[HN Gopher] Fierce Nerds ___________________________________________________________________ Fierce Nerds Author : prtkgpt Score : 343 points Date : 2021-05-18 13:30 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (paulgraham.com) (TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com) | 5tefan wrote: | A difficult topic. Everyone of us has a story to tell and a | burden to carry. Focusses on some fierce nerds and misses all | others. The gamut of personalties is vast. Got to try to bring | out the best in people. | mcguire wrote: | " _I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is | that your fierceness will be a great help in solving difficult | problems. And not just the kind of scientific and technical | problems that nerds have traditionally solved. As the world | progresses, the number of things you can win at by getting the | right answer increases. Recently getting rich became one of them: | 7 of the 8 richest people in America are now fierce nerds._ " | | It's good that we've gotten past the tedious "solving society's | problems" blather. | | " _If you do choose the ambitious route, you 'll have a tailwind | behind you. There has never been a better time to be a nerd. In | the past century we've seen a continuous transfer of power from | dealmakers to technicians -- from the charismatic to the | competent -- and I don't see anything on the horizon that will | end it. At least not till the nerds end it themselves by bringing | about the singularity._" | | Isn't Graham a dealmaker? Isn't that exactly what Y Combinator | does? | | And given Graham's comments about inequality, why am I ambivalent | about the singularity of the fierce nerds? | [deleted] | capableweb wrote: | After reading some of his books, essays and hearing people | talking about him, I think Graham is first and foremost a nerd | and hacker, the other stuff is secondary. At least that's how | it looked before the last couple of years, his view on things | seems to have slightly changed recently, so not sure anymore | actually. | npsimons wrote: | Yeah, given that we're talking about the guy who wrote "On | Lisp" I think it's fair to say he has technical credibility. | | He may be a dealmaker these days, but that doesn't take away | that he is a luminary in the nerd community. | mcguire wrote: | He certainly started that way; his Common Lisp stuff is | interesting, although I don't usually agree that it's the | best approach. But as far as I know, the only technical thing | he's done since selling Viaweb is ... this forum. You apply | to YC for money and for contacts---exactly what dealmakers | do. | bombcar wrote: | Nerds didn't spring fully formed with the invention of the | transistor - they have always existed in various forms | throughout history. | | But it has also been true that moving to a dealmaker | provides more impact, especially once you get past a | certain point. | wmil wrote: | He's done internal software to manage YC. | | YC itself was born out of an attempt to hack the hack the | VC funding system. Shift things to be more friendly to | technical types. | | So it was an attempt to improve a complex system as opposed | to focussing on making deals. Systems focussed instead of | people focussed. | Clewza313 wrote: | Is there _really_ that much custom software needed to | manage YC? As opposed to the Excel spreadsheets that most | investment banks operate with? | dang wrote: | There is; you'd be surprised. | mckeed wrote: | I think the idea is that some people are naturally | dealmakers, and the whole idea of YC was technical-minded | people taking over the job that would normally be done by | social-minded people and doing it better. | SyzygistSix wrote: | Same with artists; the ones who became famous or at least | successful in their lifetime were good at making deals. | And self-promotion. The ones who could not fit in | socially, not so much. | dang wrote: | He worked on this for several years after leaving YC: | | http://www.paulgraham.com/bel.html | | Not sure how that doesn't count as technical. | pseudalopex wrote: | They said as far as they know. More likely they never | heard of it. | capableweb wrote: | I think "Hackers & Painters" was after ViaWeb as well, a | book I'd consider technical. I'm sure there are more | technical things he been doing since ViaWeb also. | notsureaboutpg wrote: | Isn't power itself the ability to make important deals and | decisions? | creeble wrote: | Agree. | | _"There has never been a better time to be a nerd. In the past | century we 've seen a continuous transfer of power from | dealmakers to technicians -- from the charismatic to the | competent -- and I don't see anything on the horizon that will | end it."_ | | I think the continuous transfer is in nerds learning how to be | dealmakers, not in some magic power shift to nerds. | | George Westinghouse was an inventor. So was Thomas Edison. You | can think of both as "fierce nerds" in my book. | thesausageking wrote: | PG hacked the VC system so he didn't have to be a dealmaker. YC | has standard terms so there's no haggling on price, pro rata, | board seats, or anything else. They've automated a lot of what | they do via software and their network. And because of the | content they put out and the reputation they've built, founders | from all over the world come to them and accept much worse | terms than any normal VC would offer. | samatman wrote: | The big question is whether this leads to better overall | outcomes. | | If the company fails, or is aquihired by the skin of its | teeth, it doesn't matter which terms the various rounds | offered when. | | YC is perceived as offering a greater chance of success, a | combination of being plugged into a large network of alumni | and having the halo effect which comes from getting into a | cohort. | | As long as that perception is there, founders will keep | taking the deal. If that perception is _accurate_ , then | they're smart to: and the terms aren't worse than any normal | VC would offer, they're better. | | So there's a lot riding on that being true, which I have no | special insight into. Having to guess, I suspect it's less | true than it used to be. | thesausageking wrote: | The terms are worse in the sense that they're at a much | lower valuation than most VCs would offer, not that it | wasn't a good deal for the startup. Almost every YC alumni | I've talked to believes it was worth it. | Ericson2314 wrote: | I was peaved until I got to the last phrase. Well written. | | When the deals go away because the contract is standardized | and non-negotiable, it's because the dealmaker got _more_ | powerful! | airhead969 wrote: | Impatience due to rules not applying to them. And delay is often | some form of BS. "Strategic" impatience when patience encourages | faster results. (Manipulating people on the highway to drive | faster or change lanes through various techniques.) | | Nothing precludes actual fierceness rather than strictly fitting | to an archetype. I used to illegally street race for cash. I can | detail strip most Glocks, ARs, and AKs, and fire each without | occluded aiming. Grandfathers were both competition military | wheel gun marksmen. There are such people as nerdy bodybuilders. | | I took the SAT-I without any preparation (absolutely zero) and | aced the math section, 5 on AP Calc BC with minimal preparation | at school; no coaches, no practice tests, and no bootcamp classes | after school. My school was supposed to be good but it sucked in | one particular way as it picked me through testing to represent a | math tournament but sent me completely unprepared in the fields | and subject matter, it was embarrassing. I was usually the lone | white dude amongst mostly Asian and Indian overachievers who had | rich af parents with every sort of coach and social help. I road | a steel-framed bicycle to school 4 miles each way everyday, they | had hand-me-down BMWs and Mercedes parked in the school parking | lot. | | The other issue is like BUD/S and specops, the people told they | couldn't or were unsuited also tend to be the ones with the most | heart. Someone can't wish to be more fluidly-intelligent, but | they can become more relentlessly-resourceful and dog-with-a- | bone. Wisdom, experience, and mastery trends to swamp raw | intelligence as someone ages... plus, fluid intelligence tends to | decline. | [deleted] | mcguire wrote: | Nice flex. | [deleted] | graderjs wrote: | Somewhere in a secluded underground luxury bunker, Sergey | Mikhaylovich Brin, Larry Edward Page and Bill Henry Gates are | fiercely nodding their heads in agreement. ;p ;) xx | CoastalCoder wrote: | > Fierce nerds also tend to be somewhat overconfident, especially | when young. | | I wonder if that statement is overly specific. AFAIK, young | people in general, or at least young men in general, have a | reputation for being overconfident. | capableweb wrote: | Maybe it's because I'm living in a latino country, but it | certainly seems like men start with too much confidence since | teenage years, and slowly brings it down so everyone stop | calling them arrogant, then there is their appropriate level. | While for females (again, at least here in this latino country) | it's the opposite, they start off being super humble and | careful, and while growing up gaining more and more confidence | until finding the right level. | | Of course, this is a broad generalization, but seems to fit | where I'm living right now, but it's all anecdotal as it's | based on my own perceived view of things of course. | Der_Einzige wrote: | Sounds right in line with my experiences and exposure to the | "Machismo" portions of many Latino cultures. I always brought | this up to my far leftist friends who tried to pretend that | the cuban revolution was somehow good for the LGBT minority | of Cuba. LOL you think that they abandoned machismo just | because they got a hammer and sickle? They call queerness | "capitalist decadence" there... | SyzygistSix wrote: | Makes sense. In the US, being queer was associated with | communism by their persecutors. | bitshiftfaced wrote: | I think the "fierce need" / INTJ archetype the author is | describing takes it a step above that of young men in general | when it comes to overconfident / arrogance. And I agree with | the author in that it's related to independent-mindedness. I | can reflect on memories growing up where other young men were | much more "in tune" to the group. They more intuitively | understood the social cost of adopting an unpopular position. | Or they just had the sensitivity to know that a position or | statement wouldn't be well-received within the group. Or they | just valued social harmony in general more than accurately | representing what they believed to be true. | | That's a bit different than when I think of young men in | general being more confident than they ought to be. It has more | to do with the goal: status within a group vs putting effort | into finding what you believe is true and accurately | representing that truth potentially at a social cost. | bilbo0s wrote: | It's a fact that all humans are overconfident. That's why we | have biases that make us confident in what we "know", and make | us reject information to the contrary even if the information | is factually accurate. | | The overconfidence is not a trait endemic only to male "nerds". | | Of course, it's still helpful to concede that humans should | recognize and be aware of that weakness in themselves. | Overconfidence is the reason so many spend the healthy end | years of their lives so much less well off financially than | they spent their healthy prime years. It behooves us all to be | on guard against our overconfidence. | sbt wrote: | A lot of this is just the description of an emotionally immature | person. | KaiserPro wrote: | > The fierce nerds are a small but interesting group. | | If by interesting you mean "humorless bellend", then yes, I agree | wholeheartedly. | sudosteph wrote: | Only the boring ones are humorless. I actually think most | decent satirists would match up to the fierce nerd persona | pretty well. Voltaire comes to mind. | coldtea wrote: | > _There 's also a natural connection between nerdiness and | independent-mindedness._ | | Is it, or it's just an anecdotal projection from PGs own | experience ("I'm nerdy and I consider myself independent minded, | also know a few others like that"). | | This is just extrapolating from the diminishingly small number of | nerds who are also SV entrepreneurs. | | But historically nerds (e.g. 50s and 60s "propellerheads") were | just working for companies and research labs as employees, and | mostly on what they were told. Most still do exactly that. | miobrien wrote: | It's weird to read an "essay" about "nerds" from a 56 year old. | It's like he never got over the high school caste system of | cliques. | Der_Einzige wrote: | My 70 year old grand-father, whose getting increasingly worse | bouts of dementia, still remembers all the names and deeds of | the various school bullies who tormented him in High School | like it was yesterday. School seems like it was a very | traumatic time for many, many people. Bullys do enormous | amounts of damage to people and I am very happy to see the slow | death of the "high school caste system" from the new | generation. A lot of genuine social justice will come from | increasing culture shaming and rejection of people who act like | bullys. | johnthealy3 wrote: | To be fair, this man's job was to identify the type of person | who is likely to succeed at startups, and by most accounts he | was very successful at it. | | Understanding personality traits and how they relate to the | people you're looking for has felt critically important as I | work on my startup. It has come up over and over again in | hiring (including MANY more inbound, exploratory conversations | than I would have expected) and in client management | (identifying the best point of contact on their side, but also | keeping clients on track and responsive during an onboard). | droobles wrote: | I agree with you initially, but I tried to read it from the | lens of someone who is reflecting on his past experiences and | applying them to a certain archetype of people he meets | throughout life working in tech. | | With computer science being one of the most popular degrees | being held by Gen Z, the "nerd" casting will slowly fade as | computer work becomes more and more the norm vs. traditional | trades and fields that require higher education. | | Average Joe caught wind you could make Lawyer and Doctor money | with a Bachelor's or less, makes sense to me. | NikolaeVarius wrote: | I dont understand. He grew up as a teen during the age of D&D | and core scifi/nerd culture. How is not qualified to speak of | this stuff? | commandlinefan wrote: | I've noticed as I myself get older that a lot of things that | older people used to say, which seemed particularly out of | touch then, are actually starting to make some amount of | sense to me. I even find myself repeating some of those | things. However, I try to be careful to temper that with my | memories of hearing them from older folks when I was young. I | think part of the disconnect is/was that older people | actually do forget what it was like to be young or how they | thought/felt when they were young. I'd suspect that's what's | going on in OP's mind - he's mostly forgotten the trials and | tribulations of youth (maybe even defensively blocked out | some of the traumatic memories) and to him it doesn't even | make sense for an older person to remember how important | social interactions are to teenagers. | morelisp wrote: | > the age of D&D | | Is right now. It's orders of magnitude more popular than it | has ever been. | hindsightbias wrote: | Perhaps it's a generational thing, but a lot of people never | get over high school. | | Fortunately for my generation, we didn't scrimmage or skate | with helmets so we don't remember who wronged us. IDK how later | generations manage. | dragonwriter wrote: | > It's weird to read an "essay" about "nerds" from a 56 year | old. It's like he never got over the high school caste system | of cliques. | | "Nerds" being a meaningful category isn't an idea limited to | high-school caste/cliques, especially in tech; one of the | reasons software flipped from being predominantly female to | predominantly male is the popularization of the idea (IIRC, in | the late 1960s or early 1970s) that stereotypical nerds | (socially maladapted, querulous, technophilic males) were the | optimal workers in the field. | | The idea, which best as I know was only grounded in thin | popular management quasi-science, has become increasingly less | popular in the last few decades. | | It _is_ weird, though, that Graham's affected contrarianism | requires him to pretend that fierceness as opposed to | diffidence is contrary to the popular stereotype, nerds lacking | the skills to manage /moderate conflict manifesting in both | conflict avoidance where they are uncomfortable and fierce, | intractable, often petty conflict within their comfort zone has | always been central to the stereotype. | woeIsPG wrote: | Pretty sure a lot of people's brains broke given Trump, | environment, and coronavirus. | | The veil was lifted. A whole lot of the late Boomer, and Gen X | are halfway to the end, realizing it wasn't magic, and seeing | sentiment for their efforts turn on them. | | I've seen a number of folks, 40-60, meltdown over the last 2-3 | years. Most of my 20-30 something acquaintances have weathered | it well. | | The older class though, has really been hit by reality not | being as easily bent to their will given the virus, and | sentiment turning against their generation acting as helicopter | parents to society. | bob33212 wrote: | I think it relates to how he grew up in an unfragmented | society. He talks about it here. | http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html | | It applies to a lot of what is happening in society today. | [deleted] | HDMI_Cable wrote: | Does anyone else feel sort of weird when Paul Graham talks about | nerds? It feels like he's trying to deal with something on his | end, and we're just watching him rationalize to himself. | M2Ys4U wrote: | >It feels like he's trying to deal with something on his end, | and we're just watching him rationalize to himself. | | That's the case for _all_ PG essays, isn 't it? | flaubere wrote: | I have found a few of his essays very good, indeed expressing | things I haven't seen anywhere else. I think he has provided | very good advice to young people at times. | | The vast majority I would say that he is trying to retcon his | huge success and the success of some businesses he has been | associated with into a coherent worldview. I believe that in | 'Hackers and Painters' he actually goes through some back-of- | envelope calculations that show that the money he made when | Yahoo bought Viaweb corresponded closely to the real value he | had created, in some sense. | | It is baffling to me why he isn't able to say "I got lucky - | I worked hard and created something very valuable, but I was | also in the right place at the right time." Clearly there | were special factors at play selling an e-commerce platform | to Yahoo in 1998. He's also done intelligent and pro-social | things with both his money and his time since then it | appears. I don't know what the shame is in saying "I won a | lottery - but I have tried to do the right thing with my good | fortune." | | I think if you asked Jamie Zawinski, who I think was no less | technically skilled, nor less purposeful about working on | interesting and important things (nor, tbh, any worse at | writing thoughtful essays), he would readily admit to having | been extremely lucky. I don't know what the difference is | between these two personalities. I think I'd rather be jwz in | similar circumstances. | spamizbad wrote: | I feel like the Gen-X terminology of a nerd just isn't a thing | anymore. Being an older millennial, I fully understand what | sort of person Graham is talking about, however I don't think | Zoomers or even younger Millennials would describe these people | as "nerds". | | Also, these days if you are a smart ambitious person looking to | make an impact with technology you're not terribly edgy and you | certainly aren't defying any major social norms. And that's a | good thing. | HDMI_Cable wrote: | Yeah, Graham's definition of 'nerd' seems more like a social | class, whereas today, being a 'nerd' is an adjective, and a | pretty neutral one at that. | marvin wrote: | Curious question about terminology: The word 'nerd' no longer | has obvious negative connotations. It also seem to no longer | _apply_ to many folks who would have been branded obvious | nerds in 2003. And vice versa - many people laughingly named | nerd today wouldn 't qualify in 2003. | | Could the terminology just be in flux, and therefore create | confusion? With woke et al., we've got _pleeeeeenty_ of | examples of smart folks who miss the social norm du jour, | attempt to say something true but rather say something | unacceptable. And then they get ostracized or fired. | | Maybe these folks are _some_ examples of what used to be | called nerds. Do we have a name for them? | jbverschoor wrote: | Yeah that view is simply not here anymore. Thankfully | zug_zug wrote: | So what would the modern generation call somebody like this: | | In 9th grade insists "I don't see the point of these classes | I'm going to be a programmer," takes AP comp sci as sophmore | finds it insultingly easy [gets in trouble for going ahead of | teacher], resents homework vocally and refuses to do it on | principle but still gets great scores on tests, places in the | school math competition but initially gets kicked out of the | award ceremony for refusing for the "National Honor Society" | performance, 12-grade gets official permission to work half- | time coding and only take half classes. | | That's what I was, and I don't think anybody else has ever | given me a word for it. I knew pedantic nerds, and intense | nerds, and condescending nerds, but few with real conviction. | spamizbad wrote: | This sounds exactly like one of my friends in high school. | He was not considered a nerd though. However, he had decent | social skills, had a girlfriend, etc. Incidentally, he went | on to found several companies! | [deleted] | scythe wrote: | >Fierce nerds also tend to be somewhat overconfident, especially | when young. It might seem like it would be a disadvantage to be | mistaken about one's abilities, but empirically it isn't. Up to a | point, confidence is a self-fullfilling prophecy. | | As a child I was mathematically precocious and often (to myself) | compared my modest accomplishments to stories of prodigies like | Gauss or von Neumann. Looking back it seems patently ridiculous, | but I might not have spent dozens of hours per week reading math | textbooks and Wikipedia if I had had a more realistic self- | perception. I can't say I regret it. | Konohamaru wrote: | You are getting smarter and smarter every day and in every way. | [deleted] | goatcode wrote: | TIL "fierce" in the nerd world means having a massive ego and a | severe over-estimation of how awesome you are. These kinds of | people make me sick, regardless of whether they're nerds. | soheil wrote: | > 7 of the 8 richest people in America are now fierce nerds | | I wonder if he's counting Warren Buffet as a fierce nerd, I | would. | TigeriusKirk wrote: | He replied to a Twitter comment saying he doesn't. He said he | didn't know anyone who knew Buffet well enough to say. | [deleted] | qxga wrote: | "I'm less sure why fierce nerds are impatient, but most seem to | be. You notice it first in conversation, where they tend to | interrupt you." | | The answer is pretty obviously ADHD. Interrupting and | "impatience" are very common traits in people with ADHD. | smeeth wrote: | Not a big fan of this essay. I believe quite strongly that ~what | you are~ is a product of ~what you do~ and not the other way | around. In this framing, "Fierce Nerd" is nothing more than an | arbitrary categorization of a set of exhibited behaviors. | | Graham has observed that intelligent, competitive, inquisitive, | and confident individuals can do well in today's economy. He has | also identified pitfalls associated with being too aggressive, | too confident, or lacking other skills. | | I am unable to find the positive value of sticking a label on | this coincidence of qualities and strongly implying the | quantities and characteristics of these qualities are at least | mostly inherent (with the exception of "fierceness", which | apparently can be "turned off"). Of course nature does play a | role, but why ignore nurture? It must be quite depressing to | believe you are condemned to a life of little personal | development. | splithalf wrote: | This essay reminded me the thin line between constructive fierce | nerdiness and dysfunction. It's hard to navigate the perimeters. | CoastalCoder wrote: | Nobody who knows me would call me "woke", except as part of some | joke. | | But as the father of a kid with Asperger Syndrome, and as someone | with a likely diagnosis myself (according to neuropysch testing), | I'm a little bothered by the broad brush with which P.G. is | painting. | moolcool wrote: | +1, and with all due respect to PG's technical background, | reductive and stereotyping pieces like this kind of feel like | he's looking at the people who thrust him into his lofty VC | position with contempt. | waheoo wrote: | I can sort of get over all that, I'm not going to sit here | and take it personally because I know it's just broad | strokes, but at the same time, if it is broad strokes, there | is nothing to be gained here because nothing is factual and | everything can be dismissed because it is too general. | | If he focused on something more defined than a vague and | derogatory term for smart people in general heay have had | something worth reading. | | Ps. Seriously, why is the grey subtext so hard to read? Stop | with grey text. Please. | Permit wrote: | > But as the father of a kid with Asperger Syndrome, and as | someone with a likely diagnosis myself (according to neuropysch | testing), | | It's not immediately obvious to me how this relates to the | article. Can you elaborate? Is "fierce nerd" a reference to | Aspergers? | CoastalCoder wrote: | I apologize, I realized too late that it wasn't PG's article | that mentioned Asperger, it was another HN comment. | jack_riminton wrote: | As someone who is in the same boat, I think it'd be fair to say | PG is too | appleflaxen wrote: | I don't understand what would bother you. | | He's talking about "nerds"; a cultural identity. | | You are talking about asperger's, a medical condition. | | PG doesn't draw any lines between them. | | What is your objection, specifically? | jfengel wrote: | Umm... just so ya know, practically everything in "wokeness" is | about somebody saying "Please don't paint me with the broad | brush you're using." | | I think most of what you identify as "wokeness" is other people | who aren't directly affected trying to help out, since the | affected people are usually a minority who won't be heard if | it's just them. That can lead to its own forms of tone-deafness | and "you're not helping" behavior, but that just leads to more | cases of people who are sincerely and effectively helping being | dismissed as "SJWs" out of hand. That's a cheap way of avoiding | genuine problems with one tiny all-purpose acronym. | | I just wanted to point that out because what you wrote can be | read like "I didn't care about anything except when it happens | to me". It might give you a moment's pause the next time you | want to deride something as "woke". | mjburgess wrote: | > practically everything in "wokeness" is about saying.... | Please don't paint me with the broad brush you're using. | | Err.. really? I mean, that's the definition of individualism | against which many "woke" people would object. Even you say, | "since the affected people are usually a minority". This is | just false, if we take minority to refer to the usual | "protected subgroups". | | The relevant sense of Woke here, seems to me, to be concerned | not with people's individual needs -- but their needs qua | some alleged _group_. Esp., as you offer, "minority" groups. | | It's a sort of perverse individualism. It's just substituting | a different type of broad brush. Rather than starting with a | maximally individual analysis (and hence construe treatment | in terms of procedural fairness), rather, start by a group | analysis and place individuals within those groups (and hence | talk about aggregate distributional outcomes). | | The derision here is the conflict in having to raise an issue | because you are autistic, without inviting the Woke-style | "and autistic people are a minority who need protected". The | latter substitutes the underlying lack of procedural concern | for individual needs with exactly the same problem: again | ignoring individual difference expect now substituting | alleged "group needs". | | Woke analysis of this kind prescribes, a typically | condescending, set of redresses for alleged group grievances. | Individualism prescribes nothing of this sort, rather, | adjusting the rules so as to maximise each person's ability | to get what they each, as individuals, need. | | "Don't paint me with a broad brush" means _let me speak for | myself alone_. This attitude is antithetical to analysis | which begins with "minorities", which by construction, are | not people who are each individually empowered to speak for | themselves. | joshuamorton wrote: | > It's a sort of perverse individualism. It's just | substituting a different type of broad brush. Rather than | starting with a maximally individual analysis (and hence | construe treatment in terms of procedural fairness), | rather, start by a group analysis and place individuals | within those groups (and hence talk about aggregate | distributional outcomes). | | > Don't paint me with a broad brush" means let me speak for | myself alone. This attitude is antithetical to analysis | which begins with "minorities", | | This is, I think "just be race blind". Wokeness, as you | seem to be describing it is an ideology that recognizes | that identities impact how a person is perceived. To fairly | judge an individual, you have to take into account that, | because of their race or gender, their work may have been | misvalued or falsely attributed. | | For better or worse, society discriminates, and recognition | of that is a part of fairly judging people as individuals. | mjburgess wrote: | Well I think we have to take "woke" to mean the most | plausible _worst_ version of this ideology; or else we 'd | just name it charitably. Ie., the OP comment is nervous | about being associated with the type of thinking i'm | talking about. | | It's entirely fair to say that _whilst_ accommodating and | judging people individually we need to account for that | person 's particular difficulty in _first_ being judged | in this manner -- because we, the judger, may be unable | to properly understand their situation; and likewise they | may not be able to argue their case, state their need, | etc. | | The problem enters when we take the _goal_ of our project | to actually be removing such "prejudices and obstacles" | and, not rather, the empowerment of each individual. The | former is an often optional detour to the latter. | | Consider, for example, the most effective civil rights | president in US history (LBJ) was a racist: did we need | to solve his prejudice _first_? Would that have done | anything positive? | | Wokeism, if it means anything at all, I think has to be | identified with this ends-means confusion. It's raising | to the status of an end in itself the elimination of | (minority) group hatred, (minority) group prejudice, etc. | | This a deeply confused project; and routinely gets in the | way of the actual end everyone cares about: each person, | in their own particular situation, being able to live the | way that best suits them. | | If I read the message here correctly, the woke-dissenter | is saying this: "My difficulties are particular to me, | and all I want is to be able to solve them. I don't want | to participate or "ally" with a society-wide war against | the possibility I will be misunderstood or mistreated; | rather I simply want the rules (,tools, practices) in | place to empower me when I am." | | Wokeism is the political incarnation of New Atheism, or | likewise Evangelism: first we fight a total war against | The Sins of The Mind themselves; and then, much much | later, we help people in their particular situations. | joshuamorton wrote: | > Consider, for example, the most effective civil rights | president in US history (LBJ) was a racist: did we need | to solve his prejudice first? Would that have done | anything positive? | | The current iteration of the civil rights movement is | solving a different problem than that of 1968. Due to | LBJ's actions, minorities are equal under the law. You | can't just pass laws to make them more equal. They | already are. | | But if you look around, they clearly aren't, so the | question becomes, well why not? If you subscribe to woke | ideology, the answer is something like "pervasive | cultural and systemic biases across various aspects of | society". I'll draw a parallel to another evergreen | topic, "cancel culture". The idea being that a large | group of distributed people can ruin someone's life by | changing how they interact with that person and making | them a pariah. | | Well many of these systemic biases are similar, if less | sudden. People and systems trained to see or treat people | as lesser. How do you solve that problem? I only see one | solution: to get the distributed group of people to be | aware of and ultimately counteract those biases, to undue | the incidental cancellation of these people. And what is | that but raising awareness of and reducing those | ingrained prejudices. | | All of the other approaches are things that routinely get | called "reverse-racist" themselves, things like | affirmative action and such which ignore the individual. | | > "My difficulties are particular to me, and all I want | is to be able to solve them. I don't want to participate | or "ally" with a society-wide war against the possibility | I will be misunderstood or mistreated; rather I simply | want the rules (,tools, practices) in place to empower me | when I am." | | And the response to this is that while your difficulties | are particular to you, it's likely that the best tools | and practices to empower you when you are mistreated are | allies who are willing to stand up for you agains the | person mistreating you. As in the limit, if no one | believes you are being mistreated except you, you will | have no recourse. | | There's no law that says that PG isn't allowed to say | things that make GGP uncomfortable. In fact, there's laws | that say that we can't prevent PG from doing that. All we | can hope for is that said mistreatment is recognized by | others, and that people pressure him to correct his | behavior. | | Wokeness is a recognition that this is a political (in | the sense of like human-interaction, not election- | related), not legal issue. | CoastalCoder wrote: | Thanks for raising that point. I'm only now realizing that | the term "woke" means different things to different people. | I'm grateful for your correction. | bigmattystyles wrote: | I agree with a lot of what the 'woke' are trying to achieve; | police reform, less bias (call it institutional racism, | etc..) in government institutions, address massive | generational wealth gaps, etc... but the 'woke' are mostly | reductive and reactionary and are the kings and queens of | painting with a broad brush. | jfengel wrote: | Thank you very much for that demonstration. | bigmattystyles wrote: | Touche... | whalesalad wrote: | This is top tier cringe. I can't read his stuff any more at all. | waterside81 wrote: | Try reading his Twitter feed. He went from VC visionary to | Facebook mom. | whalesalad wrote: | I intentionally avoid SV/Tech/VC on Twitter. It's a parody at | this point. | fumar wrote: | I've witnessed music scenes come and go. It wasn't until | recently I noticed the startup culture or visible ethos, at | least online, morphed into something new. Perhaps like | music we are seeing new trends evolve or we are in a | transition phase where the new culture leaders are yet to | emerge. But, PG is like alternative rock in in 2020 and | beyond, out of style. | notacoward wrote: | The problem with glorifying fierce nerds is that there are | already too many of them. (Or us, perhaps, but not for me to | say.) Sure it's great to have a few fierce nerds trying | unconventional things, challenging orthodoxy, etc. Unfortunately, | when there are many fierce nerds, they start to compete among | themselves to have the _most_ contrarian ideas and often to | establish themselves as the _earliest_ champions of those ideas | as soon as possible. | | This rush, not only to be right but to be right when everyone | else is wrong and to show them the light, is what makes people | susceptible to bandwagons, cargo cults, and conspiracy theories. | We see it plenty right here. Elsewhere we see it in QAnon. In | both we see it in arguments about COVID origins and | countermeasures. | | Like a chemical compound that's therapeutic in one dose but toxic | in another, fierce nerds can be either a good thing or a bad | thing. We're _already_ well into the toxic side, so I think this | is a poor moment for pg or anyone else to glorify more. | dncornholio wrote: | If you don't let the word nerd affect you with bad feelings, the | post is pretty OK. | | I don't think nerd is a bad thing to say anymore. | | Also I can identify me with this personality. Last few years I | can find myself turning more into bitterness and I just started | realising that the cause is not external. | eplanit wrote: | I like to be clear and differentiate between "dorks" and | "nerds". Dorks are insufferable by definition. Nerds might | sometimes act like dorks (ex: talking about bitcoin throughout | a dinner), but nerds have, on balance, more redeeming qualities | than the dork. There is a lot of overlap in the definition of | the two[1][2]. I don't hear "dork" used much anymore -- it | should be used more. | | [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dork [2] | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nerd | iafiaf wrote: | > The bad news is that if it's not exercised, your fierceness | will turn to bitterness, and you will become an intellectual | playground bully: the grumpy sysadmin, the forum troll, the | hater, the shooter down of new ideas. | | I like this. | morelisp wrote: | It's just a twist on prosperity gospel, a way to a priori | dismiss anyone who disagrees with him as a bitter bully. | [deleted] | paulpauper wrote: | This whole things feels autobiographical | | _I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that | your fierceness will be a great help in solving difficult | problems. And not just the kind of scientific and technical | problems that nerds have traditionally solved. As the world | progresses, the number of things you can win at by getting the | right answer increases. Recently getting rich became one of them: | 7 of the 8 richest people in America are now fierce nerds._ | | starting one of the 10 most successful businesses of the past 2-4 | decades business vs solving a problem are not the same thing | though. Problem solvers on average do not make that much money. | Look at all the problems solved everyday on stack | overflow/exchange. How many of those ppl are making lots of | money. Same for freelancing sites. The rates are pretty low. | making money means a lot to PG, but it's a separate type of skill | than solving problems. It is something that is probably harder in | many respects because it requires not only solving problems but | making money from it, which means competition and other aspects | of business. | [deleted] | egypturnash wrote: | "I'm not an asshole! I'm a FIERCE NERD." | logicslave wrote: | "If you do choose the ambitious route, you'll have a tailwind | behind you. There has never been a better time to be a nerd. In | the past century we've seen a continuous transfer of power from | dealmakers to technicians -- from the charismatic to the | competent -- and I don't see anything on the horizon that will | end it. At least not till the nerds end it themselves by bringing | about the singularity." | grae_QED wrote: | >To be a nerd is to be socially awkward, and there are two | distinct ways to do that: to be playing the same game as everyone | else, but badly, and to be playing a different game. | | Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I've always been under the impression | that this is what it's like to be a geek. Maybe someone can help | me understand the two. I've always identified more as a geek for | this reason, but maybe I'm a nerd. | wcarss wrote: | my read on the two has always been: | | nerd: intellectually inclined | | geek: unusually interested in _some_ hobby | | And of course being one, or both, or none, and liking math, or | liking star wars, or both, or disliking math, or disliking star | wars, etc. are all valid combinations. | est31 wrote: | See also: Why nerds are unpopular. Feb 2003. | http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7759892 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13475146 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24710474 | jt2190 wrote: | [Here's my best summary of what a "fierce nerd" is, according to | this essay] | | Most non-nerds think of nerds as: * quiet | * diffident | | In fact some nerds are quite fierce. "Fierce nerds" are: | * small group [subset of nerds overall?] * more | competitive than highly competitive non-nerds * | competition is more personal for them; they're not | emotionally mature enough to distance themselves | personally from competition * work in areas that are less | random in the kinds of competition they engage in [no | points for persuasion or style, I suppose] * | somewhat overconfident, especially when young * | intelligent, at least moderately so * independent- | mindeded, see fitting it as wasted effort * annoyed by | rules * impatient, not sure why | | [I'll let you draw your own conclusions.] | dkarl wrote: | This essay falls flat for me because I think Paul Graham is only | talking about nerds of my generation, people who are in their | forties and older. I don't see any nerds like myself and my | friends in the generation that is in their twenties now. | | It's interesting to think about the difference, though, and he | does nail a few things about nerds from my generation. Most | importantly, that being socially awkward was a prerequisite, | because functioning social instincts would have prevented you | from ever saying anything unconventional or investing time in | learning things that were outside the norm. Without the internet | to expose people to a diversity of views packaged in well-edited, | easily digestible chunks, the socially acceptable range of | interest was limited entirely to what people heard from | tradition, network television, and if you were "edgy," MTV. Any | progressive ideas you got, any historical perspective you got, | anything you learned about different cultures, any cool ideas you | had about the future, you got from books and magazines, and you | were a total weirdo if you treated them as part of the shared | world you inhabited with other people. | | And I'm talking about pretty mainstream stuff. Like, if you | remembered something out of a National Geographic article you | read and repeated it in conversation, that was already letting | your freak flag fly. So we came to identify reading, curiosity, | and a progressive attitude with social inappriopriateness, with | grossness, and this had an enormous impact on us. It affected the | way we presented ourselves, the way we dressed, everything. | | A hugely consequential example is our gut response to the feeling | that we're about to say something that other people would find | off-putting or offensive. We learned the habit of embracing that | feeling. That was the feeling we got whenever we admitted to | liking a book we read in English class, or talked about anything | to do with science or math, or said, hey, did you know the last | time that country had a democratic government we overthrew it? If | those things were good, then it was good to embrace the feeling | of social disapproval they generated, the way an athlete embraces | the burning in their muscles in a hard workout. To be honest and | intellectually engaged, we had to be weird and distasteful, and | we learned not to trust anybody who shied away from that. | | The younger generations of nerds, I feel like they trust peer | influence more. When they feel like they're about to say | something inappropriate, their instinct is to pause and recheck | their thinking, which, I have to say, I'm kind of jealous of | that. They take it for granted that the people they feel pressure | from are people they choose as their peers, people who reflect | their own values and therefore have the potential to improve | them. | | For my generation, being socially maladjusted felt like a moral | imperative. We had to be socially maladjusted to be the people we | wanted to be: curious, open-minded, engaged with the information | and ideas trickling in from outside our little towns and schools. | It was necessary, but it selected for people who already had a | difficult time integrating socially and then further warped us in | a way that maybe the generations after us aren't warped. | zozbot234 wrote: | > When they feel like they're about to say something | inappropriate, their instinct is to pause and recheck their | thinking | | This is something all intellectually honest people learn to do, | one way or the other. We're all very familiar with claims that | are simple, mostly plausible, and totally wrong for | $COMPLICATED_REASON. After a while, you learn to double-check | your thinking to avoid being nerd-sniped by someone saying | "Bzzzzzzzt, that's wrong." | dkarl wrote: | Inappropriate and incorrect are very different things. One | thing they have in common, though, is that after processing | feedback over and over again that doesn't affect your | thinking at all because it comes from a perspective you | fundamentally disagree with, you learn to tune it out. For | example, if you're talking about Covid 19 vaccines and | there's an anti-vaxxer in the group, you'll eventually stop | engaging with the content of what they say, because it isn't | worth your time. | | A significant difference is that incorrectness is context- | sensitive in a different way than inappropriateness. Saying | something incorrect can be a productive part of a | conversation that serves a shared goal of achieving | correctness. I'm not going to feel inhibited or embarrassed | about saying something incorrect unless I haven't put in the | appropriate level of preparation for the context. Saying | something inappropriate cannot serve a higher shared goal of | avoiding inappropriateness, because it spoils that goal from | the start. | sudosteph wrote: | Like knows like. That description definitely fits me, my husband | and a few other people I in my life who I care about deeply. We | all know we're obnoxious sometimes - but we're all just trying to | root out the truth of things and improve things as well as we | know how. It's a little annoying that we are pushed into pursuing | capitalist endeavors over other things right now - but | practically speaking, you can make a lot more change in less time | if you have the capital for it. | | Still, it's stuff like Andrew Yang's presidential run that really | give me hope that we might be on the cusp of changing things | outside of business as well. Not just in politics (obviously, | since he lost) but at least in culture - with coherent ideas and | platforms that can't be ignored. There have been others in the | past who were like us and tried similar things (Huey Long comes | to mind), but understanding technology gives our generation a | huge economic tool that we can also use to our advantage. Of | course, if my peers are any indication: our society and entire | economic system seem designed for the express purpose of making | millennials depressed. And it's not really easy to shrug that off | and just build things when the state of so many people you care | about is so dire. | greyhair wrote: | I worked with a number of brilliant people at Bell Labs through | the 1980s/1990s. The most comfortably competent among them, the | most productive among them, were also the least abrasive. They | were also the most self deprecating. | | Not just one or two, but the majority of them. To the point that | the aggressive geniuses stood out. And I worked for/with two | abrasive ones as well, so I know the difference. | | The same was true for the two startups I worked at after that, | and Qualcomm, and now the third startup where I work. | | The really productive geniuses in each situation were easy to | work with, I think largely, because of their confidence in their | own grasp of the subject at hand. They had nothing to prove, they | knew that, and it showed. The difficult people were never stupid, | far from it, but they felt like they needed to defend everything | they did, every decision they made, and that made working with | them less productive. | | With the gentle geniuses, if you thought you came up with | something that was an improvement on what was being done, they | would look at it honestly, and if it was not better, they would | calmly explain why, and if it was better, they would acknowledge | it right out and discuss how to merge that into the current work. | | The 'less gentle' ones would take pride in pointing out the flaws | in your idea if you were wrong, and if you were right, would | fight you over whether it had any real value at all, then would | stiff arm you as far as getting it accepted as a change. | tomcam wrote: | Microsoft vet from 1990s-2000: same. Got to work with many of | my programming heroes, and many of the same people influencing | programming language design, Azure, and .NET even now. The vast | majority were a pure joy to work with, just as you describe. | Tomminn wrote: | If I had to guess, I would guess these would often be "fierce | nerds" who mellowed with age. | | I think this "fierceness" is an expected sign of intellectual | dominance of your peers at 15-20. At 25+, it's a sign that | you've either never entered a pond with genuinely big fish, or | you've never managed to recognize that big fish are swimming | around you. | | Of course, you could just be dominating big fish at 25+. It's | logically possible. But the incident of "fierceness" is muuuuch | higher than the incidence of that level of genius. | mjfl wrote: | This is like the cow talking about how they don't like mean | other cows while Paul Graham was probably talking about the | farmer. | Tomminn wrote: | Absolutely, the best people at Bell labs in the 80's were | "like cows". | mjfl wrote: | I mean they oversaw the decline of Bell labs so... | dataflow wrote: | > The difficult people were never stupid, far from it, but they | felt like they needed to defend everything they did, every | decision they made, and that made working with them less | productive. | | I assume the implication here is that the productive folks | didn't necessarily defend everything they did, and thus went | with other people's solutions sometimes even when their own was | better? Is that what you're trying to convey? or should I be | reading it differently? Curious how their behavior contrasted | in your experience. | haswell wrote: | I interpreted this differently. My takeaway was that the | abrasive ones constantly defend everything they do, even when | it's not necessary, and the gentle genius doesn't feel the | need to be defensive at every step. | | It doesn't have to mean that the gentle genius never defends | their viewpoints, but highlights the key differences in how | these personality types operate on a day-to-day basis, and | the resulting impact on the team around them. | novosel wrote: | There is a Russian saying: | | Who is a wise man? | | The one that always seeks to occupy the smallest place/room. | | Nota Bene: I am not a Russian, but simply encountered this | formulation several times. | tomcam wrote: | Wise and true. I totally agree with it in principle. * | | * Whoever said this didn't own a grand piano. Just saying. | cperciva wrote: | That saying, combined with the euphemism "smallest room in | the house", paints an interesting picture. | solipsism wrote: | Yeah, it's remarkable to me that this article could be written | to provide advice to "fierce nerds", and not include a single | sentence about not being an asshole. | | I work with "fierce nerds". Some of them are self-aware, and | try very very hard not to be assholes to the people around | them. They do this without sacrificing their passion. And they | are tolerable to work with only because they consciously push | back against their inner asshole. | bob1029 wrote: | This is the camp I find myself in. | | It takes a lot of effort in some areas to stay calm and allow | the other side to play out a their argument, and I recognize | how critical it is in maintaining a positive attitude towards | work. | | I find that minimizing unnecessary conference calls was a | monumental step in the right direction. When a technical | conversation is serialized through a Github issue, it tends | to get a lot more thought and time applied. It is also easy | to walk away from a frustrating issue, go for a run, come | back, and write a much more reasonable reply than you | otherwise would have if compelled to do so. | steve_adams_86 wrote: | My favourite people to work with are the gentle geniuses. I | love to be wrong around them because I get to learn, and I love | opportunities to present something useful I've done and know it | will become a valuable contribution. | | I avoid the other kind of person like a plague now. They ruin | otherwise excellent teams. They might be fine to have a drink | with or something, but in day to day work, they are sand paper. | | Another thing I find is that the gentle variety tend to | understand and appreciate realistic timelines. Highly | competitive "nerds" tend to fight on timelines, or suppress | others using them. Why wasn't that done sooner? Wait, all you | did in 3 days was this? It's a terrible tool used to knock team | mates down a peg on a routine basis. | tomcam wrote: | I know, right? It is one of the greatest things in the world | to be the dumbest guy in a room full of really smart, secure | people. It's like you're getting a mini postdoc education for | free, compressed into a few minutes. | ptr2voidStar wrote: | I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who relishes | being the "least smart" in a room full of geniuses. | | No ego here, I just absorb, absorb and absorb! | steve_adams_86 wrote: | It's the best thing that's happened to my career by a wide | margin. I'm 15 years in and definitely not the smartest | person in the room on most topics, and I'm finally moving | forward and really enjoying it after quite a stagnant | period. | | I try to remind myself to show some gratitude, not just for | my team's knowledge and insights that they share, but for | having selected me as a person to join them as well. It's a | real privilege to have a good team. I think they consider | me more of an equal than I give myself credit for but I | really do get an education pretty much every day. Life is | interesting. | albatruss wrote: | If you're going to be this sort of fierce nerd, make sure you | come from money, because you're getting fired if you pursue these | traits in the workplace. | dreyfan wrote: | Assuming those traits come alongside the ability to get shit | done, that's patently false. | themodelplumber wrote: | Or maybe you keep quitting jobs, because you are the precocious | one who can always see why things aren't working well long | before anyone else. Yet nobody wants your feedback because it's | too something. Too fierce, or scary because it's predictive, or | they're just annoyed that you have no social skills. | | And socially maybe the people at work can keep you in check | without firing you, because you can't respond well in a | socially-clever environment for example, no matter how amazing | your insights. | paulpauper wrote: | lol have bill gates' parents | wutbrodo wrote: | FWIW, this isn't my experience at all. There's a difference | between being an asshole and the contrarian bent+ relatively- | minor rough edges Graham describes. The essay touches on this, | by saying that it's become a lot easier to thrive as this sort | of person than it used to be. In particular, you need to find | your way to a field and role where results matter more than | glad-handing and ego-stroking, and where the subjectivity and | discretion of measuring those results is minimized. This used | to be vanishingly rare, but in my perception (and experience), | it no longer is. | | In my case, my fatal flaw career-wise wasn't abrasiveness or | asshole-ish behavior, but a strong aversion to promoting my | work or any of the other non-goal tasks required to advance in | an organization. I hate every minute I have to spend making it | clear that I'm productive instead of just _being_ productive. | | However, this is almost unavoidable in most organizations that | aren't tiny. You either have to "manage your brand" and play | politics, or you have to make sure that you're fitting a | squishy, inherently-subjective rubric. At a bare minimum, you | need to craft a presentation of your output at performance | review time, and hope your interpretation of the rubric matches | the decision-makers'. | | My solution was to find a company with fairly objective and | well-defined measures of output[1], where there's more than | enough impact to go around. You can't avoid having people | skills to get things done, but I don't mind using my people | skills in service of getting shit done instead of internal | organizational BS. | | [1] This does not mean that we're tolerant of assholes. We've | fired people for being pathological "brilliant jerks", though | everyone I've come into close personal contact with is well | above the jerk bar. What this does is separate "are you toxic | in a way that hurts your coworkers or the company" from "what | is your output", allowing people who are awkward and well- | intentioned to thrive on one axis and grow on the other. This | is in contrast to the usual case, where measuring output is | polluted by interpersonal skills that are not related to | output, and being awkward means your work isn't recognized | either. | slfnflctd wrote: | > measuring output is polluted by interpersonal skills | | Also, many of those 'skills' are nothing more than shared | cultural backgrounds and/or biases. | version_five wrote: | This is exactly what the original essay said: | | > It's hard to be independent-minded without being somewhat | socially awkward, because conventional beliefs are so often | mistaken, or at least arbitrary. No one who was both | independent-minded and ambitious would want to waste the | effort it takes to fit in | AlexCoventry wrote: | > _Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, | by devoting yourself to meditation or psychotherapy or something | like that. Maybe that 's the right answer for some people. I have | no idea. But it doesn't seem the optimal solution to me. If | you're given a sharp knife, it seems to me better to use it than | to blunt its edge to avoid cutting yourself._ | | Meditation doesn't necessarily lead to a reduction in "ferocity." | The Buddha was a fierce nerd, according to Graham's | characterization of "fierce." He took on an ambitious goal, and | made immense sacrifices to see it through. He could also be quite | "fierce in his speech, post-enlightenment. E.g. | | > "And to whom, worthless man, do you understand me to have | taught the Dhamma like that? Haven't I, in many ways, said of | dependently co-arisen consciousness, 'Apart from a requisite | condition, there is no coming-into-play of consciousness'? [2] | But you, through your own poor grasp, not only slander us but | also dig yourself up [by the root] and produce much demerit for | yourself. That will lead to your long-term harm & suffering." | strict9 wrote: | With descriptions of social clumsiness, being independent minded, | and difficulty navigating two-way communication (when to | start/stop) pg's depiction of "nerds" resonates because these | traits are frequently associated with asd. | | But what surprised me is that instead of washing away negative | traits as part of the package, two options for the "fierce nerd" | are presented: | | 1. use power for good | | 2. be cynical and embrace bitterness | | It's a lot easier to do #2 than #1. | mcguire wrote: | Can you point me to where "for good" is mentioned in the essay? | The only end goal I remember is getting wealthy. | davidhunter wrote: | Although questionable as a psychometric test, he is describing | the Myers-Briggs INTJ [1] or INTP [2] personality type here. In | terms of the Big-Five [3], I would suggest: Moderately-high | Openness, High Conscientiousness, Average-to-Low Extraversion, | Low Agreeableness, Average-to-low Neuroticism. | | [1]: https://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality | | [2]: https://www.16personalities.com/intp-personality | | [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits | carlisle_ wrote: | >Although questionable as a psychometric test | | That's an understatement. It's meritless pseudoscience. | fraud wrote: | What makes you say so? | sn9 wrote: | Probably an awareness of the history of MB and the research | about its utility: | https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs- | personali... | davidhunter wrote: | All models are wrong, but some are useful. | | I have found the MBTI to be useful despite the empirical | inaccuracy of the test itself. Even without taking the | test, people can self-identify as one (or more) types. | This then serves as a meaningful basis for discussion as | well as raising awareness that people are deeply | different in terms of their ways of thinking. It is quite | an eye opener the first time you see someone self- | identify as a personality type that is very different to | your own. | | None of the personality theories are 'proven' of course. | We won't get that until we have a fuller understanding of | the brain. But it is well accepted within psychology that | personality is a thing. And personality types (Big 5, | MBTI, etc) are useful models for now despite their | shortcomings. | | This is a fairly good post with some additional thoughts | on the MBTI debate: https://dynomight.net/in-defense-of- | myers-briggs.html | csa wrote: | Check out "the human element" which is the basis for | firo-b. | | It actually has international data to support its model. | SilurianWenlock wrote: | > As the world progresses, the number of things you can win at by | getting the right answer increases. | | What does this mean? | teachingassist wrote: | Using James Watson as an example is an interesting choice. | | When I think of James Watson, I think of someone who a) stole his | major work (the one thing for which he is famous) from a woman | without giving credit, and b) has been almost-literally cancelled | for being consistently racist, also by his colleague-science- | nerds who consistently report that they don't like him. | | Not someone that I want to celebrate for being a 'fierce nerd'. | bobcostas55 wrote: | The idea that Watson "stole" his major work from Franklin is | absurd. Franklin was on a completely different track and | thought Watson & Crick's approach was a dead end. | teachingassist wrote: | Wikipedia quotes Watson implicating himself in his own book: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Interactions_with. | .. | FeteCommuniste wrote: | Interestingly, Rosalind Franklin herself may have been | something of a "fierce nerd": | | > From the outset, Franklin and Wilkins simply did not get on. | Wilkins was quiet and hated arguments; Franklin was forceful | and thrived on intellectual debate. Her friend Norma Sutherland | recalled: "Her manner was brusque and at times confrontational | - she aroused quite a lot of hostility among the people she | talked to, and she seemed quite insensitive to this." | | https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/23/sexism-in-sc... | educationcto wrote: | What an example to choose the same week that Paul is out | defending Antonio Garcia Martinez's sexism on Twitter. | zip1234 wrote: | I didn't see it as defending sexism. It was more pointing out | the hypocrisy of Apple for firing Martinez while selling and | promoting 'Beats by Dre'. In both cases the creative works | were well-known before the hire/acquisition. | deanCommie wrote: | Pointing out that hypocrisy is a strategy _some_ took with | criticizing Apple, but it 's not the direction PG chose. | [1] | | He said nothing about Dre, focusing entirely on saying | "He's a good guy, actually", which is the epitome of the | strategy taken by men historically to defend other shitty | men. | | That's not "defending sexism" per se, but it is _excusing_ | sexism because of the content of someone 's character. | "Sure he said sexist things but he is not sexist". It does | not pass even the most baseline level of scrutiny. | | I think it's also worth saying here that the comparison to | Dre is super irrelevant: | | 1) Musicians may write lyrics in the first person, but the | general default for all musical content is it's | "fictional", and not representive of their _personal_ views | on the matter. It 's artistic license with ideas - | occasionally problematic. That is not the case with | "autobiographies", which is what Antonio's book was | purported to be. | | 2) Dre has taken complete ownership of all of his past | indiscretions and apologized for them [2]. Antonio double | down. | | [1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1392756490138791937 | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dre#Violence_against_ | women | The5thElephant wrote: | Which is a poor critique considering Martinez would be | working directly with other Apple employees while Dre is | barely involved with Apple as far as I know. The issue | isn't the creative work alone, the issue is the impact on | fellow employees and the working environment. | hamburga wrote: | Nerds are already high-status. Look who just hosted Saturday | Night Live. | | The contrarian position is to be anti-nerd and pro-charm. Taleb | on this: | https://www.azquotes.com/author/18869-Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb/... | | > Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; | nerdiness the reverse | crocodiletears wrote: | Is there any broader context to this quote? | carapace wrote: | To young "fierce nerds": The single best piece of advice I got | for dealing with normals was, "Act like a dumbass and they'll | treat you like an equal." (from the Book of the Subgenius.) | | - - - - | | There's a lot to unpack in this essay, some good some bad IMO. | | One thing I feel is worth mentioning: I don't think the cure for | bitterness is success, I believe it's _helping others_. | username90 wrote: | Trying to help others just makes you more bitter. | mhh__ wrote: | It might do for you, and I'd say it does for me a little too | (i.e. If I get the answer in less than one google search I | need to take a breather because I'll get annoyed), but I have | come across people who are just as clever/nerdy/knowledgeable | (take your pick) who really derive pleasure from teaching and | explaining things in the best way they can - so I wouldn't | assume. | nitrogen wrote: | Particularly so when placed into a position where help is | expected, but then immediately rejected once delivered. It's | the sort of double bind that makes for a toxic environment -- | you must assist others; if you don't, you will be accused of | hindering and hoarding, but if you do (no matter how | generously, politely, and tactfully) you will be accused of | patronizing or interfering. | mhh__ wrote: | Also don't call them normals. | wincy wrote: | I believe the socially acceptable term these days is | "normies", right? | wiggumspiggums wrote: | "Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be | kind?" -Jeff Bezos | | https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate... | | "Fierce nerds" can be valuable. Sure. But the folks who truly | stand out in my mind are a level higher. They're the ones at the | top of their game, who know how to demand & command excellence, | without being jerks about it. | | I'm reminded of this episode of "The Chef Show" where Jon Favreau | compliments Roy Choi behind his back. He tells Bill Burr that he | had followed Roy around for a full day, going to all his | restaurants and food trucks, and not once did Roy raise his voice | to his staff. It's pretty cool to see how much admiration one | artist/leader has for the other, not because of their technical | skills but because they choose to be kind. | | I don't think we need to settle for being "fierce nerds". | zem wrote: | When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I | admire kind people. | | -- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel | username90 wrote: | Once you have achieved significant status and money you no | longer need to be fierce since people listen anyway. But most | people worth listening to doesn't have significant status and | money, instead we wait until they found their own companies and | become rich before we listen to them. | lostlogin wrote: | > "Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be | kind?" -Jeff Bezos | | That an interesting read, thanks. I struggle to square what | Bezos is saying with what Amazon has become. He is clearly | incredibly clever but appears devoid of any kindness toward his | low level employees. Am I missing something? | ping_pong wrote: | Are you only believing what you read in the media or do you | know people that actually work at Amazon? The fact that | Amazon employees in a warehouse rejected unionization speaks | volumes. And I know plenty of Amazon engineers that love | working there. | | To put it in perspective, there may be employees that hate | working at Amazon, but there are also 100,000 employees. If | only 10% of the employees hated working there, that's still | 10,000 employees. But a 90% satisfaction rate for any company | is amazingly high. | pseudalopex wrote: | I know people who work at Amazon. Not even the people who | like it say it's kind. | bdavisx wrote: | I've heard "cut-throat", but not kind. | crocodiletears wrote: | I've only once had an employer I would describe as kind. | Even then, it was but for the generosity of an aberrant | manager, and not a commercial institution. | | In most low-skill positions (especially the ones which | favor physical labor over soft-skills), you are a body to | be instrumentalized until you either leave leave or are | disposed of. That's the reality of most work. Retention | is as high as it needs to be to ensure continuous | operations, and employee happiness is either incidental | or primarily a slogan. The human element is made to be as | irrelevant as the market will allow. | | The Amazon Warehouse workers I've known have described it | as warehouse work. Little better or worse in their | experience than working at any other distribution center, | though some centers are naturally likely to be ran more | poorly than others. | jjtheblunt wrote: | 1.3 million employees a recent news article said. wow. | lostlogin wrote: | > Are you only believing what you read in the media or do | you know people that actually work at Amazon? | | I've talked with people who work there as engineers. I | haven't any friends there. | | The engineers seem well looked after, but engineers are not | what I'd describe as 'low level employees'. | | I'm not sure that rejection of unionisation says as much as | you are attributing to it and if reports are to believe, | Amazon used a few dirty tricks. | | Likely both sides did, but there is plenty to suggest that | Amazon isn't a kind or benevolent employer. | imraj96 wrote: | That's the feel I get from reading Brad Stone's "Amazon | Unbound" .There were multiple instances where Bezos appear | devoid of kindness towards employees. | | E.g '...In 2009, Onetto's human resources deputy, David | Niekerk, wrote a paper titled "Respect for People," and | presented it at an S-team meeting. The paper drew from | Toyota's proven Lean ideology and argued for "treating people | fairly," building "mutual trust between managers and | associates," and empowering leaders to inspire employees | rather than act as disciplinarians. Bezos hated it. He not | only railed against it in the meeting but called Niekerk the | following morning to continue the browbeating. Amazon should | never imply that it didn't have respect for people embedded | in the very fabric of how it operated, he said...' | | "...Among the final straws for Onetto was a September 2011 | story in the Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, | Pennsylvania. The paper reported that the company's warehouse | in the Lehigh Valley had gotten so swelteringly hot that | summer that workers were passing out and being transported to | nearby hospitals by ambulances that Amazon had waiting | outside. An ER doctor even called federal regulators to | report an unsafe work environment..." | | "...Before the incident, Onetto had presented a white paper | to the S-team that included a few paragraphs proposing to | install rooftop air-conditioning units in Amazon's | facilities. But according to Niekerk, Bezos bluntly dismissed | the request, citing the cost. After the Morning Call article | drew widespread condemnation, Bezos approved the $52 million | expense, establishing a pattern of making changes only after | he read criticism in the media. But he also criticized Onetto | for not anticipating the crisis. Fuming, Onetto prepared to | remind Bezos of his original proposal. Colleagues begged him | to let it go, but he couldn't. As they anticipated, the | meeting did not go well. Bezos said that as a matter of fact, | he did remember the paper and that it was so poorly written | and ambiguous that no one had understood what course of | action Onetto was recommending. As other S-team members | cringed, Bezos declared that the entire incident was evidence | of what happens when Amazon puts people in top jobs who can't | articulate their ideas clearly and support them with data..." | | "...Bezos didn't want another empathetic business philosopher | to replace Onetto as the head of Amazon's operations; he | sought an uncompromising operator..." | deanCommie wrote: | Sounds like a very one-sided story based on an interview | with Onetto and nobody else...[1] | | > people in top jobs who can't articulate their ideas | clearly and support them with data..." | | That IS a legitimate problem. Through the lens of | Hindsight, and based on an interview with Onetto it's easy | to retell this story as "Bezos was told upfront, had all | the available information upfront, and chose to do nothing | until it was too late." | | But another way to present the same story is "Onetto didn't | articulate the importance of his ideas. Did not present | data to support it. And it led to a catastrophic outcome." | | I'm not saying the latter interpretation is correct. The | truth is somewhere in the middle - probably closer to the | original telling of the story. But the key is that good | ideas are useless unless you can convince the right people | of them. Ultimately, Onetto did not convince Bezos of his | ideas. The blame for that can't rest solely with Bezos, | because clearly there is ample evidence throughout Amazon's | history that people _can_ convince him, and situations like | this are an outlier. | | [1] If his strategy for this book is anything like for his | first: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer- | reviews/R1Q4CQQV1ALSN0/re... | dfxm12 wrote: | _Am I missing something?_ | | Probably how good his publicist is. | | If I'm being _really_ cynical, Jeff is suggesting these | Princeton grads be kind so that he may become clever at their | expense. | prtkgpt wrote: | Interesting! I think compliments given in general to fierce | nerds is a valid idea. General rule of not to be pissing off | people in life. | systemvoltage wrote: | I find this ironic coming out of Jeff Bezos. There are plenty | of examples of people that are exactly opposite of what you | describe as. Steve Jobs - massive jerk, but demanded and | commanded excellence. I don't personally condone this type of | personalities but they exist. Linus Torvalds is another | example. There is much more to it. | yupper32 wrote: | > He tells Bill Burr that he had followed Roy around for a full | day, going to all his restaurants and food trucks, and not once | did Roy raise his voice to his staff. | | Sorry what are you trying to say here? It's admirable or | difficult not to yell at your employees? | klinskyc wrote: | Chefs/Kitchens are stereotypically full of yelling, and | (otherwise) well-regarded chefs definitely live up to that - | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/dining/restaurant- | workers... | yupper32 wrote: | That still doesn't mean that not yelling should receive any | sort of admiration. You don't get bonus points for doing | what should be the bare minimum, regardless of what the | current norms are. | zem wrote: | it's definitely admirable, and given the number of people who | yell i would say it's pretty difficult for a lot of people | too | prtkgpt wrote: | Bill Burr is a badass. Ruthless savage killer with words. But | he's a comic. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | For years I've labeled this nonsense the Midas Delusion: people | get dramatically unusual success with their startup, and then | conclude that they somehow have superior insight into every banal | topic they choose to opine on. They fail to properly understand | the path dependency and sheer luck that played a roll in their | success, nor that the biggest lesson their success should teach | them is humility in the socratic ignorance sense. | | This is a very large number of words to essentially say "when I | was a jerk in the past it was actually virtue." If you don't see | that plainly and transparently I'm not sure what to say to you. | | PG deserves credit for creating YC, but from the narrative in | this essay it's clear he does not even understand how that | happened or his own role in it (assuming he's not being straight | up dishonest in his writing). He's a deal making power player, | nearly a king maker, not a technocratic nerd. No amount of essay | writing will erase that reality. | | I am so very weary of this nonsense being taken seriously as sage | advice. | | We already have too many reductive stereotypes in tech. Let's not | lionize them. | whymauri wrote: | I'm just so tired about people like PG and Scott Aaronson (who | I otherwise respect) talking about nerds all the time. Why is | everything framed in this black-and-white nerds vs. the world | narrative? I'm just going to accept that this essay and others | incessantly talking about "nerds vs jocks"(or the more modern | Gen-Z framing, "chads vs virgins") just isn't for me. | | Sorry for speaking out against The Messiah. | kragen wrote: | PG is not particularly "fierce" in the way he's describing. | He's talking about what he's observed in other people more than | in himself. He's more laid-back and encouraging and positive | than aggressive and competitive. | | > _If you don 't see that plainly and transparently I'm not | sure what to say to you._ | | I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that | you may be mistaken. | | Or, to say it differently, sometimes people might disagree with | you, not because they're stupid, but because they know | something you don't, or because you've made an error. | johnsillings wrote: | I interpret this pretty differently, and PG seems pretty well | positioned to make claims about something like this. I don't | think this is so much about PG's journey as a founder. | | PG has personally mentored hundreds, perhaps thousands of | founders - whatever it is, a sufficiently huge sample size to | identify some traits that correlate with founder success and | happiness. | | Sure, the truth is probably more nebulous than presented here, | but archetypes can be useful. | judofyr wrote: | > PG has personally mentored hundreds, perhaps thousands of | founders - whatever it is, a sufficiently huge sample size to | identify some traits that correlate with founder success and | happiness. | | However, in this article the correlation only goes one way: | He's not saying that most successful founders have these | traits; he's saying that people with these traits can become | successful founders. And the traits he talks about happen to | perfectly match his own traits? | | I'm sorry, but this reads very much like someone looking at | their own past, not the result of an extensive, unbiased | review of successful startup founders. | johnsillings wrote: | > I'm sorry, but this reads very much like someone looking | at their own past | | What makes you say that? | gregwebs wrote: | I agree that even PG at times falls prey to the Midas Delusion. | However, I don't understand this attack on his technical | competence given PG's history of starting starting a successful | startup, introducing modern spam filtering, and deep-diving | into lisp. | psyc wrote: | > but from the narrative in this essay it's clear he does not | even understand how that happened | | I find this accusation very ironic, considering that it started | with writing essays a lot like this one. | junkilo wrote: | I have less problems with stereotyping than with the hum of a | million managers patronizing remarks, like this article from | PG. | | I've grown accustomed to negs' (microaggressions) like these, | but they do a greater injustice to actual genius. Mutual | respect in a team will never be achieved when people treat | others in this manner. | mistersquid wrote: | > I am so very weary of this nonsense being taken seriously as | sage advice. | | Agreed. | | In fact, in the featured article, the author makes reference to | the hard science achievement of Watson and Crick's discovery of | the double helix structure of DNA as follows. | | > And moreover it's clear from the story that Crick and | Watson's fierce nerdiness was integral to their success. Their | independent-mindedness caused them to consider approaches that | most others ignored, their overconfidence allowed them to work | on problems they only half understood (they were literally | described as "clowns" by one eminent insider), and their | impatience and competitiveness got them to the answer ahead of | two other groups that would otherwise have found it within the | next year, if not the next several months. | | Pointing to this as an example of fierceness producing | contrarian success completely ignores the sheer amount of luck | that contributed to the timing of Watson and Crick's discovery. | Given a different roll of the experimental dice, Watson and | Crick's method might have had temporary setbacks that resulted | in their names being relegated to footnotes. | | As luck and effort would have it, two of the most ornery | scientists of the twentieth century will figure as pioneers in | the annals of science history. | 1auralynn wrote: | Also ignores the fact that the "discovery" of the helical | structure of DNA was based on the unpublished work of | Rosalind Franklin and others | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | This. The example is particularly galling when you know | that part of the story. | stephc_int13 wrote: | These days, being a nerd or being "on the spectrum" is mostly | synonymous. | | And now we have this attempt at describing the properties of a | sub-category of "Fierce Nerds". | | In my opinion, this is a poor model, not super useful and with | many potential drawbacks related to | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism. | zzzeek wrote: | > Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, by | devoting yourself to meditation or psychotherapy or something | like that. Maybe that's the right answer for some people. I have | no idea. | | I do, and I think you should invest in these things (not "devote | your life", PG shows his deep ignorance here of these things as | though they are black and white). if you are in the overwhelming | vast majority of "fierce nerds" that does not become a | billionaire, or even if you do, you will invariably have a lot of | problems in social situations and close relationships until some | investment is made in tempering this extreme sort of personality. | | > But it doesn't seem the optimal solution to me. If you're given | a sharp knife, it seems to me better to use it than to blunt its | edge to avoid cutting yourself. | | PG encouraging people to be emotionally unhealthy so that they | can add to his pool of talent for him to profit from. The fierce | nerd, great term btw, is ambitious and brilliant. they can do | _all_ of these things at the same time. It might just cut down | the full on "become a billionaire" mindset, but that's a good | thing, since it's unethical to _be_ a billionaire. | npunt wrote: | Yeah this part was especially disappointing given pg's | influence, and I think this is one of his weaker essays because | the advice is not well thought out. If you have a chip on your | shoulder, are insufferable, can't shut off aggressiveness, etc, | the best thing you can do is _learn when and how to channel | it_. That 's the missing piece. | | I know a lot of people that fit this mold, and for this type of | personality there's nothing that will meaningfully dull the | edge [1]. But, if they learn how to control it, they can avoid | cutting their friends and themselves, and live a much happier | life. | | The last thing this world needs is more emotionally stunted | leaders alone in their suffering. | | [1] This point in particular seemed like pg engaging in pure | speculation, not something based on specific examples | pbhowmic wrote: | With respect, has there been any social science or psychological | studies on the "fierce nerd" and its observed characteristics as | Graham has noted here? | ZephyrBlu wrote: | This essay feels like it really panders to the reader. | | It excuses poor social skills, tells you that you too can become | rich by simply "getting the right answer" and that it's the best | time ever to be a nerd. | | I don't buy it. The only way this makes sense is in _hindsight_ | if you 're massively successful. Otherwise you're just the weird | person who has poor social skills and is obsessed with "solving | problems". | pattusk wrote: | > Most people think of nerds as quiet, diffident people. [...] In | fact some nerds are quite fierce. | | That someone would think nerds are not competitive is, to me, the | strangest thing about this article. Perhaps because I'm one, but | whether it's Magic the gathering, Demoparties, rubics cube | solving, chess, Counterstrike LANs, academia, or any of my tech | jobs, every "nerdy" activity I've ever engaged with has always | been overly competitive. | | The fact that so many open source projects have had to adopt | "code of conducts" is IMO a direct reflection of the fierce | competition that has always been inherent to software | development. Whether it's code quality, clever hacks, | optimization... everything about what we do has a competitive | element. | | Come to think of it, I can't actually think of any nerdy activity | that isn't, in practice, extremely competitive. | NikolaeVarius wrote: | I think its mostly due to the diffusion of what a "nerd" is. | Being a "nerd" or a "geek" used to be a insult, now its trendy | for some reason, and seems to mostly be a term for modern | consumerist culture (buy lots of stuff in some sort of genre | and be a nerd) | munificent wrote: | _> now its trendy for some reason_ | | Culture follows power. Once a bunch of tech nerds became | billionaires in the 1990s, every aspect of that subculture | gained prestige. | watwut wrote: | > Perhaps because I'm one, but whether it's Magic the | gathering, Demoparties, rubics cube solving, chess, | Counterstrike LANs, academia, or any of my tech jobs, every | "nerdy" activity I've ever engaged with has always been overly | competitive. | | I think that is little bit you choosing very competitive things | to engage in. People who were obsessed with start trek for | example did not build competitive societies. And I worked in | multiple teams that did not felt overly competitive to me at | all. | | Through, I would not see Counterstrike nerdy at all. This sort | of games is more of the most stereotypical guy pastime that | exists. | pseudalopex wrote: | LAN parties are nerdy for sure. | bredren wrote: | It is probably because competition is so commonly attributed to | physical athletics. Physical strength or stamina exhibited on | the playing field is competition. | | Spelling bee competitors are seen positively, but also almost | as a joke compared to quarterbacks. Mathlete? A joke in popular | culture. | | There is some evidence that this is changing, but there is also | a lot of bad art. The Social Network, and Steve Jobs the film | portray fierce nerds that basically no one wants to know. | | The actual people? | | Zuck and Dorsey just got through extracting maximum advertising | value from the heart of US democracy. | | Bezos hasn't done fierce nerds any favors with his squeezing of | the lowest paid people in his organization. | | Bill Gates' reputation is headed downhill right now faster than | ever before. | | Tim Cook has real potential. But the jury is still out. We do | not know the calculus involved in compromising privacy values | in China. | | It is going to take a lot more well-known, rich, fierce nerds | that also manage to round out their personality before we see | mainstream positive portrayal and following of competitiveness | in intellectual exercises. | walshemj wrote: | to play devils advocate How much is this Amazon or its just | the way all warehouse US workers are treated? | | I have heard far worse things about non amazon warehouse | workers in the UK Sports Direct for example. | knicholes wrote: | Collecting comic books? Memorizing all the Star Wars and Star | Trek quotes, and reading side fan fictions about each of the | characters? | mycologos wrote: | Eh, pedantry is a form of competitiveness, and all of these | activities seem to foster pedantry (e.g. "that's not part of | this canon!"). | watwut wrote: | That way everything is competitive. Pedantry does not have | to be competitive at all. | mycologos wrote: | I think pedantry is often a way of asserting status ("I | know this thing, you don't"), though I agree it doesn't | intrinsically have to be. | [deleted] | moron4hire wrote: | > The fact that so many open source projects have had to adopt | "code of conducts" is IMO a direct reflection of the fierce | competition that has always been inherent to software | development. | | This is something that has bothered me about a lot of people's | views on competition, whether it's sports or business or | whatever. Being competitive does not have anything to do with | being an asshole. | | I never got into trash-talking during games. It was always just | easier for me to ignore it/use the other person's trash-talking | as their own distraction against me running circles around | them. | | And then in software, Code of Conducts are not covering | anything about how the project interacts with other projects. | They're covering how contributors treat each other within the | project. You're not in competition with your project mates. The | sorts of harassing and belitting behavior that CoCs are | supposed to address (whether they do or not is a different | discussion) comes about from some sort of glory-hog mentality | that is ultimately anti-productive. Insert roll-safe meme: "If | I drive away most of the other contributors, my own efforts | will be a much bigger proportion of the overall whole". | mempko wrote: | Paul Graham, The Fierce Nerd Eater. Feed him fierce nerds. Many | will be chewed and spit out. Some will succeed. Like highly | competitive athletes (even more so, some become billionaires!). | Those spit out need help with mental health. | | Or maybe instead of abusing mentally fragile people, we need | something a bit more healthy. | | We need to make it honorable to fail and those that fail get the | help they need. We need to make the harms as small as possible | and the benefits as broadly shared as possible. But many nerds | trying many things don't need to be fierce. We can have many | experiments with cooperation not competition. We need | decentralization not centralization. | RobRivera wrote: | >[1] To be a nerd is to be socially awkward, and there are two | distinct ways to do that: to be playing the same game as everyone | else, but badly, and to be playing a different game. The smart | nerds are the latter type. | | while I value the observation and concur, I'd like to | semantically edit it vis :%s/socially awkward/behaviorally | atypical/g | | 'awkward' just rubs me as poor word choice. for instance, throw | me into a cs:go chat and I am the norm, complete with trolling, | voices, and other things. | chalst wrote: | > And moreover it's clear from the story that Crick and Watson's | fierce nerdiness was integral to their success. | | I dare say PG's analysis of the psychology of Crick & Watson is | correct, but one should not take only Watson's word for it about | the source of their success. Rosalind Franklin was the first to | observe the double-helix structure, a fact omitted from Watson's | book. | | https://sites.psu.edu/magdaliapassionblog/2018/02/08/watson-... | hazeii wrote: | Very much agree on not taking Watson's word for it. As for | Franklin, it would be nice to think the Nobol committee would | have agonised long and hard had she lived long enough to make | it an issue for them (given at most 3 people can share a nobel, | her early death ruled her out - a fact often ignored). | MyHypatia wrote: | I met a lot of nerds in graduate school. In my experience the | "fierce" nerds weren't smarter or successful than the "nonfierce" | nerds. The fierce nerds were just more insecure and emotionally | immature. They felt more threatened by being surrounded by other | people who might smarter or more successful than them. It | threatened their identity of being uniquely intelligent. They | responded by lashing out. | | It may be that this source of insecurity is a driving force. But | years later, when I see who is more successful I think it is the | nonfierce nerds. The fierce nerds exhausted themselves with petty | disagreements and arbitrary hills to die on. The nonfierce nerds | were able to focus on the hills worth climbing and recruit others | to work with them. | automatic6131 wrote: | As someone who feels like this description of "fierce nerd" | applies to themselves, I'd agree. I'm clever, but not | particularly so. And I'm not particularly successful either. | And my abrasiveness has lost me many friendships and | relationships over the years too. | | Perhaps it's a flattener of the bellcurve of success. If you | only look at the right hand side you will see lots of fierce | nerds. But you aren't seeing the many, many more who are just | ordinary, annoying assholes. | NikolaeVarius wrote: | I heavily disagree. Any fierce nerd ive known all know they are | VERY good at what they do (in terms of some intellectual | persuit) and know how to assert themselves | arduinomancer wrote: | > exhausted themselves with petty disagreements and arbitrary | hills to die on | | In a more broad sense, you can be smart but easily work on the | wrong thing or put your energy into the wrong area. | xondono wrote: | Maybe it's me, but I think "fierce" has thrown a lot of people | off. I would classify what you are describing as what PG terms | "the bitter nerds", not necessarily "fierce". | mcguire wrote: | As Graham says, the difference between fierce and bitter is | success. And given that, in a very competitive environment, | the difference between success and failure is largely luck... | 1cvmask wrote: | I think we should confine this to the primarily US setting (and | maybe parts of the English speaking world like Canada). In most | of the rest of the world being top in academics is expected from | everyone especially to pass standardized tests (the only way in | many countries) to get into universities. The poor outnerd the | rich fiercely so that they can step up. The rich try to nerd so | that they can maintain their privilege. | | There are no secret backdoors (like athletics) for the rich in | the public schooling and university realm that exist in most of | these countries. In essence everyone is a nerd or trying to be a | nerd. | | In the US system, one could make the argument that elite legacies | and the fencing team help the manufactured diversity and lower | the "nerd" (achievement oriented) "toxicity.". | | A study abroad for just a semester would be an eye-opener for | many of us on the normalcy of nerdness in many societies. Most | parents hope their kids become doctors, engineers etc. | walshemj wrote: | And force them into it - even when they don't want to do it or | have no aptitude. | | The only time in a fairly long career I have seen some one | really unsuited to working in tech was case of this. | goldenchrome wrote: | I think what you're describing is undergraduates. In the US we | don't typically say that undergraduates are academics. Usually, | people who are academics will complete a masters and/or PhD | where they do independent study and publish a thesis. | Afterwards, many of them hope to stay in academia for life, or | continue their work as a researcher in a private organization. | | Academics have to go through undergraduate programs too, but | most non-academics end their education with a bachelor's degree | simply to help them get a (typically) non-nerdy job. | | Other countries have students who study harder than Americans, | for sure. As someone with a multi-ethnic background, I find | that students in lesser developed countries have fewer options | in their future so they study hard as a student for the chance | to make it out of poverty. Students in highly developed nations | don't worry as much because they think they have a decent | standard of living waiting for them regardless. | | I don't think that (for example) India has dramatically more | nerds than (for example) America because being a nerd is driven | by your personality. Nerds genuinely enjoy studying <x> in | particular and they find ways to do just that. Nerds can end up | as doctors or engineers but typically nerds aren't primarily | motivated by careers. I think you notice this difference in the | wide prevalence of cheating in poorer countries. Non-nerds feel | the pressure to study but they're not actually interested in | the work so they cheat to get by. Cheating exists in America | too, but there's less risk of falling into poverty so students | who aren't interested in a subject will more often accept a low | passing grade. | [deleted] | helen___keller wrote: | I enjoy reading Paul Graham's musings on nerds / nerdiness, but I | can't help but have difficulty relating. | | Maybe it's a generational thing (born in '92), but Graham often | seems to paint a picture of nerds similar to what you might see | in movies and TV shows depicting the 80s, like the kids in | Stranger Things. | | Even this article, while I can certainly conjure which of my | friends growing up were the "fierce nerd", it still feels a | little disconnected from my reality. | | For example, Graham begins by explaining that the concept of a | fierce nerd is one unknown to the general public. But I'm not | sure I agree. In the era I grew up, there was not so much social | distinction between who is a nerd, but there was a lot of social | distinction for those who were argumentative, or "fierce". In my | experience, everyone knew who the "fierce nerds" were (although | not by that name), because they were known for their awkwardness | and combativeness - not for their nerdiness. Indeed, my own nerdy | friend circle in high school spanned a wide range of popularities | and I would say "fierceness" (or rather, lack thereof) was | probably the best indicator of popularity. | | I see these themes spanning Graham's other musings on nerds, | typically trying to characterize a class of kids who are hated | for their interests and passions, but that's just never been my | experience. I think it's a generational thing. | moolcool wrote: | There's definitely some eccentric people in the field, but a | vast majority people I've met working in tech were hardly the | Poindexter type characterized in these articles | nzmsv wrote: | But do they think of themselves as such? | moolcool wrote: | I don't think so. I saw a lot of that kind of mentality in | university among CS students, but it faded away immediately | once I entered the workforce. | spamizbad wrote: | I think after the dotcom craze, it stopped being "edgy" or | "different" to be passionate/ambitious about technology. If | anything, it's the most straightforward thing to pursue ideas | or business interests with these days, especially if you have a | "fierce" personality. | helen___keller wrote: | To be fair, there's a lot more to the "nerd" archetype than | just technology. But, from my experience, it was not | particularly edgy or differentiating to be passionate about | video games, board games, card games, literature, obscure TV, | fanfics, internet culture, etc. | spamizbad wrote: | Yeah... if anything that seems normal these days? Many | young adults are passionate about at least one of those | things, whereas for Gen-X (Paul's generational cohort) | those were far more underground interests. | shard wrote: | Is the word "geek" no longer used for what you are | describing? Although there a lot of overlap, I thought nerd | referred to strong interests in academic subjects and geek | referred to niche cultural subjects. | helen___keller wrote: | True, I've been conflating the two in all of my posts. As | far as how they were used when I was growing up, the | distinction tended to be moot because they were most | commonly used ironically or jokingly. | SyzygistSix wrote: | That is the problem with using labels rather than talking | about what people are doing or what specific actions they | are taking. | dagw wrote: | _there 's a lot more to the "nerd" archetype than just | technology._ | | I'd probably go as far as saying that technology (or at | least practical technical skills) has become far less | relevant as a 'nerd' marker. | | Many of the self identifying 'nerds' I meet might be avid | technophiles, but it's not like most of them know how to | code better than anybody else (or at all in many cases). | zozbot234 wrote: | Paul Graham himself muses in this post that the main contrast | is between people who are "good at making deals" and those who | are actually competent in some relevant domain. We can see this | shift happening in politics as well. | [deleted] | woeIsPG wrote: | A year ago he was musing how categorizing people into two | groups was too basic. | | Xist versus Yist, and he showed us with some pretty basic | math. | | Now two groups is all we need to understand the world? | dimitrios1 wrote: | The two group categorization is a rhetorical device | commonly used everywhere, throughout the world, to help | drive a point, worldview, or allegory home. In it's correct | form, it is never intended to be a dichotomy (as this would | make it fallacious). | | So perhaps the way to understand it is PG believes people | fit in these two groups, but those are not the _only_ two | groups you fit in, and they are by no means all- | encompassing. | | It's kind of like, you are either a member of team red, or | team blue. You may be a blue type of person, another is a | red, but that by no means defines the entirety of your | being. | | Let's try to have a little more good faith here, when | trying to understand people's musings. The reality is, most | of us here wouldn't have the courage to put our thoughts | and opinions out there on the internet for the whole world | to see, at least not to the extent PG does. | _jal wrote: | Well, we could certainly speak to the difference between | those whose emotional needs are served by sharing their | advice with the world, and those for whom they aren't. | woeIsPG wrote: | I'd take PG more seriously if he actually had to work to | maintain his flock. Folks who struck it rich in the | lottery talk about how suddenly everyone wanted to be | their friend. | | I've been rummaging around the human experience for 41 | years, applying technology to problems at public uni and | big corp, building houses, growing food, hunting, earned | degrees in electrical engineering and math. | | To me that's all there is, to go do directly. | | All this feels like is someone who is riding off that | lottery ticket. | | That is, I'm not seeing an information advantage. Just a | political capital advantage. | | I thought we did away with allegiance to unelected | political agents? | AbrahamParangi wrote: | I am reminded of a fun idea: | | The reason that 4 quadrant divisions of the world seem like | they always work is because any two vectors chosen at | random in a high dimensional space are nearly orthogonal | with high probability. | mcguire wrote: | If one were suitably cynical (and independent-minded, | another of his bugaboos) one might suggest that it's always | been "the kind Paul appeals to" and "the bad people". | bluetomcat wrote: | The article is an attempt of classifying people into neat | groups with certain characteristics, without acknowledging | their true inner personality as a result of the cultural | background and the particular individual qualities. "Nerd" | is one such classification, "fierce" is a sub- | classification. Semantic word-play with little empirical or | anecdotal evidence. | HeyImAlex wrote: | Same, born in 92 and his characterization of being nerdy and | young seems super antiquated. "Nerdy" interests don't make you | a social pariah, they transcend groupings all together; the | star quarterback plays dnd, the head cheerleader builds robots | in her basement, the stigma on having unique or "nerdy" hobbies | and interests is mostly gone. When I think of what PG is | describing, it's characterized by poor social skills and bad | hygiene. | pnathan wrote: | You're a bit young then. I'm a decade older, and see very | clear similarities in my age cohort to what he's describing, | particularly when I was in my early 20s and teens. Which is | interesting, because a _good_ theory of behavior is not | limited that tightly in time. | dugmartin wrote: | I can tell you as someone that graduated college in 92 that | being nerdy as a kid in the 70s/80s it was very different | from that, at least in my area of the world (Midwest USA). | | If you want a not very distorted glimpse of what it was like | watch the movie, "Revenge of the Nerds". | watwut wrote: | In that movie, nerds publicly sexually harass and worst | their enemies girlfriend. Yes, girlfriend mocks him at one | moment, but the response is ridiculous. Are you sure you | want to claim that is how things actually were? | | Edit: in the movie nerds sell secretly taken naked pictures | of said girlfriend to earn money. The movie is old and | ridiculous, but when you start to claim this is how things | were, I want to know wtf was going on in your school. | leetcrew wrote: | stuff like that happened at my high school, and not that | long ago. do you not believe that kind of thing | happens/happened, or do you just not believe that "nerds" | can be the perpetrators? | | these kinds of events can fly under the radar if you | aren't involved. I only know of the situation I'm | thinking of because the girl found out and complained to | the school, which ended up expelling the others involved. | watwut wrote: | I do not think the movie is "a not very distorted glimpse | of what it was like". | | More importantly, if movie is accurate, then nerds are no | better then evil jocks. They are just two groups of | bullies and assholes locked in a fight where everybody | who avoids them is doing something smart. | | In your school, did the girl that got her nudes public | got together with the dude that took them and sold them? | You can peel levels of that movie how much you want, you | won't get meaningfull image of reality. | riversflow wrote: | Where are you (or GP) from? Im also '92. I grew up in | California, but in a rural part of the state. Nerdy interests | absolutely had a stigma. My high school didn't even have a CS | class, no academic decathlon team, and certainly no robotics | club. It was the "best" school in my district, too. | | In challenging or AP classes you had essentially two groups, | the jocks, who were trying to follow a college track, for | which sports were essentially requisite in our district, and | the nerds who just liked learning stuff. The jocks(male and | female) did their homework as a group, complained loudly | about difficult tests/assignments and consistently used their | relative influence to affect their grades. The nerds brought | in their own lessons, asked questions that lead the class off | topic, consistently read the textbook and stayed late to ask | questions rather than negotiate. | | Anyway, thought I'd throw this anecdote out there for | variety. | SyzygistSix wrote: | Things have changed a lot since then though. In a positive | way. | HeyImAlex wrote: | I was in a semi-rural suburb of San Antonio, Texas. We had | a CS class, our academic decathalon team team placed 6th in | state (I was a C but placed 3rd in individual), and I took | a lot of AP science and math so I spent a lot of time with | the top people in our class. It was... a great time. Non-AP | classes were hit or miss, but AP physics C, calculus B/C, | and art history were some of my all time favorite school | experiences. I feel very lucky to have had the time I did. | sharker8 wrote: | If there are star QBs that play DND (somehow I doubt there | actually are that many) this is just proof that DND has gone | mainstream and is therefore being commercialized as nerdy | while actually not nerdy any more. This is known in some | parlances as 'nerd-chic'. | marvin wrote: | I'm just five years older than you and strongly relate to | these descriptions of being a nerd, having academic interests | not shared by young peers and consequently caring very little | for social games. Even in adulthood, unless I carefully | choose who I hang out with. And I'm from Europe, not the US, | so it's not a thing local to the US either. | | If it's truly a generational change, that would be a very | interesting development. Especially if it happened in just | the five years between when we were teenagers - I had no | impression that people a few years younger than me had a | wildly different experience than me. But I could certainly be | mistaken. | | Do you find no familiarity at all in these descriptions? | Meaning some of the following - Being more interested in | reading than gossiping, liking technical projects more than | team sports, being uninterested in popularity contests and | social status games to such a degree that you barely care | about losing them, prioritizing learning over number of | superficial acquaintances, having ideas and thoughts that you | assume to be true but for which you experience lashback for | stating out loud. Potentially experiencing some loneliness or | hostility over this, not necessarily making _that_ part of | your identity, eventually seeking a small number of like- | minded folks... | | Has the world really changed this much? From my perspective, | it seems likely that you're just not the target demographic | for this essay. | SilurianWenlock wrote: | I think that a total disinterest in politicking is why so | many people on here complain about how software engineers | are treated at non tech companies | randcraw wrote: | How old is PG? Born in 1964, so age 56, according to Wiki. | I'm from the same era. Being young and nerdy in the '60s | and '70s was pretty isolating. | | Computers weren't available until the early '80s, and | weren't affordable for another decade, so few kids had easy | access to them, and networks didn't arise until about 1990. | So if you were born before '80-'85, you had a tough time | rallying around tech toys with other nerds/geeks to share | your enlightened world view. | | Stewing nerds in their own juices through adolescence tends | to foment fierceness, which is just another word for not | understanding or tolerating non-nerds very well. With | today's omnipresent social connectivity, isolation should | be less a problem in 2021, since tech content and cool | devices are everywhere today. | | What I would have given to play around with RPi or robots | in my teens... | HeyImAlex wrote: | I knew many people who fit that description, but with even | a little social intelligence it seemed to me their | experiences in highschool were pretty great; they weren't | nerds, they were just smart and studious and many were very | well liked. Our homecoming king was on the academic | decathalon team. Im not saying that smart, introverted | folks with underdeveloped social skills don't exist, just | that they don't exist opposite to bros and jocks and cool | kids (and weren't mercilessly bullied for being | themselves). | | On the other end, nerd-culture had permeated all levels of | the social strata, and my very popular friends who partied | every weekend were also semi-pro halo players and avid | anime fans and didn't hide either of those facts. | | It's only six years, but it could have been wide exposure | to the internet? Also very possible I'm seeing the past | through rose colored glasses. | nitrogen wrote: | There is a pretty wide variance from school to school, | town to town, and state to state/country to country. | Maybe you were in a particularly well-adjusted school, | and other schools and communities are still more | judgmental of non-blessed interests? Or maybe the nerds | remain, but they had different interests from the new | main-stream. I'd hardly call Halo a nerd thing, for | example. | pseudalopex wrote: | Halo isn't a nerd thing. Pro gaming is. | sharker8 wrote: | Maybe it was a well adjusted school, or maybe it was a | school in which achievement culture and college | application stacking and reverse engineering had fully | run their course. After all, 'well rounded' on paper | people get into elite colleges, and people from elite | colleges have a better shot at becoming rich. Nothing | less nerdy than wanting to be rich. | [deleted] | heavyset_go wrote: | > _Maybe it 's a generational thing (born in '92), but Graham | often seems to paint a picture of nerds similar to what you | might see in movies and TV shows depicting the 80s, like the | kids in Stranger Things._ | | Graham's characterizations of nerds reminds me of the "They | don't know" meme[1] guy. | | [1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/kristatorres/they-dont-know- | twitter | version_five wrote: | I see the description he puts forward as essentially fitting | contrarian types. | | Speaking as a contrarian myself, I think the biggest challenge / | trap is it's easy to point out things that are wrong or stupid, | but tougher to do anything positive about it. I think this | equates to the idea about avoiding becoming bitter. | | Also, something he missed, and the curse of the contrarian, is | "the market can stay irrational long enough for you to lose all | your money". This happens all the time with unorthodox ideas, you | can be right but if the mainstream doesn't shift in your favor | before too long, you get ignored, discredited, or worse. I'd | argue this is a bigger problem now, there is more polarization | and a shorter feedback cycle so ideas get shot down and people | fall out of favor much more quickly. Popular but wrong ideas, | once they have "network effects" are much stickier than they once | were. All this is tougher on the contrarian, or "fierce nerd". | wutbrodo wrote: | >This happens all the time with unorthodox ideas, you can be | right but if the mainstream doesn't shift in your favor before | too long, you get ignored, discredited, or worse. I'd argue | this is a bigger problem now, | | If I'm understanding you correctly, he doesn't miss this. He | addresses it directly and comes to the opposite conclusion. | | > The good news is that your fierceness will be a great help in | solving difficult problems. And not just the kind of scientific | and technical problems that nerds have traditionally solved. As | the world progresses, the number of things you can win at by | getting the right answer increases. Recently getting rich | became one of them: 7 of the 8 richest people in America are | now fierce nerds....In the past century we've seen a continuous | transfer of power from dealmakers to technicians -- from the | charismatic to the competent -- and I don't see anything on the | horizon that will end it. | | Im sure all of us see ourselves in this essay, in part because | it's ego catnip. But this part resonated very strongly with me. | I was in my early 20s when I realized how crucial it was for me | to work somewhere where my work was measured as objectively as | possible, which has finally led me to hone in on small/mid- | sized co applied research[1] as the path that fits me. | | It's definitely my perception that the world supports this more | now than it ever used to. You can't ignore people skills | entirely, but the path to success through technical work | instead of management has never been better (eg the IC ladder | at my co easily goes up to $1M/yr). | | > Popular but wrong ideas, once they have "network effects" are | much stickier than they once were. All this is tougher on the | contrarian, or "fierce nerd". | | I'm not convinced that this is __worse_ than it once was. | There's too much heterodoxy, too much pluralism, too low | barriers to entry, and too much opportunity for the quiet | dissenter to build their niche and wait out the irrationality | longer than they could ever have dreamed in the world of 50 or | even 20 years ago. | | [1] driven by well-defined problems instead of product people's | beliefs about the market, or the politics and bureaucracy of | academia. It's actually been very useful ground for me to | practice my political skills, since the impact of rubbing | people the wrong way while figuring it out is heavily mitigated | by the clear and measurable impact of my work. | spamizbad wrote: | The biggest problem facing contrarians is how more people are | people stake out contrarian positions for the express purpose | of building personal brands, despite any genuine conviction. A | contrarian used to be dependably passionate. Now it's just | another tool for audience building. As such, all contrarians | now have an uphill battle of gaining trust because not only do | you have to convince people of your views but you also have to | convince them you're not just some charlatan on their latest | grift. | hazeii wrote: | In the tech world, it also seems to stem from insecurity (I'm | sure many here have held their tongue in meetings when | someone with little experience talks well above their level | of competence in the subject). | wutbrodo wrote: | Fwiw, I have the opposite perspective (maybe because I used | to be one of these people!). All of the people I've worked | with who go out on a limb in technical discussions and | engage with their technical seniors are independent-minded | and intellectually curious. Anybody can reason (albeit not | as well) about a system they're working on, and a good team | is able to foster this type of growth in their more junior | engineers. This includes knowing ones limits, but does not | include being perfect at knowing ones limits from day one. | chmod600 wrote: | I'm not convinced that it's a bigger problem now. In many ways, | the ancient world was much stickier. A king could have a bad | idea, and it could persist through generations before it falls | to better ideas. | FooBarBizBazz wrote: | Are we talking about the Bronze Age, or about the early '00s? | | In the '00s, before the FAANG giants had arisen, I would say | things were more dynamic than they are now, and there was | more room for smaller players. | | If we're talking about the Bronze Age then this is a | different conversation entirely. Then there was more | continuity in each place with the past, but more difference | between different places. | toyg wrote: | I'm not convinced that there was "more room for smaller | players" in the '00s, the mobile switch created a lot of | work for small players. The desktop-web atrophied a bit, | particularly in areas where FAANG expanded, but the web and | IT as a whole continues to grow and create opportunities | for small players to emerge. | FnControlOption wrote: | Regardless of the ancient world, a lot of people today would | say that there's more polarization with the advent of social | media. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | >As the world progresses, the number of things you can win at by | getting the right answer increases. | | Either that or in history there are certain junction points in | which a number of hard problems arise and if you are good at | solving hard problems at that point you are going to do well for | yourself. After which there is a period of consolidation until | the next rise of hard problems. Probably Mr. Graham wouldn't like | to consider that idea though. | stephc_int13 wrote: | So, this is the second installment of Paul Graham's analysis of | the various unwelcoming reactions to the MightyApp announcement a | few weeks ago. | | Especially the last part. | | He is not completely wrong, but also visibly bitter. | waheoo wrote: | Someone made an app / service that remote desktops chrome on a | server to avoid the bloat? | | Instead of using Firefox? | | Was that an April fools? | stephc_int13 wrote: | Nah, this is the future of Internet, according to PG :) | moshmosh wrote: | The punchline was that, IIRC, it's an Electron app. | | Also PG and others were evidently very upset that, aside from | just laughing at the obvious humor of the situation, lots | people expressed wishes--for a bunch of reasons; e.g its most | viable business models all seem to involve spying or other | shady behavior; it's just a bad sign for where the Web is at | so it would be sad to see that become normal--that the | company doesn't do very well. | stephc_int13 wrote: | I was modestly part of the haters, with a few more vocal | and visible guys such as Jonathan Blow or Casey Muratori. | | Fierce Nerds :) | Nasrudith wrote: | The success and bitterness footnote seems very off. In my | experience and observations bitterness seems to be more driven by | "scarring" than current success. A bad situation doesn't help but | a good one is no antidote. | | There is the "one who made it out" archetype for one example. The | kind who left a very unsuccessful community and have even less | sympathy for them than those taking a priveledged background for | granted. | henning wrote: | You can have a good career and a good life without being a macho | asshole bully. Grow up. | shalmanese wrote: | PG gets dunked on on Twitter for defending Antonio Garcia | Martinez but he knows he's right even though everyone is making | fun of him so his natural defense mechanism is to go back and | create an elaborate framework to prove he's right and it's just | that nobody else can see he's right. | | You see, AGM isn't a misanthrope misogynist, he's fierce! He says | the things everyone else is afraid to say and thinks the things | everyone else is too afraid to think because he's an | Unconventional Thinker (TM). Everyone else is simply just too | threatened to acknowledge this and that's why they're bullying | PG. | zozbot234 wrote: | For anyone who isn't currently on Twitter, AGM is the guy who | publicly called Bay Area women "soft, weak and full of $#!+" | and was recently canned from a management role at Apple when | people pointed out that his performance assessments of | subordinates might not be free from bias. Sucks to be him of | course, but what's the alternative? | slibhb wrote: | He wrote a gonzo book full of insensitive over-the-top | passages, like the one you're referencing, in order to sell | books. It worked. He created a literary persona that people | loved or loved to hate. | | It's a huge leap to go from "you wrote x passage" to "you may | be biased against women". If you want to fire someone for | bias, you need evidence of bias, not a theory that someone | might be biased. | pseudalopex wrote: | Did his literary persona harass Heidi Moore?[1] | | [1] https://twitter.com/moorehn/status/1392533753768128513 | mchanson wrote: | You don't actually "need evidence of bias". You can let | someone go if they are not an asset to the company. This | guy certainly wasn't once the amount of annoyance and upset | his words had caused others in the company was pointed out | to management. | slibhb wrote: | It's always lovely to see people who, I'm sure, are | staunch defenders of "workers rights" turn around and say | "yeah just fire anyone who isn't currently an asset to | the company by whatever criterion". | | The difference between "can" and "should" is the entire | moral universe. | flaubere wrote: | I think if you write something which says 'I am biased', | the burden of proof is now on you to show hiring managers | that it was all a bit, rather than on them to demonstrate | that it wasn't. | slibhb wrote: | Well you're wrong. The burden of proof is to show | examples of bias. | westernmostcoy wrote: | This feels like an unreasonable expectation for the | people who would be reporting to him. | | If someone in your future/present management chain wrote | a "I think people like slibhb are bad at this job" | missive somewhere, would you then feel the need to wait | for examples of bias? | wvenable wrote: | You can be a big success either being or pretending to be a | big asshole but what is the argument that this should be | consequence free? | def_true_false wrote: | _> Sucks to be him of course, but what 's the alternative?_ | | Uh, not firing people over Twitter drama? I swear America is | getting more insane by the day. It's even more obvious if you | take a break from social network sites and then come back | after a while. | zozbot234 wrote: | This wasn't even Twitter drama. He wrote that in a | published book, that then went on and on and on demeaning | women in all sorts of "fun" ways (i.e. this isn't a single | throwaway statement that might be misunderstood; the | misogyny is core to what he was saying). His girlfriend is | "special" of course, but he still manages to say very not- | nice things about her. | def_true_false wrote: | The book is like 5 years old... So, why now? Because of | Twitter drama? | | Edit: Well, it seems that, according to Wikipedia, the | impetus might have been an article in tech media (which | seems to mean anti-tech media these days). | rovolo wrote: | He also was hired at Apple in April. ~2k Apple employees | then signed a letter condemning his hiring after excerpts | of his book circulated. This wasn't so much a Twitter mob | resurfacing an old book, as a group of Apple employees | using a published work to criticize the hiring of a new | manager. | | https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/13/tech/apple-antonio-garcia- | mar... | zip1234 wrote: | Why does Apple still sell Beats by Dre if they are taking | a stand against misogyny? | flaubere wrote: | I don't think that Dr Dre gets to evaluate the | performance of Apple employees who are women (or Korean, | etc) simply because they have a JV making headphones. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | To be fair, his comments (and the entire book) is pretty | gonzo, and he sets up a contrast with his romantic partner | based on the theoretical other women of the Bay Area. | | It's a literary device, and it's sad that it's biting him in | the ass (I don't know him, but know lots of people who do, | and they mostly seem to think he's OK). | getpost wrote: | Since pg's essay is of a psychoanalytic nature, I'll reply in a | psychoanalytic frame, for the sake of conversation, not | criticism. [Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely | applies even to psychoanalysts.] | | During the last year or two pg has written more than a few essays | and tweets which appear to be of a defensive nature. People like | him contribute more than other people, it's alright to to be | fierce, can't speak the "truth," etc. | | Whenever there is dichotomous thinking, cognition has moved away | from clarity. If it were me, I'd be asking myself, What is being | defended? (This kind of question can be a multi-decade inquiry.) | | Although most of us are easily baited into self-justification or | self-promotion, I think going down that path it is ultimately a | distraction from doing real work and knowing who you are. | altonzheng wrote: | > Protip: never psychoanalyze anyone! This likely applies even | to psychoanalysts. | | Beside your point, but wondering if you could expand on this. I | have a tendency to do this, and while it's fun, I'm starting to | get the sense that it's a bad habit, possibly because I sense | I'm overly confident on something that might be 100% wrong and | it feels... invasive? | prtkgpt wrote: | I agree on not calling out anything psycho. Not sure about | invasive though. | m_fayer wrote: | I've asked myself the same question. While I don't go as far | as "never", I do it much less than I used to. | | Thinking this way can certainly lead to worthwhile and | actionable insights. But I think any skilled amateur will | overestimate their abilities. Therapists build their insights | on top of huge amounts of biographical information that they | gather in intense, concentrated sessions. Their observational | skills are trained, and they use them to gather as much | information from posture, tone, and expression as they do | from narrative. Even if an amateur's observational skills are | good, they won't have the right context (the session) to | gather that kind of information. So the amateur will be | lacking in both theory, and information - compared to the | pros. And yet the amateur often has more confidence than the | pro - leaping at the first theory that "clicks", not | considering alternatives, and with an unwillingness to | revise. | | The next pitfall comes if/when you decide to act on your | insights. And once you have those insights, it becomes | tempting to act on them. Then, when you do act, you're almost | by definition being manipulative. Your behavior towards the | other person is no longer a straightforward reaction to what | they're sending your way, but is instead following an agenda | constructed to fit a diagnosis that is unknown to them. If | they knew what you were up to, they would most likely object, | even if your agenda was "for their own good." At best it's | paternalistic. Therapists do act on their insights in opaque | ways (and often screw up despite all their training) but the | particulars of the patient-therapist relationship resolve the | ethical violations that us civilians are likely to stumble | into. | | So, I would say that the tendency to psychoanalyze needs to | come with heaps of humility, openness to revision, and a | reluctance to act on the resulting insights in 9 out of 10 | cases. | noumenized wrote: | "Therapists build their insights on top of huge amounts of | biographical information that they gather in intense, | concentrated sessions." | | Agreed with all of your post, I think this is the most | crucial point here. Genuine, skilled psychoanalysis is less | about being some master discerner of psychological motives, | and instead being very good at giving the subject of | analysis a lot of psychological safety to express their | innermost thoughts and most personal life experiences. | Unless you build that kind of (responsible and | professional) intimacy for lack of a better term, you're | largely just projecting imo. | kixiQu wrote: | I think you have to detach to get value out of it -- not | "what's the reason this person is like this" but "what are | three different mechanisms by which a person might become | like this". A bit like how a history student of a certain | level isn't asked "why did WWI happen" but "contrast the | materialist and post-revisionist explanations for the origins | of WWI". | noumenized wrote: | Not OP, but as someone who holds this view (who also used to | engage in the practice): a lot of armchair psychoanalysis is | based less on a genuine understanding of the other person's | life and circumstances, and more on the assumption of what | their life and circumstances must be combined with a surface- | level knowledge of psychoanalytic practice. | | Armchair psychoanalysis ostensibly seeks to understand the | subject of analysis, but rarely makes the effort to first | understand the subject on their terms or in a way where they | can articulate their own experience; instead, someone usually | has their presumptive conclusion about the subject in mind | ("they're just doing this because they haven't gotten over | being bullied as a kid" or whatever), and tries to wrangle | the limited information they have about that person into | their conclusion. | darepublic wrote: | I see what you are saying. I mean the topics do have something | of a defensive nature. Though arguably PG could just be making | a valid point on topics that are contentious and widely | misunderstood | bumby wrote: | > _Whenever there is dichotomous thinking, cognition has moved | away from clarity._ | | Can you expand on this? | getpost wrote: | This is a deep topic worthy of an essay, the kind of essay pg | might write! The concise reply is, when you catch yourself in | dichotomous thinking, you should assume you have | misunderstood or oversimplified. | | Sometimes you have to go with your misunderstanding or | oversimplification to make a decision or to make progress, | but keep in mind you are doing so based on beliefs which are | unlikely to correspond to reality. | | It's striking that so many mental health difficulties are | characterized by dichotomous thinking. [1] | | Rationality itself can be profitably critiqued at the meta- | level.[2] So, don't be an asshole, unless you need to be. Do | you see the world as consisting of assholes and non-assholes? | How does that feel? What are the advantages of that view? | What are the disadvantages? Is considering that question | worth your time? | | [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/she-comes-long- | way-b... | | [2] https://metarationality.com/introduction | | EDIT: Fixed link, spacing | [deleted] | getpost wrote: | Clarity is about seeing how things are, not how you've chosen | to divide things up. | | (I added this as an edit to my other reply, but it seems the | edit is lost.) | eloff wrote: | Do you think he's defending himself, or the entrepreneurs he | funds, befriends and admires? | pseudalopex wrote: | I think he perceives criticism of them as criticism of him. | breck wrote: | I'm speculating, but perhaps with all the YC IPOs in the past | year they are now liquid billionaires, and he is thinking it | through, out loud, via essays, which is how he figured out | things from Lisp to startups to investing? | whatshisface wrote: | PG, if you asked him, might describe himself as defending | people who do real work from a larger culture that all too | often prioritizes serving the status quo over accomplishing the | goals that the status quo was established to accomplish. One | example of that would be SpaceX doing the launch vehicle design | work that the NASA/Boeing/Big Government Contractor complex was | established to do. At the same time, SpaceX works its people | extremely hard and is lead by a billionaire with abnormally | unsophisticated PR. So there you have cultural and business | forces set against a new company that has nothing going for it | except the fact that it actually does stuff. Actually doing | stuff is a surprisingly small advantage in a world that is | interested in so many other qualities. | ziziyO wrote: | Why can't we have both? A job where we can "actually do | stuff" without getting mistreated by psychotic billionaires. | There's a lack of compassion in tech. | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | Maybe there is something wrong with our society that tends | to cause organizational dysfunction and make it hard to do | stuff. Perhaps it takes someone seriously atypical (maybe a | little psychotic) to manage to build an institution that | can actually accomplish things at scale in this | environment. If there are 10000 well-adjusted bureaucrats | standing between you and your aspiration to build electric | cars and rockets, it will take some serious force of | personality (a personality disorder?) to defy all of them. | elteto wrote: | Assuming you are in the US: I'd say that, if anything, tech | is a fantastic little bubble when compared to the rest of | corporate America. We, the "nerds", exert a level of | control over our work/careers that is unparalleled in other | industries. We have plenty of opportunities available if we | dislike our current situation. Tech companies provide | excellent benefits and compensation. Maybe only doctors | have the same level of mobility/compensation. | | You will always be mistreated by someone if you work for a | corporation. We have it easier than almost everybody else, | really. | b3morales wrote: | Speaking as someone who has come to my tech career later | in life (and after another career), this is absolutely | correct. All industries have their problems: software is | no exception, there are things that could be better. | There are bad days, even bad months. | | But at nearly 6 years in I still wake up every day amazed | that I get paid as much as I do to do this thing that I | really enjoy. With overall reasonable hours. Without | having to deal with the general public. Considered an | asset despite the fact that I cost so much and write | bugs. And with people banging on my door constantly to | get me to work for them. I feel extremely fortunate. | jvanderbot wrote: | I would like people to stop believing that this is a real | example, at least around here (I'm close to a few NASA | missions). SpaceX was selected by NASA for some lunar lift | services, and everyone I know is quite excited by US's | expanding lift / launch capabilities. I think that I and | those around me exist in these roles to serve the needs of | the nation and priorities of congress and the scientific | community, and will use any tools at our disposal to do so. | | Other companies may fight this, sure, but stop throwing NASA | (an exploration agency) in with those who would benefit from | suppressing SpaceX. | | Personal opinion. | whatshisface wrote: | SpaceX + vendor-agnostic NASA contracts are a world away | from the cost-plus launch vehicle design projects with | heavy involvement from NASA engineers that got us to the | moon, built the ISS, and also spent a long time going | nowhere once the corruption caught up with the system. | shmageggy wrote: | I don't see the point in inventing some arbitrary social | category, when it's only backed by what seems like little more | than speculative drivel. | | > _Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, | by devoting yourself to meditation..._ | | Huh? Lots of highly successful and effective people (who he would | probably call fierce) cite meditation as a crucial tool for | increasing their focus and mental discipline. This is just a | bizarre take. | fallat wrote: | Awww did someone get their feelings hurt? | | The more this Paul Graham person writes the more I realize they | are just another regular person. | Grustaf wrote: | Why would you use "they" when talking about someone you know | for sure is a man? Aren't you supposed to "respect peoples' | pronouns"? | dragonwriter wrote: | Knowing that someone is a man doesn't mean knowing their | pronouns; gender identity and pronoun preference are | correlated but not 1:1 tied. It is somewhat inconvenient that | the long traditional use of "they" for semantically singular | cases where the correct pronoun is unknown has become blurred | by "they/their/them" becoming a reasonably common preferred | pronoun (especially among the nonbinary but also among some | who identify as men or women), so its use to avoid the risk | of an incorrect specific pronoun can be misread. | Grustaf wrote: | Has PG, or anyone else, ever referred to him as anything | but a "he"? Since 99.9% of men refer to themselves as men, | that would seem like a useful default. | postit wrote: | Most of us doing tech for more than 20 years grew up as a fierce | award nerd. | | Them somewhere aroud early 2010s being a nerd was the new cool | and paid off. Tech teams had more non-nerd competent engineers, | and suddenly nerds are a target for complains and a bad example | of teamwork. | nashashmi wrote: | > The bad news is that if it's not exercised, your fierceness | will turn to bitterness, and you will become an intellectual | playground bully: the grumpy sysadmin, the forum troll, the | hater, the shooter down of new ideas. | | Can't stress this enough. Some reach for what others have. Others | reach for what they need but get trolled into thinking they have | nothing and start reaching for what others have. | | This is the equation for misery. And the opposite is the equation | for success. But I admit this is just one dimension and datum on | the look of life. | AS_of wrote: | This was not too bad considering PGs latest writings, which have | been various degrees of underwhelming and tone deaf. This is | like, at least, a rally call or something. But I'm just a bitter | forum troll so... | fungiblecog wrote: | I think the problem with Paul Graham's writing is that it always | comes down to talking about getting rich. | | A lot of people - including very intelligent people - have other | things they'd rather do than play such a stupid game. | Unfortunately the world is pushing everyone in that direction | which will create a lot of bitterness because most people | necessarily lose that game. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | I still fail to understand how we've organised society so that | the losers of a particular game _don 't eat_. It's virtually | decoupled from helping other people with stuff (which is what | the economy purports to represent); you have old money, and | nth-generation new money, and people working two jobs to afford | rent. | | "Invest" in the stock market in X way, and you can stop working | earlier - that is, if you had enough _savings_ to do so. | Bukhmanizer wrote: | A lot of this essay feels a lot like cold reading of tech | workers. PG brings up the 8 richest people in America, but if you | look at the top like 10-15, the VAST majority are tech CEOs. So | that's who we're talking about here. | | First, "independent-mindedness". I'm guessing that if you survey | people, approximately 95% of people would consider themselves | "independent-minded". | | Then he talks about social awkwardness and intelligence. I would | say about 90% of tech workers would consider themselves both of | those things. | | And competitiveness? Probably any CEO could be considered | somewhat competitive. Just to succeed at that scale probably | requires some competitiveness. | nindalf wrote: | Almost anyone reading this would think "oh wow, he's talking | about me!" Like you point out, his criteria and statements are | vague enough that anyone would think it applies to them. Such | only need to follow PG's advice - be "fierce", ie, be an | asshole to people to get ahead. | whatshisface wrote: | Nobody is going to change their basic personality because of | an essay they read online. I doubt it's even possible. | thisisbrians wrote: | I wouldn't quite equate "be fierce" with "be an asshole". My | take: PG is suggesting that smart people who are formidable | and stick to their guns are more likely to change the course | of things. If you are overly 'kind' and allow all of your | good ideas to be dismissed by others, you aren't going to be | as successful. This doesn't mean you have to intentionally | hurt others in the process. It could mean you take your | ferocity and point it at starting your own company because | you believe you have a better way and are tired of trying to | convince others to your way of thinking. | | Edit: a word. | betageek wrote: | PG essays === Tech Horoscopes | moolcool wrote: | This article reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer goes | to college and expects it to be exactly like Animal House and | Revenge of the Nerds. | [deleted] | MikeTaylor wrote: | > In the past century we've seen a continuous transfer of power | from dealmakers to technicians -- from the charismatic to the | competent | | ... writes a man who was evidently not paying attention to the US | presidential election of 2016 or the UK Conservative Party | leadership election of 2019. | Grustaf wrote: | > In ordinary social situations they are -- as quiet and | diffident as the star quarterback would be if he found himself in | the middle of a physics symposium | | I don't think a QB is ever "diffident". I bet he'd feel a lot | more confident there than the nerd on a football field, or really | anywhere. | mikekij wrote: | Random question about PaulGraham.com: I noticed that the header | of his blog posts are always images; not text. e.g. "fierce- | nerds-1.gif". Does anyone have any idea why he renders the title | as an image? And do we think this happens programmatically? Or is | he firing up ImageMagick every time he posts? | Communitivity wrote: | Expertise with people, technology, and finances could be view as | three legs of a startup. Each has their own form of fierceness. | As a casual observer, it seems to me that the ideal founder | formula is a fierce networker/marketer, a fierce nerd, and a | fierce businessperson. | mikece wrote: | I can't help thinking that "fierce nerd" and Asperger syndrome go | together. There will be some random Steve Jobs assholes as well | but I think they are the exception. | vbsteven wrote: | Exactly my thoughts as well. Almost all fierce nerd traits PG | describes are signs typically seen in Asperger/ASD/Gifted. I | recognise myself in the article, as well as a number of my | friends/colleagues who are all diagnosed with one or more of | the above. | langitbiru wrote: | > There has never been a better time to be a nerd. In the past | century we've seen a continuous transfer of power from dealmakers | to technicians -- from the charismatic to the competent | | What happens if a nerd learns how to be charismatic? It's a | winning combo, I guess. | javajosh wrote: | The first rush of comments are all negative, mostly of the _ad | hominem_ sort, accusing PG of publicly psychoanalyzing himself. | And yet, I really liked the essay because it reads like a | lifeline to those who doubt themselves, perhaps profoundly. To PG | the same qualities that alienate a "fierce nerd" in so many | contexts are precisely the same qualities that could lead to | success (even dominance) in other contexts. | | The useful follow on to this essay, I would think, is to give a | list, as long as possible, of places where "fierce nerds" are | wanted, demanded, needed - both well-known institutions and | startups. | | Another useful follow up would be to give better advice about | achieving harmony. Everyone deserves peace; to put it another | way, progress that requires a human to sacrifice love isn't worth | making. | moolcool wrote: | >The useful follow on to this essay, I would think, is to give | a list, as long as possible, of places where "fierce nerds" are | wanted, demanded, needed - both well-known institutions and | startups. | | "How to Deal with Difficult People on Software Projects" is a | pretty good read in this vain | https://neilonsoftware.com/difficult-people-on-software-proj... | Bukhmanizer wrote: | > And yet, I really liked the essay because it reads like a | lifeline to those who doubt themselves, perhaps profoundly | | Do they? I mean one of the define characteristics is an | overconfidence in themselves. | | I think PG is trying to justify some kind of assholish | behaviour in his past by reframing it as a virtue. | | Really, I think the "fierceness" is incidental. Do immensely | successful people need to be somewhat competitive? Sure. Do | they have to interrupt everyone, lack social awareness, etc? | Probably not. | sangnoir wrote: | > I think PG is trying to justify some kind of assholish | behaviour in his past by reframing it as a virtue. | | I couldn't help but read part of it as a response | to/rationalization of the recent pushback he (and other | "fierce nerds") have been receiving lately...the former | underdogs are now the establishment. | | _The bad news is that if it 's not exercised, your | fierceness will turn to bitterness, and you will become an | intellectual playground bully: the grumpy sysadmin, the forum | troll, the hater, the shooter down of new ideas._ | ryandrake wrote: | I think "shooter down of new ideas" is getting unfairly | lumped in with those other actually-bad traits. If there's | one thing a lot of "idea guys" and optimistic entrepreneurs | tend to lack and need, it's a skeptical partner who keeps | them grounded in reality. Someone who is experienced, seen | it all, constructively critical. Someone who will say "Wait | a minute, this was tried in the '80s, and it won't work. | Maybe try this instead." If you lump "people who push-back" | in with haters and trolls, you're going to end up | surrounded by yes-men. | | The tech landscape is littered with failed projects that | could have been stopped early if the idea person had a | sounding board that keep him/her realistic. | abnry wrote: | Yes, it is true that new ideas need criticism. However, | if one is almost always critical of new ideas, especially | ones that push beyond your wheelhouse, then that is a | problem because you'll never innovate. PG lumps it with | haters and trolls because that's what being a negative | person entails. The point is the extremity. There is | nothing wrong with being a hater, proportionately, as you | can only love something if you hate its opposite. | flaubere wrote: | Absolutely agree. The best and most creative environments | I have worked in have been full of people who you could | turn to and say "What if we did X?", and they would | immediately come up with reasons that X would fail or be | impossible. If your idea hadn't been absolutely | annihilated after 5 or 10 minutes of this, it was | probably pretty decent. | tchalla wrote: | > I think PG is trying to justify some kind of assholish | behaviour in his past by reframing it as a virtue. | | I wonder how much Bill Gates triggered this write up. | microtherion wrote: | PG also recently came to the defense of Antonio Garcia | Martinez: | | https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1392756490138791937 | | It appears he sees himself as the shop steward for the | Silicon Valley Asshole Union. | dvfjsdhgfv wrote: | If we really want to go in this direction and criticize | other people calling famous tech businessmen assholes, at | least give credit where it's due - Jobs deserves this much | more than Gates. Gates _documented_ unethical behavior was | mostly against other companies, not so much individuals, | with a few notable exceptions. | kragen wrote: | Wozniak was the nerd. Jobs was just a manipulator. As a | nerd he never progressed beyond assembling circuit | boards. | pwinnski wrote: | I doubt Jobs--who died nearly ten years ago--was as | likely a trigger for this essay as Gates, who is | currently in the daily news due to his alleged bad | behavior. | themacguffinman wrote: | On the other hand, Gates' recently reported "bad | behavior" seems to be largely stuff like infidelity and | inappropriate sexual relationships which is not what the | essay touches on at all. Jobs' assholery is exactly | business & engineering related in the way that PG is | talking about. | GavinMcG wrote: | Overconfidence and self-doubt can go hand-in-hand: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_narcissism | serverholic wrote: | Wow this describes me to a T. My parents were constantly | praising me and making me feel like a genius. Yet in the | real world I'd estimate I'm around 120 IQ. So definitely | not genius level. | | It's almost like a positive form of gaslighting which | unfortunately still has negative consequences like you've | pointed out. | Bukhmanizer wrote: | Is there a clear definition of self-doubt that doesn't | overlap with underconfidence? Because if the terms we're | using are so broad that a person can both be described as | overconfident and underconfident, then as I say elsewhere | this just looks like cold reading. | SyzygistSix wrote: | It's the difference between feeling and acting. A person | can feel a lack of confidence and feel doubt and still | act confident or overconfident. | | Lots of people, like artists, visionaries, and weirdos | who make strides to live a unique life have to act | confidently to get to that life yet many also have a lot | of self doubt. They just do the brave thing to move ahead | with their vision even though it could likely end in | failure. For many it does, whether they are remembered | posthumously or not. | ModernMech wrote: | > A person can feel a lack of confidence and feel doubt | and still act confident or overconfident. | | This is essentially the pathology of a narcissist. | playpause wrote: | People are really complex systems, they don't just have | one emotion, even at one time. I know several people who | seem to swing between overconfidence and self doubt, | sometimes very suddenly. Maybe some will eventually | settle in the middle. But if someone has something in | their psyche that just keeps pushing them back into an | overconfident mindset, then it's hard to see how they | _wouldn't_ also experience regular injections of | humiliation leading to growing self doubts over time. | username90 wrote: | Everyone who says they suffer from impostor syndrome are | both overconfident and underconfident, unless they are | lying. | Bukhmanizer wrote: | I'm not saying you can't be both under- and | overconfident. I'm saying that if you're using terms so | broad and vague, you could probably describe anyone that | way. | kevmo314 wrote: | Maybe their fierceness has turned into bitterness and they've | turned into an intellectual playground bully. | mcguire wrote: | Or perhaps they're too independently minded, but not in the | right way. | commandlinefan wrote: | > The first rush of comments are all negative, mostly of the ad | hominem sort | | Happens on every PG post. | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | Any fierce person can be overconfident, productive, and a giant | douchebag. With fierceness, you can "win" even if you're stupid. | (Recent worldwide national political appointees make this a | fact.) The "Nerd" part just means this fierce person lacks social | awareness. | | It's good to be fierce and intelligent, but it's really important | to be compassionate and empathetic too. IQ without EQ is wealth | without health. If you truly want to enjoy life, if you don't | want to make other people miserable, and you would like other | people to raise you up in good company, you need to work on how | you treat and think about other people. For nerds I think this is | as difficult a problem to solve as any other they could attempt. | eggbrain wrote: | For me, as much as I am competitive, I feel like it only drives | me when the odds of what I am competing for feel somewhat fair. | | To give an example, a lot of my friends have been into Magic the | Gathering for many years, and I recently tried to get into it | myself, but the asymmetric gaps were too large for me to enjoy it | -- they had way more knowledge, more cards, had spent more money, | and had more time to spend playing outside of work hours, | resulting in me getting crushed again and again. | | There was two options I could take: 1) Try to catch up on years | of accumulated knowledge, or 2) Change tactics, and see if | instead I could play a game we all were more similarly matched | with. I chose the latter. | | In entrepreneurship, I feel like it's no different. For me, | fighting a large startup on common ground is a losing game -- | they have the money, the manpower, the knowledge, the social | proof, and more. As competitive as I am, and as hard as I push, | it's not going to be a fair fight to begin with. So instead, it's | about me finding a battlefield where the odds change more in my | favor -- perhaps something that doesn't scale, something I have | innate knowledge in, etc. | | Not sure if that lines up perfectly with what PG is saying here, | but it's worked well for me. | ronyeh wrote: | [1] To be a nerd is to be socially awkward, and there are two | distinct ways to do that: to be playing the same game as | everyone else, but badly, and to be playing a different game. | The smart nerds are the latter type. | | PG probably agrees with you, as that's the first footnote from | his article above. | eggbrain wrote: | D'oh, this is what I get for not reading the footnotes | closely! | swinnipeg wrote: | "The best way to beat Tiger Woods is to play him at something | other than golf." | | I think I am paraphrasing Buffett here, this can apply to so | many career/business decisions. | bradleyjg wrote: | Why do we need to _reclaim_ nerd? A lot of us have painful | memories associated with the term, can we just let it fade into | well deserved obscurity? | shohpanhandler wrote: | Plus it's not as though people don't still make fun of nerds. | They just don't throw the term itself around anymore. Twitter | (not that we should be paying any attention to the thought pit | anyway) is rife with jabs at smart/technical people and some of | our more common idiosyncrasies. | Der_Einzige wrote: | The butthurt at our (collective) success is also obvious from | a wide variety of sources. My gun-loving red state relatives | have impressed upon me multiple times about how the high pay | that engineers get and general cushy life that they get is | really bad for society and that eventually when the power | turns off due to a solar flare we will be essentially their | slaves. There's even a comic of this exact scenario that gets | posted all the time on 4chan which I cannot for the life of | me find but documents this exact scenario happening. | | It really sucks I guess to make 45K fixing tractors all day | with demanding managers hearing all about how the person half | your age is making 4x what you make by writing yaml files | with basically no stress and good WLB. | | The right answer to "how do I stop getting exploited" for | many is unironically "learn to code" (yes, including to many | of those coal miners in WV), but they HATE when you say this. | Kinda sad too since most of the hate is from people that | never even tried it. They seethe at our success, and would | take it away from us in a heartbeat if ever given the chance. | Just look at the culture war being waged against "big tech" | right now. | fouric wrote: | Because others of us have _good_ memories associated with the | term. | | Given the choice between having more language available to use | or less, I don't see a reason to want less. | bradleyjg wrote: | Do you think young African-Americans lucky enough to have | never had the N word used as racial epithet against them | ought to ignore other parts of the community that tell them | this is a very painful term and they should not throw it | around causally? | | What right do you have to reclaim something that was never a | source of harm for you to begin with? Doesn't that make you | just another set of bullies metaphorically shoving people | into lockers? | joshuamorton wrote: | No. Generational reclamation of words is fairly common. The | best examples aren't actually race (comparing how "nerd" | and the n-word are reclaimed doesn't really work, for | reasons that should be obvious in that I'm censoring one). | | On the other hand, within the LGBT community, tons of terms | have been fully or partially reclaimed. Most notably | "queer". That also isn't without controversy (and queer has | been in the process of reclamation for longer than "nerd" | has been an insult in its current context), but almost no | one seems to think that by self-identifying as something | (in good faith) you're bullying someone else. | [deleted] | femiagbabiaka wrote: | Very good. One thing I'm surprised wasn't mentioned (or at least | I didn't catch on the first read) -- IMO, on average, this kind | of person will have much better experiences on the bitterness to | invigoration spectrum at startups vs. bigco. | lvs wrote: | Is this not just a broad ad hominem against people with whom this | venture capitalist has had prior disagreements? If only you | choose to do risky things that are (inexplicably in many cases) | capital intensive -- i.e. engage investors in ways good for them | -- then you will be a good nerd. Investors will make you rich. | Everyone will be happy. But if you don't engage investors, then | you will become a bad nerd! Bad nerd! Bad! | question000 wrote: | This feels weirdly like someone working out emotional issues by | describing them in an emotionally distant "rational" way. Like | what does this have to do with anything other then the thoughts | in Paul Grahams head? | mdorazio wrote: | Nothing. PG's recent writing has increasingly been for no one | other than PG, which is fine. I just wish it didn't always get | upvoted on HN. | s_kilk wrote: | It's a classic refrain in a petty "revenge of the nerds" | mindset. All the "haters" are wrong, unconditionally, and | acting like an asshole is excused as being very special and | brave. | | It's a siege mentality designed to shore up one's sense of | superiority, and ensure that one doesn't need to do very much | soul-searching. | Edman274 wrote: | When you have to justify to yourself why you're a millionaire | or a billionaire and "dumb luck, some modicum of skill, and | being first" isn't a satisfying reason, you have to rationalize | to yourself that you deserve it because you've got something | that those ivory-tower eggheads and non-nerdy simpletons don't. | And that thing is fierceness. | | I've never seen a blog post more worthy of a good old fashioned | fisking. I mean come on - "confidence is a self-fullfilling | prophecy" - are we being serious here? It's only self- | fulfilling because of survivorship bias. Maybe he's running | with a crew of super successful founders and that's true, but | from my point of view, I remember the dudes at my place of work | that could very confidently talk my ear off about something | that they half-understood (or very confidently describe an | unworkable solution to a problem) and then got fired a month | later because they weren't productive enough to meet even the | super-low requirements of software development at a car | insurance company. It's easy to spin narratives about | confidence and restlessness and intelligence when you've | surrounded yourself with the winners. Less visible are the | people who go all-in on a fintech startup and end up broke a | year later. Those people have all the same traits and end up in | the same boat as all the other un-fierce nerds. | typon wrote: | What are personal blogs for? | TechBro8615 wrote: | Fierce nerds read this and say "that's totally me!" | oreally wrote: | That's a pretty good description, and many of the posts here are | about fierce nerds with petty issues which I think the essay is | not about. | | I've grown into that fierce nerd. Being in forced conscription in | my 20s has made me wary of the 'wait to rush for nothing | meaningful' culture. Then I joined companies and it feels like a | ton of my time is wasted by processes, norms and ideologies. I | did break out once to try and make a business but that hasn't | worked out. So now I'm in employment just to earn/invest to have | enough for a certain level of financial independence and I'm | feeling that bitterness rise up again. | | I'm very likely destined to burn out of industries/companies that | aren't my own quickly, and this could cascade into bad looking | resumes. It feels like a do or die situation sometimes. | ziggus wrote: | "...a ton of my time is wasted by processes, norms and | ideologies." | | So, all the stuff that helps society function? | oreally wrote: | Have you done mine prodding drills over 50 square meter | fields? Sure it'll fulfill some superior's KPI but it's not | very useful nowadays with all that modern military equipment. | A good majority of these prescribed processes, norms and | ideologies just aren't useful in the individual's growth. | jfengel wrote: | Sounds like an excellent analogy: "We've been doing all | these mine-detecting drills, but nobody ever gets blown up. | We should stop doing mine-detecting drills." It's wise to | take advantage of changes, but it's also wise to ensure | that you're not taking down Chesterton's Fence[1] without | knowing why the fence was put up. | | Some processes, norms, and ideologies exist for reasons | that aren't obvious. It's often not difficult to find | somebody to explain them to you, but you have to be | prepared to genuinely listen to the answer. It's easy to be | impatient when you see them as getting in your way, and the | first explanation you get may not actually be a very good | one. (If you don't know why the fence was put up there's a | good chance others won't either -- but that doesn't mean | that an unsatisfactory explanation implies that there isn't | a satisfactory one.) | | That does slow you down, and that's hard when you're not | the one who gets harmed by violating those norms, | processes, and ideologies. But that doesn't mean nobody | gets hurt, and such harms have a way of making society | around you worse though mechanisms you don't see -- even | though they do end up affecting you, too, eventually. | | [1] https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Chesterton%27s_Fence | marchenko wrote: | Joel Spolsky used the dilemma of being ambushed on a | minefield (to make a different and almost orthogonal | point) in a way that illustrates how norms that are not | individually useful -- or even rational -- can be | essential for group survival. | [1](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/08/08/the- | command-and-co...) | jfengel wrote: | A ton of _his_ time his wasted by other people trying not to | waste _their_ time. If we all just agreed to do everything | his way, it would be a huge time saver... for him. | sangnoir wrote: | _He who pays the piper calls the tune_ - if he 's not doing | what he's paid for, he'll soon find himself not being paid | for. | dang wrote: | " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation | of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to | criticize. Assume good faith._" | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | sidlls wrote: | There are plenty of people in the tech industry who abhor | _any_ process, norm, or ideology (most often, especially if | it's not one _they_ created). I don't think it's | uncharitable to simply take the comment at its word, and | adding an implied "excess," "unnecessary," or whatever | constructs a different--and more ambiguous--argument to | comment on. | prosaic-hacker wrote: | Being an ordinary success is fine too. Been there, done that, | more than once. Being fierce worked sometime and not others. | Found the sweet spot in some companies, fired in others. | Moderate success as a consultant (made a living for 7 years), | failed at other business(lost a years salary). Learned how to | write resumes out of that pastiche so I am still working on | nerd stuff 3/4 time, enough to save money, leaving me time to | play with other fun nerd stuff. | | Heard a "rockstar" lamenting he would never win Grammy because | of his niche but was not unsatisfied with the 60 year arc of | his career. | | Retrospectively, I see I could have been a contender several | time but me then (brash) nor me now (wiser, possibly) could | have been capable of elevating myself from a working nerd to a | famous rich nerd. | passivate wrote: | >Then I joined companies and it feels like a ton of my time is | wasted by processes, norms and ideologies. | | I work in biotech and I smiled when I read this. The entirety | of our business relies on people following processes, norms and | ideologies. Once the "thinking" stage is done - the rules and | framework are now in-place. You need to trust them and follow | through to produce results for the company. | | In tech so many nerds are constantly sharpening their tools or | creating new ones and chasing some mythical 'perfection' that | they lose sight of the results - the thing that matters the | most to the company. Being entirely result oriented has changed | my outlook completely, and made me a happier person. I am much | more respectful towards people who produce actual results using | any tools rather than judging someone who uses Java or Perl or | whatever other language/tool that is not the flavor of the | month. And working in biotech has made me value long term | reliability over everything else. The single most thing that is | important to me is that the tool be reliable and ready for me | to use to produce results. | slibhb wrote: | In the essay, nerds are identified as socially awkward, not | necessarily quiet but out of their element in social situations. | And sure, Crick rubbed people the wrong way, because he was loud | and overly-sociable. But wasn't he, by Watson's account, | absolutely in his element in social situations? Isn't the main | complaint about Crick the fact that he was too loud (especially | his laugh), too willing to solve other people's problems? | | And was Watson a nerd at all? I think the magic of The Double | Helix is that Watson tells the truth (or "his truth") to a fault. | That's necessary for good biography and it's very rare but I | don't get the sense that Watson is unaware of what he's doing or | what the consequences will be. It seems like a conscious decision | to write down everything he thinks and, as they say, publish and | be damned. | | Anyway, I think the essay is making a semantic error here by | identifying the usual heroes (odd men out, innovators, people who | refuse to go along, people who do their own thing) as nerds. | There's no doubt that going against the grain is almost a | prerequisite for being an admirable person and also for being | someone who changes the world. I just don't see that as | nerdiness. | tomp wrote: | Thanks, Paul, for writing this. It really puts a few of my traits | into perspective, including being rude (interrupting people... | _just get to the point, dammit!_ ) and being awkward (yeah, I | just don't care about the game of "emotions" or whatever most | people are playing)... | [deleted] | hardwaregeek wrote: | Surprisingly, I'd argue that athletes are an example of fierce | nerds. I think people vastly underestimate how nerdy top athletes | are. They're people willing to devote their entire lives to | obsessively analyzing a single game. Somebody like Jordan had to | spend hours, days, years of their life just constantly shooting a | ball at a basket. Not to mention the obsession with meta and | strategy. | | We like to see people like Jordan or Kobe as normal people who | happen to be really good at basketball. I disagree. They're nerds | who happened to do a profession that doesn't seem nerdy to the | public. | 29athrowaway wrote: | Once, the YouTube "algorithm" led me to video featuring a | bodybuilder that explained that being a professional | bodybuilder = being a professional eater. | | To bodybuilders (and I assume, also athletes), eating in a | methodical and structured way is an important part of their | job. The guy grew his own vegetables and spent a lot of time | selecting food at markets, ate at very specific times, etc. | | That, combined with supplements, experimenting with different | training regimes, etc... it's a lot of experimentation and | certainly there's a lot of cognitive work behind all of that. | | I found this very interesting. | dragonwriter wrote: | I think there's a difference between the sort of subject- | matter-preference driven obsessiveness that characterizes nerds | and the one-of-the-few-visible-though-high-odds-of-failure- | ways-out-of-a-miserable life that drives a lot of black kids to | a focus lots of time and energy on basketball. | bidirectional wrote: | Very odd comment. Jordan and Kobe did not grow up miserably | at all. Jordan grew up in a stable middle-class home and | Kobe's dad was an NBA player-turned-coach. | nitrogen wrote: | I don't think they were talking about Jordan or Kobe | specifically. There does seem to be a kind of seductive lie | (not just in black communities) that sports or other long | shots are a viable career path for the dedicated kid. Where | I grew up, there were plenty of kids who believed they | would be famous basketball players one day as a matter of | fact, skaters who believed a fat sponsorship was in reach | if they just got that kick flip down tight, even culinary | artists who think they can join the ranks of the rich by | catering their private dinners. | | It's probably the same with startups -- most startups fail, | mine included, but either we delude ourselves into thinking | that it's just a matter of putting in enough effort, _or_ | we are in situations where we really can 't see any other | option to escape the gravity well of our situations. Not so | far off from someone obsessively playing ball to try to get | out, except for the broader applicability of the skills | gained if the long shot doesn't pay off. | flaubere wrote: | By redefining anyone who has worked very hard and enjoyed | success as a 'fierce nerd', you make the term meaningless, and | the supposed payoff from being one into a tautology. | mhh__ wrote: | One of the traits of top footballers in the modern game is that | their teammates are pretty much - and keep in mind these are | already some of the best players in the world by a long way - | in disbelief of how hard and how efficiently they train. That's | how Cristiano Ronaldo is as good as he is at an age when many | have already retired. | nradov wrote: | This is especially true in endurance sports. The level of | competition is so high now that now one can succeed just based | on talent and grit. In order to win you need to understand | physiology, psychology, nutrition, aerodynamics, equipment | maintenance, etc. Elites even run their own informal private | scientific experiments with detailed data analytics to | determine empirically which techniques deliver the best | results. | kodah wrote: | Jordan is an incredible athlete and an incredible person. Not | long ago a friend sent me a recording of Jordans last game | against the Jazz, and man, I was seriously impressed at his | tactical prowess. Two really amazing teams playing a game of | human chess with some might and force of will mixed in was awe | inspiring all over again. Watching Jordan rise to the occasion | on top of that gave me goosebumps. I'm quite proud to have | grown up watching his games. | rdiddly wrote: | Absolutely, why do you think the first jock called the first | nerd a nerd for the first time? He was projecting! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-18 23:01 UTC)