What game are you playing? • Hacker News Board

Re: What game are you playing?

#61

Post by eyelidlessness » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

DrBoring wrote: post #27

DrBoring wrote: post #25

Interesting little article. To me, it speaks like the author is a bit remorseful for spending so much time on academic pursuits, and not building important social skills. I can recall in my youth making the assumption that someone was entirely stupid because they didn't share my breadth of knowledge. Like the author, I never considered that they spent their time in pursuit of other knowledge. I'm not sure where that…

P.P.S. Minecraft with my daughter. It's the first survival play-through for both of us.

For me it’s finally getting to see my pup do both competitive and cooperative fetch/keep away with another pup in the same play. (All the more pertinent discussion is more valuable overall, but I wanted to honor wholesome family play too)

Re: What game are you playing?

#62

Post by dasz » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:34 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #41

es7 wrote: post #5

Science and technology and other nerdy pursuits can be really valuable, and certainly don’t require you to be judgmental of others. The problem, as I’ve seen it is that people who are bad at some of the other ‘games’ that make a meaningful life lean too heavily on science and technology as a coping mechanism. That coping mechanism could be many things: nerdy pursuits, alcohol, video games, etc. Whatever your pursuit,…

Im guilty of being rather judgmental of others who performed worse than me in academics. I don’t really want to go into the reasons but, yes its very unhealthy to think that way. People have their reasons for why they choose to focus on some things and not others. Perhaps the most important goal of a good society is to be able to assign people to things they’re most suited for.

I've found that there's a kind of person who excels at academic pursuits but isn't so great elsewhere. Especially outside academia.

I was judged harshly at school. Fast forward years later and I'm that guy who hired someone who got better scores than me. Annoyingly I later also had to fire them because they couldn't deliver. Those scores didn't help them succeed. Too much theory.

They had not played the associated game of project management. Too much focus on getting good caused excessive success in their local minima instead of the bigger picture.

I realised this lesson quite frequently in many ways and our hiring is now more around the competency game. Can they do it? So now the bar is set differently and there's multiple games you need to play and succeed in. Better have hobbies outside IT as well.

We've gotten suspicious of people who overplay in the tech sandpit. Its suboptimal in our view.

Hiring adult humans who can succeed with adult supervision seems like a better overall situation.

Re: What game are you playing?

#63

Post by hans1729 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:35 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #41

es7 wrote: post #5

Science and technology and other nerdy pursuits can be really valuable, and certainly don’t require you to be judgmental of others. The problem, as I’ve seen it is that people who are bad at some of the other ‘games’ that make a meaningful life lean too heavily on science and technology as a coping mechanism. That coping mechanism could be many things: nerdy pursuits, alcohol, video games, etc. Whatever your pursuit,…

Im guilty of being rather judgmental of others who performed worse than me in academics. I don’t really want to go into the reasons but, yes its very unhealthy to think that way. People have their reasons for why they choose to focus on some things and not others. Perhaps the most important goal of a good society is to be able to assign people to things they’re most suited for.

>People have their reasons for why they choose to focus on some things and not others.

You're saying that like those "reasons" are properties of the personality of their beholders. They are not, it's coping mechanisms all the way down.

>Perhaps the most important goal of a good society is to be able to assign people to things they’re most suited for.

Perhaps we should stop putting things as wild as brains into boxes labelled "suited for X, suited for Y". Perhaps the most important goal of a good individual is to be able to leave others alone, so they can flourish instead of trying to fit the arbitrary concepts that random other participants made up for them to fit into.

Re: What game are you playing?

#64

Post by eyelidlessness » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:46 AM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #48

scubbo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nerds in particular get shit for respect I have no idea what world you're living in, but it's not mine.

Rings true for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures I know lots of engineers and scientists are devoted to art, opera, literature, history. Next to zero artists or singers who are familiar with say, the laws of thermodynamics.

Excuse me but what definition of “nerd” are you operating under because I want to travel back in time and not literally have the shit beaten out of me and go enjoy an art and history education for the pure academic joy of it.

Re: What game are you playing?

#65

Post by rektide » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #57

arvinsim wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy for nerds to get respect from other nerds. But I agree with him that nerds get little respect from non-nerds.

You are saying that women don't respect successful men? Because in my world, nerds are successful.

How deep does the respect go? Is it a knowing respect that understands the real strengths & weaknesses of a person's professional persona intimately? Honestly I think it's probably kind of alienating & unideal that so many partners cant really communicate & share effectively what it is they face. We might get respect, but that doesnt mean the other person actually understands the game, or our moves.

There's a whole idea of "workwife," as in, the professional partner that can comprehend & share & commiserate & bond over the "other" 40 hours of our lives. Someome else to co-play the work game with. Because so so rarely are our partners positioned to be able to, no?

The post is about a lot more than respect. We can give each other respect for all kinds of things, all manner of reasons & successes. Respect can says more about the person giving respect than it can the person getting respect. This post is about a different kind of empathy, of understanding people as they want to be be seen, find ways to meet people on their courts & finding ways to be good witnesses to their moves/triumphs.

Re: What game are you playing?

#66

Post by golergka » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:51 AM UTC

hans1729 wrote: post #60

routerl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever your pursuit, if you’re being judgmental of most other people, then you’re probably missing something big Sure, but this may very well be intentional and good; an entire community can become pathological, and it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. Liberal-minded people often had this reaction to the mid-century rise of fascism, to…

> it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. I don't get this. Being judgemental always seemed immature to me. Being curious and trying to understand why individuals or groups do seemingly irrational things: yes. Being judgemental (or "principled" (is this synonymous?)): no. To me, that was always a sign of someone who hasn't made sense of thems…

Have you experienced a moment when most of your nation supports an unjust invasion, and many openly and proudly dream of genocide?

Re: What game are you playing?

#67

Post by slavik81 » Thu, May 05, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #48

scubbo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nerds in particular get shit for respect I have no idea what world you're living in, but it's not mine.

Rings true for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures I know lots of engineers and scientists are devoted to art, opera, literature, history. Next to zero artists or singers who are familiar with say, the laws of thermodynamics.

> Next to zero artists or singers who are familiar with say, the laws of thermodynamics.

You don't have to dig very deep to find counterexamples. Dr. Brian May was the lead guitarist and a founding member of Queen. He holds a PhD in astrophysics. Tom Scholz was a founding member of Boston and has a master's degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. Dr. Brian Holland is the lead vocalist for The Offspring and has a PhD in molecular biology.

As a more personal example, I spent my high school science classes competing on each test for top marks against Wesley MacInnes, who today is an actor and country music singer. (He was the school bully in the last Power Rangers movie. It was an amusing role. Wesley was an extraordinarily kind person in real high school.)

Re: What game are you playing?

#68

Post by routerl » Thu, May 05, 2022, 6:01 AM UTC

hans1729 wrote: post #60

routerl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever your pursuit, if you’re being judgmental of most other people, then you’re probably missing something big Sure, but this may very well be intentional and good; an entire community can become pathological, and it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. Liberal-minded people often had this reaction to the mid-century rise of fascism, to…

> it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. I don't get this. Being judgemental always seemed immature to me. Being curious and trying to understand why individuals or groups do seemingly irrational things: yes. Being judgemental (or "principled" (is this synonymous?)): no. To me, that was always a sign of someone who hasn't made sense of thems…

> Being judgemental always seemed immature to me

This might just be a matter of vocabulary. I come from a tradition where "judgment" means pretty much the same thing as "inference", and it's not possible that inferential reasoning is "immature", so we probably disagree about definitions.

> At what point have you made so much sense of anything that you can make a defining principle out of it?

Well, there are certain fairly uncontroversial things. For example, I think that an argument's conclusions should follow, according to the rules of inference, from that argument's premises. This is just applying deduction to everyday life, as a principle. Of course, as with many real-life applications of general principles, it comes with caveats; in the case of deduction, for example, it calls for an understanding that most things in life don't lend themselves to formal, deductive arguments.

Nevertheless, the point here is that I haven't made "so much sense of anything", but have borrowed the best (as far as I can tell) tools my culture has provided me with, in order to make sense of things. At this general level of description, it should be recognizable that I'm talking about things like math, science, and many others.

> Is it a desire for deeper stability?

Sure, that's part of it. This is why medicine exists, for instance. The human desire to normalize the wild oscillations of nature is why we make clothing, build shelters, grow crops, etc etc.

> I never got the advantage of saying "well now MY model fits this pattern, PERIOD!".

When confronted with human goals, some models succeed, and some don't. A theory of infection that doesn't lead to vaccines will, probably, succumb to the brutal fact that "this pattern of thinking isn't useful".

Re: What game are you playing?

#69

Post by watwut » Thu, May 05, 2022, 6:25 AM UTC

hans1729 wrote: post #60

routerl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever your pursuit, if you’re being judgmental of most other people, then you’re probably missing something big Sure, but this may very well be intentional and good; an entire community can become pathological, and it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. Liberal-minded people often had this reaction to the mid-century rise of fascism, to…

> it then makes sense (and is good) for principled people to trust their judgement, even if it makes them an outcast. I don't get this. Being judgemental always seemed immature to me. Being curious and trying to understand why individuals or groups do seemingly irrational things: yes. Being judgemental (or "principled" (is this synonymous?)): no. To me, that was always a sign of someone who hasn't made sense of thems…

The issue here is, that good sounding high minded principle you describe in first paragraph fairly often amounts to enabling. It also puts great emphasis to understanding aggressor and literally none to understanding victim ... which turns into victim blaming and petty scrutiny of victim fairly often.

And I don't even have super big issues in mind. It happens in fairly normal abusive/low level corruption situations the most.

Re: What game are you playing?

#70

Post by Bayart » Thu, May 05, 2022, 6:34 AM UTC

booboofixer wrote: post #49

There was a comment on HN about a year ago by somebody that grew up in India, and being Pakistani i relate to it a lot as well. Specifically, it mentioned that these 'games' and people choosing one or two games out of a great number of games available out there seems like a uniquely North American thing (as far as we can tell from our own limited exposure to other societies). So while you folks had the jock, the nerd…

While that sort of « hobbie tribalism » is definitely a North American trope, I think the main point (it's more likely for people to have incentives aligned in a way that you don't understand than it is for them to be stupid) stands.