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What game are you playing?

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Re: What game are you playing?

#91

Post by AussieWog93 »

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…

Is it, though?

I've never been to India/Pakistan, but just knowing some of the migrants I've met you guys seem to be much the same as us. Some play the status game (first to get a shitty BMW wins), others play the "knowledge" game. Some play the "work your arse off to show how much of a man you are" game, others play the "work as little as possible to show how much of a man you are" game.

Re: What game are you playing?

#92

Post by everdrive »

I've often observed that people mistake "intelligence" for

- "knowing the things that I know"

- "coming to the same conclusions as me"

You can see the "knowing the things that I know" most often in professional settings. "If this guy were smart, he'd know how to do XYZ." Knowledge and intelligence are not the same, but I encounter this bias on a very regular basis.

You can see the "coming to the same conclusions as me" most often in the moral and political sphere. Clearly if someone were intelligent, they would draw the "right" conclusion, as I have.

Real intelligence is the capacity for complexity, pattern recognition, and speed of cognition; none of these guarantee either of the two above conditions.

Re: What game are you playing?

#93

Post by miguelmurca »

everdrive wrote: post #92

I've often observed that people mistake "intelligence" for - "knowing the things that I know" - "coming to the same conclusions as me" You can see the "knowing the things that I know" most often in professional settings. "If this guy were smart, he'd know how to do XYZ." Knowledge and intelligence are not the same, but I encounter this bias on a very regular basis. You can see the "coming to the same conclusions as m…

The converse fallacy is also, I believe, true. "This person knows how to do XYZ, therefore they're smart" (in a more general sense; good at "other games", as it were), is something that took me time to understand to be false.

And I think your last paragraph reflects this fallacy:

> Real intelligence is the capacity for complexity, pattern recognition, and speed of cognition; none of these guarantee either of the two above conditions.

These are criteria I would give to be good at mathematics, not necessarily a kind person, or cultured person, or good team member.

Of course, I may be hair-splitting at what you mean by "smart" (and I'm sorry for that), but I think this is the angle the article is also taking.

Re: What game are you playing?

#94

Post by emmelaich »

slavik81 wrote: post #67
emmelaich wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 P…

I would argue that their science career came first. Even if less remunerative.

> graduated as class valedictorian in 1984. During high school, Holland was the best student in mathematics in his year,

from wikipedia

Re: What game are you playing?

#95

Post by snvzz »

capableweb wrote: post #89
glouwbug wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re being downvoted because you’re coming off as if you’re marketing. It’s okay though. Pixel dungeon is a lot of fun and well written to boot; the source is online

I think the downvotes are there because their post is wildly off-topic, the submission post is not "Ask HN: What video games are you playing" but about playing a totally different game: life.

life? What a kusoge.

Re: What game are you playing?

#96

Post by ZephyrBlu »

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.

Women respecting successful men who are nerds is generally them respecting the "successful" bit, not the "nerd" bit.

Re: What game are you playing?

#97

Post by xnorswap »

jholman wrote: post #87
davidkuennen wrote: post #84

I play 1-2 games of Teamfight Tactics or League of Legends per day. I love the limited time for each game. It's perfect for relaxation. You just play a game which takes around 20-30 minutes and after that you can decide to play another one or quit for the day.

The game I'm playing is "read articles that HN users found interesting, and then see what other HN users had to say about that topic". I guess I can conclude that davidkuennen is playing is some other game. They're probably very good at it, or at least having fun.

Yes, you're playing a losing game.

Others read headlines, form their opinions and decide what they want to say, then come to the comments to say it.

Usually they scan the comments to check they're on topic, then give their pre-formed opinion. Sometimes they'll instead share that they had a different idea about a different topic if the comments reveal they were mistaken about the topic.

Occasionally they'll find another comment to reply to instead so they can further discuss their pre-formed opinions.

Almost never they'll actually read the article more than a quick scan.

Actually reading a whole article first before commenting is playing a losing game. You'll lose out to those who simply scan an article far enough to find a hook they can respond to. By the time you actually read, digest and respond to an article, the community will have largely moved on. The scan-until-hook crowd will appear more informed than the post-without-reading-a-word" crowd while maintaining much of the speed advantage of the non-readers.

Simply giving pre-formed opinions and only if the commentary signal is strong enough then actually opening the article is a better strategy from a game theory perspective.

It's a shame and there are times I feel compelled to fight back against it, but that doesn't always go well either. As you say, they're just playing a different game. Some may say I should take heed from the article and look for the perspective that makes that okay, but I prefer informed opinions rather than everyone's favourite pet arguments endlessly rehashed.

Re: What game are you playing?

#98

Post by AussieWog93 »

rektide wrote: post #2

One of nerd's worst problems is that the games they play really deeply matter, that their pursuits can be fantastically stunningly valuable extrinsic & intrinsic pursuits. But there's so few people playing the good games, that commit to engaging the world as naked frankly & genuinely. This post preaches recognizing others game. But few people will ever have the capacity to genuinely recignize your game. Nerds: your p…

I'd almost believe this before I started my PhD.

In reality, I think the most common academic/"nerd" game, by a long shot is "acquire as much useless/non-actionable/niche knowledge as possible, so that you can rub other peoples' noses in the fact that they don't possess said knowledge".

With very few exceptions, it's not "the long game", a "good fight" or anything else worth valorising - it's lonely, miserable fucks who are mad that other people are happy.

Re: What game are you playing?

#99

Post by darkerside »

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…

I think some of this is related to America being a nation of immigrants. Many of us have language barriers with our own parents. We don't always look like our teachers. Nobody explains to us how the world works. We just need to figure it out.

Re: What game are you playing?

#100

Post by hans1729 »

everdrive wrote: post #92

I've often observed that people mistake "intelligence" for - "knowing the things that I know" - "coming to the same conclusions as me" You can see the "knowing the things that I know" most often in professional settings. "If this guy were smart, he'd know how to do XYZ." Knowledge and intelligence are not the same, but I encounter this bias on a very regular basis. You can see the "coming to the same conclusions as m…

intelligence := ability to build models [only exists relative to $domain, but training the brain to perform well in one domain translates to enhanced capability in others; see link between iq and affinity to music etc.]. the speed of cognition is basically a symptom of how well your brain is trained to perform a task in some domain; someone deeply versed in theoretical physics, doing objectively hard mathematical work in his daily life, may be very slow at other cognitive tasks, if the neuro-pathways of the different tasks/domains are not aligned. It's complicated, mashing the entire concept of "cognitive ability" into a single, one-dimensional term is not really doing the topic justice.

We're just used to it, because groups need to converge on the simplest, most accessible abstraction of the idea (of cognitive ability, in this case). Truth is, "intelligence" as a broad term doesn't make that much sense.

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