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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

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Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#271

Post by seanmcdirmid »

narag wrote: post #267
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kerr Avon was always more popular than Roj Blake on the BBC show Blake's 7, so I guess there is a point to that.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#272

Post by mattm »

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.

Somewhat off topic - I'm curious if the diagnosis has helped in any way. I'm early 40s and have gone so far as taking an online test for autism where I scored very high.

I've thought of being tested by a doctor but always think "What's the point? How is it going to help knowing?" so I'm curious as someone also well into adulthood if you've had any impact from knowing.

I'm also married and am able to keep a job and function relatively well even though I'm not the most sociable person.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#273

Post by [deleted] »

wyldfire wrote: post #248
gavinhoward wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In some ways, things are better than ever for folks like you. Starting and running a one-person business making software is feasible now but would've been much harder in decades past. Yes, you are absolutely right. Unfortunately, I have been trying that and failing. I don't blame anyone for that either. > Unfortunately, industry has problems that are big enough that they're not easily solved with one person. So too…

IMO Open Source software communities are where folks like you can really thrive. They're much closer at something like a meritocracy than traditional workplaces. > I want to make the next-gen version control system While you certainly could invent one yourself, you could consider contributing to popular ones like git/mercurial. It'd help teach you both the positive and the negative aspects of their design choices. Al…

[deleted]

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#274

Post by Analemma_ »

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…

> And that's fine for most weird nerds. Being cordial and respecting of knowledge is all that's needed in the workplace.

Well, no it isn't. That was the point of the top comment in the chain: the commenter worked for Weird Nerd, found them insufferable, told everyone they were insufferable and that working for them sucked, and as a result the Weird Nerd's career has tanked because no one new will work with them. There really aren't many cases where you can Go It Alone without any support from anybody, even if you're brilliant.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#275

Post by jltsiren »

icodemuch wrote: post #23
Yossarrian22 wrote: post #5

The author is missing a crucial pressure that pushes against weird nerds, the people that have to work underneath them. I’ve had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out in my field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life, and I’ve spent the years since warning people away from that person, their career and their contributions to their field have stagnated due to all the people like me that they burn…

I read the article as acknowledging this pressure by arguing that Weird Nerds should not be forced into people management positions. Without the workplace pressure on Weird Nerds to become people managers, would they still manage people? Maybe not. I can’t speak for academia, but in tech companies I’ve worked at I’ve seen a marked improvement in management when there’s a tech track for engineer advancement such that…

From a certain perspective, there are two kinds of fields in the academia: "laboratory science" and everything else. If you want to make a career in laboratory science, you need to be a manager and a professional beggar. You need to bring in money to hire people to do your research, and you need to support the administration with grant overheads. If you are good at the job, you pay the administration more than they pay you. Long-term non-manager positions are rare, because they are more expensive for the university than successful managers.

Outside laboratory science, the expectation to bring in funding is not as strong. You don't need much money to do research, and grants are not as readily available. As far as the administration is concerned, if you do your teaching duty without too many issues, you can use the rest of your time as you see fit. Academic politics revolve more around personal relationships with the tenured people at your department.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#276

Post by alistairSH »

ergonaught wrote: post #258
sneed_chucker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you're saying, but also - everyone has problems. Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical? Why do some people's problems get the validation of the medical system and others don't? (These are non-rhetorical questions, I'm really not sure about the answers to them myself)

> Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical Yes. I get that your questions appear to be sincere and genuine, but, yes. Relative to the actual, demonstrable, neurological differences in connectivity and so forth in the “neurodivergent” brain, the overwhelming majority of people are “normal”. Relative to the actual lived experience of “neurodivergents”, the overwhelming majority of people are “normal”. These kinds of ques…

Much like people who don’t have aphantasia speaking to people who do. And so forth.

Aphantasia is one that I find extremely hard to wrap my head around. The notion that somebody who’s otherwise normal can’t visualize things is really interesting. I have a friend who has it. The only outward symptom is his dislike of fiction and most TV/movies (and you’d only notice that if you knew him fairly well).

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#277

Post by alistairSH »

rustyboy wrote: post #225
detourdog wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disorder is how they affect their social surroundings. Everyone is on the spectrum and the disordered are having social problems.

Out of curiosity, given it is a spectrum, what's at the other end of "really" autisitc (if that's even the right word) or does that just go from 0 being "normal" to 1 being that "really"?

The problem with this line of labeling is there are multiple possible “spectrums”. I’m not sure what the best visualization would be… Like a starburst, with the center being normal, and all possible disorders going away (except they can be combined, so this isn’t perfect either).

But, if you’re asking about the typical autistic inability to communicate with others, then yeah, 0-1 works as well as any. Just don’t take it as literal or as the only possible set of traits.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#278

Post by 015a »

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.

The article literally reads:

> I recently argued that many Weird Nerds (I called them autistics, but people really hated that)

These are the same thing. The author recognizes that. Everyone recognizes that.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#279

Post by jltsiren »

programjames wrote: post #125

> In 2011, the average age at which a biomedical scientist gets their first R01 grant to establish their independent career as a PI is 42 This is ridiculous! The best researchers won't be much better at 45 than 25, so it's just wasting 20 years getting "experience" and moving up the ladder. But by nature of getting that experience, they're going to give up on actual innovation.

Research is very labor intensive. It's easy to reach a point where the lack of time is a bigger obstacle to pursuing your ideas than the cost of pursuing them. Which is why you need to apply for grants to hire people to do your work.

At 25, you are likely pursuing somebody else's ideas, because you have not proven yourself yet. At 35, you should be pursuing your own ideas, but it often gets delayed to 45, because taxpayers are stingy with their money.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#280

Post by makeitdouble »

kristjansson wrote: post #57
makeitdouble wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line you draw between "weirdness" and "neurodivergence" is interesting. Would neurodivergence have to be native (so, not grown "naturally") and at which point does weirdness fit on the spectrum ? Recently I think people are more receptive to lower degrees of neurodivergence. I see it the same way people understand that you have a gradation between having difficulties climbing stairs and not being able to walk. We…

At some point the question is “why?”. We can keep atomizing human variability into smaller, more graduated buckets of neurodivergence, but what’s the point, esp. for those that don’t really suffer negative impacts, and for which there isn’t really any remedy besides acceptance?

Acceptance comes from understanding, on both sides.

We have small and graduated buckets for absolutely anything that impacts how we socially interact with someone. Which town they come from, nationality, ethnicity, educational background, religion down to specific cult group, football team, wealth level, parent's profession, family composition etc.

Any of these has potential for negative discrimination, but we also use them for improving the interaction and mitigate confronting issues. The small and graduated buckets do IMHO help avoiding the negative impacts in the first place.

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