Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When Nerds Collide (2014)

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 361 posts

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#51

Post by Animats »

icelancer wrote: post #45

I am loathe to post an "I agree" comment here... but damn. This is a very well-said article and one I have tried to express many times but have failed over and over. The "invaders" who claim to be socially liberal are actually authoritarian in nature, completely hypocritical by pushing so-called "tolerance" on those who received none by society's "normal." Just a powerful essay.

The "invaders" who claim to be socially liberal are actually authoritarian in nature...

That's been true from the days of the Third International[1] to the Mozilla Foundation.[2]

[1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/apr/15.htm [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-signing...

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#52

Post by arrrg »

hyperion2010 wrote: post #26

This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public…

Uhm, I’m real confused. Why do you talk about “try to join nerd communities” with regard to the dongle thing? Do you know something we don’t?

That seems more like a policy of exclusion from your side – ala obviously a real nerd wouldn’t ever find something inappropriate or be clumsy in how they complain about something.

This whole thing is a way of cordoning yourself off, isolating yourself from criticism, shunning others, excluding others. It’s so, so weird. And hateful.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#53

Post by tajen »

angersock wrote: post #21
Terr_ wrote: post #5

> When weird nerds watch the cool kids jockeying for social position on Twitter, we see no difference between these status games and the ones we opted out of in high school. [...] “corporate culture” that’s as loudly promoted and roughly as genuine as the “school spirit” These bits resonated with me more than I had expected. The declaration "life is not like high school" is only partially true. College offers a tempo…

The fact that we even have a collective shared-ideal of "we judge you by your work" is an achievement worth celebrating and continuing, even if we individually fail at it, or even fail at it a lot. And that's the problem I've got with a bunch of the attacks I'll commonly see that are based on privilege: the entire idea is that "well, no, that cool hack doesn't count somehow, because you're a member of $MALIGNED_GROUP…

I'm surprised there is so little controversy in this thread of HN. After all, most comments here confirm that we're a group and we like us as-is, or with very minimal changes, which is already a reluctance to diversity. On the one hand maybe the title didn't appeal for a pageview by the controversial types of feminigeeks [vocabulary from this article], and the other hand this is the kind of place where our culture gets shaped.

Edit: I can't resist positing this quote. It makes me feel understood. It would make me feel safer if it were acknowledged by the other party during debates: "The voices clamouring for change offer us no money, a social role reversal back to “disempowered outsider,” and a status demotion to “likely sexual predator.”"

Edit 2: If anyone here has data, it seems like a lot of communication about feminism in IT started circa 2013 (e.g. the controversy on Paul Graham [1], which probably provoked the Female Founders Conference in 2015). It would be nice if someone made a blogpost about that and explained what that year changed in the geek culture.

[1] http://www.thewire.com/technology/2013/12/paul-graham-revive...

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

LordHumungous wrote: post #50

>Programming is an inherently constructivist discipline. A constructivist is like the archetypal Missourian: “Show me!” Many "hackers" are unable to apply this principle to the field of business. They don't understand business, they aren't good at it, and therefore they see it as nothing more than empty headed self-promoters jockeying for social status, just like those "cool kids" who picked on them in high school. T…

The prime directive of a business is to serve the interests of its owners. That usually requires making money at some level, but making money itself may not be the prime directive. It's true that if a company is publicly traded, widely held, or principally owned by investors who choose it based on potential financial returns, the shared interests of its owners are likely to be limited to making money, but that isn't true of all businesses.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#55

Post by pekk »

modfodder wrote: post #31
angersock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that we even have a collective shared-ideal of "we judge you by your work" is an achievement worth celebrating and continuing, even if we individually fail at it, or even fail at it a lot. And that's the problem I've got with a bunch of the attacks I'll commonly see that are based on privilege: the entire idea is that "well, no, that cool hack doesn't count somehow, because you're a member of $MALIGNED_GROUP…

"we aren't against diversity"..."they should make their bones, same as we did" sounds like it could come from any all white male institution. The problem is, we as humans prefer to surround ourselves with people just like us, sometimes that means same race, sometimes same religion, or gender, or political views, and often it happens subconsciously, choosing the person closer to our ideal without us even realizing we'…

I can't convince you, and it doesn't matter whether you believe me, when I say that it doesn't matter to me about your race or sex or whatever, I am still going to think your cool hack is a cool hack. That's just how it is. I know not everyone does work this way. But I think it's counterproductive to try to tear down and erase this entire value system. In the worst case it's an imperfectly met ideal, but that's no reason to abandon it.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#56

Post by moonshinefe »

arrrg wrote: post #52
hyperion2010 wrote: post #26

This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public…

Uhm, I’m real confused. Why do you talk about “try to join nerd communities” with regard to the dongle thing? Do you know something we don’t? That seems more like a policy of exclusion from your side – ala obviously a real nerd wouldn’t ever find something inappropriate or be clumsy in how they complain about something. This whole thing is a way of cordoning yourself off, isolating yourself from criticism, shunning o…

Speak for yourself, it was clear to me what he meant and you're putting words in his mouth.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#57

Post by chralieboy »

tajen wrote: post #53
angersock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that we even have a collective shared-ideal of "we judge you by your work" is an achievement worth celebrating and continuing, even if we individually fail at it, or even fail at it a lot. And that's the problem I've got with a bunch of the attacks I'll commonly see that are based on privilege: the entire idea is that "well, no, that cool hack doesn't count somehow, because you're a member of $MALIGNED_GROUP…

I'm surprised there is so little controversy in this thread of HN. After all, most comments here confirm that we're a group and we like us as-is, or with very minimal changes, which is already a reluctance to diversity. On the one hand maybe the title didn't appeal for a pageview by the controversial types of feminigeeks [vocabulary from this article], and the other hand this is the kind of place where our culture ge…

I was equally surprised. The controversy is overwhelming and I loved her point about being against either brogrammers or feminigeeks does not make you the other. I feel like any conversation where everyone doesn't completely agree turns into accusations of privilege or sexism.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#58

Post by amirmc »

arrrg wrote: post #52
hyperion2010 wrote: post #26

This article is so spot on and covers many of the things that have bothered me for years about people who try to join nerd communities and then immediately start complaining about "inappropriate behavior" (eg the dongle thing). Yes, there are cases where there is real inappropriate behavior surrounding positions of power in corporate or workplace settings, but in the community at large and in the communal and public…

Uhm, I’m real confused. Why do you talk about “try to join nerd communities” with regard to the dongle thing? Do you know something we don’t? That seems more like a policy of exclusion from your side – ala obviously a real nerd wouldn’t ever find something inappropriate or be clumsy in how they complain about something. This whole thing is a way of cordoning yourself off, isolating yourself from criticism, shunning o…

I feel there's a lot of 'no true Scotsman' in the article and throughout the comments here.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#59

Post by zachlatta »

RKoutnik wrote: post #29

I was shocked, visibly, when I found out that no one at the first startup I worked at played tabletop RPGs. I was shocked again when they looked down on me because I did. In a city that prides itself on "weirdos", I was the wrong kind of weird. In college I poured over Steven Levy's Hackers , hoping one day I would be able to meet the tech elite. I jumped at the first chance I got to work out here, hoping I'd finally…

Sorry to hear that this has been the case. I've definitely experienced this as well. One of the things I've learned is that the best people in startups are the best at playing the game, not necessarily the smartest or most talented.

If you ever plan on putting together a board game meetup or something along those lines, shoot me an email. Would love to try and make it. Been wanting to try DnD recently as well. My email's zach@hackedu.us.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#60

Post by jf »

RKoutnik wrote: post #29

I was shocked, visibly, when I found out that no one at the first startup I worked at played tabletop RPGs. I was shocked again when they looked down on me because I did. In a city that prides itself on "weirdos", I was the wrong kind of weird. In college I poured over Steven Levy's Hackers , hoping one day I would be able to meet the tech elite. I jumped at the first chance I got to work out here, hoping I'd finally…

If you want to meet people "talking hacker-speak" in the Bay Area, then I would suggest that you go to events that would only attract that sort of person. In general this will mean shying away from events about technological pop-culture and instead focusing on the events that cover very specific and "boring" topics.

In your particular case, I would suggest going to events that focus on building things ("project nights", etc), events that cover a specific "unpopular" languages (Haskell, Clojure, Erlang), or events that feature talks from people who aren't "popular" but should be (Fabrice Bellard, Jan Hubicka, etc).

Post reply on HN