1) Incredibly large amounts of money
2) GamergateWhat happened to nerds?
171–180 of 541 posts
Re: What happened to nerds?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think that plenty of 'nerds' would very much disagree about that. Steering agents effectively is something that can take massive amounts of creativity and talent and be quite helpful wrt. the final result. There's no real analogue of this in traditional programming.
Re: What happened to nerds?
#173[dead]
Re: What happened to nerds?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virtuous people become doctors, social workers or kindergarten teachers. People who spend their entire life in front of computers should not be the ones with the keys to society yet here we are.
I don't believe doctors and kindergarten teacher needed to be virtuous at all
I have a friend who worked in kindergarten taking care of the children. From what they told me, I can tell you, it's no easy lunch for virtuous people with ideals, who want to help and educate the children there. The amount of playing hierarchy games and bickering and bullying and whatnot, that happens when someone wants to improve things for the children... It basically crushed that friend and often made them cry, until they got out of those shit holes named kindergarten.
Re: What happened to nerds?
#175I 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…
Virtuous people become doctors, social workers or kindergarten teachers. People who spend their entire life in front of computers should not be the ones with the keys to society yet here we are.
As someone who's been in both engineering school and medical school, I would say you're very wrong. Most doctors aren't in any way virtuous, most are in it for status or money and plenty don't care one bit about humans (some just like the thrill of being in charge of someone their life). There's only a small minority that's extremely virtuous.
This might've been different 50 years ago but it's the number one striver job there is.
Re: What happened to nerds?
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Virtuous people become doctors, social workers or kindergarten teachers. People who spend their entire life in front of computers should not be the ones with the keys to society yet here we are.
I don't believe doctors and kindergarten teacher needed to be virtuous at all
Doctors with big egos are a huge problem because they don’t listen to patients. I deal with some medical issues and, if a self-absorbed doctor walks into the room, I know my problem isn’t being solved today.
Re: What happened to nerds?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that too many people are confusing arguments they agree with with logical arguments. Most of people, when they claim that something is rational or logical, actually mean that it's a position that they agree with. I have no reason to believe that back in the day when internet was only for nerds the situation was different.
> I have no reason to believe that back in the day when internet was only for nerds the situation was different. Strong disagree. Having lived those times, it really really was different, and there are a bunch of reasons for it. 1. First, back then (90s, early 00s) there was very little financial incentive to participate in discussions. BBSs, IRC, forums etc. were mostly non commercial. People joined without any expe…
The internet was different, for sure. But the post you are responding to just stated that they don't really believe arguments were rational and logical back then. I don't think any of your points refutes that.
Re: What happened to nerds?
#178This happens in any industry where value/status are at a premium. Finance, Law, VC guys were good too in the beginning but when the value/status change happens it attracts certain kind of guys who are average in talent but excel in demonstrating value and social management of the value/status. Another change which has happened recently is that the economics of engagement farming have become common place wisdom as alr…
Academia is the most relevant, toxic example that I can think of. Be horrible to others on a short term contract (grad students, postdocs) and break them whilst extracting maximum value -- get more papers, more grants written -- more money -- success.
Be nice, think about hard problems for a long period of time, only speak up when you have something positive to contribute -- be labelled an underperforming academic and managed into obscurity.
A great example of this is Peter Higgs, who famously said that he'd be unemployed pretty quickly in the academia of 2013. [0]
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...
Re: What happened to nerds?
#179You listen to the Radio Channel you picked. I understand the complaint, though it's like a complain that nerds featured in Cosmopolitan aren't as nerdy as they were. Musk for me was never a nerd. Many "founders" aren't nerds for me. In the end, I wouldn't classify anyone who is "money" first as a nerd - to me they are businessmen (and businesswomen) in their core. Want to see "the lost nerds"? Here, on HN there are m…
There were people who told me 15 years ago that I’m not like others who go to software engineering universities. Because although I’m a nerd, I can speak about non nerdy things, and I don’t speak about them in non nerd environments. This happened to me many-many times. They were even surprised that I’m in this field.
Not anymore. I haven’t heard this for a while now, and I didn’t change regarding this. But people behave very differently when I say “software developer” recently. Now they think immediately, that I’m rich. Not that I’m a freak nerd. They are not surprised anymore at all.
I experienced this very obviously with something else too. I born in Hungary, but I moved to Austria. There is a huge difference between how people behave with me if I say that I’m from Hungary, than if I say that I’m from Austria when I travel. They immediately recommend me things which are more expensive. The beaches, restaurants, pubs for rich tourists. Not when I say Hungary. That’s the only time when they say to me that something is expensive.
I state openly, that if somebody says that the public perception didn’t change and also the people in this field didn’t change to be more money focused, then those people lying, probably even to themselves. The current discussions about AI make this obvious. Most developers, engineers, founders are fine to ship shit on every single level, if they get the same money for it. They became “developers” only for the money.
“IT crowd” is unimaginable today.
Re: What happened to nerds?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> far less moderation and tone policing This feels like maybe even the majority of the problem. In general corporate social media favors memetic content and disfavors "inconvenient" content. Inconvenient meaning things that cause non-trivial numbers of users to mash the thumbs down or "report content" button. The premise of that is supposed to be that people are reporting spam and trolling etc. The problem naturally…
That’s a ZIRP problem. You didn’t have massive sprawl communities until the investment was there to build systems to keep Nazis and trolls away. Slashdot really highlighted this for me - if you followed the site and the core forum of founders, dealing with moderation was horrible. The writing of CmdrTaco over the years really made it sound like it just made him miserable.
>You didn’t have massive sprawl communities until the investment was there to build systems to keep Nazis and trolls away.
Oh, it kept the trolls and Nazis just fine (even brought some close to power).
What the investment killed was the regular curious / not-for-profit nerd.