Rands in Repose: How nerds and geeks parse the world | Hacker News Reader

Rands in Repose: How nerds and geeks parse the world

randsinrepose.com

57 pointsfilament16 comments

> This is why, when you’ve piqued my interest, I keep asking questions, incessantly, while staring you in the face… never blinking.

Personally, I'm interested in what makes a person push themselves. Normally, in conversations with strangers or even friends about eating at X restaurant - I'm bored. But every once in a while we'll have a fascinating discussion about something important to me. It's a lot easier to do this one on one - perhaps because it's easier to process one data stream. When I go to parties that evolve into people telling stories, I usually sit back and soak it all in. I usually get asked by someone if I am having a good time - and I truly am - but the person thinks because I am not actively participating that I am wishing to be somewhere else. Sure, I've had my share of aborted conversations that are uncomfortable. But this article makes me think that true people persons are truly interested in finding out who someone is - what they feel about things, what their life is like. By limiting my relevancy filter to stuff that is important to me - I am potentially funneling out a significant amount of people that I meet. Interesting article - it makes me wonder if there is a hack for consistently being able to engage people in real conversation.

Interesting article - it makes me wonder if there is a hack for consistently being able to engage people in real conversation.

There probably is. But I would suggest this falls under the heading of "be careful what you wish for". I seem to have this knack (or something akin to it) and sometimes wish I could gnaw my left arm off and escape this trap.

Blue whales never interested me as a child.

Relevance is subjective, what seems important to me might seem unimportant to someone else, and vice versa.

Not all nerds behave the same way, we have different personalities.

I for one didn't relate to most of what that article claimed. Actually I find it rather offensive that someone makes assumptions about me based on his observation about himself.

I find the MBTI to be a better tool to understand behavior than a general stereotype like "nerd". Not all nerds share the same type.

Though I do think that most entrepreneurial types of people tend to be xNxP. But nerds and entrepreneurs are not necessarily the same thing at all.

I really don't understand what the distinction he's making here between "nerds" and "smart people who aren't nerds" is.

All smart people, nerdy or not-nerdy, have a vast collection of random trivia stored away in their brains somewhere (dumb people have something similar but smaller), and everybody enjoys saying funny things. What's the real distinction here?

I'm not even sure what your distinction between nerds and smart non-nerds, to be honest. I've always found them essentially equivalent (modulo the topics they find interesting).

Well, I don't want to get into an argument about poorly-defined words, but I see "nerds" as embodying a certain set of negative behavioural stereotypes.

You can define it so broadly as to include all smart people if you wish, but then what label do you have for the fat smelly bearded 35-year-old virgin on the bus writing Firefly/Dollhouse crossover fanfiction?

I'm not coming up with this less pejorative usage all on my own - clearly the original article meant this usage as well. The pejorative "nerd" is really kind of fading out lately, I think.

That's a pretty negative image. I'm sure most people would just call that person a loser.

Perhaps, but this particular form of loserdom seems to be a common enough trap for smart people, so it's an interesting one to analyze.

Ah, but now we have to discuss the definition of smart: I think there's a distinct type of intelligence involved in not being a weird, smelly loser. In fact, the vast majority of people are at least moderately smart in this regard.

I disagree. I don't really think the volume of trivia is much different, just the utility and technicality of it.

Good post. I find there is a lot of potential economic value in connections of information. Essentially this is innovation.

Find just a few useful concepts/tools/techniques not previously connected together. Figure out if there are any new useful emergent features that result. See if you can build a business model around the features. Implement. Market. Prosper.

Nice post, but the phenomenon of being witty that he describes is not solely the domain of being a nerd.

There exists a class of people, collectively known as "smartasses," who exhibit these same tendencies. Being an engineer is not a prerequisite. I personally know many smartasses, most of them are not engineers.

>blue whales

>Quaking Aspen grove in Utah

>Giant Sequoia named General Sherman.

He's too good, I've read the wikipedia article for each of those within the past couple years :/

At least now it's been diagnosed. As I was reading this article, I couldn't resist the urge to wikipedia Quaking Aspen, General Sherman, and (from the comments) the antimalarial effects of quinine.

I have a different reaction. I figure that if other people already know about quaking aspen, then that no longer interests me. I'd rather press the "Random Article" button and find out about... Mount Grace Priory.

Did you know it was the last monastery established in Yorkshire? And the monks were Carthusians, who basically live as a community of hermits, keeping to their own rooms and only coming together on rare occasions?

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