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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

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Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#381

Post by TeMPOraL »

wisty wrote: post #363
bradleyjg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s been my experience as well. But these minders are not cheap. They need to be smart enough to win the respect of their assigned WNs, charismatic enough to smooth everyone else’s ruffled feathers, patient, and have thick skins. Definitely worth it for a Nobel Prize level intellect but I’m not sure how far below that the line is.

The teenagers working at the local McDonalds do a fine job modifying some truly unpleasant people.

They have the added benefit of not having to give a damn about those people, as they interact infrequently, and likely won't even recognize each other the next time. An occasional unpleasant regular is a different story entirely, but I suppose that's what the security person is there for.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#382

Post by pantalaimon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #241
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)

> Why do some people's problems get the validation of the medical system and others don't? Because there are effective forms of treatment available, but are gated by diagnosis because of $reasons. Validation of the medical system enables one to access those treatments, perhaps most important of which is being able to tell yourself, as well as others, that you're having an actual problem and are not "just lazy" or nee…

What forms of treatment are there for autism?

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#383

Post by TeMPOraL »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #338
bsder wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "You're out of your depth." Except most of the time ... they are not. Most non-junior WNs learn to have significant respect for those doing the work . The Weird Nerd judges based upon objectively observed behavior rather than social cues or group opinions. Mostly, the Weird Nerd gets in trouble because they simply aren't fooled. And that pisses of corporatocrats like you worse than anything else. The WN can see tha…

I have been in a meeting where the weird nerd is saying "our company should completely ditch customer support phone lines and only use a chat service because I don't know anyone who wants to make a phone call". This company was a utility that had customers with every level of literacy and internet access. He was mindbogglingly wrong, because he had no idea there was information in the world that he hadn't come across…

Ironically, that's what the companies have been doing for the past few years, by having people talk to voice assistant "AI"s instead of humans.

Hell, you could argue the process started much earlier: before voice assistants came DTMF phone menus with automated recordings; before that came outsourcing customer support to cheapest labor available - which is like hooking up ChatGPT to the phone line, except with protein robots paid peanuts and worked to the bone instead.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#384

Post by CalRobert »

esskay wrote: post #380
CalRobert wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This bizarre romanticization of autism is frustrating for those who are or have loved ones who are nonverbal, stim all day, etc.. I almost wonder if nerfing autism to the point where it's a fun thing to talk about having on tiktok is a way to demonize effective interventions so insurance companies won't have to pay for them.

It's been a similar pattern with ADHD, it feels like its almost been turned into a trend. Although that being said we've had a number of people at our place been diagnosed with ADHD, Autism and in some cases both, all developers, all within the last 3-5 years, and you know what, they're absolutely correct diagnosis. It's a mix of romanticization and a change in acceptance and understanding of the two, and they do oft…

My sister didn't say her first word until she was almost 5 and would bang her head against the wall. Hearing people say that autism "isn't a disability, it's a differentability lol!" or "oh I must be autistic because I'm awkward", or worst of all "don't try to treat people with autism it's cruel!" (aka don't force insurance companies to cover ABA, which is the only reason my sister can even talk now) is really upsetting.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#385

Post by TeMPOraL »

tqi wrote: post #328

The idea that IQ and EQ are negatively correlated is dubious at best. I would venture a guess that the vast majority of "Weird Nerds" are not Katalin Karikós, and instead are simply difficult jerks who are not nearly as smart as they think they are. Hubris mixed with obstinance is a recipe for misanthropy. Also, the notion that the internet is a place where your outputs are judged solely on their merits, so that you…

> The idea that IQ and EQ are negatively correlated is dubious at best.

How about: IQ and EQ are mostly fixed in any given individual. You can use one to simulate the other - e.g. using EQ to get help or bullshit your way through a problem your IQ is insufficient for, or using IQ to intentionally behave in a way that would be totally natural if you had higher EQ. So it's not that they're negatively correlated per se, just that if you're being pressured past your limit in one, the other will effectively drop.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#386

Post by davidthewatson »

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…

> "The author wanting to combine Weird Nerd with autistic is very incorrect IMHO... I've known a lot of weird nerds, am one myself, and there's lots of different flavors, most of them not autistic."

That makes one of us - no consensus required.

Monotrope? AuDHD? Brenner's Lacanian "Way of Being"?

Forensic accounting of which spectrum owns which symptoms is the new ultra-sport - winner take all. The thought that we wind up with yet another control vs. uncontrollable dichotomy of Stoicism worries me, at least in the West.

Walk around an Amazon warehouse unannounced for an afternoon observing its transformation of surveillance capitalism into a set of funhouse mirrors where the observer cannot discern between observer and observed - an infinitely extensible Heisenbug. It's as if you took a page from the 1980's PC design playbook and decided that delightful beige was the architecture of the future - a kind of inorganic revenge of the techno-typicals.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#387

Post by marcus_holmes »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #241
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)

> Why do some people's problems get the validation of the medical system and others don't? Because there are effective forms of treatment available, but are gated by diagnosis because of $reasons. Validation of the medical system enables one to access those treatments, perhaps most important of which is being able to tell yourself, as well as others, that you're having an actual problem and are not "just lazy" or nee…

I want a diagnosis of ADHD so I get free speed :)

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#388

Post by pantalaimon »

jacobolus wrote: post #193
IggleSniggle wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somewhat agree, but I think there's more to it than that. To be a great performer, you have to care about delivering your own "message" as authentically or at least "in totality" more than anything else. Critique may be useful in understanding how your vision is being received, but actually delivering the vision requires believing in your own vision more than the visions of others. The same could be said of CEOs. I…

The "diva" stereotype, starting with opera prima donnas, has plenty of real-world examples. These are people who were constantly pampered by support staff who treated them as royalty, and then ended up being huge jerks to anyone who even looked at them the wrong way. Lack of empathy and basic respect is not just about iconoclasm or compartmentalizing criticism or whatever.

I don’t think Klaus Kinski was particularly pampered, he was still a legendary jerk and actor.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#389

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

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…

Passion and ambition are just not neuro-vanilla traits. I think that's what you're picking up on.

Some people these days who are anything but call themselves autistic, ADHD, etc because they don't have a defensible banner anymore under which they can be passionate or ambitious without some reason behind the reason for it.

The only way out is empathy - true empathy, a willingness to accept sometimes (often) people do things for the sheer joy of doing them.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#390

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

azernik wrote: post #366
throwaway2037 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your last paragraph is interesting. When I think back about at Perl, Python, and Ruby, all of them have/had charismatic leaders -- Larry Wall, Guido van Rossum, and Yukihiro Matsumoto. This would help to explain part of the success of their programming languages. My guess: All three of them have high IQ and EQ. To be clear: I don't write this post to take anything away from the incredible accomplishments of those peo…

I would even argue that Linus Torvalds's famous abrasiveness is its own kind of charisma, well adapted to its target audience.

Oh, absolutely. Linux kernel hacking is a _dojo_ at least as much as it is a service to one's fellow man. You don't want to go to the gym with a bunch of wimps who are cheating on their curls, and you don't want to hack on the kennel all day when 90% of the people around you are more interesting in talking around the thing than in actually improving it, and improving their own skills in the process.

Linus's approach is very good at setting this precedent, while staying really quite friendly, and it's what attracts a lot of people to the endeavor.

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