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What happened to nerds?

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Re: What happened to nerds?

#161

Post by embedding-shape »

zozbot234 wrote: post #153
embedding-shape wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't expect such people to handle fame and wealth well at all. Maybe this is just a human trait in general? Seems every person from any subculture fall victim to "fame and wealth" basically turning them into an evil and greedy person, maybe 1/1000 manages to still stay human in such transition. Or is there any subcultures in particular where most people seem to actually be able to handle "fame and wealth" withou…

There's plenty of wealthy folks who aren't especially evil or greedy in any real way, but you wouldn't know that because they don't tend to show off or spend their wealth to begin with, they just shepherd it and grow it carefully. Sometimes over generations, eventually turning it into sustainable 'old money'.

> There's plenty of wealthy folks who aren't especially evil or greedy in any real way, but you wouldn't know that because they don't tend to show off or spend their wealth to begin with

I'm well aware, I'm personally early-retired person with financial independence, and of course I have friends too :) With that said, many of them are greedy, some in big ways others in smaller ways, even if they're generally good people too.

I think it's the combination of "famous + wealthy" that seems to poison people, pick one of them and it doesn't seem so bad, but both together seems like a recipe for disaster.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#162

Post by Cthulhu_ »

moffkalast wrote: post #84
Sprotch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say everyone got on the internet, and it turned into the equivalent of your local bar for discussions

Then LLM bots got on and it turned into an email spam folder.

That predates LLMs, but I get your point.

But besides bots, there's also "low value" comments, the "who's listening in 2026" type comments. Undiscernable from a bot, adds no value, can be omitted and you wouldn't miss anything.

And the worst part is that LLMs can generate more interesting comments than a large chunk of online people can.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#163

Post by cs02rm0 »

They're still around, even if Musk is excluded. Torvalds springs to mind pretty quickly. I think society is increasingly adverse to people having personality flaws, than it is in favour of people having strengths such as technical knowledge or ability.

Better to have a bland guy running McDonalds who can't stomach eating the "product" than some passionate chef doing his best to improve mass market food but rubbing people up the wrong way.

It's failure of capitalism if the money goes to the guy in the shiny suit instead of the person, or team, who can actually innovate. I don't want to be too melodramatic, but maybe this is all part of the fall of the empire.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#164

Post by PaulHoule »

sumitkumar wrote: post #134
sigmoid10 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for law I imagine these "nice" beginnings were 2000 years ago at best. If they even existed at all. But all these jobs where talking to other humans is paramount will be dominated by extroverted quacks by default. Same goes for the capital raising college dropout pseudo-tech-bros. They were never nice, they just weren't so engaged in public discourse before, when billion dollar net worths still meant you actual…

Not that far. Lawyers had a great deal of influence in creation of all modern nation-states, human rights, international law and maintenance of the core social contract in the modern society. Similarly lawyers/bankers were the ones who built in trust in capital, contracts, businesses and protection of investor rights. Delaware c corp is not an outcome of bad guys.

That’s a system though that seems to be at the breaking point.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#165

Post by zelphirkalt »

biofox wrote: post #142
goodpoint wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> guys who are average in talent but excel in demonstrating value and social management of the value/status aka techbros

I got into programming and computers due to their intellectual depth, and the exciting opportunities they opened to explore everything from electronics to obscure areas of mathematics... through to theory of mind and the dream of making silicon think. The combination of endless trend-chasing, software churn, and techbro culture made me hate everything about software, so I jumped ship to biology.

Well, and now with the push towards AI slop and letting agents do work for you, it is even less about creativity and talent. You can't even chase trends in libraries while still being clever about it any longer, you gotta chase more and more braindead ways of getting code generated based on tons and tons of mediocre code found online, gobbled up by big tech without the original creator s' consent.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#166

Post by zozbot234 »

rayiner wrote: post #135
keiferski wrote: post #78

I don’t know why you’d think “being interested in nerdy stuff like computers” would somehow translate into virtuous behavior. They seem like entirely different things to me, in the sense that I wouldn’t expect a writer, or a baker, or a chef to have typical ethical behaviors as a group. “What happened” was just that some people got rich and powerful and their real personalities showed through. This is not a new thing…

It’s related to the trope that non-rich people are more ethical than rich people, or nerds would treat women better than jocks. Confusing lack of opportunity to engage in certain behavior for lack of propensity.

That's an interesting point since in practice, athletic ("jock") women tend to be more common than nerdy women to begin with. Women being into tech or science (stereotypical "nerdy" pursuits) is something that tends to happen more in lower-income countries, which suggests a large self-interest or incentive component, while the opposite is true for athletic women. Perhaps the proper counterpart of the "nerd" among women is engaged in very different, more traditional crafts or intellectual interests which aren't highlighted as "nerdy" by mainstream culture.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#167

Post by steveBK123 »

> Ten years ago, the cultural idea of the technologist was still basically Jobs and Wozniak.

Nah, that's been dead since 2010 or earlier. It was probably dead during DotCom too. Anytime tech is hot again, it attracts the kind of money/status chasers that move to whatever is hottest.

I mean Zuck was a Harvard grad and Bezos was a hedge fund guy first. Thiel was in law and derivates trading before tech.

The founders in garage era was more 70s/80s vibe.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#168

Post by boelboel »

keiferski wrote: post #78

I don’t know why you’d think “being interested in nerdy stuff like computers” would somehow translate into virtuous behavior. They seem like entirely different things to me, in the sense that I wouldn’t expect a writer, or a baker, or a chef to have typical ethical behaviors as a group. “What happened” was just that some people got rich and powerful and their real personalities showed through. This is not a new thing…

Bill Gates was always a POS, reading about his behaviour earlier on doesn't make him seem in any way virtuous. The whole 'charity' persona he put on afterwards is just PR.

Re: What happened to nerds?

#169

Post by jordand »

jnwatson wrote: post #122
keiferski wrote: post #78

I don’t know why you’d think “being interested in nerdy stuff like computers” would somehow translate into virtuous behavior. They seem like entirely different things to me, in the sense that I wouldn’t expect a writer, or a baker, or a chef to have typical ethical behaviors as a group. “What happened” was just that some people got rich and powerful and their real personalities showed through. This is not a new thing…

Bill Gates is a great counterexample to the article's premise. Always clearly a nerd, yet led a company that no one loved and many people hated for its strategy of embrace, extend, extinguish. Post-CEO, he had completely refurbished his image via philanthropy, only to throw it away with the Epstein stuff.

Your perception of him is the result of a very carefully crafted image and PR management going back decades to the 80's. His behaviour and controversies with Microsoft have been well known since the 90's (Melinda Gates relationship, anti-trust probe etc.) and even with more recent allegations in 2019. Link: https://www.wsj.com/business/microsoft-directors-decided-bil...

Re: What happened to nerds?

#170

Post by jappgar »

Julian Assange and Mark Zuckerberg were two nerds on either side of the privacy spectrum in the twenty-teens.

One was framed and tortured, the other was given an empire.

The message was received.

We now only have the Zuckerberg type.

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