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What game are you playing?

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Re: What game are you playing?

#191

Post by scubbo »

CharlesW wrote: post #26
rektide wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an organizational level, we're 98% regarded as human resources for management's usage. From a personal level, few people have the capability to appreciate what we care about. They can measure us with yard sticks & jira points & dollars-of-valued-delivered, but none of these outsiders can adopt our value system & see us as we see ourselves, none can rate us by what matters to us & how we go about & care about our…

> From an organizational level, we're 98% regarded as human resources for management's usage. 100% of employees are regarded as human resources for management's usage, so "nerds" aren't unique in that regard. The idea that money goes in and business value comes out applies to business nerds, facilities management nerds, HR nerds, accounting nerds, etc. Everyone is beholden to a business operating system responsible f…

Exactly this. As I said in another comment that was alluding to sprint points - "nerds get no respect" is a much less true or insightful statement than "workers get no respect under capitalism, and many nerds are workers". I suspect that the OP I was replying to believes that nerds are entitled to _more_ respect than the average worker, hence their perception.

Re: What game are you playing?

#192

Post by MonaroVXR »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #107
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…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures Talks about this as a cultural thing. I think people in the west are still surprised that nerds might weightlift or jocks might be really smart.

Exactly, Exactly the place where I'm living is behind

Re: What game are you playing?

#193

Post by Bancakes »

es7 wrote: post #186
Bancakes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are not deep or interesting, and are easy to plot on a database. If silicon valley companies know being a consumer - for instance - is a wretched lifestyle, then so can the average person. I don't need cutesy ways to understand it, I resent it. Having to send your kids to school with fancy clothes and shiny toys - what a setback in society. At some point you need to have a set of axioms to ground yourself…

> Most people are not deep or interesting, and are easy to plot on a database This strikes me as only very superficially true. In my own experience as a human, I've found that every person I meet is unique and interesting in meaningful ways. I didn't use the term "deep" because it seems ill-defined in this context. If one of the main ways you think about "most people" is "not deep", then it seems to me that you're le…

Status used to be defined by achievements - it had weight back then. Consumerism is a modern phenomenon and to me seems to enable people to compensate for a lack of character and skill with abundance of inanimate objects. Suzy wears an artsy dress - can she draw one? Billy sports an expensive calculator - can he plot with it well?

I say people are not deep because often they cease growing, and instead develop sentimentality and culture around something which is mass-produced and soulless. Then human connections shift from direct and interpersonal to being routed over a net of purchased goods.

I don't like it either but humans are normally distributed over different metrics, and it makes sense to look above and climb up, instead of accepting yourself. People change, don't be yourself.

Re: What game are you playing?

#194

Post by torginus »

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…

Generally speaking I was the same, the I wasn't. I spent a significant amount of my youth, and an unreasonable amount of effort being involved in amateur astronomy. As you can imagine, it didn't exactly catapult me to the top of the high school social hierarchy.

Yet as an adult, I've received a lot of respect and admiration (from people whose opinion I care about) for my knowledge in this domain, and I can say I have an unconventional and very rewarding hobby.

Re: What game are you playing?

#195

Post by horns4lyfe »

nikanj wrote: post #72
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'm from the EU, and after moving to North America with my partner I realized you can't just part-time anything in NA. No matter what you are (goth/nerd/cyclist/painter/activist/etc), you have to dial it to 11 and be Really Serious about it. It was weird feeling like a wannabe at all of my hobbies, because I merely liked them, I wasn't serious about it with a goal-oriented diet+exercise regimen aimed for fast gains

I don’t really get where you’re coming from on this. Who is telling you that you have to dial it to 11? The vast majority of people I know have lots of varied hobbies and interests and very rarely are they anything beyond casual interests. That’s one of the things I like about living here, is that people have lots of casual interests, and no one really thinks much of it. For example, I have lots of friends that are into playing music, but very few that actually perform. I suppose if you expect people to applaud you for dabbling, you’d be disappointed, but that’s true everywhere.

Re: What game are you playing?

#196

Post by Aeolun »

physicles wrote: post #130
Aeolun wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd be surprised how many years in a row you can feel that way before the meta realization sinks in. I think that meta feeling comes quite quickly, it’s just that you cannot yet grasp the full scope of your naivete. Every year I feel more cynical and look back on my younger self with a mixture of awe and horror. It’s becoming more and more apparent to me why it is young people that change the world.

The older I get, the more I hold the following two thoughts simultaneously in my head: - "Young people are insufferable. They know nothing but think they know everything." - "Thank $deity for young people. They have the naïveté to question everything and the energy to try fixing it."

I’m content to keep the world running while they do it.

Re: What game are you playing?

#197

Post by Gordonjcp »

dqpb wrote: post #155
Gordonjcp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain it? Is it something that's entirely dependent on understanding US-only cultural references?

Brad and Edgar are both athletes. Brad plays football and Edgar plays baseball. Brad is watching Edgar play baseball. Edgar’s behavior indicates to Brad that Edgar is not a talented athlete. However, Brads frame of reference is football, which is not the game Edgar is playing. In the frame of reference of baseball, it turns out that Edgar is a good athlete.

Right, okay. I get that would have been much funnier if I'd heard of either term ;-)
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