I can certainly conjure which of my friends growing up were the "fierce nerd", it st…

Same, born in 92 and his characterization of being nerdy and young seems super antiquated. “Nerdy” interests don’t make you a social pariah, they transcend groupings all together; the star quarterback plays dnd, the head cheerleader builds robots in her basement, the stigma on having unique or “nerdy” hobbies and interests is mostly gone. When I think of what PG is describing, it’s characterized by poor social skills…

Where are you (or GP) from? Im also ‘92. I grew up in California, but in a rural part of the state. Nerdy interests absolutely had a stigma. My high school didn’t even have a CS class, no academic decathlon team, and certainly no robotics club. It was the “best” school in my district, too.

In challenging or AP classes you had essentially two groups, the jocks, who were trying to follow a college track, for which sports were essentially requisite in our district, and the nerds who just liked learning stuff. The jocks(male and female) did their homework as a group, complained loudly about difficult tests/assignments and consistently used their relative influence to affect their grades. The nerds brought in their own lessons, asked questions that lead the class off topic, consistently read the textbook and stayed late to ask questions rather than negotiate.

Anyway, thought I’d throw this anecdote out there for variety.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#188

Post by dkarl »

zozbot234 wrote: post #164
dkarl wrote: post #159

This essay falls flat for me because I think Paul Graham is only talking about nerds of my generation, people who are in their forties and older. I don't see any nerds like myself and my friends in the generation that is in their twenties now. It's interesting to think about the difference, though, and he does nail a few things about nerds from my generation. Most importantly, that being socially awkward was a prereq…

> When they feel like they're about to say something inappropriate, their instinct is to pause and recheck their thinking This is something all intellectually honest people learn to do, one way or the other. We're all very familiar with claims that are simple, mostly plausible, and totally wrong for $COMPLICATED_REASON. After a while, you learn to double-check your thinking to avoid being nerd-sniped by someone sayin…

Inappropriate and incorrect are very different things. One thing they have in common, though, is that after processing feedback over and over again that doesn't affect your thinking at all because it comes from a perspective you fundamentally disagree with, you learn to tune it out. For example, if you're talking about Covid 19 vaccines and there's an anti-vaxxer in the group, you'll eventually stop engaging with the content of what they say, because it isn't worth your time.

A significant difference is that incorrectness is context-sensitive in a different way than inappropriateness. Saying something incorrect can be a productive part of a conversation that serves a shared goal of achieving correctness. I'm not going to feel inhibited or embarrassed about saying something incorrect unless I haven't put in the appropriate level of preparation for the context. Saying something inappropriate cannot serve a higher shared goal of avoiding inappropriateness, because it spoils that goal from the start.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#189

Post by slibhb »

In the essay, nerds are identified as socially awkward, not necessarily quiet but out of their element in social situations. And sure, Crick rubbed people the wrong way, because he was loud and overly-sociable. But wasn't he, by Watson's account, absolutely in his element in social situations? Isn't the main complaint about Crick the fact that he was too loud (especially his laugh), too willing to solve other people's problems?

And was Watson a nerd at all? I think the magic of The Double Helix is that Watson tells the truth (or "his truth") to a fault. That's necessary for good biography and it's very rare but I don't get the sense that Watson is unaware of what he's doing or what the consequences will be. It seems like a conscious decision to write down everything he thinks and, as they say, publish and be damned.

Anyway, I think the essay is making a semantic error here by identifying the usual heroes (odd men out, innovators, people who refuse to go along, people who do their own thing) as nerds. There's no doubt that going against the grain is almost a prerequisite for being an admirable person and also for being someone who changes the world. I just don't see that as nerdiness.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#190

Post by rdiddly »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #167

Surprisingly, I'd argue that athletes are an example of fierce nerds. I think people vastly underestimate how nerdy top athletes are. They're people willing to devote their entire lives to obsessively analyzing a single game. Somebody like Jordan had to spend hours, days, years of their life just constantly shooting a ball at a basket. Not to mention the obsession with meta and strategy. We like to see people like Jo…

Absolutely, why do you think the first jock called the first nerd a nerd for the first time? He was projecting!
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