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Fierce Nerds

paulgraham.com

191–200 of 482 posts

Re: Fierce Nerds

#191

It's weird to read an "essay" about "nerds" from a 56 year old. It's like he never got over the high school caste system of cliques.

I agree with you initially, but I tried to read it from the lens of someone who is reflecting on his past experiences and applying them to a certain archetype of people he meets throughout life working in tech.

With computer science being one of the most popular degrees being held by Gen Z, the "nerd" casting will slowly fade as computer work becomes more and more the norm vs. traditional trades and fields that require higher education.

Average Joe caught wind you could make Lawyer and Doctor money with a Bachelor's or less, makes sense to me.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#193

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.

Umm... just so ya know, practically everything in "wokeness" is about somebody saying "Please don't paint me with the broad brush you're using." I think most of what you identify as "wokeness" is other people who aren't directly affected trying to help out, since the affected people are usually a minority who won't be heard if it's just them. That can lead to its own forms of tone-deafness and "you're not helping" be…

> practically everything in "wokeness" is about saying.... Please don't paint me with the broad brush you're using.

Err.. really? I mean, that's the definition of individualism against which many "woke" people would object. Even you say, "since the affected people are usually a minority". This is just false, if we take minority to refer to the usual "protected subgroups".

The relevant sense of Woke here, seems to me, to be concerned not with people's individual needs -- but their needs qua some alleged group. Esp., as you offer, "minority" groups.

It's a sort of perverse individualism. It's just substituting a different type of broad brush. Rather than starting with a maximally individual analysis (and hence construe treatment in terms of procedural fairness), rather, start by a group analysis and place individuals within those groups (and hence talk about aggregate distributional outcomes).

The derision here is the conflict in having to raise an issue because you are autistic, without inviting the Woke-style "and autistic people are a minority who need protected". The latter substitutes the underlying lack of procedural concern for individual needs with exactly the same problem: again ignoring individual difference expect now substituting alleged "group needs".

Woke analysis of this kind prescribes, a typically condescending, set of redresses for alleged group grievances. Individualism prescribes nothing of this sort, rather, adjusting the rules so as to maximise each person's ability to get what they each, as individuals, need.

"Don't paint me with a broad brush" means let me speak for myself alone. This attitude is antithetical to analysis which begins with "minorities", which by construction, are not people who are each individually empowered to speak for themselves.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#194

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.

> But as the father of a kid with Asperger Syndrome, and as someone with a likely diagnosis myself (according to neuropysch testing),

It's not immediately obvious to me how this relates to the article. Can you elaborate? Is "fierce nerd" a reference to Aspergers?

Re: Fierce Nerds

#195

Using James Watson as an example is an interesting choice. When I think of James Watson, I think of someone who a) stole his major work (the one thing for which he is famous) from a woman without giving credit, and b) has been almost-literally cancelled for being consistently racist, also by his colleague-science-nerds who consistently report that they don't like him. Not someone that I want to celebrate for being a…

The idea that Watson "stole" his major work from Franklin is absurd. Franklin was on a completely different track and thought Watson & Crick's approach was a dead end.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#196

PG gets dunked on on Twitter for defending Antonio Garcia Martinez but he knows he's right even though everyone is making fun of him so his natural defense mechanism is to go back and create an elaborate framework to prove he's right and it's just that nobody else can see he's right. You see, AGM isn't a misanthrope misogynist, he's fierce! He says the things everyone else is afraid to say and thinks the things every…

For anyone who isn't currently on Twitter, AGM is the guy who publicly called Bay Area women "soft, weak and full of $#!+" and was recently canned from a management role at Apple when people pointed out that his performance assessments of subordinates might not be free from bias. Sucks to be him of course, but what's the alternative?

He wrote a gonzo book full of insensitive over-the-top passages, like the one you're referencing, in order to sell books. It worked. He created a literary persona that people loved or loved to hate.

It's a huge leap to go from "you wrote x passage" to "you may be biased against women". If you want to fire someone for bias, you need evidence of bias, not a theory that someone might be biased.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#197
I see the description he puts forward as essentially fitting contrarian types.

Speaking as a contrarian myself, I think the biggest challenge / trap is it's easy to point out things that are wrong or stupid, but tougher to do anything positive about it. I think this equates to the idea about avoiding becoming bitter.

Also, something he missed, and the curse of the contrarian, is "the market can stay irrational long enough for you to lose all your money". This happens all the time with unorthodox ideas, you can be right but if the mainstream doesn't shift in your favor before too long, you get ignored, discredited, or worse. I'd argue this is a bigger problem now, there is more polarization and a shorter feedback cycle so ideas get shot down and people fall out of favor much more quickly. Popular but wrong ideas, once they have "network effects" are much stickier than they once were. All this is tougher on the contrarian, or "fierce nerd".

Re: Fierce Nerds

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet, I really liked the essay because it reads like a lifeline to those who doubt themselves, perhaps profoundly Do they? I mean one of the define characteristics is an overconfidence in themselves. I think PG is trying to justify some kind of assholish behaviour in his past by reframing it as a virtue. Really, I think the “fierceness” is incidental. Do immensely successful people need to be somewhat competitiv…

> I think PG is trying to justify some kind of assholish behaviour in his past by reframing it as a virtue. I couldn't help but read part of it as a response to/rationalization of the recent pushback he (and other "fierce nerds") have been receiving lately...the former underdogs are now the establishment. The bad news is that if it's not exercised, your fierceness will turn to bitterness, and you will become an intel…

I think "shooter down of new ideas" is getting unfairly lumped in with those other actually-bad traits. If there's one thing a lot of "idea guys" and optimistic entrepreneurs tend to lack and need, it's a skeptical partner who keeps them grounded in reality. Someone who is experienced, seen it all, constructively critical. Someone who will say "Wait a minute, this was tried in the '80s, and it won't work. Maybe try this instead." If you lump "people who push-back" in with haters and trolls, you're going to end up surrounded by yes-men.

The tech landscape is littered with failed projects that could have been stopped early if the idea person had a sounding board that keep him/her realistic.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#199

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…

This is especially true in endurance sports. The level of competition is so high now that now one can succeed just based on talent and grit. In order to win you need to understand physiology, psychology, nutrition, aerodynamics, equipment maintenance, etc. Elites even run their own informal private scientific experiments with detailed data analytics to determine empirically which techniques deliver the best results.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#200

Using James Watson as an example is an interesting choice. When I think of James Watson, I think of someone who a) stole his major work (the one thing for which he is famous) from a woman without giving credit, and b) has been almost-literally cancelled for being consistently racist, also by his colleague-science-nerds who consistently report that they don't like him. Not someone that I want to celebrate for being a…

The idea that Watson "stole" his major work from Franklin is absurd. Franklin was on a completely different track and thought Watson & Crick's approach was a dead end.

Wikipedia quotes Watson implicating himself in his own book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Interactions_with...
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