A difficult topic. Everyone of us has a story to tell and a burden to carry. Focusses on some fierce nerds and misses all others. The gamut of personalties is vast. Got to try to bring out the best in people.
Fierce Nerds
331–340 of 482 posts
Re: Fierce Nerds
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 oppos…
There is a pretty wide variance from school to school, town to town, and state to state/country to country. Maybe you were in a particularly well-adjusted school, and other schools and communities are still more judgmental of non-blessed interests? Or maybe the nerds remain, but they had different interests from the new main-stream. I'd hardly call Halo a nerd thing, for example.
Re: Fierce Nerds
#333Since pg's essay is of a psychoanalytic nature, I'll reply in a psychoanalytic frame, for the sake of conversation, not criticism. [Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts.] During the last year or two pg has written more than a few essays and tweets which appear to be of a defensive nature. People like him contribute more than other people, it's alright to to be fierce, can't s…
PG, if you asked him, might describe himself as defending people who do real work from a larger culture that all too often prioritizes serving the status quo over accomplishing the goals that the status quo was established to accomplish. One example of that would be SpaceX doing the launch vehicle design work that the NASA/Boeing/Big Government Contractor complex was established to do. At the same time, SpaceX works…
Why can’t we have both? A job where we can “actually do stuff” without getting mistreated by psychotic billionaires. There’s a lack of compassion in tech.
Re: Fierce Nerds
#334> The fierce nerds are a small but interesting group. If by interesting you mean "humorless bellend", then yes, I agree wholeheartedly.
Only the boring ones are humorless. I actually think most decent satirists would match up to the fierce nerd persona pretty well. Voltaire comes to mind.
Re: Fierce Nerds
#335Since pg's essay is of a psychoanalytic nature, I'll reply in a psychoanalytic frame, for the sake of conversation, not criticism. [Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts.] During the last year or two pg has written more than a few essays and tweets which appear to be of a defensive nature. People like him contribute more than other people, it's alright to to be fierce, can't s…
> Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts. Beside your point, but wondering if you could expand on this. I have a tendency to do this, and while it's fun, I'm starting to get the sense that it's a bad habit, possibly because I sense I'm overly confident on something that might be 100% wrong and it feels... invasive?
I agree on not calling out anything psycho. Not sure about invasive though.
Re: Fierce Nerds
#336"Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?" -Jeff Bezos https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate... "Fierce nerds" can be valuable. Sure. But the folks who truly stand out in my mind are a level higher. They're the ones at the top of their game, who know how to demand & command excellence, without being jerks about it. I'm reminded of this episode of "The Chef Show" where J…
> "Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?" -Jeff Bezos That an interesting read, thanks. I struggle to square what Bezos is saying with what Amazon has become. He is clearly incredibly clever but appears devoid of any kindness toward his low level employees. Am I missing something?
Are you only believing what you read in the media or do you know people that actually work at Amazon? The fact that Amazon employees in a warehouse rejected unionization speaks volumes. And I know plenty of Amazon engineers that love working there.
To put it in perspective, there may be employees that hate working at Amazon, but there are also 100,000 employees. If only 10% of the employees hated working there, that's still 10,000 employees. But a 90% satisfaction rate for any company is amazingly high.
Re: Fierce Nerds
#337"Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?" -Jeff Bezos https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate... "Fierce nerds" can be valuable. Sure. But the folks who truly stand out in my mind are a level higher. They're the ones at the top of their game, who know how to demand & command excellence, without being jerks about it. I'm reminded of this episode of "The Chef Show" where J…
Interesting! I think compliments given in general to fierce nerds is a valid idea. General rule of not to be pissing off people in life.
Re: Fierce Nerds
#338"Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?" -Jeff Bezos https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate... "Fierce nerds" can be valuable. Sure. But the folks who truly stand out in my mind are a level higher. They're the ones at the top of their game, who know how to demand & command excellence, without being jerks about it. I'm reminded of this episode of "The Chef Show" where J…
> He tells Bill Burr that he had followed Roy around for a full day, going to all his restaurants and food trucks, and not once did Roy raise his voice to his staff. Sorry what are you trying to say here? It's admirable or difficult not to yell at your employees?
Bill Burr is a badass. Ruthless savage killer with words. But he’s a comic.
Re: Fierce Nerds
#339Since pg's essay is of a psychoanalytic nature, I'll reply in a psychoanalytic frame, for the sake of conversation, not criticism. [Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts.] During the last year or two pg has written more than a few essays and tweets which appear to be of a defensive nature. People like him contribute more than other people, it's alright to to be fierce, can't s…
> Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even to psychoanalysts. Beside your point, but wondering if you could expand on this. I have a tendency to do this, and while it's fun, I'm starting to get the sense that it's a bad habit, possibly because I sense I'm overly confident on something that might be 100% wrong and it feels... invasive?
I think you have to detach to get value out of it -- not "what's the reason this person is like this" but "what are three different mechanisms by which a person might become like this". A bit like how a history student of a certain level isn't asked "why did WWI happen" but "contrast the materialist and post-revisionist explanations for the origins of WWI".
Re: Fierce Nerds
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am so very weary of this nonsense being taken seriously as sage advice. Agreed. In fact, in the featured article, the author makes reference to the hard science achievement of Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA as follows. > And moreover it's clear from the story that Crick and Watson's fierce nerdiness was integral to their success. Their independent-mindedness caused them to consi…
Also ignores the fact that the "discovery" of the helical structure of DNA was based on the unpublished work of Rosalind Franklin and others
This. The example is particularly galling when you know that part of the story.