21–26 of 26 posts
One of my first meetings to present my topic to my thesis committee had a leader in my field (a world-wide expert in the field and one of the founding fathers that particular area) say: "This idea is bullshit and I can't even bother to tell you why" That was the only thing he said.
Of course, I defended PhD on the same subject 4 years later and other leading scientist and his competitor said the idea was brilliant :D
Sure. You need to know how to handle those types; you'll never be rid of them. Broadly, though, I think any large ecosystem needs a broad mix of personality types, including the ones stereotypically painted as 'negative', to remain vibrant. If everyone in a community were high in agreeableness, say, this will feel nice to the people in it, but could have downsides if no-one feels able to engage in conflict, disagreem…
Can confirm, because libraries/Library Science is like this. What is best for the patrons or society comes second to how everybody in the room feels about a plan and everybody's 'lived experiences'. By far my least favorite part of the field, as a woman who's pretty low in 'agreeableness'.
For an extreme example, I remember a group project in my MLIS where we talked for three hours unable to choose a topic because everybody had to be in agreement. It was the stupidest waste of my time I'd ever encountered and they were not receptive to my declaration that it didn't actually matter and we'd not remember this in three years anyway. External validation and 'community' were a big deal to them, so my saying that anything wasn't actually that important was a huge social faux pas. I eventually just left and told the rest of the group to let me know when they figured out what we were doing.
Sounds like they didn't pass a high enough filter. It's easy to have a high impression of yourself when you didn't actually compete. I remember having conversations with roommates and people in my classes about how hard so and so works, how you would always find them in their office, how we would get emails from this or that professor in the middle of the night, etc. My guess is that most people don't see how competi…
I consider myself pretty competitive. I'm in a top 5 CS PhD program, have published several first author conference papers in top-tier conferences in my field, and I consider computer science to be a big part of my identity. That being said, I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on "academic competitiveness" and can distinguish that from what I'm describing above (which I'm calling "computer science personality diso…
Why is it some common in CS? I can only guess but it’s a field where an entire individual can have outsized impact without the need for collaboration so it attracts this kind of personality. I think that will change, though, as the field matures. You look at Math, which should be similar, but it seems that collaborators are more successful than the lone wolves as many of the known problems have had many mathematicians try and fail to solve.
Yes, I think that if you're neurotypical, and you find it difficult to relate to the neurodivergent, you should dismiss them as being assholes.
> who just doesn't realize he's rude
NT's make the social rules, and everyone else should fall in line, I get it. In this case, you should just go old school and stuff them in a locker because they're harshing your chi, bro.
> Is this everyone else's experience?
Absolutely. I'm not in academia, but I've found that we need to address this scourge early on. Identify these pieces of shit early in grade school. Give them wedgies, laugh at them, beat the shit out of them on the playground, steal their property, call them names, isolate them in the cafeteria, make them the butt of every public joke, and make sure they know where their station is.
And don't get me started on those paraplegics. Neurodivergent people are bad enough, with the wiring in their brains making it difficult to understand our arbitrary social rules. Paraplegics, with the wiring in their spinal cords that make it difficult to walk need to get out of their fucking wheelchairs, what a bunch of assholes, always getting in the way.
Oh my god, and the homosexuals, too! Why won't they just love the correct gender?
I am 100% with you, academictemp. Maybe we can just load all these people who are not exactly like ourselves, or think and behave exactly as we do, onto cattle cars and be done with it.
This is very interesting could you please describe your experience in more detail? What was the turning point that made you want to share this idea here?
Mostly just repeated observations of my peers. It's kind of hard to articulate an exact experience other than general rudeness and sneering but I'll give it a shot. Recently, a colleague of mine was presenting their work. Another colleague with CSPD (comp. sci. personality disorder) interrupted the presentation to say "this all seems very obvious." The remark was self-aggrandizing and completely dismissive of my coll…
Ok, but was it wrong?
Put your friend's precious fee-fees aside, and ask yourself the important question: was it wrong?
If it wasn't, then it sounds like the problem was with your friend, wasting everyone's time with a pedestrian analysis that benefited nothing except for their own ego, so they can be heard, so they can climb that all-important neurotypical status ladder, so they can put another insignificant bullet point on their C.V.
Was it wrong?