The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs • Hacker News Board

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#261

Post by bruce343434 » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:24 PM UTC

mmcgaha wrote: post #212

cbozeman wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're out of your depth." That's what you do. A lot of very smart people think because they're very smart they have some kind of exceptional insight into the inner workings of all things. They don't. And they need to be reminded of that. Intelligence allows someone to gain that insight faster than those in the middle of the bell curve of IQ, but it doesn't magically confer it . It still takes time, reading, researc…

A better response would be to tell them you are done trying to convince them because you own the responsibility and consequences of the decision. "You're out of your depth" is an insult and is intended to be one.

Is saying that someone has no expertise in a subject necessarily an insult?

To me, your proposal sounds more like a band-aid, instead of treating the core ailment: someone who won't recognize their own fallibility.

Perhaps it can't be "treated", and we just have to make do with such "band aids". But wouldn't it be more productive if we could just get to the root of it?

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#262

Post by ben_w » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:24 PM UTC

walt_grata wrote: post #45

ianbicking wrote: post #4

There's definitely been a move to demand individuals be good at everything... old stereotypes of the nerd brought a lot of negatives, but they were also apologetic, acknowledging the trade off, that paying attention deeply to one thing does lead to being worse at other things. The exact stereotype differed by domain... the performer who is a diva, the self destructive author, the manic artist... each with a hint of n…

I duno on some of that. Until I was about 39 I was a "weird nerd" and then my wife (Dr of special education) finally convinced me to talk to a Dr and get get tested for autism. Turns out I'm ASD 1, would have been Asperger's in the past. Autism has a very wide range of ways it shows itself.

I'm very weird, but whatever I am is rare (or harmless) enough to not be commonly discussed or have a well known group identity the way autism does — I've done online tests for a bunch of psychological conditions, including autism, and all of them rate me as absolutely normal.

But I draw my ingroup/outgroup boundary broadly enough to include all non-sociopathic humans and several other species; I have zero motivation towards spectator sport; music only holds my interest for a few plays and then bores me; I can "visualise" my sense of balance strongly enough to completely override my actual sense of which way is down; my body self-image is almost entirely under conscious control (as in: I can't be body-dysmorphic because I don't have a consistent morph to dis).

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#263

Post by npilk » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:26 PM UTC

wdh505 wrote: post #176

Loughla wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying here.

If my daddy makes 7 digits per year and set me up in a trust then I don't have to work to live upper middle class. Therefore an "elite" aka prestige only position that pays pennies may be more elite because i don't depend on the pay like the plebians. A different way to become a low paying professor is to research and earn 7digits+ from patents

I'm not disputing your point about prestige, and I'm sure that people whose 'daddies make 7 digits per year' would be interested in more prestigious roles and less interested in pay. But I really doubt that most professors are trust fund kids who don't have to work.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#264

Post by pavel_lishin » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:27 PM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #139

pavel_lishin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respect for your knowledge, yes - but if you're the world's top expert in Subject X, while simultaneously world-renowned for being an unpleasant asshole, don't expect people to interact with you more than the absolute bare minimum required to do the job. And frankly, nobody's irreplaceable. If you're #1 in the world, but casually drop racist and sexist slurs, odds are that the #2 expert in the world isn't that much w…

And that's fine for most weird nerds. Being cordial and respecting of knowledge is all that's needed in the workplace. Most wns wouldn't make good friendship material either. Their opinions and tastes have a wide range from normal to rather eclectic. But without these people you will never be able to deliver the next new search paradigm. That's how they bring value and that's why the employer hires them. They also te…

> Being cordial and respecting of knowledge is all that's needed in the workplace.

Yes - but a lot of Weird Nerds aren't willing to be cordial. I said in another comment that I think that one of the reasons they find their home online is because online, others can walk away from their comments when they need a break from them; something that's much harder to do at work, when you're face to face with them in a meeting, or at the watercooler, or in the bathroom where they followed you to continue their argument.

> Re: racism and sexism, I suspect that's not just wns and may have more to do with upbringing than personality. Most wns tend to be free-thinkers, and barring some oddballs, they tend to self-select out of that way of thinking.

I wildly disagree that racism and sexism - especially if you were brought up in it - is something most people, especially weird nerds who have a very high opinion of their intelligence - "think your way out of".

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#265

Post by eikenberry » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:27 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #203

eikenberry wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this stance different from one that says the same thing about your race or being deaf or requiring regular injections? Seems to me this is saying that some forms of bigotry are OK and the victims of it just need to deal with it. That neural disorders aren't as real or important because you can't see them and that makes it easier for some people who have them, but at a functional level, try to make more of it t…

> How is this stance different from one that says the same thing about your race or being deaf or requiring regular injections? Seems to me this is saying that some forms of bigotry are OK and the victims of it just need to deal with it. I never suggested discrimination based on mental health conditions is okay or encouraged. I'm just pointing out that you shouldn't put it on your resume and you can't expect it to ex…

The analogy to race was due to DEI training at work. They equate all things people have biases against as things you should work to overcome. Race is one of these as is sex, handicaps, etc.

The deaf example is actually quite good. People who suffer from neurological disorders have a disability (in the legal sense) that sometimes can't be accommodated in a very similar way. But they aren't considered to be disabled in the same sense and people don't recognize it. They instead just think the people have bad social skills and should try harder (my last employer's DEI training said exactly this). If you had a deaf or wheelchair bound person and people just generally decided that those are excuses for doing things that everyone else can do then it'd be comparable (I mean things that they can do, but can't do as others expect because, say, they can't hear the instructions from their boss).

I'm really not that concerned with a perfect world and I agree with much of what you are saying. I'd best describe my feelings as annoyed and concerned for how much society has doubled down on all DEI biases being unacceptable except for those against people with neurological disorders (both sides of that annoy me, the doubling down and the ignoring).

And I apologize for suggesting, if indirectly, that you were bigoted. I meant that more as a rhetorical statement but don't think I couched it as well as I could have.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#266

Post by pavel_lishin » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:31 PM UTC

nurple wrote: post #135

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Everyone get your bucket ready, I'm going to throw an anecdote into it. I play D&D. This exposes me to a wide variety of people, but unsurprisingly, a lot of them are probably what the author would consider Weird Nerds. Most of them are perfectly pleasant people, and I look forward to spending time in their company, both in the context of playing D&D, and just as a way to socialize. Heck, at my last session, a player…

I had a "friend" like you once. We got along well, he would excitedly dive deep with me in tech because he wanted to learn programming, and I would excitedly dive deep with him into creating coffee and beer because I find the stricture in creation leading to creativity endlessly interesting. However, whenever he'd have his "cool" friends over for parties I wouldn't get an invite, in fact never met any of his other ac…

I don't know you, and you don't know me. I won't hypothesize about your situation - though based on what you've written, you're right, and it was an objectively terrible experience for you, and I'm sorry you had to go through it..

But please don't equate me with someone who treated you badly, based on five paragraphs I banged out this afternoon.

Just because I don't want to invite a casual acquaintance who regularly says things I find vile to my house, doesn't make me an incompassionate villain.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#267

Post by narag » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:33 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #155

fragmede wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or plain just getting away with shitty behavior. Uncle Rick's a raging asshole and we still accept him as part of the family, which means so can I.

Usually people with an uncle Rick don’t want to become like him and are actually more self aware.

People suffering uncle Rick, of course.

But when it's some famous "difficult" person like Jobs or Gates, or in fiction like Doctor House, the version of them that we see is idealized.

Actually this is the exact counterpoint of TFA: using the inexistent genius as an excuse for the trade-off. Imitating the genius is more difficult than just being a jerk.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#268

Post by pfannkuchen » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:37 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #240

koolba wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except (young?) people are idiots and mistakenly think the bad behavior is the source of the genius rather than just hitching a ride.

Except when it is, which was the actual point here (or maybe stating it more directly). Or maybe it's the other way around (see, e.g. uncle Rick); either way, there seems to be some correlation there. I imagine that every asshole genius will have plenty of sharp edges in their behavior that they could round off very easily, making it a near-free win for their relationships (and overall success in life). Beyond that,…

Genius and asshole tend to go together because to be noticed as a genius you can’t just be doing what everyone around you is doing. People with a high IQ who just go with the flow do not stand out as genius. The noteworthy part of genius is the things they do that are different. Being different means rejecting what everyone around you is doing. Having a personality where you reject what everyone around you is doing usually earns you the label of… asshole.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#269

Post by klysm » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:42 PM UTC

cod1r wrote: post #195

jarjoura wrote: post #180

Speaking from big tech, you get things like rust (mozilla) or React (facebook) when your engineers are given the space to solve industry scale problems. Those are both "weird nerd" contributions since the original creators weren't interested in the celebrity public facing side of it. In the React case, I'm not sure it would have become the framework it is today unless Dan Abramhov pushed it outside of the company. Th…

What industry scale problems does React solve? I don't have the most experience in React but it feels like it's gotten very complex in recent years.

React is a very good framework for writing _web_ frontends in my opinion. Writing web frontends is complex, there is no getting around that. React being complex isn't a fault of react, it reflects the nature of the problem.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#270

Post by klysm » Sun, Jun 09, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #194

Good article, but I would probably have stopped at "Nobody should give any weight to the opinions of people still using Twitter in this day and age."

Stopping reading something because of one sentence you disagree with doesn't exactly resonate with your stance.