[HN Gopher] The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs
___________________________________________________________________
The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs
Author : jseliger
Score : 243 points
Date : 2024-06-09 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.writingruxandrabio.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.writingruxandrabio.com)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow the first sentence. What does this have to
| do with Women in STEM?
|
| (I'm not being political. I just don't follow the connection)
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| I'm on the same page as you here.
|
| Even the proposed rule
|
| > Any system that is not explicitly pro-Weird Nerd will turn
| anti-Weird Nerd pretty quickly
|
| just feels like a misunderstanding of the _paradox of
| tolerance_ [0] ("in order to maintain a tolerant society, the
| society must retain the right to be intolerant of
| intolerance").
|
| So we need to question what the author means with "Weird Nerd",
| because if a weird nerd just isn't expressing intolerance, I
| can't fathom how anyone could have an issue with it ...and
| become "anti-Weird Nerd".
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The first half of the sentence ("women in STEM") is meant to
| reflect on the confounding approach to the person mentioned in
| the second half of the sentence, a woman in STEM. First half
| "YAY GIRL POWER GO!," second half is that same bunch of people,
| presumably the Twitterati in question, being down on an opinion
| held by a woman in STEM who, well, the Nobel Prize is pretty
| good as a confirmation that you are STEMming very hard, when
| what they ought to be doing is, "Hey, we were just talking
| about women in STEM, maybe we should not reflexively criticize
| the very model of the person we were praising when she has an
| opinion which might be new or troublesome to us."
| orwin wrote:
| It's because of a lot of the people who push for more women in
| STEM (i think there is a movement called that too) also called
| out Karico for her vision on politiking and asskissing in
| academia (and science in general. My sister interned in a
| private lab in the past spring, it seemed to be even worse than
| academia on those point, although the pay was way better).
|
| It's not a dig at the movement or their values, i do think its
| a minority who do this, but its a vocal minority who might be
| capturing the movement (i don't think this is the case, but
| this is a danger. look at what HAES as become).
| red_admiral wrote:
| There is an argument that, to make STEM more friendly to women,
| it needs a culture change - which implies less weird-nerd
| culture. Whether this argument is correct or not is a separate
| matter (I'm leaning towards "it's complicated, but I'll round
| off to 'no'.") But what's going on here is people holding this
| argument are dunking on a woman in STEM.
| ianbicking wrote:
| There's definitely been a move to demand individuals be good at
| everything... old stereotypes of the nerd brought a lot of
| negatives, but they were also apologetic, acknowledging the trade
| off, that paying attention deeply to one thing does lead to being
| worse at other things.
|
| The exact stereotype differed by domain... the performer who is a
| diva, the self destructive author, the manic artist... each with
| a hint of nobility but also quite off-putting.
|
| The author wanting to combine Weird Nerd with autistic is very
| incorrect IMHO... I've known a lot of weird nerds, am one myself,
| and there's lots of different flavors, most of them not autistic.
|
| So much of talent is just really caring about something specific.
| Caring about it above other things. Specifically above external
| motivation and incentives. Do that and the weirdness grows
| naturally, neurodivergence isn't even necessary (though it might
| help)
| jacobolus wrote:
| "Performer who is a diva" is not directly about focusing on one
| thing at the expense of another. Performers are trained to be
| divas by having no real friends willing to confront them, and
| by being infantilized by the people around them who lie about
| their faults, are excessively accommodating of bullshit, and
| don't ever make them take responsibility for mistakes or
| reflect on their impact on other people. The result is often
| the same for people in positions of authority, such as CEOs.
| Cf. Elon Musk.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I somewhat agree, but I think there's more to it than that.
| To be a great performer, you have to care about delivering
| your own "message" as authentically or at least "in totality"
| more than anything else. Critique may be useful in
| understanding how your vision is being received, but actually
| delivering the vision requires believing in your own vision
| more than the visions of others. The same could be said of
| CEOs. It's not just that there are adoring fans / sycophants,
| it's that to be a great success in these areas you need to be
| able to disregard the criticisms of others when the criticism
| doesn't really connect with what you are trying to achieve.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The "diva" stereotype, starting with opera prima donnas,
| has plenty of real-world examples. These are people who
| were constantly pampered by support staff who treated them
| as royalty, and then ended up being huge jerks to anyone
| who even looked at them the wrong way. Lack of empathy and
| basic respect is not just about iconoclasm or
| compartmentalizing criticism or whatever.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The line you draw between "weirdness" and "neurodivergence" is
| interesting.
|
| Would neurodivergence have to be native (so, not grown
| "naturally") and at which point does weirdness fit on the
| spectrum ?
|
| Recently I think people are more receptive to lower degrees of
| neurodivergence. I see it the same way people understand that
| you have a gradation between having difficulties climbing
| stairs and not being able to walk. We could probably have it
| more in the open that many are not full blown clinically
| diagnosed ASD patients, and I wouldn't see it as an issue to
| have "false positives" of diversity lumped into neurodivergence
| if it was destigmatized.
| kristjansson wrote:
| At some point the question is "why?". We can keep atomizing
| human variability into smaller, more graduated buckets of
| neurodivergence, but what's the point, esp. for those that
| don't really suffer negative impacts, and for which there
| isn't really any remedy besides acceptance?
| belinder wrote:
| Just a guess here - but to make diagnosed people feel more
| included and part of a group, the more people get diagnosed
| even if it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because
| they're not alone, it stops being a stigma
| ambicapter wrote:
| How does sifting people into smaller and smaller buckets
| work to make people feel more part of a group? Seems more
| like people who have felt marginalized in the past want
| others to feel marginalized like they did, and work to
| place people into smaller and smaller categories to do
| so.
| beaned wrote:
| And for every group there is an anti-group, another set
| of people for whom the group-included feel justified in
| feeling resentful towards in some way.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| This is not my experience at all. Being diagnosed
| directly led to immense stigma over and over. You are
| literally giving people the language they need to
| stereotype you and put you into a bucket by getting
| diagnosed and telling people your diagnosis. Stigma is
| literally an iatrogenic consequence of diagnosis itself,
| never mind diagnosis stopping stigma! I hear "Autistic"
| thrown around as an insult maybe 10x more than I heard
| the same 20 years ago.
|
| People feeling safe because they're not alone does not
| end stigma whatsoever either.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > by getting diagnosed and telling people your diagnosis
|
| One of the things I try to emphasize with newly diagnosed
| young people is that they should _not_ make their
| diagnosis an outward part of their personality.
|
| There's a trend of putting your diagnoses in everything
| from your LinkedIn profile to your resume lately. I've
| been helping with resume review in a group and I've been
| stunned by how many times I've had to tell people that
| they need to remove their ADHD diagnosis from their
| resume.
| andoando wrote:
| I dont even like it on a personal level. People use these
| terms to describe themselves in very narrow buckets and
| stereotypes, and there is no logic to that at all. I saw
| a post on /r/ADHD for example thst went something like
| "Does anyone else svoid eye contact during sex" and
| everyones like "omg thats me too!". I mean...need I say
| more?
|
| I get how it might be fulfilling to have a label to
| explain away all your behaviors but it makes no sense to
| do so and I find it extremely self-limiting
| Aurornis wrote:
| > but to make diagnosed people feel more included and
| part of a group, the more people get diagnosed even if
| it's 0.01%, the more safe the others feel because they're
| not alone,
|
| I've worked with younger people in tech. I'm seeing a mix
| of effects, positive and negative, from increased
| diagnosis rates.
|
| On the plus side, some people are using their diagnoses
| to find helpful support material, techniques, and advice.
|
| On the negative side, some people get a diagnosis and
| then try to use it as an excuse for every personality
| trait they can fit under the umbrella of that diagnosis.
|
| It's really difficult as a mentor to have to explain to
| someone that their diagnosis of anxiety or ADHD or autism
| doesn't give them a free pass in society for all of the
| things they struggle with.
|
| I've had to explain to numerous people that having an
| ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the
| same performance review standards as their peers at work.
| This can be difficult to acceptance for someone who was
| given extra time on tests and possibly more leniency on
| assignments throughout high school and college due to
| their diagnosis. The educational institutions meant well,
| but the students took the wrong message from their
| accommodations and assumed it was always the world's
| responsibility to bend to their personal quirks rather
| than the other way around. Teaching people that their
| diagnosis is, to be blunt, not other people's problem is
| a difficult hurdle to clear for some. Many others get it
| right away, of course, but the internet rhetoric about
| neurodivergence leads a lot of people in the wrong
| direction.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > I've had to explain to numerous people that having an
| ADHD diagnosis doesn't, for example, exempt them from the
| same performance review standards as their peers at work.
|
| I can't speak for you, but that isn't at all accurate as
| far as I know. I myself would not say these kinds of
| things to a coworker, and definitely not to a subordinate
| one or one that reports to me, as I don't work in HR or
| legal department, and I'm not intimately familiar with
| actual existing accommodations for ADHD and other
| conditions under the FMLA and other disability
| discrimination laws and regulations in the US or other
| countries.
|
| This is a legal minefield and accident waiting to happen.
| Tread lightly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Ac
| t_o...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > I can't speak for you, but that isn't at all accurate
| as far as I know.
|
| > I'm not intimately familiar with actual existing
| accommodations for ADHD and other conditions under the
| FMLA and other disability discrimination laws and
| regulations in the US or other countries.
|
| Why are you saying it's inaccurate if you don't
| understand the laws and regulations?
|
| The FMLA that you cited and linked is for emergency
| medical leave, not for ADHD accommodations.
|
| You're also making a mistake that I see a lot: Getting an
| ADHD diagnosis is not the same as having a disability. It
| is possible to qualify as having a disability due to an
| ADHD diagnosis, but it's a substantially more difficult
| standard to achieve and prove. The average ADHD patient
| will not and cannot qualify as being _disabled_ due to
| ADHD.
|
| This is exactly what I was talking about: There has been
| an explosion of over-confident opinions about how ADHD
| and other mental health conditions intersect the
| workplace that have no basis in reality. The amount of
| incorrect ADHD information circulating on places like
| Reddit and TikTok is leading people in the wrong
| direction in large numbers.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > Why are you saying it's inaccurate if you don't
| understand the laws and regulations?
|
| I didn't say I wasn't familiar with them, I said I wasn't
| _intimately_ familiar with them.
|
| > The FMLA that you cited and linked is for emergency
| medical leave, not for ADHD accommodations.
|
| It's about more than that, but that's neither here nor
| there.
|
| Needing to take time off regularly, irregularly, as
| needed, or working less than full-time at an ostensibly
| full-time job due to a medical condition that may or may
| not be a disability are accommodations that would fall
| under FMLA, and it would be a factor in someone being
| unable to meet otherwise-reasonable standards or
| expectations. The FMLA applies even if your medical
| condition isn't considered a disability, for that matter.
|
| That's specifically why I said that I'm _not_ speaking
| for you, because I don't know what you know or don't
| know, nor do I know what jurisdiction you operate in, but
| I know enough to not advise others about how to speak
| about coworkers' medical issues - I just don't do it! I
| don't speak about coworkers' medical issues, because it's
| none of my business, and it's a poor use of my time,
| their time, and the company's time. It's also not in my
| job description to comment on my coworkers' medical
| issues.
|
| I'd be happy to discuss this further and read any
| resources you may have on this subject, though. I don't
| claim to be an expert, and I am amenable to reason.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > and read any resources you may have on this subject,
|
| If anything, I'd suggest reading up on the details of
| FMLA.
|
| FMLA is not, for example, a free pass to take time off
| _as needed_ , or regularly.
|
| The wording of FMLA is more about _recovering_ from an
| illness. Someone who routinely becomes overwhelmed with
| work and needs extra time off is going to have a hard
| time arguing that it 's actually FMLA protected leave..
| FMLA will specifically exclude things like taking time
| off for routine medical care, because it's specifically
| not for those purposes.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > FMLA will specifically exclude things like taking time
| off for routine medical care, because it's specifically
| not for those purposes.
|
| I am going to have to disagree with you there: continuing
| care and mental health days are covered under the FMLA as
| I read it.
|
| https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/28o-mental-
| heal...
|
| > LEAVE FOR MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS UNDER THE FMLA
|
| > An eligible employee may take FMLA leave for their own
| serious health condition, or to care for a spouse, child,
| or parent because of a serious health condition. A
| serious health condition can include a mental health
| condition.
|
| > Mental and physical health conditions are considered
| serious health conditions under the FMLA if they require
| 1) inpatient care or 2) continuing treatment by a health
| care provider.
|
| > A serious mental health condition that requires
| inpatient care includes an overnight stay in a hospital
| or other medical care facility, such as, for example, a
| treatment center for addiction or eating disorders.
|
| > A serious mental health condition that requires
| continuing treatment by a health care provider includes--
|
| > Conditions that incapacitate an individual for more
| than three consecutive days and require ongoing medical
| treatment, either multiple appointments with a health
| care provider, including a psychiatrist, clinical
| psychologist, or clinical social worker, or a single
| appointment and follow-up care (e.g., prescription
| medication, outpatient rehabilitation counseling, or
| behavioral therapy); and
|
| > Chronic conditions (e.g., anxiety, depression, or
| dissociative disorders) that cause occasional periods
| when an individual is incapacitated and require treatment
| by a health care provider at least twice a year.
|
| > REASONS FOR LEAVE
|
| > Leave for the Employee's Mental Health Condition
|
| > An eligible employee may take up to 12 workweeks of
| leave for their own serious health condition that makes
| the employee unable to perform their essential job
| duties.
|
| > Example:
|
| > Karen is occasionally unable to work due to severe
| anxiety. She sees a doctor monthly to manage her
| symptoms. Karen uses FMLA leave to take time off when she
| is unable to work unexpectedly due to her condition and
| when she has a regularly scheduled appointment to see her
| doctor during her work shift.
| eikenberry wrote:
| How is this stance different from one that says the same
| thing about your race or being deaf or requiring regular
| injections? Seems to me this is saying that some forms of
| bigotry are OK and the victims of it just need to deal
| with it. That neural disorders aren't as real or
| important because you can't see them and that makes it
| easier for some people who have them, but at a functional
| level, try to make more of it than they should. Because
| of this everyone with any level of these conditions
| should just suck it up where it doesn't jive well with
| our common hierarchical workplace organization.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > How is this stance different from one that says the
| same thing about your race or being deaf or requiring
| regular injections? Seems to me this is saying that some
| forms of bigotry are OK and the victims of it just need
| to deal with it.
|
| I never suggested discrimination based on mental health
| conditions is okay or encouraged. I'm just pointing out
| that you shouldn't put it on your resume and you can't
| expect it to exempt you from having to do your job. It's
| simple.
|
| I don't understand your analogy to race because that
| doesn't make any sense and certainly isn't relevant to
| what I said.
|
| As for your example of being deaf: The reality is that
| any disability that prevents someone from doing a job, in
| a way that that cannot be _reasonably_ accommodated,
| means that an employer doesn 't have to hire that person
| for the job. This makes people angry in the general
| sense, but the truth is that there are jobs that require
| certain abilities to perform. If someone was, for
| example, confined to a wheelchair then they would not be
| considered for a job loading trucks. That's
| "discrimination" in the general sense of the word, but
| it's certainly not bigotry.
|
| I think you've either misunderstood what I was saying, or
| you're upset that the world isn't as idealistic as you
| want. The reality is that if a condition prevents someone
| from doing a job and it can't be reasonably accommodated,
| the employer isn't forced to keep paying that person and
| ignore their inability to do the job.
|
| Having ADHD is a hurdle, but not something that prevents
| most people from doing jobs. It makes them more
| difficult, yes, but not impossible. If the condition is
| so bad that it becomes _disabling_ (legal definition)
| then that 's a different story, but again you're not
| required to employ people who have disabilities that
| prevent them from doing the job.
| eikenberry wrote:
| The analogy to race was due to DEI training at work. They
| equate all things people have biases against as things
| you should work to overcome. Race is one of these as is
| sex, handicaps, etc.
|
| The deaf example is actually quite good. People who
| suffer from neurological disorders have a disability (in
| the legal sense) that sometimes can't be accommodated in
| a very similar way. But they aren't considered to be
| disabled in the same sense and people don't recognize it.
| They instead just think the people have bad social skills
| and should try harder (my last employer's DEI training
| said exactly this). If you had a deaf or wheelchair bound
| person and people just generally decided that those are
| excuses for doing things that everyone else can do then
| it'd be comparable (I mean things that they can do, but
| can't do as others expect because, say, they can't hear
| the instructions from their boss).
|
| I'm really not that concerned with a perfect world and I
| agree with much of what you are saying. I'd best describe
| my feelings as annoyed and concerned for how much society
| has doubled down on all DEI biases being unacceptable
| except for those against people with neurological
| disorders (both sides of that annoy me, the doubling down
| and the ignoring).
|
| And I apologize for suggesting, if indirectly, that you
| were bigoted. I meant that more as a rhetorical statement
| but don't think I couched it as well as I could have.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| > The educational institutions meant well, but the
| students took the wrong message from their accommodations
| and assumed it was always the world's responsibility to
| bend to their personal quirks rather than the other way
| around.
|
| This is kind of a toxic perspective and could be why you
| have so many problems with your neurodiverse coworkers.
| If you believe they should never require accommodations
| and are always expected to conform to the rest of
| society, then you don't understand what that experience
| is like and how further debilitating it can actually be.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If you believe they should never require accommodations
| and are always expected to conform to the rest of society
|
| That's _not what I said_. The amount of toxic projection
| happening underneath these comments is wild.
|
| Anyway, I did not say they shouldn't get
| _accommodations_. I said those accommodations do not
| exempt them from having to do the job.
|
| The mistake being made is to confuse accommodations that
| help people do their job with "accommodations" that
| exempt the person from having to do the job.
|
| Two different things! You can expect the first in the
| workplace. You cannot expect the second.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I'm sorry, no one is going to bend their whole life to
| fit whatever accommodation you require. If you have a
| covered disability and a company legally must provide
| some minimal accommodation, then sure. If you are a
| weirdo who needs their emotional support stuffed animals
| surrounding the office or you break into a panic attack,
| you will discover life isn't fair pretty quick.
| fragmede wrote:
| so that people can identify themselves as being part of a
| group, and then find others who are also part of that
| group, just to have a community for support. if I want to
| find a group of left handed pansexuals who are into Pokemon
| Go, the Internet facilitates finding your exact flock.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| Seems to me like enabling further segregating people
| would be a negative thing. Eventually groups become so
| isolated that conflict is inevitable
| detourdog wrote:
| My guess is to try to improve human relationships. Trying
| to understand why someone has consistent
| surprising/inappropriate reactions might help. The flip
| side is someone who consistently seems to be surprised by
| how people are reacting to them and wants better
| connections.
| folsom wrote:
| I do know that people do not like me. Don't get me wrong,
| my coworkers all get along with me and I think most enjoy
| working with me but in general people outside of work
| don't want to be around me. Hell I couldn't even keep my
| wife interested enough to stick with me.
|
| So how could we study what makes me turn off other people
| and have it make a difference in my life? It is unlikely
| that I would be able to change myself and there is almost
| zero chance that whatever it is about me that disgusts
| others will change their natural reaction.
|
| In addition, I am not sure that this isn't how things are
| supposed to be. This may be part of social evolution that
| just makes the world tick.
|
| I would prefer we stop classifying people and just let
| them be who/what they are without pointing fingers at
| them.
| detourdog wrote:
| It's all about realistic introspection. People with a
| disorder often prefer the disorder to change. I think it
| is a personal decision. If one feels the need to be
| closer/understand an individual or is not satisfied with
| the quality of their human relationships than
| understanding personalities including one's own can help.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Acceptance comes from understanding, on both sides.
|
| We have small and graduated buckets for absolutely anything
| that impacts how we socially interact with someone. Which
| town they come from, nationality, ethnicity, educational
| background, religion down to specific cult group, football
| team, wealth level, parent's profession, family composition
| etc.
|
| Any of these has potential for negative discrimination, but
| we also use them for improving the interaction and mitigate
| confronting issues. The small and graduated buckets do IMHO
| help avoiding the negative impacts in the first place.
| giantg2 wrote:
| ASD has different levels of diagnosis. I've been told by a
| therapist specializing in ASD that there are a lot of
| diagnosed and undiagnosed ASD workers in tech. It's very
| possible the only reason they are "full blown clinically
| diagnosed" is because they haven't been tested.
| Gigachad wrote:
| At this point we could diagnose basically everyone on the
| planet with some flavour of neurodivergence. I'm sure
| there's one that makes people good at sales, one that makes
| people ruthless CEOs, one that makes people programmers,
| etc.
|
| But I just don't see the point of diagnosing people with
| things unless it causes some kind of actual disability and
| dysfunction.
| giantg2 wrote:
| No, you can't diagnose most people. Yes, the diagnosis
| generally _requires_ there to be disabilities related to
| it. Otherwise it doesn 't meet the criteria.
| parineum wrote:
| You didn't use this word specifically but this whole
| conversation has the underlying prior of the "everything is a
| spectrum" mindset.
|
| In that context, everyone is neurodivergence because,
| afterall it's a spectrum we're all on and nobody is going to
| be deadest average. At some point we have to define at what
| point these spectrums become clinical. The kind of language
| you see in the DSM for stuff like this is "does it affect
| daily living/relationships/health in a negative way".
|
| Being neurodivergent isn't a disorder, not showering because
| you're obsessed with programming probably is.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Autism is a result of neurons failing to "trim" or being
| over-connected. Being "on the spectrum" refers to the
| degree of above average physical over-connection of
| neurons. The opposite, when neurons fail to connect or lose
| too many connections is called schizophrenia.
|
| People that are between the two, the vast majority of
| people, are not said to be either autistic or schizophrenic
| (you can't be both at the same time but can go from
| autistic to schizophrenic with a degenerative disease).
| Everyone is not "on the spectrum" for autism, again by
| definition no one that is schizophrenic is "on the
| spectrum" for autism at all so your comment is nonsensical.
| parineum wrote:
| You've really only redefined the spectrum. It's now a
| single spectrum from Autism to Schizophrenia. You can't
| be on two spots on the spectrum at once. You've still put
| everyone on a spectrum and my question still stands.
|
| How far on the spectrum towards schizophrenia have to be
| before they are clinically schizophrenic?
|
| I don't disagree with the tendency to place things on
| spectrums but I find that people fail to adress that some
| people are so far on any spectrum that they become
| clinical.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _not said to be either autistic or schizophrenic (you
| can 't be both at the same time_
|
| I've never heard this before and a quick search can't
| find any evidence of it.
|
| The "over-connected" suggestion did pull up studies like
| this[1], but that's one effect of one set of genes
| sometimes associated with autism, and, of course, it was
| in mice.
|
| I'd definitely like to learn more, but at first
| impression, a spectrum with autism and schizophrenia at
| opposite ends seems way too simple a model for human
| brains.
|
| [1] https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/in-autism-too-many-
| brain-con...
| dbtc wrote:
| The phrase has sounded weird to me for some time but here it
| strikes me as especially so: "the spectrum"
|
| Just one spectrum, 2 dimensions? Is that all we get? It's a
| linguistic short-cut, I get that, but I wonder how useful it
| is, how much nuance it conceals.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Yes, 2 degrees, because autism is a neural "over-
| connectedness" in the brain that leads to common physical
| and mental symptoms like toe walking, double hair whorl,
| sensitivity to sound, etc.
|
| The spectrum can essentially be thought of has the degree
| of neural "over-connectedness".
| ModernMech wrote:
| Picture a color wheel instead of a continuum.
|
| Here's an image that shows what I mean: https://ih1.redbubb
| le.net/image.4683716510.9542/raf,360x360,...
| fragmede wrote:
| Yeah, a Kiviat diagram, or radar graph
|
| https://blog.onepatchdown.net/autism/2023/01/13/autism/
| ianbicking wrote:
| Yeah, "the spectrum" feels like squeezing lots of things
| into one diagnosis. Kind of the opposite of neurodiversity.
|
| It also feels a bit tech-centric... probably tech is
| someplace autistic attributes are particularly helpful, but
| other subjects are probably most compatible with other
| kinds of neurodivergence.
| walt_grata wrote:
| I duno on some of that. Until I was about 39 I was a "weird
| nerd" and then my wife (Dr of special education) finally
| convinced me to talk to a Dr and get get tested for autism.
| Turns out I'm ASD 1, would have been Asperger's in the past.
| Autism has a very wide range of ways it shows itself.
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| Well, to me your comment also speaks to the increasing degree
| to which we medicalize personality traits.
|
| I'm sure your diagnosis is legitimate, but also I'm inferring
| from your comment that you are married and gainfully
| employed; so it sounds like you're able to build and maintain
| relationships, as well hold conversations with strangers or
| non-close acquaintances when necessary.
|
| In years past would any professional have bothered to test
| someone like you for a disorder?
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I don't really accept the validity of people who are
| generally more functional and conventionally successful
| than average being called "disordered" in the first place.
| It seems like a weird arbitrary insistence of the medical
| system to simply pathologize anybody who fits into a
| certain box.
| tomrod wrote:
| I'm glad you aren't a, diagnostician with that bias!
| WereAllMadHere wrote:
| What about someone who needs a wheelchair but is
| conveniently successful?
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| If they seemingly successfully have walked around their
| entire lives - sure. But this seems like a off analogy
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Being in a wheelchair is rarely going to be caused by a
| disorder, also autism is different insofar that the
| negatives and positives seem to be linked to eachother
| and are not merely a matter of random circumstance.
|
| But practically, the disorder definition above basically
| would lump the above poster in with somebody who was
| struggling to hold down a part time job or any social
| relationships as having the same level of disability. All
| therapies, treatments, accomidations, etc will end up
| calibrated for the more profoundly disabled person while
| being offered to the above poster. Generally, peoples
| first impression of the person will understandably be
| based on that of the average person with autism spectrum
| disorder if they're told they're autistic which will
| cause them to be pretty profoundly misunderstood.
|
| That's just my take on this.
| detourdog wrote:
| The disorder is how they affect their social
| surroundings. Everyone is on the spectrum and the
| disordered are having social problems.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Yeah but we don't call people disordered for lacking the
| talents of these gainfully employed autistics, so it
| seems sort of arbitrary to me.
| detourdog wrote:
| I think the behavior is called disordered not the person
| exhibiting them. Many of the disordered behaviors can be
| transient.
| rustyboy wrote:
| Out of curiosity, given it is a spectrum, what's at the
| other end of "really" autisitc (if that's even the right
| word) or does that just go from 0 being "normal" to 1
| being that "really"?
| detourdog wrote:
| I think another comment said the opposite was
| schizophrenia.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The problem with this line of labeling is there are
| multiple possible "spectrums". I'm not sure what the best
| visualization would be... Like a starburst, with the
| center being normal, and all possible disorders going
| away (except they can be combined, so this isn't perfect
| either).
|
| But, if you're asking about the typical autistic
| inability to communicate with others, then yeah, 0-1
| works as well as any. Just don't take it as literal or as
| the only possible set of traits.
| sctb wrote:
| Being married and gainfully employed and able to build and
| maintain relationships as well as hold conversations with
| strangers when necessary can come at an exceptionally high
| cost for neurodivergent people in the form of masking (like
| a kind of mental tech debt). Instead of overt social
| difficulty, this might present itself as anxiety,
| depression, and suicidality--those conditions are worthy of
| medicalization IMO.
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| I agree with what you're saying, but also - everyone has
| problems. Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical? Why do
| some people's problems get the validation of the medical
| system and others don't?
|
| (These are non-rhetorical questions, I'm really not sure
| about the answers to them myself)
| sctb wrote:
| > [...] everyone has problems
|
| They certainly do. And I don't think we can make
| meaningful comparisons between individuals in terms of
| their problems, how they struggle or suffer, etc. For me
| personally, I don't assume to have it any worse than
| anyone else, and I always assume that others have deep
| challenges that I won't ever know about.
|
| > Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical?
|
| Again, these concepts become strained when applied to
| individuals. It's like the family who has 1.5 children:
| they don't exist. These are ever-changing labels that we
| make use of within an extremely nebulous social process.
| I try to apply them only in well-defined contexts and
| then throw up my hands in the general case.
|
| > Why do some people's problems get the validation of the
| medical system and others don't?
|
| I have no idea; in my mind this question is trying to
| peer closely into the nebula.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Why do some people 's problems get the validation of the
| medical system and others don't?_
|
| Very roughly, because some people can't function without
| intervention (for loose definitions of "function"). And
| some treatment (therapy, drugs, whatever) can help them
| function.
|
| Autism 1/Aspergers is sometimes kind of borderline - some
| people can function with it, but it can exact a heavy
| tool on them as a sibling comment noted. Depress and
| suicide are relatively more common. Why go through life
| miserable if it's not necessary?
|
| People without autism or other diagnosable issues are
| generally more resilient. a bad week, one-off negative
| occurrence, etc won't send them into a tailspin. That's a
| very real concern with some neurodivergent individuals.
|
| And you do have to remember, it's all a spectrum. And as
| observers, we don't know what a person is
| feeling/thinking internally and not expressing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Why do some people 's problems get the validation of
| the medical system and others don't?_
|
| Because there are effective forms of treatment available,
| but are gated by diagnosis because of $reasons.
| Validation of the medical system enables one to access
| those treatments, perhaps most important of which is
| being able to tell yourself, as well as others, that
| you're having an actual problem and are not "just lazy"
| or need to "just get yourself together", etc.
| ergonaught wrote:
| > Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical
|
| Yes. I get that your questions appear to be sincere and
| genuine, but, yes. Relative to the actual, demonstrable,
| neurological differences in connectivity and so forth in
| the "neurodivergent" brain, the overwhelming majority of
| people are "normal". Relative to the actual lived
| experience of "neurodivergents", the overwhelming
| majority of people are "normal".
|
| These kinds of questions are asked by people who simply
| don't understand the enormity of the difference.
|
| Much like people who don't have aphantasia speaking to
| people who do. And so forth.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Much like people who don't have aphantasia speaking to
| people who do. And so forth._
|
| Aphantasia is one that I find extremely hard to wrap my
| head around. The notion that somebody who's otherwise
| normal can't visualize things is really interesting. I
| have a friend who has it. The only outward symptom is his
| dislike of fiction and most TV/movies (and you'd only
| notice that if you knew him fairly well).
| majormajor wrote:
| > These kinds of questions are asked by people who simply
| don't understand the enormity of the difference.
|
| Eh. Not necessarily.
|
| Going back to the full line you're responding to: "I
| agree with what you're saying, but also - everyone has
| problems. Is anyone truly normal or neurotypical? Why do
| some people's problems get the validation of the medical
| system and others don't?"
|
| I'm "neurodivergent" in ASD/ADHD ways but also "just
| plain lazy" even in non-ADHD-ways.
|
| The laziness has caused me more problems in some ways.
|
| But it's generally seen as more of a "character flaw"
| than a "neurodivergent" issue.
|
| If someone is socially normal, attention-normal, but
| "just lazy" we'd rarely try to make any major
| interventions, though they might - especially from our
| outside perspectives, seeing the self-inflicted wounds! -
| make major improvements in the person's quality of life
| if they were done.
|
| Is it that we don't know how? Is it that we think they
| should know better?
|
| I feel like that's a big part of why I generally roll my
| eyes at a lot of how the Extremely Online talk about
| "neurodivergence" today but I couldn't honestly tell you
| how much of that is also coming from a place of
| bitterness, like "I buckled down and figured out how to
| function normally, just put in the work already." So I
| don't know.
| tomrod wrote:
| Are you aware that ASD isn't purely psychosocial?
| sneed_chucker wrote:
| Yes I'm aware that it's understood to be neurological
| condition.
|
| But it's diagnosed based on behavioral observations, it's
| not like people get diagnosed with ASD based on brain
| scans like you would for MS or parkinsons.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Human brains are complicated. Many psychological disorders
| we have little hard science to understand them with. That
| doesn't mean they don't exist, and much more importantly,
| that a diagnosis is _useful_ in improving someone's
| situation.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| This reads kind of like "my parents hit me when I was
| younger and I turned out fine" though o highly doubt it's
| your intention.
|
| Just because things seemingly turned out OK doesn't mean
| the treatment was appropriate. In the same way, just
| because someone manages to "get by" doesn't mean they don't
| need to be diagnosed. It's just making their life
| needlessly more difficult whereas they could yave more
| resources that reduce the burden they have to live with
| every day.
|
| Just knowing you have a diagnosis, regardless of whether or
| not you are treated, can be incredibly empowering and
| helpful. It isn't a mystery why other people could sit down
| and study for three hours when I was in college and I
| couldn't. I was diagnosed with ADHD, I knew where my
| blockers were and what they looked like (and continue to!)
| It gives me a lot more control and ability to manage myself
| day to day vs. assuming something is _wrong_ with me. The
| latter feeling can be incredibly demoralizing and even lead
| to self-destructive tendencies such as a self-medicating
| with alcohol and drugs. After all: Why bother trying if
| you're convinced you're truly broken? It's not something
| that has a name but that other people share this problem
| with you and manage is, again, incredibly empowering.
| manmal wrote:
| > you're able to build and maintain relationships, as well
| hold conversations with strangers or non-close
| acquaintances when necessary
|
| The traits you are describing here and autism don't exclude
| each other. Many autists live well. Some Fortune 500
| founders and/or CEOs are autistic. I'm tempted to conclude
| you are projecting a stereotype, but I might be reading too
| much into your post.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > my wife (Dr of special education) finally convinced me to
| talk to a Dr and get get tested for autism. Turns out I'm ASD
| 1, would have been Asperger's in the past.
|
| Can I ask candidly, what did you gain from knowing this?
| Presumably this didn't have much effect on you, since you
| seem to be fairly successful - finding a partner and getting
| married and presumably also having a decent job.
|
| Seems kind of like a vanity validation for your wife rather
| than a benefit to you.
| hnbad wrote:
| It can help reframe personal experiences and past struggles
| for one, but it can also help gain access to support that
| isn't available if you're just a "weird nerd". It can also
| serve to legitimize your struggles to people who think you
| just need to "stop being so lazy" at whatever you genuinely
| struggle with by being able to point at a diagnosis.
|
| Yeah, the benefits are a mixed bag and subjective but
| that's why we should normalize self-dx rather than
| insisting people have to get a medical opinion to be
| "validated".
| ben_w wrote:
| I'm very weird, but whatever I am is rare (or harmless)
| enough to not be commonly discussed or have a well known
| group identity the way autism does -- I've done online tests
| for a bunch of psychological conditions, including autism,
| and all of them rate me as absolutely normal.
|
| But I draw my ingroup/outgroup boundary broadly enough to
| include all non-sociopathic humans and several other species;
| I have zero motivation towards spectator sport; music only
| holds my interest for a few plays and then bores me; I can
| "visualise" my sense of balance strongly enough to completely
| override my actual sense of which way is down; my body self-
| image is almost entirely under conscious control (as in: I
| can't be body-dysmorphic because I don't have a consistent
| morph to dis).
| mattm wrote:
| Somewhat off topic - I'm curious if the diagnosis has helped
| in any way. I'm early 40s and have gone so far as taking an
| online test for autism where I scored very high.
|
| I've thought of being tested by a doctor but always think
| "What's the point? How is it going to help knowing?" so I'm
| curious as someone also well into adulthood if you've had any
| impact from knowing.
|
| I'm also married and am able to keep a job and function
| relatively well even though I'm not the most sociable person.
| 015a wrote:
| The article _literally_ reads:
|
| > I recently argued that many Weird Nerds (I called them
| autistics, but people really hated that)
|
| These are the same thing. The author recognizes that.
| Everyone recognizes that.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Caring about something deeply above external motivations,
| especially external validation is by itself neurodivergent. At
| the very least, you have to be highly introverted, which is
| rare.
| fdw wrote:
| I'm understanding your statement to mean that caring about
| something because of itself, without external motivation
| (like validation or money), is neurodivergent. So
| neurotypical would be to only care about something if you
| profit from you caring about it? Is that reading correct?
|
| If so, I have to disagree vehemently. That is not my
| experience at all and feels extremely homo economicus and -
| to be honest - depressing. I want to care about things I like
| and that bring me joy, even if no-one pays me for that or
| validates my choice.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It sounds to me like you probably are introverted, but
| might not be familiar with exactly what that means, or how
| neurodivergent is really is from much more common
| extroverted people.
|
| Most extroverts aren't ruthless machivellian self
| interested people like you are worrying I am claiming, but
| they are focused primarily on fitting in and being accepted
| by others- and do choose their activities and behaviors
| mostly based on that. Their interests are genuine, but the
| biggest factor in them is usually who it connects them
| with, and how it makes them appear to others. What do your
| hobbies, car, clothing, etc. say about you and how will
| that affect how others see and treat you?
|
| Introverts are, as the name implies, more inwardly focused-
| and although they enjoy social connection and acceptance
| also, it can be exhausting and therefore less motivating,
| and generally takes a back seat to more inwardly generated
| concerns. It is often wrongly confused with being socially
| awkward or shy, which isn't the same at all.
| andoando wrote:
| I hate this extrovert vs introvert thing too. People
| don't fit simiply into these buckets.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It's not a bucket you fit people into, it is one aspect
| of a persons personality, out of an almost infinite
| number, and is also a continuum.
|
| The idea originally comes from Carl Jung, and his point
| in coming up with it was for people that personally
| identify themselves as fitting into a particular bucket,
| to realize this, and be able to consciously explore the
| part of yourself that doesn't fit into it, that you might
| have ignored or rejected in the past.
|
| For example, if you see yourself as an introverted
| person, and dislike extroverted qualities in others, it
| can be useful, for personal growth, to explore and accept
| your own extroverted qualities as well. I would argue
| that is nearly the opposite of "simply fitting people
| into buckets" - it is a tool that gives a perspective to
| do the opposite of that. To understand the complexity and
| diversity of yourself, and of others.
| andoando wrote:
| How does saying "Im an introvert" not put yourself into a
| bucket? Youre quite literally using someone elses made up
| categorization to define who you are, and people tend to
| speak of this as an innate and overcompassing trait, and
| moreover using these made up categorizations as a _cause_
| of other behaviors. I dont like making small talk with
| cashiers at this point in my life " essentially becomes
| "I am an introvert, so I dont like making small talk with
| strangers and its is never likely to be my thing".
|
| I am perfectly fine describing myself with the actual
| details of my experiences. Its much richer and nuanced
| that way rather than simply saying Im not some way
| _because_ Im an introvert. What Ive seen is the complete
| opposite of ehst you are saying. People label themselves
| as something and believe anything thst doesnt fit the
| label is not them, out of reach, a monumental step for
| them to do. Talking to a cashier all of a sudden isnt
| just muttering some words, its a foundational shift from
| being introverted to extroverted.
|
| I think all of modern psychology/psychaitry suffers in
| this way: Making up categorizations with the belief that
| making things easier to conceptualize and making it
| easier to associate things is scientific and valuable
| insight. I think its the opposite. Youre losing precious
| detail and artificially killing complexity and getting
| simplified, untrue beliefs.
|
| I dont need these labels to explore "my more extroverted
| qualities". Having never labeled myself this way, I had
| no issues being the complete "opposite"
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| The point is people are already unconsciously putting
| themselves in buckets- being conscious of it is the first
| step towards actually moving past it. By being conscious
| of exactly how you are doing this, you can also begin to
| explore and accept the parts of yourself that don't fit
| into those buckets (what Carl Jung calls the shadow).
|
| The "buckets" themselves (archetypes) are simply
| explaining different aspects of human experience and
| personalities, but absolutely nobody fits into them
| neatly, and they are limitless- you could probably come
| up with hundreds of them if you wanted to. Which you
| think are important and worth talking about is really a
| matter of opinion or personal values and goals.
|
| These ideas are widely misunderstood and misused in both
| popular culture _and_ the social sciences, but that isn
| 't the fault of the concepts themselves. For example, the
| categories in the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
| (MBTI) are from Carl Jung's archetypes, but people use
| them exactly like you said- to essentially justify their
| own behaviors, when the point is to explore the parts of
| yourself that are the opposite of that. This idea often
| horrifies people that are fans of MBTI and use it like
| you are implying.
|
| I'm sure you would agree that people already have
| different personalities, and see themselves a certain
| way, and often dislike traits in themselves and others
| that are somewhat opposite traits to those. For example a
| person might see themselves as an analytical logical
| person, and look down on people who seem to be guided
| mostly by emotions. It can be hugely valuable for a
| person like this to start to understand and accept the
| emotional part of themselves and others, but that likely
| won't change the fact that they are still a person that
| prioritizes "thinking" over "feeling."
|
| People often mistakenly call this Carl Jung stuff
| "pseudoscience" because they are misunderstanding it as
| trying to be science. It is not- it is a tool or
| technology for personal growth, and is not attempting to
| be a literal explanation for how the human brain works or
| anything like that. It would be more accurate to relate
| it to religious or spiritual practices like meditation.
|
| The fact is that introverted people are quite rare
| compared to extroverted people, and extroverted people do
| tend to see it as a bad thing and want to do things like
| "help teach introverts to be less extroverted" but may be
| horrified by the idea of the opposite- learning about and
| accepting their own introverted aspects.
| fdw wrote:
| > or how neurodivergent is really is from much more
| common extroverted people.
|
| Do you mean to say that neurodivergence is more common
| among extroverted people? If so, do you have sources for
| that? I have not yet heard of any relation between extra-
| (or intraversion) and neurodiversity.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I want to check that I'm parsing this correctly.
|
| Caring about something beyond a typical amount for intrinsic
| reasons is a neurodivergent marker?
|
| Is this really the HN I grew up with?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Mental illness is somewhat linked to creative productivity,
| sadly. Bipolar disorder is somewhat overrepresented in highly-
| accomplished musicians, artists, and writers (with the trend
| going as far back as the 1800s).
|
| It would not surprise me if ASD is overrepresented in
| scientists and engineers.
|
| However, people also imitate their tribe, and seeing "weird
| nerds" with mental illness may get other nerds to emulate that
| behavior without actually being mentally ill.
| fragmede wrote:
| Or plain just getting away with shitty behavior. Uncle Rick's
| a raging asshole and we still accept him as part of the
| family, which means so can I.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Usually people with an uncle Rick don't want to become like
| him and are actually more self aware.
| koolba wrote:
| Except (young?) people are idiots and mistakenly think
| the bad behavior is the source of the genius rather than
| just hitching a ride.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Except when it is, which was the actual point here (or
| maybe stating it more directly). Or maybe it's the other
| way around (see, e.g. uncle Rick); either way, there
| seems to be some correlation there.
|
| I imagine that every asshole genius will have plenty of
| sharp edges in their behavior that they could round off
| very easily, making it a near-free win for their
| relationships (and overall success in life). Beyond that,
| however, it feels likely to me that making them focus -
| intellectually, emotionally, or both - on being more
| socially acceptable, eats directly into the focus they
| have for the things they're genius at, and
| disproportionally so.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Genius and asshole tend to go together because to be
| noticed as a genius you can't just be doing what everyone
| around you is doing. People with a high IQ who just go
| with the flow do not stand out as genius. The noteworthy
| part of genius is the things they do that are different.
| Being different means rejecting what everyone around you
| is doing. Having a personality where you reject what
| everyone around you is doing usually earns you the label
| of... asshole.
| narag wrote:
| People suffering uncle Rick, of course.
|
| But when it's some famous "difficult" person like Jobs or
| Gates, or in fiction like Doctor House, the version of
| them that we see is idealized.
|
| Actually this is the exact counterpoint of TFA: using the
| inexistent genius as an excuse for the trade-off.
| Imitating the genius is more difficult than just being a
| jerk.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Kerr Avon was always more popular than Roj Blake on the
| BBC show Blake's 7, so I guess there is a point to that.
| shufflerofrocks wrote:
| >So much of talent is just really caring about something
| specific. Caring about it above other things
|
| This is a really nice statement. Definitely agree with it. I've
| often seen so many fast-starters in many fields who just taper
| away, because the subject just isn't interesting to them, and
| it was the peeps who stayed in the field that ended up becoming
| really good at it. Definitely holds up the old "Average
| intelligence and persistence has accomplished much more than
| genius" quote
| red_admiral wrote:
| I think part of the problem with "autistic" is that, although
| there is an official diagnostic protocol for it, it's far from
| clear whether that cleaves reality at the joints, as the
| philosophers say. It's also still mostly an open question if
| and how autism in women might present differently from in men.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| The author is missing a crucial pressure that pushes against
| weird nerds, the people that have to work underneath them. I've
| had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out in my
| field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life, and I've
| spent the years since warning people away from that person, their
| career and their contributions to their field have stagnated due
| to all the people like me that they burned.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yep. Just because you're a Weird Nerd who's good at something,
| the world doesn't owe you respect and friendship unless you're
| willing to do the same.
| p_l wrote:
| Beware though that the inverse is also true.
|
| No matter if one is "weird nerd" or not
| glitchc wrote:
| You conflate two things that are actually quite different.
| You don't need to be friends with the Weird Nerd, but you do
| absolutely have to respect their expertise in the subject
| matter, especially when it exceeds yours. It's in your
| employer's interest to do so. Not doing so means you're being
| less than professional and might secretly be jealous of this
| person for having attained a higher level of technical
| achievement than your own.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Respect for your knowledge, yes - but if you're the world's
| top expert in Subject X, while simultaneously world-
| renowned for being an unpleasant asshole, don't expect
| people to interact with you more than the absolute bare
| minimum required to do the job.
|
| And frankly, nobody's irreplaceable. If you're #1 in the
| world, but casually drop racist and sexist slurs, odds are
| that the #2 expert in the world isn't _that_ much worse
| than you, nor #3..#10.
| glitchc wrote:
| And that's fine for most weird nerds. Being cordial and
| respecting of knowledge is all that's needed in the
| workplace. Most wns wouldn't make good friendship
| material either. Their opinions and tastes have a wide
| range from normal to rather eclectic. But without these
| people you will never be able to deliver the next new
| search paradigm. That's how they bring value and that's
| why the employer hires them. They also tend to be the
| ones that work very long hours, tinkering with stuff
| because it's "fun."
|
| Re: racism and sexism, I suspect that's not just wns and
| may have more to do with upbringing than personality.
| Most wns tend to be free-thinkers, and barring some
| oddballs, they tend to self-select out of that way of
| thinking.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Being cordial and respecting of knowledge is all that
| 's needed in the workplace._
|
| Yes - but a lot of Weird Nerds aren't willing to be
| cordial. I said in another comment that I think that one
| of the reasons they find their home online is because
| online, others can walk away from their comments when
| they need a break from them; something that's much harder
| to do at work, when you're face to face with them in a
| meeting, or at the watercooler, or in the bathroom where
| they followed you to continue their argument.
|
| > _Re: racism and sexism, I suspect that 's not just wns
| and may have more to do with upbringing than personality.
| Most wns tend to be free-thinkers, and barring some
| oddballs, they tend to self-select out of that way of
| thinking._
|
| I wildly disagree that racism and sexism - especially if
| you were brought up in it - is something most people,
| especially weird nerds who have a very high opinion of
| their intelligence - "think your way out of".
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > And that's fine for most weird nerds. Being cordial and
| respecting of knowledge is all that's needed in the
| workplace.
|
| Well, no it isn't. That was the point of the top comment
| in the chain: the commenter worked for Weird Nerd, found
| them insufferable, told everyone they were insufferable
| and that working for them sucked, and as a result the
| Weird Nerd's career has tanked because no one new will
| work with them. There really aren't many cases where you
| can Go It Alone without any support from anybody, even if
| you're brilliant.
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| What exactly was the issue, and did they burn people on purpose
| or through some kind of extreme carelessness and indifference?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Many weird nerds are on the spectrum and require very good
| people managers above them to mitigate their quirks, and should
| never go into people management themselves.
|
| The industry has really changed though. It is much easier to
| hire social well adapted people who can code at all than to
| hire a bunch of people with social problems who can code really
| good. The former is scalable at least, the latter breaks down
| as no one can get along.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Any non-trivial engineering or research is a team effort.
| It's good to have a mix of perspectives and temperaments in a
| team to keep poeple creative and honest. But the team
| ultimately has to cohere in order to deliver. That's really
| the core job of a manager: to create an environment where
| people can work together meaningfully and direct it to
| productive ends.
| alexvitkov wrote:
| > Any non-trivial engineering or research is a team effort
|
| There's plenty of counterexamples in the software space, to
| the point where most great software was originally written
| by a single person - C, Unix, Linux, Git, TeX, Python,
| Ruby, Perl, SQLite, QEMU...
|
| Most of these now have huge teams maintaining them of
| course, but the initial research and engineering that was
| needed to come up with the golden egg is usually a one man
| show. C designed by committee is COBOL.
| greatpostman wrote:
| This isn't true, most of the best software is written by
| individuals. Even inside large tech companies, it still
| happens that major value is created by one person.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I totally empathize with this, but there are hardly many
| people managers who can pull that off. And often those that
| can get promoted up quickly so that they aren't managing
| teams directly anymore. It is much easier to produce with
| mediocre people managers with a team of socially well
| adjusted mediocre programmers, than a unicorn people
| manager with a diverse team of highly skilled programmers
| who aren't necessarily great at social skills.
|
| Individual efforts are completely different. A programmer
| like Notch can produce Minecraft on his own and then just
| get help to push it into a maintained product. This happens
| all the time, but you can't produce that easily (and
| definitely not consistently) at the big corp level.
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| > The industry has really changed though. It is much easier
| to hire social well adapted people who can code at all than
| to hire a bunch of people with social problems who can code
| really good
|
| If you have no financial constraints? In what world do you
| spend massive amounts of money to mitigate people being
| "weird"?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The shift to high level languages like COBOL, BASIC,
| FORTRAN from machine language? The shift to GC languages?
| The shift to vastly inefficient but easy to use scripting
| languages like Python? There's a long history of trading
| off CPU/RAM/storage efficiency (i.e. massive amounts of
| money) to make computing accessible to less and less nerdy
| people.
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| Those also save time for all people? Which also saves
| money? I don't think anyone was like, "we need a language
| to save us from having to hire all these weird people!"
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Yes, the weird nerd is rarely a good people manager. As useful
| as they might be as an individual contributor when property
| channeled, they can easily be a -10x contributor when you put
| them in charge of people.
| doug_durham wrote:
| I disagree. A "weird nerd" is much better in leadership than
| a socially adept careerist to parachutes in to get a bump on
| their resume. To build good products you need to care. A
| "weird nerd" is more likely to care.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The author bemoans that any org that is not sufficiently pro-
| weird-nerd becomes anti-weird-nerd, and in conjunction with
| this comment which laments the experience of working under one
| alongside my own experiences of similar, I think it's worth
| remarking that many Weird Nerds not only do not foster social
| skills of any sort, but in fact view this as a badge of honor,
| as "proof" of their weirdness, and just, I'm over that shit.
|
| I love weird nerds, I love the sort of people who obsess about
| things, who work on them as obsessively as I do, I love info
| dumps, I love people who are passionate even about bizarre,
| niche shit I don't care about (actually, I love them even more
| for it!) but seriously. You need to be able to hold a
| conversation. You need to be able to talk productively with
| your fellow people, including difficult conversations. You need
| to open to negative feedback, to be able to take criticism or
| contrary viewpoints without turning into a puddle of some
| combination of depression/rage/self-hatred, or people are just
| not going to get on with you.
|
| And I fully accept that autism runs through this pack of people
| like a freight train, and that's fair, I am always down to
| provide accommodations, I will talk to people how they need to
| be talked to, I will bend the norms of social interaction so
| it's more palatable, all of that, zero issues whatsoever. But
| even with that in consideration, relationships of all kinds are
| a give and take, and if all you do is take, people will notice,
| and people will avoid you.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > but seriously. You need to be able to hold a conversation.
| You need to be able to talk productively with your fellow
| people, including difficult conversations. You need to open
| to negative feedback, to be able to take criticism or
| contrary viewpoints without turning into a puddle of some
| combination of depression/rage/self-hatred, or people are
| just not going to get on with you.
|
| You implying that non-nerds have any of these traits lol no
| they don't it's just that they exhibit more of group-thinking
| and less individualism, so they provoke less situations that
| might potentially cause conflict.
|
| My experience with nerds is "ok each has their own opinion
| this is going to be difficult but let's try cooperating"
| whereas non-nerds act exclusively "my way or the highway"
| because they have never previously encountered the idea that
| their view of the world might be wrong "because I'm the
| majority".
| stale2002 wrote:
| > You implying that non-nerds have any of these traits
|
| The thesis of the initial discussion is that it is unfair
| to hold "weird nerds" to certain standards.
|
| The person you are responding to is claiming that actually
| some of these standards are important.
|
| Your response to that of claiming that the standards are
| important is to say that actually normal people don't pass
| those standards either.
|
| This doesn't refute the argument that the standards are
| important, but would actually agree with them that actually
| yes it is totally fine to hold people to important
| standards, weird nerd or not. (And in fact, you think the
| weird nerds are even _better_ are following the standards!
| So what is the issue of holding them to those standards
| then?)
| icodemuch wrote:
| I read the article as acknowledging this pressure by arguing
| that Weird Nerds should not be forced into people management
| positions. Without the workplace pressure on Weird Nerds to
| become people managers, would they still manage people? Maybe
| not.
|
| I can't speak for academia, but in tech companies I've worked
| at I've seen a marked improvement in management when there's a
| tech track for engineer advancement such that they never need
| to become managers, if they don't want.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| Even if you're not doing performance reviews there's still a
| need for directing people technically when the work exceeds
| what one person(even a 10xer(if such a thing really exists),
| and that's where you need some minimum amount of EQ
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean it really depends where the weird nerd is. I mean I
| can say I'm on the border of weird nerd myself, though I
| say I have enough EQ to get around. Never want to manage
| people, and have a "high enough" position for myself. The
| company I work for is in the middle of a new software
| project and just a few months in I layed out a document
| stating how and where the software was going to hit failure
| points that were going to cause outages/degradations of
| service. Nine months later those failures started occurring
| like dominoes. We had to stop on new deliveries and work on
| performance for months.
|
| I mean the entire VC culture is ate up with the 10x CEO,
| the fact that a few other people lower down the totem pole
| can 10x in their narrow field shouldn't be a surprise.
| omoikane wrote:
| I think the contention is that playing political games, as
| quoted in the article, is beyond the minimum amount of EQ
| normally expected for a non-management role.
|
| Problem is that many places design their ladder such that
| non-managers are expected to do manager-like work past a
| certain level. This is to much dismay of those people who
| are not trained in management skills, and most of the
| skills they have acquired thus far are no longer being put
| to good use. These Weird Nerds may very well understand
| that being at the next level means making impact that
| exceeds what one person can do alone, nonetheless they will
| become increasingly unhappy at those roles. Maybe they will
| leave, maybe they will avoid getting promoted to higher
| levels in the first place.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Being a professor at a research university is really multiple
| non-overlapping jobs all at once: managing your research
| group, bringing in funding and publicity, helping run your
| department and research community, and teaching classes. PhD
| programs really only prepare you for the nuts-and-bolts of
| research, and maybe teaching. Only if you're lucky, your
| advisor was thoughtful enough to make proper introductions to
| help you get started on funding and prestige out of the gate.
|
| It's not surprising that lots of people opt out or wash out
| of this system because the expectations don't match the
| formal preparation for it.
| glitchc wrote:
| You can blame the bureaucrats for this multi-facted
| outcome. Their ever-increasing pressure of getting new
| funding and balancing your books with frequent budget
| updates is what leads to so much time spent on those
| activities. And of course they tie those activities to your
| promotion, instead of the importance of your discoveries
| which is what should be the only thing that matters.
| dsign wrote:
| > Weird Nerds should not be forced into people management
| positions
|
| Let's forget the Weird Nerds for a minute and look at the
| following situation: a person W is technically savvy enough
| to have accomplished a big chunk of project X. Say, 90%. And
| then there is a 10% left which takes as much work. So
| management hires people from a consultancy to pick up the
| 10%. Except that these guys don't write much code. They are
| adept at finding their way into technical management at light
| speed and want to push what should be their work back to W,
| while doing the bare minimum otherwise. Now W has more work
| than before, because he has been pushed into politics. At the
| very least, he will need to communicate to his colleagues
| that they need to pick up the slack for real. With some luck,
| W will find a nice way to do that, but that's the kind of
| problem he is ill-equipped to handle.
|
| There is something in this article which is overlooked in
| these comments: people like Katalin Kariko are often under a
| lot of pressure to perform. They can have crippling debts, or
| be supporting an elderly parent or relative. Or fear
| something as life-wrecking as a deportation. They don't get
| the luxury of being "average", because there are more
| desirable "average" candidates than them: people who speaks
| with the right accent or in the right cultural code.
| jltsiren wrote:
| From a certain perspective, there are two kinds of fields in
| the academia: "laboratory science" and everything else. If
| you want to make a career in laboratory science, you need to
| be a manager and a professional beggar. You need to bring in
| money to hire people to do your research, and you need to
| support the administration with grant overheads. If you are
| good at the job, you pay the administration more than they
| pay you. Long-term non-manager positions are rare, because
| they are more expensive for the university than successful
| managers.
|
| Outside laboratory science, the expectation to bring in
| funding is not as strong. You don't need much money to do
| research, and grants are not as readily available. As far as
| the administration is concerned, if you do your teaching duty
| without too many issues, you can use the rest of your time as
| you see fit. Academic politics revolve more around personal
| relationships with the tenured people at your department.
| koolala wrote:
| i had to be in a confinement center designed by a nerd who put
| a computer where it shouldn't belong, im sorry thank you for
| sharing your story
| neilv wrote:
| > _I've had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out
| in my field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life,_
|
| I wouldn't want to tar all people who might be perceived as
| Weird Nerd, based on one data point (which AFAIK might not even
| be due to them being a Weird Nerd).
|
| Almost all of the too-many people I've seen burn others under
| their influence, I wouldn't have called any of them Weird Nerd.
| And none of them appeared to be geniuses. Rather they tended to
| be at least somewhat successful as political operators, unlike
| how the article characterizes Weird Nerd. (Arrogant seemed to
| be the most common attribute, then greedy, dishonest, and
| unprintable bad word.)
|
| Someone might decide to call some of those FTX cryptocurrency
| scammers Weird Nerds, but you could also just call them
| overprivileged brats with consequently warped worldviews.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The author sidesteps the problem entirely by picking the most
| idealistic Weird Nerd possible: A person who is indisputably
| talented, accomplished, perseverant, and even benevolently
| forgives those who wronged her in the past.
|
| In the real world, the "Weird Nerd" rarely checks all of these
| boxes, let alone most of them. I bet a lot of people will read
| this and identify as the Weird Nerd despite checking none of
| the boxes. That's the nature of articles that leave out the
| nuance and instead give us the most idealized view of a noble
| scientist who was a victim of the system. It leaves an opening
| for everyone to feel like they were a victim of the system.
|
| That's why this problem is far more complicated than articles
| like this would lead you to believe. Many of the "Weird Nerd"
| people out there aren't perfect scientists or engineers
| unfairly shunned by the system. Many of them have real flaws of
| varying degrees that would require a lot of guidance and
| mentoring even within a perfect system. And it's not easy! In
| fact, it can be very taxing on teams to work around the quirks
| of your average (non Noble Prize winning, like this article)
| Weird Nerd even if they can produce good output, which is why
| so many companies select for Boring Nerds instead.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > I've had to answer to a Weird Nerd when I was starting out in
| my field, it was the worst fucking experience of my life, and
| I've spent the years since warning people away from that
| person, their career and their contributions to their field
| have stagnated due to all the people like me that they burned.
|
| And in what way is Katalin Kariko responsible for your
| mistreatment? I doubt you would have said something similar
| about a black or gay former manager, attributing your
| mistreatment to their race or sexual orientation. But for some
| reason it's perfectly acceptable to attribute it to a Weird
| Nerd personality.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Everyone get your bucket ready, I'm going to throw an anecdote
| into it.
|
| I play D&D. This exposes me to a wide variety of people, but
| unsurprisingly, a lot of them are probably what the author would
| consider Weird Nerds.
|
| Most of them are perfectly pleasant people, and I look forward to
| spending time in their company, both in the context of playing
| D&D, and just as a way to socialize. Heck, at my last session, a
| player proposed doing a regular board game night, and I am _very_
| excited to do this with those people.
|
| But. Occasionally, you meet someone who is just fucking
| unpleasant to be around. Maybe they're on the spectrum (as the
| author really wants to lump all Weird Nerds on the far end of),
| maybe they're just poorly socialized, maybe they're just
| assholes. And unless they're just awful people [more on this
| later], you learn to put up with their idiosyncracies - because
| in the end, they're pretty good at playing D&D, and it's fun to
| slay a dragon or solve the mystery of the mermaid pond, or
| finally get revenge on your vampire stepfather from hell or
| whatever. But those people? They're not coming to board game
| night, and they're not fucking coming to any of my BBQs. They're
| ok in the context of playing D&D for three hours, but I'm not
| willing to spend more time with them.
|
| I think that's another reason why some Weird Nerds who are
| unpleasant to be around have found a safe haven on the internet,
| as the author puts it: because while they're still unpleasant,
| you can read their unpleasant words and then walk away for
| awhile. They're not standing in front of you, demanding your time
| face to face. If someone is the world's expert on a thing you're
| collaborating on online, it doesn't matter if you groan every
| time you have to talk to them, because your time with them is
| largely limited, and you can walk away at literally any point
| during the interaction and regain the will to live and spend more
| time with them.
|
| I'm not sure what my point is. Maybe that it's kind of ok to not
| want to be around people who are unpleasant to be around, and
| that despite that, it's also ok for them to still meaningfully
| participate in the things that matter to them.
|
| [About the awful people in D&D: it's a game, and it's made to be
| fun. Not every table is made for every player, and vice versa. If
| you're in a game, and someone is truly ruining the game for the
| other players by being a generally unpleasant person, I am
| begging you to just fucking stop playing with them. Life is
| short, don't surround yourself with assholes. I promise you can
| find more players. And if you're the one being asked to leave a
| D&D table because other people find your unpleasant, reflect on
| your actions. Maybe you're just at a table that's a bad fit for
| you. Or maybe you're an asshole.]
|
| (If I currently play D&D with you, rest assured that I am not
| talking about you; all the examples are from past games.)
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I ask, if that person is truly unpleasant have you spoken to
| them about how unpleasant they are?
|
| Not to defend but how is someone to recognise a fault of their
| own if they're not called upon? Unless its truly terrible and
| they know they are doing it on purpose.
|
| The issue we live in nowadays we are all scared how to tell
| each other how we feel towards and that we now safe harbour
| them by throwing them a label and approving that to a degree.
|
| I'm direct and blunt, if someone is doing something in a group
| I call them out of it; I expect folk to do the same for me.
|
| I may be offended but you should be offended, there's no harm
| in that.
|
| Granted it's a double edged sword. You tell them; they preach
| to their safe haven and breathe the toxic fumes of their peers.
| Or they actually recognise it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Sometimes, yes, we talk to them.
|
| But I'm a DM, not their therapist or their dad - I'm not
| obligated to hand-hold someone through a radical
| restructuring of their personality.
|
| And, it might not surprise you to find out, some people react
| _very badly_ to being criticized. And I 'm not particularly
| interested in having an argument over my subjective opinion
| of a person. _I just don 't want to be around them anymore._
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I suppose, and that's fair enough. I just tend to trial
| their behaviour.
|
| "No that's not alright, cut the crap otherwise your out of
| here"
|
| Why play with them and not just cut them out completely? By
| keeping them in group your only enforcing their
| unpleasantness.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Why play with them and not just cut them out
| completely? By keeping them in group your only enforcing
| their unpleasantness._
|
| The people who actually ruin the game and make it not fun
| to play, we do cut them out.
|
| But other people, well - I guess the threshold for
| playing a cooperative game with someone is different than
| the threshold for inviting them to a party at my house.
| Plus, at D&D, they spend a lot of their time inside a
| character who may be more interesting and pleasant than
| the person rolling the dice.
| kstenerud wrote:
| > But I'm a DM, not their therapist or their dad - I'm not
| obligated to hand-hold someone through a radical
| restructuring of their personality.
|
| Therein lies the crux of the issue. Everyone agrees that
| this person needs help, but also agrees that they shouldn't
| feel obligated to provide it.
|
| And so they continue on, blissfully unaware of the chafing
| they cause. Life goes on, and their contribution remains
| minimal.
| fragmede wrote:
| Am I my brothers keeper? Culturally, we've just bought
| into the notion that I'm not your therapist, so as to
| absolve myself of the responsibility of fixing broken
| people. But if I don't do it, who will? so I take care of
| myself first, so that I'm sable to take care of others,
| but when I encounter broken people, I still try to fix
| them (as if people are devices like microwave ovens that
| need fixing) , because we all have to live in a society
| and hurt people hurt people, so don't over extend
| yourself, but also do the work that's staring you in the
| face.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think we both know the kind of That Guy we're talking about
| and a conversation isn't going to change things.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Okay, moot. But in that case why keep them active in group?
| Why tolerate it in the first place.
|
| Maybe I'm just to compassionate.
| orwin wrote:
| Not gp, but because they aren't so unpleasant they're
| intolerable. But i definitely know one person i won't
| play a game with once my current campaign is over, and
| another i won't have as a player, ever. For two different
| reasons. The first might overall be a nice player to have
| if you manage to canalise him, he play his character well
| as long as the NPC he interact with isn't a female, then
| he becomes incredibly weird. I thought he was playing
| that part too, but since we have a female player at the
| table it became painfully obvious its not (and it became
| worse, weirdly). The second one is actually pleasant to
| be around most of the time, just very tiring. I had a
| player with the same energy level before and it's
| exhausting. I'd love having her as a DM however.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I would suggest you check out some of the things on
| reddit's rpghorrorstories subreddit.
|
| Of course, we're only seeing one side of a narrative, and
| the stories are obviously written for an audience that
| expects something - but it can be rather enlightening at
| _just how bad_ some people can be, and _just how much_
| some other people can put up with.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I've had my fair share. I know the stories. In the end I
| just started not tolerating the bull and told them go
| away.
|
| As I said, I trial them out if they can't obey the first
| warning than out they go.
| wumbo wrote:
| If it's their general emotional candor, I don't think it's
| worth wondering if they are self aware.
|
| Not your emotions, not your circus.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Normies don't require feedbacks to be verbally and explicitly
| delivered most of the time. It's the last resort path.
| Constantly delivering and being delivered clear and blunt
| express feedback is not normal. It's "sad"-"agitated" state
| if you ask them
|
| It might be true that allowing minute variances between
| normie nonverbal feedback gatherer people to be a factor to
| their successes has its own problems, but encouraging
| everyone to drop that BS and just be offensive and blunt to
| make things simple is at least not a widely supported
| solution.
|
| So be nice... it sometimes gets complicated to be just a nice
| and happy person, but you actually don't have to be a
| fearless warrior at all times.
| nurple wrote:
| I had a "friend" like you once. We got along well, he would
| excitedly dive deep with me in tech because he wanted to learn
| programming, and I would excitedly dive deep with him into
| creating coffee and beer because I find the stricture in
| creation leading to creativity endlessly interesting.
|
| However, whenever he'd have his "cool" friends over for parties
| I wouldn't get an invite, in fact never met any of his other
| acquaintances. He explained to me once that he likes to keep
| his different social lives separate, and I was apparently the
| only one in his "tech" social circle.
|
| That made me feel like shit, and reinforced my self-view as
| failing to be a normal human.
|
| This is a theme that's continued with multiple "friends"
| throughout my life, to the point where I eventually just gave
| up trying, gave up giving of myself to others to simply be
| siloed or discarded once they got what they wanted from me. I
| got tired of the lack of reciprocation in giving me a chance to
| be a part of their actual life even though they were apparently
| getting enough from me that they were willing to keep me around
| when it suited their needs.
|
| I hope some day you gain some compassion and can see that
| people who are different than you are still people, and that
| treating them as lesser except when you can get something from
| them (like an interesting dnd game) is a huge part of the
| problem in these types of people retreating even more from the
| social and emotional norms.
|
| At this point, why in the hell do you think I would even _want_
| to be willful part of the society you inhabit, that treats
| other humans as you do?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I don't know you, and you don't know me. I won't hypothesize
| about your situation - though based on what you've written,
| you're right, and it was an objectively terrible experience
| for you, and I'm sorry you had to go through it..
|
| But please don't equate me with someone who treated you
| badly, based on five paragraphs I banged out this afternoon.
|
| Just because I don't want to invite a casual acquaintance who
| regularly says things I find _vile_ to my house, doesn 't
| make me an incompassionate villain.
| lainga wrote:
| > I still stand by my association of Weird Nerds with autism, but
| for some reason people really do not like to call Weird Nerds
| autistic.
|
| I'm sorry, _what_ , even if they're preponderant you can't just
| call all of them that any more than you can collectively call all
| basketball players "Marfan Syndrome havers"
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Tell me honestly that most weird nerds are not on the spectrum
| and I might be able to work up enough energy to clutch my
| pearls at this.
|
| I say this as a weird nerd who is definitely on the spectrum,
| like I suspect many HN readers are.
| lainga wrote:
| Allow me a bit of poetic license with the original statement
| and maybe it will explain my objection better.
|
| > but for some reason people really do not like to call
| marathon winners "Kenyans".
|
| Why might other marathon runners not like being lumped in
| with that country, given its incredible winningness at long-
| distance racing?
| lawn wrote:
| Maybe many and even most are on the spectrum, but not all
| are.
|
| And even then, its a _spectrum_ meaning every person has a
| their own unique mix of, lets just call them quirks.
|
| Meaning they (and you) are more than a single word like
| "autism". In fact in Sweden we've moved away from the
| "autistic diagnosis" because it's too simplistic. It's
| dangerous to be too caught up in "being autistic" that we
| hinder ourselves and others when we can do more.
|
| Signed, a dad with autistic tendencies and a 4-year old child
| with may quirks that already give us quite a lot of
| challenges.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I am on the spectrum but I definitely know nerds (although
| not necessarily weird nerds) who are insanely good
| programmers/computer scientists (and do have that as their
| hyper specialized interest) who are not on the spectrum.
|
| But the thing is, it's a spectrum.. Personally I do find it a
| little ridiculous because the biggest parts of autism have
| absolutely nothing to do with my work/interests but with
| social life, sensory issues, etc. And it's definitely more a
| struggle than a superpower (at least to me).
| 65 wrote:
| Yeah, this is a dumb insinuation.
|
| The author is conflating people who are motivated internally by
| making great contributions to society with autism. Many of the
| best artists and scientists aren't autistic, and perhaps are
| quite the opposite: deeply emotional and socially aware. I'd
| argue you need a deep understanding of social value to even
| want to make a great contribution to society.
|
| Also, it's not like people with autism are automatically
| geniuses. Anecdotally I've found autism to not really
| contribute to original and innovative thinking, more with
| excessive fixation on a subject. There is a difference.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| >I'd argue you need a deep understanding of social value to
| even want to make a great contribution to society.
|
| Autistics only nessecarily misunderstand social value in a
| superficial way. They are frequently compensating for a sort
| of "social blindness" with unusual strengths like pattern
| recognition to get insights into social situations in a more
| detached way through a different lens.
|
| People also can be on a team with somebody who has a deep
| understanding of social value who doesn't have it themselves.
| Jobs/Woz comes to mind.
| ModernMech wrote:
| It seems like you're saying autistic people are not deeply
| emotional or socially aware, or capable of understanding
| social value. This is not what autism is -- it's a
| developmental disability that leads to impairment in social
| situations, not an inability to understand society and
| emotions.
| analog31 wrote:
| I qualify as a weird nerd, and I'm definitely not autistic.
|
| I don't like to call anybody autistic because it invites
| paternalism or even outright discrimination. I even object to
| using much milder labels such as "introvert."
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I've witnessed more than a little of this. I worked in a
| university, in a library (though not as a librarian), and
| realized that everyone at a certain level or above in
| administration Came From Money. While "has a house in another
| country" is not subtle, "father was on an Everest expedition" is.
| Once I began noticing this soft ceiling I could not help but see
| it everywhere in the university. Meritoriousness was not on the
| menu and it took me entirely too long to "get" that I was locked
| out of promotion and that it was just a way to keep me dancing
| like a little dog standing up for a treat.
|
| The "bundle of tradeoffs," which is a more humane and human way
| of thinking, is at odds with the "cog in the machine" approach
| which began with interchangeable machined parts and progressed on
| to the human element. Being replaceable then becomes a prized
| characteristic. Indeed, one of the administrative staff suggested
| that anyone who seemed like they were too valuable to replace
| ought to be let go on those grounds alone. It's a recipe for a
| kind of predictable mediocrity.
|
| Business _loves_ predictable mediocrity, and we see it in various
| forms of intellectual property. Why sell a copy of Office for
| unlimited use when you can charge monthly and predict out your
| next few quarters? Own a movie? No, rent. And as academic
| institutions continue their transformation into administratively
| bloated credential assembly lines, we will see more business-y
| strategies worm their way in.
| neilv wrote:
| > _and realized that everyone at a certain level or above in
| administration Came From Money_
|
| There's a lot of that. And in academia in general.
|
| Many/most are decent people. But even those often haven't been
| exposed to the ordinary life experience of the majority people
| from their country. And that often seems to affect how they
| think about themselves and the world.
|
| Also, there's often implicit self-promotion and self-interest
| behavior. Which they might think is normal, since it's in their
| upbringing, and in the circles they now travel in. But it's not
| necessarily normal to the masses of their countries (which I'd
| expect to tend towards more cooperative and egalitarian in some
| ways).
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I didn't fully understand what the author meant by "Weird Nerd",
| and this bit was the key for me:
|
| > Weird Nerds (I called them autistics, but people really hated
| that)
|
| And I totally get why they're trying to come up with a word that
| markets better, and yes many people react negatively to "autist"
| or calling someone "on the spectrum".
|
| At the same time, man prominent people are making public their
| diagnostics and assert being on the autism spectrum, and I wonder
| if it becomes a disservice to them to not use the term when
| appropriate, precisely because of how it's perceived now.
| meesles wrote:
| I think you're circling some valid points, but realistically I
| don't think this happens in the current climate. There's a
| couple of forces at play - a) it's a medical issue that people
| are really passionate about b) there's an ironic (or not, at
| times) subculture of calling oneself 'autistic' when it's just
| exhibiting an interest and c) there's still no 100% accurate
| test, not everyone will want to out themselves, etc. So the
| shroud of mystery + confusion persists for the vast majority
| outside of those that advocate and speak out.
|
| I think it's a good thing to come up with some other term to
| refer to these extrinsically motivated nerds that don't really
| care for typical social constructs but bring immense value to a
| bunch of types of work. That way whether they identify or are
| diagnosed as autistic isn't necessarily the important piece,
| more the result of their person.
| slillibri wrote:
| I react negatively to "autist" because it's not a good
| description. "ist" is usually used for something people do, or
| more to the point something they choose to do, see cyclist,
| artist, etc.
|
| Also, "on the spectrum" is used today much like "depression"
| was used in the '90s. It's a catch all excuse used at the
| expense of people actually suffering the disorder. Much like
| sometimes you are just sad, I would wager many people who claim
| to be "on the spectrum" are just assholes.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'd argue assholes would merit the same attention as the
| people on the spectrum, but it might be another discussion.
|
| > something they choose to do
|
| Point taken, but then switching that for "weird" doesn't feel
| like helping, it's still a pejorative and not really focused
| description.
|
| > people actually suffering the disorder
|
| An issue I'd take with that is the effect to which it's
| penalizing depends a lot on the environment and what the
| person is trying to do. Would two people with the same
| condition, but one suffering and the other not, need to be
| identified in two different ways ?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| This spectrum they speak of, are there labels for its
| extremes? Other spectra have things like hot/cold,
| large/small, etc.
|
| Is it the autistic/not-autistic spectrum? Because if so,
| we're all on it.
| throw46365 wrote:
| I am pretty certain I am a Weird Nerd.
|
| I have good reasons to consider myself neurodivergent (and
| others do consider me such). There are definite divergences
| that have caused me problems. I have what people consider
| "superpowers" and what people consider "difficulties".
|
| Not certain I am autistic. Might have been considered mild or
| (the then-termed) "high functioning" as a kid in the 80s.
|
| But on the other hand, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to
| put me in the same broad category as autistic people, because I
| have the same issues in the context of the article -- with
| being conventionally "ambitionless", having relatively little
| grasp of (or instinct for) power games etc., and needing the
| kind of support that others often do.
|
| That category needs a name. (In the UK we'd traditionally go
| for "boffin", which is broadly a term of affection, but it's a
| little harder to spot a boffin these days because of casual
| clothing at the office)
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The path of the weird nerd has never been easy. Humans are
| inherently social animals and when you don't fully fit that mold
| you will, by definition, exist somewhat on the perimeter of
| society, no matter how valuable your skills.
|
| The best thing for a Weird Nerd to do is to find a trustworthy
| 'patron' who can appreciate that it benefits them to handle the
| messy human stuff and let the Weird Nerd do the nerd work. The
| problem is that Weird Nerds are often terrible at figuring out
| who is trustworthy and a good fit for a symbiotic relationship
| like this.
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| I do think it's a major issue that academia is increasingly
| bureaucratic and corporate, but I don't quite agree with the
| article. It's not that very smart, truth-motivated people have
| bad people skills (e.g., off the top of my head - von Neumann,
| Feynman, and Newton were all pretty good with people when they
| needed to be), it's that they are motivated largely by discovery
| and not by status and money. But academia today is essentially a
| machine for amassing status and money at the expense of creating
| genuine new knowledge, which drives away those who want to create
| knowledge.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Academia pays absolutely terribly for an elite job, it's all
| status. You could make more than 90% of tenured professors as a
| manager of Buc-ee's
| Michelangelo11 wrote:
| Yes, good point, thanks. I was thinking of the high end of
| disciplines with strong ties to industry, mainly STEM and
| business, but that's actually just a very small, although
| prominent, part of academia.
| ghaff wrote:
| The very high end of academia--especially in areas where
| consulting gigs are readily available--is pretty nice from
| what I've seen. But, as you say, it's pretty rare and still
| probably not that lucrative overall especially if you're in
| some expensive living area.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| "Earning" doesn't necessarily come with a truly elite status
| job, because you're not relying on a salary to live. Having
| to live off a salary is lower status.
| Loughla wrote:
| I don't understand what you're saying here.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| The comment above mine said "Academia pays absolutely
| terribly for an elite job". But earning doesn't really
| come into a truly elite (status-wise) job, because the
| person doing it doesn't need to earn to live.
| wdh505 wrote:
| If my daddy makes 7 digits per year and set me up in a
| trust then I don't have to work to live upper middle
| class. Therefore an "elite" aka prestige only position
| that pays pennies may be more elite because i don't
| depend on the pay like the plebians.
|
| A different way to become a low paying professor is to
| research and earn 7digits+ from patents
| npilk wrote:
| I'm not disputing your point about prestige, and I'm sure
| that people whose 'daddies make 7 digits per year' would
| be interested in more prestigious roles and less
| interested in pay. But I really doubt that most
| professors are trust fund kids who don't have to work.
| swayvil wrote:
| Speaking as a weird nerd (wn)
|
| A wn is disconnected from society. This gives him the power to
| think and act independently. The non-wn can't do that.
|
| (And, being disconnected like that, the wn is oblivious to a
| million social hints and cues. He is blind that way)
|
| It isn't voluntary, being a wn. It's an artifact of habitual,
| excessive concentration, or something.
|
| The non-wn's state is involuntary too.
|
| Both are products of nature/society/habit/etc. Both trapped in
| their respective shape.
|
| I suppose some of us are not trapped like that. There might even
| be a way to escape it. To make that habit-shape into something
| conscious and voluntary.
| woopwoop wrote:
| I've met a handful of people who have won at least one of the top
| prizes in mathematics, i.e. a Fields medal, Abel prize, or Wolf
| Prize. I would describe none of them as "weird nerds", and I
| don't think any of them are autistic. I chafe pretty hard at the
| suggestion here that one has to be socially ill-adjusted to
| advance scientific knowledge at the highest level.
| megadal wrote:
| That's not the suggestion though. It's that a lot of high
| performers in STEM tend to be "Weird Nerds" and by selecting
| against that type, you alienate a large number of potentially
| great researchers.
|
| Not selecting against weird nerds doesn't mean selecting
| against "socially well-adjusted Nerds".
|
| In fact, the article says that a person can in fact be
| exceptional at politic and science, despite their tenets being
| antithetical in many cases.
| woopwoop wrote:
| It says there is a "strong anti-correlation" between being a
| weird nerd and being pleasant to be around socially. This may
| be true, but it is not my experience that there is a strong
| anti-correlation between being an exceptional mathematician
| and being pleasant to be around socially. Despite the
| stereotype, in my experience the best mathematicians are not
| the ones who stare at their shoes when you talk to them.
| megadal wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > There is a strong anti-correlation between these
| interests ( _that of course does not mean there is no one
| who is good at both._ )
| paulcole wrote:
| > I chafe pretty hard at the suggestion here that one has to be
| socially ill-adjusted to advance scientific knowledge at the
| highest level.
|
| This is very similar to the idea of the tortured artist or that
| to be a great comedian you have to be depressed.
|
| The happy and well adjusted comedian or socially adept
| mathematician doesn't make for an interesting story -- it just
| doesn't fit the popular narrative and so it gets ignored.
|
| In every discipline there are total weirdos and normal people
| at every step of the way, from terribly inept to amazingly
| world-class.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| And that's the problem. How many weird nerds were driven out
| because they aren't playing the academia game well?
| godelski wrote:
| At the root of it is a lot of "yes man" behavior, and I don't
| think it's just academia. But I think academia has a stronger
| history and stereotype of allowing people to be weird.
|
| It's essentially the bureaucrats taking over. Putting metrics on
| things that can't be measured well and treating those as if
| they're the answer. Saying "good enough" or "something is better
| than nothing" when they don't apply. Because it's easier to deal
| with that than the chaos and uncertainty of innovation.
|
| I think this is also something silicon valley lost. We definitely
| stopped dreaming. Stopped building the future we wanted and
| instead just started doing work. There's been a lot of
| stagnation. It's not just about making things smaller
| neilv wrote:
| > _Weird Nerds (I called them autistics, but people really hated
| that^2) [...] But it's also hard to believe someone like her
| could ever become the most pleasant interlocutor at a dinner
| party, or the most socially adept and organized manager._
|
| The part about "organized manager" is surprising. If we're going
| to stereotypes, I would've guessed that a manager who was
| autistic would likely have being organized as one of their
| strengths.
|
| Regarding "socially adept [...] manager", I've worked with two
| software engineering project managers who were autistic. They
| were both very different (one amiable, and had much better than
| average understanding of human behavior and emotions; the other
| came off as making an effort to tolerate people). Both were not
| only well-respected, but liked, and were effective at difficult
| work&people-herding jobs.
|
| Even with the manager who came off as not really liking anyone by
| default, and even on a very difficult project, almost everyone on
| large teams respected the project manager (excepting one person,
| who couldn't stand something about the project manager, or the
| nature of the project). And I didn't hear the grumbling like I'd
| normally hear about a manager who was unfair, incompetent, or
| dishonest.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Academia is just messed up because the path to the top is to
| become an absolute expert in some topic, (PhD, postgrad), then
| become a performer/people manager/grant writer/office politics
| master (professor). It is really dumb. You are rolling the dice
| twice for expert level skills, and the second roll comes after
| huge personal investment.
|
| Not really sure what the solution is. Maybe a huge increase in
| the number of national labs, as a vent for those who hit the
| first roll but fail the second.
|
| We also need a vent for people who are good at teaching but not
| super focused on research. Drastically increase the community
| college system, IMO, and start paying the instructors enough to
| have nice middle-class lifestyles. Stop making people-people and
| weird nerds compete for rare grants and let them both do the
| things they are better at.
| pyrale wrote:
| The alternative would be that public
| performance/management/grant writing/office politics are
| handled by someone who has absolutely no clue about what
| science is.
|
| It doesn't take very long to find corporate examples of this
| alternative, and why it's not great either.
| Khelavaster wrote:
| Introduce struggle sessions for supervisors of scientists like
| her. Clear the cruft quickly. Careerist ciminals have no place
| running research labs.
| monitorlizard wrote:
| Could you expand more on your struggle session idea? I'm aware
| of the analogy to Mao's China but I'm curious how you'd see it
| playing out in this setting.
| mberning wrote:
| There is a similar parallel in the corporate world. Being
| involved with tech and software has never had less to do with
| actually being good at those things. I just remarked to my
| director the other day that the only innovation we have had in
| the org in the last 5 years was relentless self promotion,
| marketing, and branding. When did being known as an excellent and
| reliable engineer stop being "enough".
| paulcole wrote:
| > I just remarked to my director the other day that the only
| innovation we have had in the org in the last 5 years was
| relentless self promotion, marketing, and branding.
|
| What was your director's response?
|
| Do you think there's any chance you're biased and blind to
| other innovations because you really dislike self-promotion,
| marketing, and branding?
| mberning wrote:
| They agreed, but we have a similar viewpoint on the overall
| technical excellence of the org, so that part is
| unsurprising.
|
| I am definitely biased, but whether I am blinded to real
| innovation or progress is something I think about all the
| time.
|
| I think I would not be opposed to the self-promotion,
| marketing, and branding were it in support of some
| significant achievement or accomplishment. Unfortunately we
| have a culture that seems to think showering and getting
| dressed in the morning is a noteworthy event.
|
| To use a more concrete example, I ran a project to upgrade a
| significant piece of software in our environment that had
| been neglected for some time. The project went well and I
| moved on to more interesting work. I had multiple people tell
| me that we should promote it, give talks about how it was
| done, pound our chest about how hard of a project it was,
| etc. I refused. In my mind it was a normal upgrade of a
| system we were responsible for and frankly was disgraceful
| that it was in such a bad state of deferred maintenance.
| There was no way I would be comfortable "taking credit" for
| doing what should have been done years ago.
|
| Fast forward a few years and another team responsible for
| doing a similar project is giving multiple presentations all
| around the org and all the way up to the 2nd in command of
| the company. I'm like wow, maybe we should have taken the
| opportunity when we had it to pretend like we are superheroes
| for doing the bare minimum of our job and not having a vendor
| drop our support contract.
| paulcole wrote:
| It's obviously not the bare minimum of the job because like
| you said nobody did it for years. So the bare minimum is
| just not doing it.
|
| You think you'll change from this experience or just keep
| doing stuff the way you like to do it?
| zafka wrote:
| I really like this new term! I was working R&D / Development at
| J&J for about 14 years. I was one of the early members of a group
| called: "Mental Health Diplomats" When I first got involved, and
| over the years, I would try to pitch ideas to set up a
| system/program for neurodivergants who were under utilized.
|
| In retrospect, it is pretty hard for a weird nerd to gain
| traction with any ideas other than obviously profitable products.
| Strategic thinking needs to be done by the MBA's /s
| yedava wrote:
| I want to say this article describes me, but then I realized that
| it's just my confirmation bias. Who doesn't like to think that
| they are the smartest ones around and it's everyone else who is
| stupid and clueless?
|
| Science ultimately is a collective effort. The collaboration
| doesn't need to happen in real time, in the same physical place.
| Ideas can be spread out across time and geographies and finally
| one person puts them together and given our bias for hero
| worship, we call that one person a genius and go on a wild goose
| chase of how can we create more geniuses instead of asking how
| can we foster a environment for ideas, an environment which
| sometimes needs to last for decades in order to bear fruit.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| As a Weird Nerd who can't get a job in the industry [1], this
| resonates.
|
| On one hand, I understand that I can't get a job because of my
| own flaws. After all, who needs a solo-only C-only [2] programmer
| who can't build theory of mind and thus, can't read code written
| by others and who refuses to prioritize employer over user?
|
| On the other hand, it is hard, and I secretly hope the industry
| can change so that people like me can have a place.
|
| Edit: To clarify, I don't think I am a Genius, just a Weird Nerd
| in the sense that I do not like politicking. However, I am trying
| to learn from my empath wife how to do it because yes, it is a
| necessary evil right now.
|
| [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2024/06/my-programming-journey/
|
| [2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/02/why-i-use-c-when-i-
| believe-i...
| meiraleal wrote:
| People like you have a lot of places to shine nowadays. Having
| a job/boss isn't the right way for many (much less a given).
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I have also tried to start my own business, but that is not
| going well.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > On the other hand, it is hard, and I secretly hope the
| industry can change so that people like me can have a place.
|
| In some ways, things are better than ever for folks like you.
| Starting and running a one-person business making software is
| feasible now but would've been much harder in decades past.
|
| > Second, I work alone on code that is entirely in my head. ...
| Rust is great for teams ...
|
| Unfortunately, industry has problems that are big enough that
| they're not easily solved with one person. So tools that work
| to bring about a team's success will be valuable. As will
| individuals who work well in teams.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| > In some ways, things are better than ever for folks like
| you. Starting and running a one-person business making
| software is feasible now but would've been much harder in
| decades past.
|
| Yes, you are absolutely right.
|
| Unfortunately, I have been trying that and failing. I don't
| blame anyone for that either.
|
| > Unfortunately, industry has problems that are big enough
| that they're not easily solved with one person. So tools that
| work to bring about a team's success will be valuable. As
| will individuals who work well in teams.
|
| You are absolutely correct. And yes, that is why people
| shouldn't hire me.
|
| Nevertheless, I think there are some problems that one person
| _can_ solve.
|
| I want to make the next-gen version control system. I think
| that may be small enough for one person. Other infrastructure
| software can be like that too.
| wyldfire wrote:
| IMO Open Source software communities are where folks like
| you can really thrive. They're much closer at something
| like a meritocracy than traditional workplaces.
|
| > I want to make the next-gen version control system
|
| While you certainly could invent one yourself, you could
| consider contributing to popular ones like git/mercurial.
| It'd help teach you both the positive and the negative
| aspects of their design choices. Also you could consider
| learning from newer approaches like Jujutsu [1] or Pijul
| [2] on your way to designing the next-gen system. Good
| luck!
|
| [1] https://github.com/martinvonz/jj
|
| [2] https://pijul.org/
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not going to lie, I would like to see myself as one of these
| smart people who was held back by lack of social skills like
| selling oneself and capitalizing on political situations. I think
| that's probably unrealistic. However I do sympathize with much of
| what the article describes. It would be nice if politics and
| stuff wasn't so important.
| adolph wrote:
| This skill alone would cause most of the Internet and politics to
| shut down:
|
| _being agreeable when you disagree, even when you are 100%
| certain you are correct_
| doubloon wrote:
| i would like to see more hard data on this instead of what
| amounts to a rant. or does that make me a weird nerd?
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| There should be word for the fallacy where you conflate a
| group's average opinion with that of the inevitable subgroup
| that sends angry tweets about a topic.
| iamwil wrote:
| As startups become a viable path to status and success, it too
| gets infiltrated with non-weird nerds.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is just Geeks, MOPs, Sociopaths restated. It's the nature of
| all fields: explorers discover, exploiters scale. But there are
| explorer mimics and exploiter mimics and they succeed at some
| rate dependent on the cost of verification.
| andrefuchs wrote:
| While I agree with the notion of the article, please stop calling
| gifted, driven, and non-conforming people "weird nerds." Both
| terms have negative connotations.
| croes wrote:
| If you replace words with negative connotations with other
| words, those new words sooner or later get the same
| connotations.
| doug_durham wrote:
| The intent is to de-stigmatize the labels. I consider myself a
| "weird nerd". I find the use of the label affirming. Perhaps
| ASD or other symptom descriptive way to describing things would
| be more "correct". However "weird nerd" is what the other parts
| of society use to describe these terms. Using the term to
| describe the positive aspects of these symptoms helps to take
| the sting out.
| programjames wrote:
| I think "genius" fits the author's meaning and connotation
| much better than "weird nerd". If the author wants to fight
| for genius rights, why start from a position of weakness?
| lolinder wrote:
| Genius would be a much worse term for what the author is
| describing because it explicitly _doesn 't_ come with
| trade-offs. The term needs to convey both the unique
| talents and the odd differences.
|
| "Nerd" has been the subject of a long and largely
| successful attempt at reclamation, to the point where
| people younger than a certain age don't generally consider
| it to be derogatory and comfortably identify with it. It's
| been so successful that the author feels the need to
| prepend the word "weird" to clarify that we're not talking
| about just anyone who likes video games.
| programjames wrote:
| Younger than what age? I think every age still generally
| considers "nerd" derogatory. Also, I think a genius would
| tell you the trade-offs only exist because most people
| are wrong. Calling them weird has the connotation that
| something is "wrong" with them, yet it seems quite the
| opposite is true. I could agree with the term "outlier"
| but not "weird".
| lolinder wrote:
| The trend towards embracing it was already starting when
| I was a kid in the late 00's and early 10's, but it
| really picked up with the class of ~2016. The rise of the
| computer programmer as the highest ROI degree in this
| generation made a huge difference in perception of the
| word "nerd".
|
| By the time I was helping with a local youth group in
| 2017 (14 year olds) the very extroverted ringleader of
| the group was a proud "nerd", by which he meant that he
| and his friends loved to play video games like Fortnite
| and had an aversion to sports.
|
| Take a look at the highest voted entries in Urban
| Dictionary [0]. Obviously this isn't a scientific
| measurement, but it shows a strong subculture of self-
| identified nerds who embrace the label to some degree.
|
| Edit: here's another source [1] that you may find more
| credible, from 2012:
|
| > And the appropriation of the word "nerd" was a "battle
| that got won", says [Neil] Gaiman. "It's like many terms
| that were originally intended to offend, the team that
| was offended took it as its own as a badge of honour.
|
| > "It's part of a cycle, that terms of abuse are turned
| around - in this case it has been socially turned
| around."
|
| [0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Nerd
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20325517
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Do you think you're setting people up for social success by
| giving them a reason to say:
|
| > I'm a genius and I'd like you to change your behavior to
| accommodate my needs.
| tetromino_ wrote:
| Because 99% of weird nerds are not geniuses. I know that I
| am a weird nerd, I work surrounded by a significant
| percentage of weird nerds, but in the past, a couple of
| times, had the privilege of working with a true genius -
| and I can say that we weird nerds and the geniuses are as
| different species. It's like yard birds vs. eagles: both
| have wings and feathers and lay eggs, but the final product
| is very different.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If we're gonna find a better way to work together we need
| something neutral so that there's no reason to miscategorize
| yourself. I definitely prefer "weird nerd," to anything that
| feels like a diagnosis or like praise.
|
| In education they call this "twice exceptional".
| jchw wrote:
| > Any system that is not explicitly pro-Weird Nerd will turn
| anti-Weird Nerd pretty quickly.
|
| Wow. Sure as hell feels that way.
|
| See, I actually feel like this is happening across the Internet,
| too, in a different way.
|
| Firstly, I'd consider myself _some_ sort of "Weird Nerd" but
| certainly not a genius or even especially intelligent; I _would_
| be willing to indulge in the idea that my contingent and I have
| some unusual qualities that, while not remarkable, are still
| somewhat unique and indeed basically a package deal with our
| "other" traits.
|
| Secondly, while "weird nerds" are prominent on the Internet of
| today, they're definitely struggling to keep control over their
| own spaces. Anyone remember forums, and have routine thoughts
| about how different it is from social media? I think that forums
| were controlled by weird nerds, and social media is clearly not,
| it's controlled by people who play the political games better and
| more often. Weird nerds are forced to try to adhere to the rules
| of this system, they get increasingly tired of it, burn out and
| start behaving erratically. I think a lot of people are deeply in
| denial that this is happening, and some of them may have never
| even known a world where it wasn't happening, so they find other
| reasons why.
|
| Being driven by truth and put off by bullshit is something that I
| think is very core to a lot of people who are currently
| struggling to find anywhere to fit in. No matter how much time
| passes, it will never feel "right". It feels like people can only
| ever be their true and honest selves in small quantities, in
| closed groups, being careful with who to trust.
|
| Note that this person seems to be somewhat convinced that the
| Internet is the best place for weird nerds, but also note that
| the critique they are talking about happened on X, one of the
| largest and most influential social websites on the Internet. I
| think this should speak volumes to how much weird nerds are not
| in control of the "rules" and narratives of the Internet right
| now. I'm not sure what the authors thoughts are on this (and I'm
| sure it's detailed in other posts if I wanted to know) but I
| think this is a huge battleground. It's a bit hard to see it
| because it's obfuscated by the broader "culture war" of the
| Internet, which makes it appear as if the "fight" is between two
| hyper-partisan groups that have completely opposite views. I
| think that's neither the cause nor the reality of why the
| Internet is full of so much strife; I think those hyper-partisan
| spats formed around more interesting and nuanced conflicts and
| overshadowed them. I hope that some day there will be a moment of
| clarity where everything starts to make sense...
| nurple wrote:
| Agreed. Having been part of the internet since its genesis,
| every day I mourn the loss of the critical mass of the weird
| and curious that pervaded it. I absolutely abhor the exploiters
| that came from behind and effected a nerd diaspora to simply
| transformed it into the same manipulative, self-congratulating
| trash hole that is so widely lauded as "normal".
|
| I lost my job in a layoff over 6 months ago and really
| struggled to find something in the state that tech has been in
| since zirp and section 174 went away.
|
| If there's any positive I see from all of this is that there
| are a lot of weird nerds out there feeling unmoored,
| unmotivated, and are looking for somewhere to fit in and do the
| greatest work of their career. I think that someone(s) with
| resources who creates such a nerd commune will create something
| truly special, something that transcends the "normal", giving
| these misfits something that they fully own, drive, but still
| share with the same world that looks down on them as
| "divergent". I have never met a more passionate or selfless
| group of people.
|
| I think Steve Jobs was an example of this type of nerd
| whisperer. He knew what drove the people that actually create
| things in this world, and he gave them a powerful outlet to
| show their value. I think he deeply felt and meant what they
| were selling at the time: "the people who are crazy enough to
| think they can change the world, are the ones who do".
|
| https://invidious.privacydev.net/watch?v=VCz_SiPD_X0
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| A case study in this:
|
| "Normal person," 2002: "you use the Internet? How weird and
| anti-social!"
|
| Same person, 2012: _addicted to Internet in public, oblivious
| to people around them_
|
| Interesting how the social acceptability changed so drastically
| in ten years time. It's almost as if it is completely arbitrary
| and based on political (e.g. relative) observations. And not a
| hint of incongruity is felt between the former and latter
| opinions.
| akozak wrote:
| I have a lot of experience working with the weird nerd archetype
| and watching them navigate large orgs.
|
| First it's absolutely true that orgs that purport to support
| weird nerds will revert back to rewarding politicians. I've seen
| it happen, and typically has to do with who is doling out money.
|
| However, in my experience the vast majority of brilliant nerds
| way overextend themselves, and are much too confident outside
| their domain. They're also much more likely to be jerks and will
| tumble from conflict to conflict until they get their way by
| attrition or status. Conflicts are strangely more personal
| because so much ego is tied up into it. They're more likely to
| assume they're right in every (non-tech/science related)
| situation.
|
| My advice to weird nerds (assuming emotional intelligence isn't
| an innate skill) is: Find a way to turn your brainpower onto this
| challenge as equally important as your core interest. Treat
| interacting with your institution like a long term engineering
| project or investigation. Think long term and be strategic,
| create and track longer term plans, try to learn what people
| respond to, what works and what doesn't. Always try to be kind
| and maintain some humility, but assuming you aren't sure what
| that really means, then ask for lots of feedback. Or you can just
| find someone you trust and delegate all of this to them, like a
| technical founder hiring a CEO.
|
| (Edit: relatedly, if you work _for or with_ weird nerds in a
| support role, my advice is to take full advantage! They might
| have a useful point, so set your own ego aside, don 't take it
| personally (they _are_ weird), and try to listen charitably.
| Their work is what you 're here to support, after all.)
| fragmede wrote:
| > assuming emotional intelligence isn't an innate skill
|
| it's a skill like any other, so if you put in dedication and
| practice, you can get better at it, just like practicing
| leetcode. whether or not an individual wants to do so is on
| them.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| While I think this is true, some people have it harder than
| others. So sure, anyone can learn emotional intelligence, but
| if it's 2x the effort for someone the ROI is much worse.
| fragmede wrote:
| A toxic individual can tank the productivity of the whole
| team, if not the whole org. What's the ROI for them on
| being fired?
| eikenberry wrote:
| And like any other skill some people are more gifted in
| learning that skill than others. Anyone can learn to paint,
| but not everyone is going to be a Monet or a Rembrandt.
| fragmede wrote:
| Everyone doesn't need to be a Monet, they just have to be
| able to paint their name on a poster without embarrassing
| themselves and putting down others.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Everyone can paint their name, that is a 0 skill
| exercise. And I wasn't saying everyone needs to be a
| Monet, more that these are high ceiling skills you are
| talking about and there is a lot more variety than is
| given credit.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _However, in my experience the vast majority of brilliant nerds
| way overextend themselves, and are much too confident outside
| their domain. They 're also much more likely to be jerks and
| will tumble from conflict to conflict until they get their way
| by attrition or status. Conflicts are strangely more personal
| because so much ego is tied up into it. They're more likely to
| assume they're right in every (non-tech/science related)
| situation._
|
| Your next paragraph gives advice to the weird nerds, but this
| is practically a genre. What I haven't seen much of is advice
| to an organization about how to deal with what you're pointing
| out here.
|
| You have an employee that's brilliant in technical area X but
| also has very strong and very wrong opinions about how the
| company ought to structure its cap table, pay its cleaning
| staff, and market to potential customers. He gets into constant
| arguments about these things. What do you do?
| cbozeman wrote:
| "You're out of your depth."
|
| That's what you do.
|
| A lot of very smart people think because they're very smart
| they have some kind of exceptional insight into the inner
| workings of all things. They don't. And they need to be
| reminded of that. Intelligence allows someone to gain that
| insight faster than those in the middle of the bell curve of
| IQ, but it doesn't _magically confer it_. It still takes
| time, reading, research, and seeing it in practice.
|
| Or put another way - what I call the "Iceberg Analogy" -
| every discipline in life is like an iceberg. The average
| person sees about 10% of what's actually happening, and is
| able to comprehend that without too much effort, but the
| other 90% that's below the surface takes a _lot_ to fully
| make sense of.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > A lot of very smart people think because they're very
| smart they have some kind of exceptional insight into the
| inner workings of all things. They don't. And they need to
| be reminded of that.
|
| When you talk to people, you have no idea how much time
| they've spent before that conversation gaining insight.
| Maybe their simple phrase is a culmination of several years
| of research and insight, whereas for you, you just thought
| about this topic yesterday.
|
| Seems like normies need to be reminded of that way more
| frequently than nerds.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| A better response would be to tell them you are done trying
| to convince them because you own the responsibility and
| consequences of the decision. "You're out of your depth" is
| an insult and is intended to be one.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Is saying that someone has no expertise in a subject
| necessarily an insult?
|
| To me, your proposal sounds more like a band-aid, instead
| of treating the core ailment: someone who won't recognize
| their own fallibility.
|
| Perhaps it can't be "treated", and we just have to make
| do with such "band aids". But wouldn't it be more
| productive if we could just get to the root of it?
| akozak wrote:
| This won't be a satisfying answer (and won't work for
| startups), but the solution I saw most frequently was to
| assign them dedicated diplomats or maintain a middle mgmt
| class who are well suited to coddle them, absorb most of
| their emotional energy, and channel it productively (or not)
| into the wider institution.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| That's been my experience as well. But these minders are
| not cheap. They need to be smart enough to win the respect
| of their assigned WNs, charismatic enough to smooth
| everyone else's ruffled feathers, patient, and have thick
| skins.
|
| Definitely worth it for a Nobel Prize level intellect but
| I'm not sure how far below that the line is.
| hnthrow289570 wrote:
| I usually see both happening at the same time, but the real
| money still goes to the politicians.
|
| Brilliant nerds that solve problems for the organization on
| their own usually don't get rewarded as much as politicians
| despite the skills perhaps being more rare at the organization
| than politics.
|
| For example, you could deep dive into a bug that's been hanging
| around, finally find the really technical solution to it, but
| most of the money holders won't be able to appraise that value
| from the technical details alone.
|
| In general, simply giving away things to companies will usually
| get you taken advantage of (usually not maliciously).
|
| Doing a tour to explain why it's a problem first, then
| providing the solution, is the much better alternative.
|
| It really is true that it's a thankless job if everything is
| working well and you're being proactive by fixing problems
| before they become a problem.
|
| There are exceptions where the money holders can deal with the
| technical details and don't need to be sold on the problem
| first, but it's rare and usually those are prestigious jobs in
| close proximity to lots money.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It feels like more and more areas of life are regressing to the
| mean in terms of how status is distributed. The mean being some
| sort of centralized cabal-like structure (perhaps
| autonomously/accidentally centralized, like an algo) doling out
| status. By design, it is highly uneven, quasi-random (there are
| things that make you eligible but there are no guarantees), and
| their authority to do so unquestioned.
|
| Take social media: it is more about who they've said you are
| rather than _what_ you say. The key message of the medium is less
| the content of the message itself (though it figures in!) and
| more the combination of your online persona's followers + likes
| along with the message itself. I'd argue social media is a real
| shift in the Internet itself where we began to take online
| reputation very, very seriously, to the point that we decided
| we'd believe that likes were more than just Internet Points.
|
| And people _love_ this sort of structure because it means that
| something other than actual competence can be the deciding
| factor. They have a shot at being in the cabal and among the
| deciders. And it's a lot easier to evaluate people: simply see
| what other people say about them.
|
| Not saying that non-technical factors don't matter. They matter a
| lot and are often very easy wins to pick up. But it's clear
| people like systems that aren't centered around competence as
| much as they may claim otherwise. And areas where that isn't the
| case seem to eventually be converted to more conventional
| hierarchies.
| throwaway42668 wrote:
| > _And people _love_ this sort of structure because it means
| that something other than actual competence can be the deciding
| factor._
|
| It's different competence. Not incompetence. It's being
| competent at identifying marks to exploit, attention-seeking,
| etc.
|
| I don't particularly care for it myself and feel pretty
| strongly that it's narrowing the gap between humans and apes,
| rather than widening it, but it's still some kind of skill.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Good catch. It gets at technical competence, but it isn't
| constrained to that. It's more of "good at what the org
| ostensibly is about," vs "good at ensuring the org lives on."
| mrcode007 wrote:
| Thanks for a thoughtful comment
| francisofascii wrote:
| I am mixed on how much we focus on posts by "a lot of people on
| academic X". Perhaps they offer some valuable insight here, or
| perhaps it is just a few grumpy individuals spouting off
| unwarrented critisim.
| Animats wrote:
| It's the author of the article that seems weird, not the
| researcher.
|
| A major risk in academia is picking a dead-end niche. We hear
| about the people who picked an unlikely winner. This one picked
| mRNA vaccines. The inventor of MRI scanning had similar problems.
| He was almost fired. Those two succeeded, eventually. But the
| people who work on E-beam lithography or vaccines against
| addiction didn't do so well. Both of those would have been huge
| if they worked well. You can't tell in advance. If you could, the
| problem didn't need research.
|
| A more useful way to look at this is that doing it and selling it
| are different skills. This is why companies have separate R&D,
| production, and marketing departments. If you face a hard problem
| in one of those areas, you can't devote enough time to the
| others. This is to some extent a time management and division of
| labor problem.
|
| Academia is not team-oriented in that sense. At least below the
| principal investigator level. Once reaching that level,
| university PR departments are happy to hype any modest advance
| into a major breakthrough. Below that level, it's a cold world.
| Academia seems to have built itself a dysfunctional world - a
| huge bureaucracy, not much of a career path for real researchers,
| and a shrinking pool of full professorships. So anybody who is
| any good goes to a startup now.
|
| Henry Kissinger, who was not lacking in people skills, once
| commented that "academic policy is so vicious because the stakes
| are so low".
| anewhnaccount3 wrote:
| Shades of Graeber in this essay:
|
| >There was a time when academia was society's refuge for the
| eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the
| domain of professional self-marketers. As for the eccentric,
| brilliant, and impractical: it would seem society now has no
| place for them at all.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7004628-there-was-a-time-wh...
| programjames wrote:
| > In 2011, the average age at which a biomedical scientist gets
| their first R01 grant to establish their independent career as a
| PI is 42
|
| This is ridiculous! The best researchers won't be much better at
| 45 than 25, so it's just wasting 20 years getting "experience"
| and moving up the ladder. But by nature of getting that
| experience, they're going to give up on actual innovation.
| dagw wrote:
| _The best researchers won 't be much better at 45 than 25_
|
| To get great research done you have to be great manager who can
| prioritise time and resources, balance a budget, forge
| connections with other researchers, get the most out of the
| people working for you and know where and how to get even more
| funding to keep the research going after the initial round of
| research dries up. Those 20 years might not make you a better
| 'scientist', but hopefully they will make you better at all the
| other 'soft' skills that are required for successful scientific
| research. At 25 you should be focusing on the science and doing
| research and not have to bother with all that 'crap'.
| programjames wrote:
| Getting other people to do research isn't doing research.
| You're misattributing who does what.
| dagw wrote:
| Very little research can be done by just one person working
| alone. A huge part of 'doing research' involves getting
| other people to do research in support of your research.
| programjames wrote:
| You're talking past me. I understand that getting
| research done requires social infrastructure. Do you
| understand that I don't consider that research?
| fragmede wrote:
| Right, the "Did Steve jobs make the iPhone?" conundrum.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Research is very labor intensive. It's easy to reach a point
| where the lack of time is a bigger obstacle to pursuing your
| ideas than the cost of pursuing them. Which is why you need to
| apply for grants to hire people to do your work.
|
| At 25, you are likely pursuing somebody else's ideas, because
| you have not proven yourself yet. At 35, you should be pursuing
| your own ideas, but it often gets delayed to 45, because
| taxpayers are stingy with their money.
| taneq wrote:
| Not sure if I count as a 'weird nerd' or not but if there's been
| one constant in my life, it's the theme of "you're amazing at a
| whole range of things, but here's some things you're not amazing
| at, could you maybe just try being a version of yourself with all
| of your strengths and none of your inconvenient shortcomings?"
| and tbh it's fucking infuriating.
| isotropy wrote:
| I read this as basically arguing that our filters throw up too
| many false negatives, like Kariko, in a high-risk/high-reward
| environment. It's saying the cost of false negatives is way
| higher than the system realizes, and that's because the system
| has drifted to be too much like the collaborative, incremental
| workplace that most of us live in. Typical work teams pay a high
| cost for false positives when hiring, so they guard against them
| at the cost of way more false negatives. The doesn't work as well
| for moonshot fields.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think about this all the time in the context of the arts.
| Kanye, for example, definitely has extremely weird political
| ideas. He also created Dark Twisted Fantasy. The tolerance for
| this kind of "troubled genius" is dropping in artistic pursuits
| too. I wonder if that's why pop culture increasingly feels like a
| "content" slurry instead of anything identifiable.
| myself248 wrote:
| I wish I had a source for it right now, but years ago I heard an
| anecdoate that Bell Labs had essentially dorms/hotels for
| scientists, where things like cooking and laundry were taken care
| of, so they could focus on their research.
|
| This had the effect of embracing those people who hadn't
| necessarily figured out how to be independent adults. As long as
| they were lucky enough to be identified and brilliant enough to
| be hired, they could flourish at the Labs.
|
| I'd love to know if other settings have made similar
| accommodations, and to what effect.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I don't think I believe that. Look at the top scientists of
| previous decades. They weren't incompetent idiot savants or
| man-children.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Status seeking and envy are absolutely at the heart of it all.
| Status seekers and flatterers are weak people, because their
| lives are very much about agreeableness and approval seeking.
| Truth-seeking has always been at odds with "the world". You will
| know them by what they love.
|
| Dante hated flattery so much, he immersed flatterers in excrement
| in the 8th circle of hell, below murderers. A fitting image given
| how full of crap such people are in this life.
|
| In a riff on John Adams, no scientific enterprise will function
| in the absence of a moral people. You cannot have good scientists
| without first having virtuous men and women. You are wasting your
| time, and in fact, probably laying the groundwork for harm.
| jarjoura wrote:
| Speaking from big tech, you get things like rust (mozilla) or
| React (facebook) when your engineers are given the space to solve
| industry scale problems. Those are both "weird nerd"
| contributions since the original creators weren't interested in
| the celebrity public facing side of it.
|
| In the React case, I'm not sure it would have become the
| framework it is today unless Dan Abramhov pushed it outside of
| the company. That took an insane amount of effort and skill to do
| that, especially at the time when Angular was quickly
| establishing itself.
|
| Rust required an entire company to organize behind it and Mozilla
| spent a fortune getting it on its feet. Otherwise, I am not sure
| it would have been more than an experiment on someone's laptop,
| long forgotten.
|
| I'm not sure what the solution for that is, or how else you push
| through all of the noise. Every great discovery and advancement
| in history is driven by the folks who can sell their hard work or
| at least have someone else willing to do it for them.
| cod1r wrote:
| What industry scale problems does React solve? I don't have the
| most experience in React but it feels like it's gotten very
| complex in recent years.
| klysm wrote:
| React is a very good framework for writing _web_ frontends in
| my opinion. Writing web frontends is complex, there is no
| getting around that. React being complex isn't a fault of
| react, it reflects the nature of the problem.
| motohagiography wrote:
| weird nerds depend on a kind of nobility and magnanimity from the
| people they work with that is perhaps a bit much to expect in
| academia, or anywhere that isn't a high-growth environment where
| participants can afford the risks of eccentricity. middling
| people indexed on in-group status aren't equipped to handle
| exceptional people who don't reciprocate what is essentially
| corruption, and so they force them out.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > middling people indexed on in-group status aren't equipped to
| handle exceptional people who don't reciprocate what is
| essentially corruption, and so they force them out.
|
| I think you hit the head of the nail there.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Good article, but I would probably have stopped at "Nobody should
| give any weight to the opinions of people still using Twitter in
| this day and age."
| klysm wrote:
| Stopping reading something because of one sentence you disagree
| with doesn't exactly resonate with your stance.
| Gimpei wrote:
| I really wish somebody had sat me down before grad school and
| told me just how important it is to sell yourself. So much of
| research is a form of sales: you have to sell your work and by
| extension your ability; you need to convince the department that
| you are a star so that they go to bat for you; you have to
| convince star professors to co-author with you so that you can
| get good publications; you need to attend all the conferences in
| your field and sell your research to potential reviewers and
| editors. Putting your head down and just doing your work is a
| terrible strategy and will get you absolutely nowhere.
| jdblair wrote:
| I think for a "weird nerd" to be successful, they need the
| support of someone (a manager, a mentor, a project leader,
| department head, etc.), who does have political and social savvy.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm a bit "spectrumish." It's definitely _way_ better, this late
| in life, than it was, when I was younger, but it 's still there,
| if you know what to look for (my wife knows what to look for).
|
| One aspect of it, that has always been a part of the package, is
| that folks Just. Don't. Like. Me.
|
| Most, if questioned about their dislike, may come up with a
| couple of things, like "He's abrupt," or "He's arrogant," but
| these are also exactly the traits present in many folks that they
| _do_ like. They are just trying to justify this "feeling" that
| they have about me.
|
| As anyone in my shoes can tell you, we're "bully magnets." Most
| of us were recipients of multiple atomic wedgies, in school. My
| grade school days were a living hell. Again, there's no real
| "reason" for the hate. There's just something about us that
| pisses them off. I suspect that the "resting bitch face,"
| prevalent amongst us may have something to do with it. It often
| looks as if we're being hostile, when we're not. I spent many
| years, training my "resting" face to be one that's basically
| "harmless dork," as opposed to "angry bastard." Doesn't win me a
| lot of respect, but, at least, I'm not being attacked out of the
| starting gate, anymore.
|
| I've gotten used to it. It doesn't even really bother me too
| much, these days, and it happens a lot less. Feeling sorry for
| myself is a waste of time. I used to get all butthurt about it,
| but that was just stupid of me. Others have far worse crosses to
| bear. In the aggregate, it's been a good thing. I'm fairly decent
| at my software development.
|
| The folks that matter, stick around. I do have a fairly large
| circle of close friends and associates that don't let my
| "oddness" get in the way, and enough folks have respected me,
| that I was able to make a decent living.
|
| But many of us don't have those "soft" skills, that can be
| important, when working in a team, or trying to establish
| relationships with other people.
| lazyeye wrote:
| In other words your typical academic institution likes all kinds
| of diversity except diversity of thought.
|
| And they hide this behind a smokescreen by focusing on all the
| superficial forms of diversity (gender, skin color, orientation
| etc).
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I think the biggest hardest tradeoff is just relating to a world
| where not only is there a huge dissonance between your strong
| stirring passions & beliefs & other's, but where most people flat
| out don't have strong stirring passions. Most people are not
| absurdly driven into deep shit. Most people don't love their day
| feeling torn apart by wanting to know or wanting to make the
| things, most people aren't living in their future possibles.
|
| > _Paul Graham talks about an underrated quality one needs for
| extreme success, namely the willingness to be low status. And
| Kariko had plenty of that: she lived her convictions, in this
| case the conviction in the importance of mRNA through rejections,
| humiliations (her office was vacated without her having received
| prior notice) and hardship. I would go even further and say: she
| had intellectual courage_
|
| Spoken of as courage and low status, being on the pursuit. But
| societally what I think is most under-stated is the _dissonance._
|
| Bruce Sterling's Reboot 2011 put forward two modern archetypes.
| The first isn't super relevant here, but Favella Chic, being low
| resources but amazingly cool, bending & reusing whatever you can
| scrape together to be cool as hell & on top of your shit. The
| other is High Tech Gothic, where you are wired to the 9's, a
| master of your domain, amazingly capable & competent, but
| desperately alone & on your own; a It's Lonely At The Top / The
| Crown Wears Heavily sentiment.
|
| This idea of apartness, the stark difference of values and
| beliefs and actions between the individual and the world they see
| about them: I am so glad to have had some referents for this
| notion, it's been so helpful. And personally, mulling it over, I
| keep thinking, it's not really the Weird Nerd's issue. It's not
| really their problem per se; another view is that the world is
| failing to hook people, failing to expose them to the raw awe and
| majesty of possibility and science, failing to inspire
| exploration & discovery & maker-ship that such an amazing
| universe of possibilities and circumstance has created around us.
|
| As the Butthole Surfers song Weird Revolution says, _The so-
| called weirdos in this country stand as completely freaked out by
| the normal man as the normal man is completely freaked out by the
| weird masses reaction to him._ It 's worth assessing not just the
| weirdos as the weird ones! And it's worth telling them, letting
| them know, this dissonance between your world and the so called
| normality isn't necessarily your fault, isn't necessarily
| something wrong with you. I don't think we duly sympathize or
| grok the alienation the weirdos suffer with.
| bitwize wrote:
| > As the Butthole Surfers song Weird Revolution says, _The so-
| called weirdos in this country stand as completely freaked out
| by the normal man as the normal man is completely freaked out
| by the weird masses reaction to him._
|
| The Butthole Surfers' observation was -- only recently -- given
| scientific support in autism research, where it's called the
| "double-empathy problem". Previously, the prevailing theory was
| that autistics suffer from "lack of empathy" or "mind-
| blindness"; the double-empathy theory posits that it's rather a
| case of mutual incomprehensibility between autistic and
| allistic minds. Dogs and cats get into conflict because they
| have difficulty reading each other's body language, but if you
| are a dog person (as most people are) you have a tendency to
| always blame the cat.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I wonder, with tools like ChatGPT available, how much more time
| before society feels they don't need to put up with the weird
| nerd any longer?
|
| I'm something of a weird nerd myself, and though I haven't tried
| it, I'm sure ChatGPT could spit out some of the most complicated
| code I've written and make it look easy.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| I'd say ChatGPT is helping me writing a lot of things that I
| won't bother but apparently you need it to play the social game
| bitwize wrote:
| I found Eric S. Raymond's take on this interesting (and most
| likely false):
|
| https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1795088812944584781
|
| He contends that autism is brain damage that limits your max IQ
| and that all the smartest people are neurotypical -- the genius
| brain is almost _necessarily_ a normie brain, but better.
|
| I think that what's closer to the truth is that extremely high
| intelligence is itself a form of neurodivergence, which is likely
| to be comorbid with other forms of neurodivergence. Eric himself
| I believe to be neurodivergent (in some non-autistic way) with
| 95% confidence: one of the tells is his choice of desktop
| environment: a minimalist tiling window manager (likely i3) with
| Emacs full screen on one of his displays -- anything else he
| deems too distracting and a drag on his brain. This sounds very
| ADHD and in any case is an almost archetypal Weird Nerd setup.
| Neurotypicals _love_ their Windows and Mac style UIs, and every
| NT software engineer I 've met has no problem managing -- and
| mousing through -- multiple windows: Visual Studio Code for
| coding, Postman for making HTTP calls, DBVisualizer for database
| interactions, etc.
|
| NTs also love what people like Eric (and I as well sometimes)
| dismiss as "monkey socio-sexual games"; and if you are smart as
| well, you tend to get really, really good at these. Having been
| around extremely intelligent people who otherwise seem
| neurotypical (in particular, having married one and thus gained
| two more as in-laws), they tend to get less into hard science
| fields like math and physics, and more into fields where they can
| wield their impressive social skills for maximum benefit such as
| law, psychology, or entertainment. (Great actors, like Orson
| Welles or Sir Patrick Stewart, fit this profile to a T, though
| there are some great actors -- like Dan Aykroyd -- with autism!)
| My in-laws were legal professionals for the entertainment
| industry; after _that_ long and successful career they retired,
| went to seminary, and joined the clergy of the Episcopal church!
|
| Eric's observation that all the best scientists are neurotypical-
| ish may be a result of what's described in TFA: in today's world,
| being a prominent scientist selects very hard against Weird Nerd
| traits because at that level, beyond a baseline level raw skill
| in the discipline doesn't correlate well with success; schmoozing
| and marketing do. The same has been true of professional software
| engineering for at least a decade and a half or so.
| bjornsing wrote:
| > Eric's observation that all the best scientists are
| neurotypical-ish may be a result of what's described in TFA: in
| today's world, being a prominent scientist selects very hard
| against Weird Nerd traits because at that level, beyond a
| baseline level raw skill in the discipline doesn't correlate
| well with success; schmoozing and marketing do.
|
| I definitely think so. If Eric had gone to tea with faculty at
| the Institute of Advanced Study back when Einstein and Godel
| were top dogs he may well have had the opposite impression.
| temporarely wrote:
| The Manhattan Project was a very successful model of managing big
| brains or "weird nerds". The key it turns out is having a big
| brain manage other big brains, while himself managed by a
| corporate type from the US Army. Another key element is a shared
| sense of insecurity tied to mission failure. I predict future
| weird nerds will be herded together in 'safe corporate cities'
| (like the Googleplex prototype) shielding them from the outside
| unwashed. They may be weird but they can do the math.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Here's a different take.
|
| > _Everything comes at a cost: spend more time worrying about
| politics, there will be less time for science. What's more, the
| kind of people who really care about science or truth to the
| extent that Kariko did, are not the same people that get
| motivated by playing politics or being incredibly pleasant._
|
| Obvious answer: We should incentivize and structure our
| institutions to be more receptive to Weird Nerds in order to
| enable further progress of science.
|
| My take: Scientific work is by its nature unnatural for human
| beings. Human beings played politics for millenia and are
| structured to do so, mentally, physically, biologically.
| Structuring our society to be more receptive to the people which
| we are _wired_ to not be receptive is swimming against the
| current.
|
| The same argument can be applied to a lot of modern phenomena.
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