When Nerds Collide (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#141

Post by Lawtonfogle » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:17 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #99

A_COMPUTER wrote: post #27

One of the biggest frustrations to me, and I do believe this is a new thing, is people with evangelistic universalist worldviews joining these groups and expecting everybody to conform to it. I feel like "nerd culture" was partially defined by being made up of the parts left out of mainstream, inherent heterogeneity, rather than a positive set of things, so arguing you're right and I'm wrong and that's that, is highl…

My disdain has always been for social rules that never made sense - i.e. in order to be liked, you have to look good, dress in a certain way, talk in a certain way, belong to certain groups . I don't want to be different, it isn't my desire to be seen as a geek, however it pisses me off that people judge books by their covers and in order for me to follow rules, well, those rules have to make sense. For the project I…

> I do not have fashion preferences, all that I desire is for the clothes I wear to be comfortable. And I don't give a fuck about the company's dress code, because in the grand scheme of things, they hired me to produce value and not to look good.

I grew up with the same thoughts and just didn't care about dress. Only when studying psychology did I realize why we judge a book by its cover, and have begun trying to incorporate this into my daily life enough to be a better fit in normal society. The problem is that now, since I had to view this from such a technical point of view, as this is something that I don't just 'get' like most people, I am viewed as manipulative by others. Of course, pointing out that they dress to manipulate the opinions of others, just without needing to put as much thought into it because it is something they 'get' doesn't help.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#142

Post by reitanqild » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:19 PM UTC

eaton wrote: post #138

hueving wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some scumbag got a guy fired by publicly shaming him on twitter for making a joke to his friend in a private conversation. That is one of the most hostile, weird, and hateful ways I've ever seen someone behave. It's a perfect example of counter-productive, oppressive behavior that was outlined in this article. Do you think getting that guy fired is going to suddenly change his sense of humor? Not likely. If anything,…

> Some scumbag got a guy fired by publicly shaming him on twitter for making a joke to his friend in a private conversation. That is one of the most hostile, weird, and hateful ways I've ever seen someone behave. A conference attendee overheard another conference attendee making dick jokes in a public space at a conference, violating the terms of the CoC that he'd agreed to before attending. She reported him and post…

There's more to it than that.

  1. The words were never meant for her
  2. She didn't contact him, maybe she misheard?
  3. She was, in fact, way more powerful than him (privilege)
  4. She has a history of being a professional victim
  5. -and a history of making similarly bad jokes herself, publicly

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#143

Post by kaitai » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

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…

Re: the dongle incident, the woman involved has been in the community for years. Why this "people who try to join" and "immediately start complaining" business? You're distorting the facts.

I'm not quite as socially oblivious as the original writer. I do agree with her that being completely oblivious to social cues is really useful for women in tech. However, you can't turn off that fact that many women are pretty conscious of social cues.

If "no one should ever be allowed to determine what is appropriate", why don't you guys just lighten up and deal with what women say at face value? Why do you take it so personally? You can't tell me it's inappropriate after a statement like you just made!

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#144

Post by whybroke » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:20 PM UTC

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…

If it seem the coding practices are inappropriately heaping on technical debt then there are two disagreements:

1. It looks like it will loose money in the long term and is therefore a poor decision even from a money stand point. This would create an impression empty-headed-ness.

2. Creating technical debt looks like at way to make a company appear superficially more valuable than it is by delivering a nonviable product whose real cost won't be realized until later (when the technical debt has to be paid). If this corresponds with funding raising, it creates an impression of dishonesty.

Likely as not these are miss-impressions. But they are deeper problems than "I didn't know companies were supposed to make money".

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#145

Post by Lawtonfogle » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:21 PM UTC

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…

I get the business value of making money. What I have through with is that I have a big disagreement with business people how much technical debt costs in the long term. Also, I don't 'get' making money being such a big desire in and of itself. As they say, greed squared is evil.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#146

Post by kaitai » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:23 PM UTC

blfr wrote: post #89

Argorak wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything what you describe as inherent and necessary to nerd culture. What you want is an abrasive culture and I oppose that. I certainly never "left the world" and certainly not because I found all those things useless or oppressive. I can still nerd out on a multitude of subjects from music to board games to digital culture and I do prefer to do it with people that don't use this culture as a reason to…

What you want is an abrasive culture and I oppose that. Why? Why can't hyperion2010, or anyone else, have an abrasive culture if they want to? There is nowadays some controversy about, best as I can tell, gamers who like abrasive gaming, ie. shoot and insult each other. I can see how one might not want to participate, but why the need to force them to stop? Wouldn't leaving them to it be a reasonable solution? If som…

I don't necessarily disagree with you, blfr... but:

If people like hyperion2010 or others want an abrasive culture, why can't they take what they dish? Why is it so ok for someone to call me a c*&t but I can't say the words "male privilege"?

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#147

Post by throwaway9324 » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:24 PM UTC

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…

It's not controversial because it's largely confirms the view of nerds that "outsiders" agree with.

Like a lot of these essays it long winding, full of generalizations and in-group cultural references which makes it hard work to disassemble and disagree with. And most of those that disagree passionately enough with this to do it wouldn't be regulars at HN.

One of the few concrete things in this article is how "we won the cryptowars". Which isn't very convincing these days.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#148

Post by ZeroGravitas » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

That opening analogy only really works if you assume the Japanese have more right to live and work in Japan than anyone else. I'm not sure I could defend that from first principles, but I'll give them a pass as it feels kind of right.

It looks very different if it's instead "Males have given Women the vote and allowed them to adopt any profession, but why should they be allowed to change the culture", or "White Americans have freed their African-American slaves, but why should they change their culture to accommodate them?" or "Poorer people now have access to computers, but why should they change the culture to accommodate them?".

More worrying for me personally, I can't tell if I'm an invader or a native in her view. I'm a white, male, middle-class, bookish computer programmer like most of the people who got an early exposure to computing. But I recognize that the people poorer or less male than me didn't get the opportunities I did.

I may have beaten some of my classmates who came from similar backgrounds fair and square, but I'm not going to kid myself on that life is a meritocracy and the only thing holding back Romanian orphans is a lack of stick-to-it-ivness. Because that would be self-delusion on a grand scale.

But because I don't buy into the popular delusion that being a geek is a pure meritocracy, apparently that makes me a feminazi invader, ruining geekdom for all the real geeks who all share some other monolithic political view?

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#149

Post by gretful » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

MollyR wrote: post #133

I found the part of the article where it talks about the what if situation about Japan getting rid of work visa to be really interesting. Honestly it shocked me, and has changed the way I think. Also I never thought of it this way, but feminism/brogrammers are super similar in the way they try to colonize nerd culture. A lot of unskilled people are trying to get a career in tech for its perks. They are not good at it…

Before all those late-night commercials in the late '90's ("Make $70K a year!!!") only people that were interested in computers chose a career in them. We make, on average, twice the national average (for U.S.) salary of our peers: people that want the bucks will move in, whether they enjoy bits and bytes or not.

Re: When Nerds Collide (2014)

#150

Post by Kalium » Wed, Mar 11, 2015, 2:33 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #40

Kalium wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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. It could... if you choose to cast it that way. It could also come from any self-selecting group where the selection process is part of the group identity. Group identity isn't just a matter of waking up one day, declaring yourself a member of $GROUP, and $GROUP being obliged…

It's less "we aren't against diversity" and more "diversity is orthogonal to what we care about", I think.

I think this is exactly it. Thank you.