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The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

writingruxandrabio.com

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Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#481

Post by rustyboy »

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…

as someone who spent a few years really addicted to stims but eventually got clean, when I started having problems at work with focus and attention, I decided that I didn't want to get diagnosed because - at some fundamental level - stims honestly feel like everyone should be on them. Like everything is better: studying, talking, moving...

I've spent a lot of time trying to avoid things that challenge my attention span, mediating and journally, and trying really hard to use organizational tools/apps. With some pretty decent success.

I really struggle with knowing when disorder is just code for anti-human (or anti-your personality) work.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#482

Post by rustyboy »

fragmede wrote: post #138
akozak wrote: post #104

I have a lot of experience working with the weird nerd archetype and watching them navigate large orgs. First it's absolutely true that orgs that purport to support weird nerds will revert back to rewarding politicians. I've seen it happen, and typically has to do with who is doling out money. However, in my experience the vast majority of brilliant nerds way overextend themselves, and are much too confident outside…

> assuming emotional intelligence isn't an innate skill it's a skill like any other, so if you put in dedication and practice, you can get better at it, just like practicing leetcode. whether or not an individual wants to do so is on them.

Do you have any tips for practicing this? I feel like I often "take the oxygen out of the room" when I offer suggestions or get talking. Conversely when I bite my tongue (or just unplug my mic) most people don't talk or offer very weak tacit agreement with the last thing that was said.

edit: I wish I had more skill at building coalitions and/or pushing an organization in a direction without saying "we need to do X".

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#483

Post by rustyboy »

ryandv wrote: post #473
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #108

It feels like more and more areas of life are regressing to the mean in terms of how status is distributed. The mean being some sort of centralized cabal-like structure (perhaps autonomously/accidentally centralized, like an algo) doling out status. By design, it is highly uneven, quasi-random (there are things that make you eligible but there are no guarantees), and their authority to do so unquestioned. Take social…

You can already see echoes of this in the software community, which was historically populated by such "weird nerds" and computer geeks who traded off social tact and grace for a childhood, or even a lifetime, spent understanding the technical minutiae of software, hardware, and computing in general. Now we have self-identifying "computer hackers" and "security researchers" and "red team operators" who probably have…

I completely agree with the sentiment. The catch here is that, unlike software in the past, there's (at least in America) ALOT of money on the line with software these days that attracts strategic and outgoing people which are "playing the game" more than they are actually interested in the technical details. I've noticed more and more peers interested in giving shallow talks, nice docs with easy diagrams, and those one page blog posts. I'm sure every industry is seeing the same thing as popularity becomes king.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#484

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Kariko is biochemist who got her PhD in 1982 before the public internet even existed.

Number of times the words "weird", "nerd" or "autistic" appear in Kariko's memoir: 0

Number of times the word "internet" appears in the book: 3

#1 referrring to her mother ("there was nothing she couldn't find on the internet") who would call Kariko daily to keep her informed of current events because Kariko was too busy working the lab (not publishing silly ideas to a substack blog about "Weird Nerds")

#2 referring to a book about stress by an endocrinologist that she read as a teenager ... she describes how the author in 1925 noticed that many diseases have the same symptoms and comments that "anyone looking up symptoms on the internet today" would also notice this

#3 referring to a period "in the 1990s, before the dawn of the internet bubble"

Thus, Kariko appears to have achieved success without being autistic and without heavy use of the internet. In fact, she achieved success despite an "internet bubble".

Let's hope the blogger finishes her PhD despite the distractions of the internet. It is likely that the only "Weird Nerds" she has identified are an internet audience who likely worship university dropouts and who are most certainly not doing real work on real biological problems in a wet lab. Instead, they are staring at screens and playing video games.

Trying to put computer addicts that idolise university dropouts whose idea of biotech is life extension in the same category as Nobel Prize-winning biochemists who have solved real problems is pure fantasy, like computer games. But coming from web bloggers, it's not surprising.

It's also not surprising that Kariko refers to an "internet bubble". That bubble arguably needlessly diverted investment away from biotech during Kariko's career. The example she cites is gene therapy which in the 1990s was "the next big thing", only to be later overshadowed when the internet bubble arrived.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#485

Post by Nasrudith »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #108

It feels like more and more areas of life are regressing to the mean in terms of how status is distributed. The mean being some sort of centralized cabal-like structure (perhaps autonomously/accidentally centralized, like an algo) doling out status. By design, it is highly uneven, quasi-random (there are things that make you eligible but there are no guarantees), and their authority to do so unquestioned. Take social…

That explains some of the absolute rabid hatred of the veey concept of meritocracy. Not even "this isn't based on real merit it's the same old boys club" style complaints/arguments but an absolutely furious hatred towards competence determining progression.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#486

Post by Nasrudith »

corinroyal wrote: post #468
intended wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you write that? You come across as insensitive, and likely someone who hasn't put the effort to understand the comment and the context. It's far too easy to conclude that you aren't heeding your own advice. Was this some next level attempt to show what being a bully magnet looks like? I don't understand.

Is it bullying to suggest that a person take responsibility for their own lack of courtesy?

Reread the initial message. You missed the point completely in your rush to cheerlead bullying.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#487

Post by licebmi__at__ »

ambicapter wrote: post #79
belinder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a guess here - but to make diagnosed people feel more included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're not alone, it stops being a stigma

How does sifting people into smaller and smaller buckets work to make people feel more part of a group? Seems more like people who have felt marginalized in the past want others to feel marginalized like they did, and work to place people into smaller and smaller categories to do so.

Because the buckets were always there and the main difference is their visibility.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#488

Post by jarbus »

I really enjoyed this article, as someone who is learning to play the politics game while also trying to still do interesting and unique research that’s slightly off the mainstream. I’ve felt horrible for not doing “popular” research, or research that employers might care about first and foremost, but this is what academia is about I think.

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#489

Post by anal_reactor »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #429
anal_reactor wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people say "I want you to have good social skills" they think "I want you to collaborate with others and not cause drama". These two might seem similar but they aren't. It's okay to expect people to live up to expectations, but at the same time you might admit that these expectations are unfair and put certain people in disadvantage because of their innate traits. Imagine you have an all-Arab company and you hir…

I would absolutely, 100% expect professional behavior from a bunch of arabs and a Jew who found themselves working together, and it's frankly illuminating that that was your go-to as a scenario that would inevitably cause workplace friction, especially following a line about "innate traits." And that's before we get into nerds being a minority which is just... no. Nerd shit is so mainstream at this point and co-optin…

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHR/comments/17og4us/my_jewish_em...

Your reply can be summarized as "workplace is magically immune to natural friction that occurs when people from vastly different social groups interact because I strongly believe in HR's wishful thinking and besides, talking about two social groups that are commonly known to hate each other to the point that they don't want to recognize each other's statehood is just non-compliant and goes against our community standards"

Re: The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs

#490

Post by mattgreenrocks »

Nasrudith wrote: post #485
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #108

It feels like more and more areas of life are regressing to the mean in terms of how status is distributed. The mean being some sort of centralized cabal-like structure (perhaps autonomously/accidentally centralized, like an algo) doling out status. By design, it is highly uneven, quasi-random (there are things that make you eligible but there are no guarantees), and their authority to do so unquestioned. Take social…

That explains some of the absolute rabid hatred of the veey concept of meritocracy. Not even "this isn't based on real merit it's the same old boys club" style complaints/arguments but an absolutely furious hatred towards competence determining progression.

You see it in denials of 10x engineers, pushes for tooling to standardize everything, tons of transitive dependencies, obligatory blog posts about how tech is "really just about working well with others" and an overall un-seriousness about actually building things.
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