Geek behaviors present during conversations

I agree, although I do find it funny that this comment is self reinforcing.

Perhaps it's an anxiety disorder? They would feel anxiety when less than perfect information is communicated?

Furthermore, I do it myself to prevent complications down the road. I've found that it's all to easy for one piece of misinformation slipped into a conversation to snowball into something much bigger, and based on a false premise.

Last week friend of mine said something stupid and I proved him wrong. I wish someone stopped me before we started arguing and reminded me the Carnegie's advice I've read few years back but was ignoring all the time.

YES. Like XKCD said: "someone is wrong on the internet." (http://xkcd.com/386/)

Geeks are obsessed with correctness. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes not. Witness Slashdot discussions.

Let's say I'm in a meeting and the VP of Marketing says, "We all know this feature easily can be launched next week." At least in the US, my silence could be used later to claim implicit agreement. There seems to be some cultural rule to the effect of, "If someone hears another person say something incorrect and doesn't immediately state disagreement, he is implicitly agreeing or did not care enough about Thing X to bother commenting." If someone believes that others follow this rule, then he could claim that a commitment had been made. At a minimum, it would be easy to raise doubt in others of my competence should I later provide an estimate of a month. So, given these risks, how can anyone not speak up?

I understand letting some non-essential facts slide if there's little threat that they can be used against you later, but US culture (at least Midwestern business culture) dictates near immediate rebuttal -- no matter how gauche.

If I'm scathingly self-critical, sometimes I'll admit that there's also an element of showing off my knowledge.

Of course it's deeply patronizing. It carries the presumption that you and nobody else is the Educator of Audiences and the Guardian of Validity of Discourse. Even if it might have an element of truth in a particular conversation, flaunting it (or just believing it) is a sign of profound social ineptitude.

True, i have a real problem with sloppy thinking the same way a musician has a problem with noise. I don't mind being corrected, i have no emotional attachment to my positions or believes, if they are wrong, but for some reason proving someone wrong is seen as a personal attack, which confuses me. Why would anyone have such an emotional attachment to a bad idea? And they call me strange... :D

What i fear most is not that i might upset someone with my correction, but that someone might not correct me out of politeness if im talking bullshit(i tend to do that often). Thankfully i tend to avoid people pleasers and most of my friends would not hesitate to state my mistakes, even at the risk of insulting me.

Yes correcting someone (especially publicly) is status lowering: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:kgxNXpw1kdgJ:greenlightw...

Geeks can't see when they're lowering the status of the other person. In fact, they're inept at knowing when to play higher or play lower. I do improv acting. I find improv acting provides an incredibly useful lens to view social interactions.

(Cached link because the Improv Wiki is down.)

Every conversation has a limited bandwidth, and the participants usually have a shared understanding—an agenda—of what topics constitute an appropriate use of that bandwidth. When you say something that goes beyond that agenda, even if what you say is true, you risk annoying the other participants, not just because you’re injecting noise into the communications channel, but because you’re asserting a right to change the agenda of the conversation. If you do this often enough, they are more likely to come away with the impression that you’re arrogant and rude than remember your corrections to their false understandings of the world.

While it's possible to find exceptions, there are some strong indicators of mild (or high-functioning) autism among the geek crowd, and several of the points in the article could be described as autistic traits.

Probably the best example is the stereotypical geek's inability to read facial expressions. Some geeks -- like me, and, it sounds like, you -- teach themselves how to do it, but this is still a trait which comes more naturally to most people. This, combined with the geek's active "inner world", causes awkward conversations and social behavior.

Above average numeracy and a tendency to mentally model problems and situations visually are a couple of other indicators, as well as tendencies towards emotional irregularities.

While you might be able to act as though the differences between you and others is not great, the fact is, their brain probably doesn't work very much like yours does.

I knew someone for a while that was working on his thesis in psychology; according to him, the field of psychology had a certain reluctance to measure various disorders in degrees. Although psychologists might say, "this person is autistic, and can function somewhat in society", and, "this other person is autistic and cannot function in society", they're reluctant to say, "this person is only a little autistic". (This was the subject of his thesis.)

Based on what I've read in the DSM and publications like SciAm:Mind, as well as what I've observed of people, I'd tend to agree with him, and I'd say that it's a pretty safe bet that the majority of stereotypical geeks are "a little autistic".

And perhaps a shorter summary.

People chat for information exchange and entertainment. To geeks, these are the same. To many people, they are not.

If you weren't a geek you wouldn't be here, right?

And if I move to the point.

<rant> I wholeheartedly agree with your summary. But there is one more point about "geeks don't have social skills" myth I would like to address. Myself being a very extrovert person, I have never had problems in mingling with people. But while wearing an engineer hat, I constantly get patronized by people who SHOULD listen to me for their own good. Yet, due to their willful ignorance and intellectual laziness, I get to clear the mess in the end. And it doesn't really matter how I try to present it. If I explain on simple terms - they don't believe me, but when I try to elaborate they just shut down. But! They do like listening to themselves, talking of lies. Yes Sir! They do! </rant>

Amen to that.

People with an IQ of 100 ("Normal or average intelligence") are two standard deviations from people with an IQ of 70 ("Definite feeble-mindedness").

People with an IQ of 130 ("Very superior intelligence") are two standard deviations from people with an IQ of 100.

A normal person will have to change basic communication skills to be found engaging by a feeble-minded person.

Likewise, an intelligent person will need to accommodate a normal person.

The term condescension has come to have a pejorative connotation[1] but is actually fitting in this context.

[1] Compare Webster's 1828 Dictionary: condescension, n. Voluntary descent from rank, dignity or just claims; relinquishment of strict right; submission to inferiors in granting requests or performing acts which strict justice does not require. Hence, courtesy.

- “It forbids pride and commands humility, modesty and condescension to others.” - “Raphael, amidst his tenderness, shows such a dignity and condescension in all his behavior, as are suitable to a superior nature.”

With Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 11th Edition: condescension, n. 1. act or instance of condescending 2. a patronizing manner or behavior

That and the asynchronous nature of exchange -- i hate blocking on you formulating an answer, and all the rediculous connection setup/teardown required.

This is definitely it for me. I wish I could operate with a 90 second delay like they have for live television.

The lack of context for phones frustrates me because it means you can be "accidentally invasive." If you approach someone in real life, you can use your senses to gauge what they're doing, thinking, and feeling at the moment of contact, and make an social gesture that is appropriate. It helps with first impressions, which are always important. And with email the asychronity is high so your risk of reaching someone at a bad time is low, so again, you can make a good first impression.

But if you're going over phone, there is some expectation of real-time availability - nobody really likes voice mail. Phone calls have a dreadful suddenness to them. Thank goodness we're moving past the days when almost everything had to be done by cold-calling a number.

IM and texting can be even worse in some ways as the expectations of timeliness are fluid so communication may get frustrating when one person is moving way faster than the other, but I think they actually work really well when used for short-term "business update" types of communication: "I will meet you at 5pm." "Do you have a link for <x>?" "We changed our plans for the meeting." etc.

Perhaps you have an inability to notice when a silence has become awkward?

There's great value in online communication, but sometimes you have to talk IRL.

Pretend like you're a noob learning netiquette.

The line "awkward silences often arise because the geek doesn't pay enough attention to his partner's attention level" struck me as a misunderstanding. Often when in a group, I'm doing nothing but focus on everyone else's rhythm because following it doesn't come naturally to me. I find everyone else trading off speaking and often just interrupting or talking over each other without issue. But before I've phrased my thought and found a place for it, the topic has moved on.

It's terrifying to consider that you wrote this article without knowing me and in fact without living inside my head. Anything in your list that I don't do I avoid only by conscious effort.

Of course many of these behaviors are not bad so much as different, but my "best" categories are:

* Most of the time I actively analyze conversations for signs that people are talking past each other, so I usually catch myself if I'm using jargon without adequate explanation. (Of course this is fed by the commitment to accuracy and desire to educate, though.)

* I don't think I often evangelize technology, but that's mostly because I discovered some time ago that if I recommend it I'm going to end up supporting it.

Thing I'd most like to improve on in myself is struggling with turn taking in conversation. Like many of these categories, I can behave more normally, but it's amazing to me how much effort and attention this one requires.

Most cognitive dissonance for me is the whole issue of caring about the "how" more than other people do. I think I appropriately focus on what and why when making decisions, and on one level I know that most people do not in fact care about the how. But on another level I can't quite believe that (e.g.) anyone who watches American football wouldn't want to know how they make the yellow first down line show up.

Your observation about geeks fearing phone conversations is spot on, but I think it has to do with more than just turn-taking. I think it's a general social anxiety that manifests more strongly with phone calls because they're easier to avoid or procrastinate and because they often intrude social anxiety into a very safe, non-challenging social environment. I would guess that face-to-face conversations that are easy to avoid or postpone are just as anxiety-provoking as phone calls.

Anyhow, I am certainly a phone-phobic geek. When I was a young child, I was terrified of talking on the phone. I was too geeky to understand the social aspects of a phone call, but I was smart enough to know I didn't understand most of what happened during a phone conversation. When my parents called somebody to ask a question or invite them somewhere, it would take fifteen minutes. Typically, I had one goal in mind, such as asking my friend Jon if he wanted to play. That was all I understood, but I also understood a phone conversation was supposed to be more complicated than that, and that I had to be polite to whoever answered the phone. I had terrible performance anxiety.

Strangely, I still have an aversion to making phone calls to people I don't know well. Even simple, low-risk, impersonal tasks like calling to ask a restaurant's hours or calling the dentist to make an appointment produce a significant amount of anxiety. The more often I talk to someone on the phone, the more the anxiety decreases, though. Talking on the phone to my family and close friends generates no anxiety.

I'm kind of appalled at the negative tone and unpleasant assumptions behind most of the comments. Let me suggest an alternative view:

Most geeks have been "weird" their entire lives. From kindergarten on, they didn't quite fit in with the other kids. The teachers actively made their social lives worse by setting them up as an object of scorn: The kid to hate because they get the answers right while the teacher acts like a) you, too, could get the answer right if only you studied more (never mind that is not why the geek kid knew the answer) and b) see, this kid is proof I am a wonderful teacher and your failures are on your own head for being lazy (never mind that she or he isn't responsible for the geek kid's stellar performance either).

They have had scorn heaped upon them until even the ones who started out as extroverts have probably become gun-shy. The vast majority of people around them were also inculcated in this sick, twisted social system so even when you are in your 40's, you run into this "5-year-olds-on-the-playground"-style bullshit harassment and get abused by it no matter how hard you try to "behave" the way other people try to dictate you "should".

Someday, after you have twisted yourself all out of shape trying to do what other people claim would make you "socially acceptable", you eventually figure out that just knowing more than other people or just thinking differently about problems is inherently verboten and there is no social disguise that will make you "acceptable" to most people. It doesn't matter one iota that you are sharing information out of genuine enthusiasm for a topic or out of a genuine desire to make the lives of other people better, you will still be treated like an egomaniac, a threat, a bitch/bastard...etc.

So maybe if the more "normal" folks who think "social skills" are vastly more important than "hard"/technical skills would exercise some genuine compassion, refrain from being too quick to judge and other types of social wisdom that they like to brag they have more of than the "geeks", they would find that geeks aren't so dreadful after all. They can be coaxed out of their shells if you don't start off by automatically labeling them and being openly hostile. And if you don't hate them on sight for simply existing and are kind and patient with their foibles, they may not need to act like know-it-alls in self-defense, which is probably the only ego defense they had in many ugly social situations.

"I've worked in both low-level systems programming languages like C as well as some high-level scripting languages like Python. What further details would you like to know?" ~= "I've worked with COM-PU-TERS. I type using a KEY-BOARD. What further details would you like to know?"

Another annoying geek habit is assuming everyone else is a drooling imbecile.

You might find this interesting: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/1e5a95...

It's a report from a speech therapist who attended a Science-Fiction convention on the way that fannish speech is different to "normal" speech.

As the father of a geeky seven-year-old, the “struggling with turn-taking” section really hits me where I live. (Not that I ever exhibited such maladjusted behavior when I was seven, or seventeen, or thirty-seven. No, never! Well... hardly ever.)

A special-needs teacher at my son’s school has suggested that he get training in what’s called “social pragmatics”; this is an actual subfield of speech-language pathology that focuses on the social use of language as distinct from pronounciation, syntax, etc. We’re not convinced that he needs to spend 45 minutes a week focused on this subject, but other people might be interested in knowing that this kind of training exists.

Practice.

A sharp intake of breath is a pretty solid indicator. The more pronounced it is, the more agitated they are that you're still talking. (Unless they're just yawning.)

Looking away for a while and suddenly looking back with their mouth open slightly can also be an indicator. If they have their mouths closed tightly, they're deciding whether to interject, so you might want to check a sentence or two later to see if they've made up their minds.

Don't think of the person you're having a conversation with as an antagonist.

One confusing thing it usually a long mmm-hmmm sound, especially one that goes down in tone from high to low, indicates that the person is interested and wants you to keep speaking- however, a short, sharp "mmm" that rises in tone can mean "Oh, I just thought of something I'd like to say".

Also, consider where in a conversation you are- you should be taking shorter turns when you are just beginning to talk to someone. If a person asks you "How are you doing" or "What have you been up to lately?" you should give them a quick summary and then ask them the same question. This is assuming that it's a social situation where you expect a conversation- don't return the question if your boss asks you what you've been doing, and don't answer at length if the question is just a social nicety. The cashier in the grocery store doesn't want a detailed answer to "How are you today?", you should just say "I'm fine, how are you?" Hope that makes sense.

Oh, and on a related note- the "quick summary and then return the question" method works for more than just introductions. A lot of times people will ask you a question as a way of introducing a topic they want to talk about- "How was your weekend?" can mean "Something really exciting happened to me this past weekend and I want to talk about it". If they actually want to hear about your weekend then they will give a quick summary and then prompt you to elaborate on your answer, in which case you can go into more detail.

I don't remember seeing that kind of post on HN. If you mean people editing their posts, I blame/credit the ease of editing. I tend to post before proofreading and then clean up any mistakes. It just seems like the natural way to do it.

If you were self-conscious about your geekdom, and wanted to adjust it so you could better interact with the slows, that summary would be pointless, but the article would be useful.

A better quick summary is that there are many socially awkward people who excel in technical fields.

There are likely as many who do just as well and have no shortage of basic social skills. One just doesn't notice the awkward silences so there's nothing to write broad generalizing blog posts about.

Being from another continent, i don't even get why is even necessary to catalog people (and sometimes how it could be done) either in the geek or non-geek category. Each one of us should have a multi-faceted personality that makes hardly possible to confine ourself in whatever definition we apparently seems to adhere to.

I'd choke you if you dragged me out of deep thought just for the sake of it.

Now that you've mentioned it, somebody should explain what it is.

Yes, what is this snort of which you speak?

I think from a non-geek perspective, "I read a lot of books" might mean "I enjoy reading, perhaps we can talk about books we've read?"

Whereas "I read about 5 books a week" sounds more like "I count how many books I read so that I can one-up anyone who thinks they are as smart as I am."

A non-geek who reads 5 books a week might admit the exact figure if probed, but would be more likely to look slightly embarrassed, to imply "yes I know that makes me odd" and "don't dislike me; I'm not trying to seem superior but you asked."

I just use IM for quick arranging or linking stuff around. Can't understand how people can chitchat on IM with each other for hours. You never now if that last message was supposed to be funny or serious or maybe even ironic? Then you don't know if your conversation partner thought your last message was serious, while you meant it to be funny...and it goes on an on and on... just can't do it.

Don't have any problems with normal conversations and phone calls though.

I am utterly afraid of phone calls. I act like it's no problem though.

I think it's an advantage of the phone that there are less visual cues, so you can concentrate on auditive cues. A non-geek on the phone is somewhat in the situation of a geek, because he is aware of less non-verbal signals. He will tend to compensate with more auditive signals and clearer indications in the content of what is said. Fewer signals with more significance are easier to see for the geek.

At least that's what I used to think when face o face conversations were still a big problem for me, but phone conversations felt easier.

It seems I have become much less of a geek over the years.