Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fierce Nerds

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 482 posts

Re: Fierce Nerds

#201

Post by thesausageking »

mcguire wrote: post #126

" I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that your fierceness will be a great help in solving difficult problems. And not just the kind of scientific and technical problems that nerds have traditionally solved. As the world progresses, the number of things you can win at by getting the right answer increases. Recently getting rich became one of them: 7 of the 8 richest people in America are now fi…

PG hacked the VC system so he didn't have to be a dealmaker. YC has standard terms so there's no haggling on price, pro rata, board seats, or anything else. They've automated a lot of what they do via software and their network. And because of the content they put out and the reputation they've built, founders from all over the world come to them and accept much worse terms than any normal VC would offer.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#202

Post by bidirectional »

dragonwriter wrote: post #182
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.

Very odd comment. Jordan and Kobe did not grow up miserably at all. Jordan grew up in a stable middle-class home and Kobe's dad was an NBA player-turned-coach.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#203

Post by sangnoir »

jfengel wrote: post #150
ziggus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...a ton of my time is wasted by processes, norms and ideologies." So, all the stuff that helps society function?

A ton of his time his wasted by other people trying not to waste their time. If we all just agreed to do everything his way, it would be a huge time saver... for him.

He who pays the piper calls the tune - if he's not doing what he's paid for, he'll soon find himself not being paid for.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#204

Post by SyzygistSix »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #163
GavinMcG wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overconfidence and self-doubt can go hand-in-hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_narcissism

Is there a clear definition of self-doubt that doesn’t overlap with underconfidence? Because if the terms we’re using are so broad that a person can both be described as overconfident and underconfident, then as I say elsewhere this just looks like cold reading.

It's the difference between feeling and acting. A person can feel a lack of confidence and feel doubt and still act confident or overconfident.

Lots of people, like artists, visionaries, and weirdos who make strides to live a unique life have to act confidently to get to that life yet many also have a lot of self doubt. They just do the brave thing to move ahead with their vision even though it could likely end in failure. For many it does, whether they are remembered posthumously or not.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#205

Post by smeeth »

Not a big fan of this essay. I believe quite strongly that ~what you are~ is a product of ~what you do~ and not the other way around. In this framing, "Fierce Nerd" is nothing more than an arbitrary categorization of a set of exhibited behaviors.

Graham has observed that intelligent, competitive, inquisitive, and confident individuals can do well in today's economy. He has also identified pitfalls associated with being too aggressive, too confident, or lacking other skills.

I am unable to find the positive value of sticking a label on this coincidence of qualities and strongly implying the quantities and characteristics of these qualities are at least mostly inherent (with the exception of "fierceness", which apparently can be "turned off"). Of course nature does play a role, but why ignore nurture? It must be quite depressing to believe you are condemned to a life of little personal development.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#206

Post by flaubere »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #149
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #5

Does anyone else feel sort of weird when Paul Graham talks about nerds? It feels like he's trying to deal with something on his end, and we're just watching him rationalize to himself.

>It feels like he's trying to deal with something on his end, and we're just watching him rationalize to himself. That's the case for all PG essays, isn't it?

I have found a few of his essays very good, indeed expressing things I haven't seen anywhere else. I think he has provided very good advice to young people at times.

The vast majority I would say that he is trying to retcon his huge success and the success of some businesses he has been associated with into a coherent worldview. I believe that in 'Hackers and Painters' he actually goes through some back-of-envelope calculations that show that the money he made when Yahoo bought Viaweb corresponded closely to the real value he had created, in some sense.

It is baffling to me why he isn't able to say "I got lucky - I worked hard and created something very valuable, but I was also in the right place at the right time." Clearly there were special factors at play selling an e-commerce platform to Yahoo in 1998. He's also done intelligent and pro-social things with both his money and his time since then it appears. I don't know what the shame is in saying "I won a lottery - but I have tried to do the right thing with my good fortune."

I think if you asked Jamie Zawinski, who I think was no less technically skilled, nor less purposeful about working on interesting and important things (nor, tbh, any worse at writing thoughtful essays), he would readily admit to having been extremely lucky. I don't know what the difference is between these two personalities. I think I'd rather be jwz in similar circumstances.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#207

Post by munificent »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #66
pattusk wrote: post #18

> Most people think of nerds as quiet, diffident people. [...] In fact some nerds are quite fierce. That someone would think nerds are not competitive is, to me, the strangest thing about this article. Perhaps because I'm one, but whether it's Magic the gathering, Demoparties, rubics cube solving, chess, Counterstrike LANs, academia, or any of my tech jobs, every "nerdy" activity I've ever engaged with has always bee…

I think its mostly due to the diffusion of what a "nerd" is. Being a "nerd" or a "geek" used to be a insult, now its trendy for some reason, and seems to mostly be a term for modern consumerist culture (buy lots of stuff in some sort of genre and be a nerd)

> now its trendy for some reason

Culture follows power. Once a bunch of tech nerds became billionaires in the 1990s, every aspect of that subculture gained prestige.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#208

Post by playpause »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #163
GavinMcG wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overconfidence and self-doubt can go hand-in-hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_narcissism

Is there a clear definition of self-doubt that doesn’t overlap with underconfidence? Because if the terms we’re using are so broad that a person can both be described as overconfident and underconfident, then as I say elsewhere this just looks like cold reading.

People are really complex systems, they don’t just have one emotion, even at one time. I know several people who seem to swing between overconfidence and self doubt, sometimes very suddenly. Maybe some will eventually settle in the middle. But if someone has something in their psyche that just keeps pushing them back into an overconfident mindset, then it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t also experience regular injections of humiliation leading to growing self doubts over time.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#209

Post by flaubere »

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…

By redefining anyone who has worked very hard and enjoyed success as a 'fierce nerd', you make the term meaningless, and the supposed payoff from being one into a tautology.

Re: Fierce Nerds

#210

Post by fallat »

Awww did someone get their feelings hurt?

The more this Paul Graham person writes the more I realize they are just another regular person.

Post reply on HN