Geek anti-intellectualism: replies | Hacker News Reader

Geek anti-intellectualism: replies

larrysanger.org

40 pointsrevorad54 comments

The more I have been studying, the more it has been coming to me that knowledge must not be an end to itself. This is because there is an infinite amount of knowledge out there (care to catalogue the shapes of grains of sand on Earth?), but only a very small subset of it is useful (for example, the fact that sand consists mostly of SiO2 represents much more useful knowledge than the above-mentioned detailed catalogue of shapes). Knowledge is an attempt to describe complexity, and since complexity of the Universe is enormous, the amount of knowledge that can be gathered is enormous as well. So one must not seek knowledge indiscriminately.

The traditional academic way of teaching material to students has been to cultivate the idea that knowledge (academic knowledge in particular, something that went without mentioning) is of tremendous value in and out of itself. I disagree with this (see my argument about grains of sand). Some kinds of knowledge are more valuable than others.

Now that we all agree with this, the question becomes what is it that we value. The problem is that people define value in different ways. Some talk of spiritual value (which I find to be complete nonsense -- an artifact of a runaway brain process). Some talk of some "eternal" value that will benefit humanity in a very long term (but I tend to be skeptical of claims that cannot be measured). The bottom line is that this is not an argument about knowledge but an argument about either values or priorities. Given a choice to know (for example, whether or not a killer will come to your house tomorrow) or not to know, most sane people would choose "know". The "intellectualism" the author espouses is the type of intellectualism that relies on emotional thinking to instill the belief that we have a "duty" to know even things that are of little measurable value. I am sorry, but I prefer to see numbers first.

Ironically, the reason why becoming a scientist is not a great life decision compared to, for example, becoming a lawyer, a businessman, or even a computer programmer, is that science does a poor job measuring its own impact (i.e. it is ironically not empirical enough), despite of the fact that it claims to be based entirely on our ability to measure and on the empirical method. In other words, science, while denying religion for the most part, itself relies on this religious-type thinking that knowledge possesses some mystical value in itself (it doesn't).

Small edit: I wish there were more good scientists, not less. I think the value of scientific contribution is enormous. I only think that our current way of doing science (grants, journal citation indexes, reviews by very small circles of peers which can often be mistaken, ignorance of financial aspects, the coupling with teaching) is a bad way and that a better one is possible.

The fundamental point underlying science and basic research is that it's generally not possible to know the value of knowledge before you, well, know it. Your perspective is extremely shortsighted.

If humanity only invested in projects of "measurable value," there would be no computer programmers, because there would be no computers, because we would not understand physics, because physics requires esoteric mathematics, and what good did fiddling with numbers ever do for anyone? No measurable value whatsoever!

> The fundamental point underlying science and basic research is that it's generally not possible to know the value of knowledge before you, well, know it

Oh no, I wasn't arguing against science -- to the opposite, I wish that scientific achievement was better recognized by our society. I was making a claim that when science does achieve something, the value of those achievements is not "tracked." I fully understand that our whole technological economy depends on the achievements of science. The problem I was trying to solve is, basically, why is it then that scientists don't make a lot of money (a small fact, which, I believe, causes a "brain drain" to the financial industry, etc). I believe that if science correctly "tracked" its achievements (either by replacing the current journal citation rank by something more closely resembling a currency, or by implementing a better patent system, or both), more good science would have been made.

I think that the high-brow idealism you often find in science is a product -- not the origin -- of the current academic system. The reason there are many idealists in science is not because science requires idealism, but because the pragmatists end up somewhere else. As a result, the high-strung idealism devalues science in the eyes of the public.

Oh, I see.

That would be interesting if it were possible. I'm not sure how you would manage it, though. Scientists already have an implicit incentive not to throw their careers away on unimportant research, and one of the major problems leading to the whole "publish or perish" trend is that it's really just impossibly hard for anyone who isn't directly involved in a narrow slice of research to evaluate that slice effectively, while anyone who IS involved in that narrow slice of research probably can't evaluate it objectively.

But some kind of prediction market or 'kickstarter' type model might do a better job than the grant model in figuring out how to dispense limited funds...? I'm not sure how you'd get it up and running with credibility and authority, but it's interesting to think about.

Most of his arguments come from flawed premises* and are riddled with logical fallacies, especially straw man, no true Scotsman, hasty generalization, and appeal to authority. But the essence of his argument essentially comes down to:

  (1) "There are geeks that are anti-intellectual"
  (a premise I reject)

  (2) "The geeks that are anti-intellectual are an increasing larger subset of geekdom"
  (ironically (given that he advocates for facts), an opinion given without facts)

  (3) "Anti-intellectual geekdom is bad"
  (something I would concur with if it weren't a contradiction in terms)

*(e.g., geeks love knowledge, we go to parties and talk about up and down quarks, politics, theory of the mind, nature of reality, Aristotle vs Plato, metaphysics, and all sorts of philosophically rooted stuff)

This sounds like an implicit disagreement over how "geek" should be defined, which is bound to be a silly argument (on both sides) as it's a slang term that's always meant different things to different subcultures, so there's no "real" definition.

Personally I wouldn't use the word "geek" like he does either, but if you scroll down to "bchjam"'s post on this thread, I think you'll get a good idea of the kind of thing he has in mind =)

Many of the "geeks" I know like to talk about quarks, politics, theory of mind, nature of reality, etc, but few (none) really take those issues seriously, as worthy of inquiry, and most are content with letting Wikipedia supply their information and settle their disputes. Keep in mind that "anti-intellectualism" doesn't necessarily mean disinterested in intellectual topics; many anti-intellectuals are very interested in intellectual topics (consider Palin's ramblings about economics). Instead, it usually means not taking those topics seriously: not bothering to understand what's at stake, not bothering to understand what motivates the issue, and so on.

I know HN is not really a place to talk politics, but something in the article surprised me:

    > leftist academics who were already anti-intellectual

I'm French so maybe this is different in Europe and in the US (if it is, that would surprise me too), but since when "leftist" are anti-intellectual? It seems to me that it's quite the opposite. Let alone "leftist academics" who I can't even start to imagine being anti-intellectual.

To be clear, I really don't want to start a political discussion here. What I would like is just an anwser to: Is the part of the article I quoted something people find normal in the US or does it seems weird there too?

Thanks :-).

He was probably referring to the already dying branch of leftist academics who engaged in "post-modernism" and "critical studies." They were not really anti-intellectual, but definitely viewed science and objectivity with a jaundiced eye. The irony is that after hitting its peak in the 80s it became something of a laughingstock within academia and is now usually trotted out as a sly punchline or mechanism for satire/farce within an academic paper (yes, there are still some True Believers clinging to the old ideals and using the joys of tenure to pump out paper after paper, but their numbers and influence are rapidly dwindling to non-existence.)

I think your "dying" is wishful thinking -- postmodernism's popularity came about at least partly because it offers genuine insight. I think that over time it will settle down into a mature discipline, rather than a fad.

And outside of academia, it's very hard to point at any cultural artifacts (films, literature, advertisements...) that aren't deeply influenced by postmodern.

Postmodernism as a trope will linger on for quite a while, but it had very little real insight to offer in the first place and any claim of deep influence is a far larger act of wishful thinking than my claim that what vestiges we still see are anything more than a dead-cat bounce into self-parody.

And the artifacts of literature, film, etc... which did the influencing mostly derived from places outside the ivory tower.

I think even a university professor is smart enough to recognize that journal articles are a poor way of creating culture. ;)

The ivory tower has always been more interested in understanding than creation, postmodern or not.

(And an edit to add: there is definitely influence from the ideas generated academia, however. For a really obvious example, Neo is reading Simulacra and Simulation in The Matrix.)

> And an edit to add: there is definitely influence from the ideas generated academia, however. For a really obvious example, Neo is reading Simulacra and Simulation in The Matrix.

It's a prop. If you're going to argue influence, shouldn't you be pointing out how the contents of that book were somehow reflected in the movie?

Actually Neo is not reading it, it is a hollowed out book containing his collection of warez, whether that is a nod to postmodernism or a joke at its expense implying it is a hollow discipline I do not know, perhaps someone could ask the Wachowskis.

The US has a deep divide in academia between folks who wish the study of philosophy and literature had ended in 1950 or so, and those who embraced what came after (perhaps a little too strongly).

(Alternatively you could maybe draw the line with the end of the Enlightenment, but not quite as starkly...)

Really? I've never met anyone in academia who wished the study of philosophy (or literature, for that matter) ended in 1950. There's definitely a division between the "Analytic Philosophy" and "Continental Philosophy" folks; and there are definitely warring schools of thought within English departments about what to read, and how-- but I've never seen a division aligned along chronological lines as you propose.

Could you offer an example of an academic who fits the "pre-1950" mode, so I can get a better idea of what you are driving at?

For more information on this see C.P. Snow's over half-century-old lecture, "The Two Cultures." Within it he posits a great rift between the humanities and the sciences. The lecture is very much relevant to this discussion. As a side note, Edge.org posits itself as an abridging third culture in direct relation to antagonisms between the humanities and sciences. Also on this front is 3 Quarks Daily, which is a more or less excellent feed of multi-discplinary geekdom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._P._Snow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

http://edge.org/

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/

Great info, but a clarification of my comment may be in order: I wasn't talking about the "sciences" vs "humanities" divide (which is huge), but a divide that goes deeply within humanities itself, which is much more of a left/right divide (hence the "leftist" wording in the original article).

Do you mind expanding on this? I am having trouble seeing an internal divide within the humanities between those that want a continuation of the study of lit and phil and those that would like to see it cease. The reasoning that normally goes into the defense of lit and phil seems to be essential to the reasoning that might go into the defense of any sub-field of the humanities. Do you mean to posit an alliance of lit and phil with leftist politics and everything else with rightist politics?

I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with the "1950" comment, is all -- making fun of one camp's deep backlash against post-modernism (among many other things).

The author answers the question himself in this paragraph:

> Just think of any progressive education professor who inveighs against most academic work in K-12 schools, describes academic work that involves a little memorization and practice as drill and kill, wants the world to institute unschooling and the project method en masse, has nothing but the purest P.C. contempt for the Western canon, advocates for vocational education for all but those who are truly, personally enthusiastic about academics, wants academic education to be as collaborative as possible rather than requiring students to read books, which are irrelevant to the fast-changing daily lives of students, and channeling Foucault rails against the hegemony of science and other experts. Well, such a person I would describe as an anti-intellectual intellectual. The person might well write perfectly-crafted articles with scholarly apparatus, read classics in her field, and so forth. It’s just that her opinions are unfortunately hostile to students getting knowledge (in my opinion).

And that's one hell of a straw man.

I've spent a lot of time around progressive education folks, and I've never met anyone who met that description. There are some folks who display mild forms of one or two of those attributes, but he's combined so many disparate traits and described them in such over-the-top terms as to render the portrait unrecognizable.

"leftist" and "anti-intellectual" as used here are just fighting words (just for emotional effect). I wouldn't read too much into them.

That's not completely true; they are fighting words, but they're fighting words re-used from the Culture Wars, which still rage on. (Particularly in academia.)

I've never gotten the impression from any of my hard science professors that they take the Culture Wars seriously enough. I would think that camp of though to be utterly discredited after the Sokal affair and the various books that sprang from that happy incident. Perhaps you could enlighten us?

For an example of the Culture Wars, just scroll back on the front page to the "Dangerous Mr. Khan" article.

As far as the Sokal affair goes, it may or may not have done an excellent job of discrediting people, processes, institutions, writing styles, academic subculture ... but it did and could not touch any ideas.

In fact, you could even say that the Sokal hoax was an excellent validation/demonstration of many postmodern ideas, albeit at the expense of the same people teaching and regurgitating them.

Okay, thank you and crux_ for your anwsers.

I still think he's confused. I've never yet met a geek that was anti-intellectual. Anti-college, anti-snob, anti-something... But not anti-intellectual.

The 2 are too much at odds. The geek loves information, and (often) spreading that information, and using that information. Information is a geek's stock-in-trade.

He continues to claim that he's only talking about geeks, but by definition he can't be. Because anti-intellectual means anti-geek. And I've never yet met a geek who hates other geeks. Okay, maybe some particular brand of geek rubs them wrong, but not all geeks.

I teach philosophy at a university. Whenever we discuss basic issues about the mind, my computer science students are always dismissive about any and all positions that don't simply say "the brain is a computer, the mind is software." It turns out that this is a pretty naive and simplistic way of thinking about the issue; but that's the "easy" way for them to frame the problem, and they often think that, because computer science is difficult subject, this response must be pretty good.

I find this deliciously ironic. I can hear myself arguing as a sophomore CS student, "but whatever is going on that constitutes the mind is observably a process on information that happens entirely inside your skull, of course we can model it with software," to which I would today answer "you can model any phenomena with software, stating as such doesn't constitute a model."

Just computer science students? I would generally expect most scientists or engineers to have have a developed antipathy to anti-reductionism.

"The brain is a computer, the mind is software" is in fact a very naive statement, but I hope your problems with it have more to do with the non-existent in reality hardware/software distinction than silly constructs like qualia.

Perhaps I am being naive, but hasn't the study of the mind now shifted to the neuroscience department?

I think he's trying to imply anti-academia is anti-intellectual, which would be hilariously ironic.

The quality of academia has been in decline for almost a century now as the bar has been progressively lowered by financial and political pressures in order to make them more "accessible to the common man". A post-secondary education is still somewhat useful in teaching one how to think, and in exposing one to higher ideas, but it's nowhere near the level of excellence of previous ages. A simple reading of theses and journals past expose the stark differences in thought.

"There are Jewish anti-Semites, too."

Now that is anti-intellectual, see-

Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group

http://www.counterpunch.org/hamod07122003.html

I'm a geek, I'm not anti-intellectual however I am anti-BS, whether it is the above statement or whether it is any of the intellectually bankrupt -isms, Marxism, Fascism etc or religious dogma that goes against all the evidence for evolution or other scientifically validated theories. All of which have been promoted as being "intellectual", Fascism was famously promoted at Harvard before WWII, Marxism has been promoted at innumerable universities and now we have creationism attempting to be "intellectual" via the idea that there is a "controversy" that pits it along side the theory of evolution in terms of being able to explain how we as a species came to be the way we are. I'm also anti-prophet, that is I do not believe that there is any human being that has all the answers to all questions. Experts to me are useful as long as they are not experts in the domains of BS.

I knew, before reading the first line of the article, that he was not suddenly going to change his mind. He managed to go lower than my lowered expectations by saying he had "hit a nerve", which doesn't mean anything about his degree of insight.

The root problem of this debate is that the word « geek » has lost any kind of meaning a few years ago. There is no clear definition of it, and it's become an empty buzzword.

Every time I see the word « geek », it reminds me of Orwell's essay about « Politics and the English Language » (http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/politics-and-the-eng...)

« The word FASCISM has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." »

Well, the word 'geek' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies « A bunch of people who do not necessarily share any goal, ideology, cultural references or lifestyle, but that we lump together because it fits our simplistic worldview »

Geeks don't get to define themselves. The word has clear meaning UNLESS you ask a geek.

The definition of geek being used is one that comes from wider society, where anyone interested in computer gadgets as a primary life interest is generally classified as a geek.

Go meet some non-geeks and you'll quickly learn the proper definition of geek.

My claim : There is no proper definition of 'geek'.

In order to refute such a claim, you mustn't limit yourself to saying there is one, you must say what it is and prove it is indeed the proper definition of 'geek'

Unfortunately, the definition you give is wrong. The word geek used to mean "someone who's passionate about something". It also used to mean something like "freak".

In any case, I have seen people whose primary life interests was RPGs or literature be classified as 'geeks'.

Also, "computer gadget" in itself is a vague phrase. Lumping together people because they're somehow connected to computers in some way is stupid.

What is there in common between a video games producer like Peter Molyneux, a millionaire entrepreneur like Bill Gates, an ideologist hacker like Richard Stallman, an amateur programmer like myself, and a technician that takes care of a university network of computers ?

>"Unfortunately, the definition you give is wrong. The word geek used to mean "someone who's passionate about something". It also used to mean something like "freak". "

"used to"

>Also, "computer gadget" in itself is a vague phrase. Lumping together people because they're somehow connected to computers in some way is stupid.

So you think society's definition is stupid. Ok.

The similarity between all those people is that they all are very interested in computers. They are all geeks.

« So you think society's definition is stupid. Ok »

Just because you claim something is "society's definition" doesn't imply it is anyone's definition but yours.

« all those people is that they all are very interested in computers »

Not necessarily. Not in the same way. Not to the same extent.

I apply a simple test—Who is Edgar Lee Masters?, Rupert Brooke? Tintoretto? Hardy? George Mallory? William Morris? I’ll even throw in one most geeks get even if they haven’t read—Edward Tufte. Not a long list, but good enough to give me a clue as to where someone stands… Note that this is not liberal or conservative, neither one side of the campus or the other, these are in fact people that you could easily become familiar with at any reasonable library or bookstore. It would require you to wander ‘beyond the fields we know’ (quick, who said that?), i.e. set aside the books on Scala and Lisp etc. and go look around, it is never too late to expand horizons.

I kept hearing the same cliche over and over in my head as I read this:

Shipping code wins

And pair that with the well-known facts that:

* quality takes time

* the amount of low-quality "ship it in a hurry" code is immense.

And we quickly see that "shipping code wins" is the root cause of our crap!

I'm all for higher standards of what counts as shippable. However, years spent perfecting the wrong idea will probably yield something of questionable value at best. I don't know what the right balance is but I never got closer to knowing by just thinking about it without some sort of feedback loop.

Be glad people don't take that attitude when building aircraft or bridges or medical scanners ;-)

I was always exposed to the Wright brothers as a successful example of the fail fast approach. Obviously the risk factors of "just shipping" are different to most software but my point is that they didn't get to success just by thinking about it. They built things that they expected to fail so that they could learn from them and iteratively made their way to flight.

Iteration and hard work did help the Wright brothers, but so did building a wind tunnel and their knowledge of aerodynamics. "Just do it" is not enough.

Agreed. It takes a balance of both (and to be honest it took me a long time to learn to appreciate the practical side). I suppose the one-liner was too vague to fully convey my meaning but it really was playing in my mind's ear.

Maybe I am confused. What do you mean by that?

There seemed to be an emphasis on remembering facts and proving intellectualism by getting degrees rather than using knowledge to accomplish things. You obviously have to know enough to get it done but without trying to actually do it you'll never have a good idea of what enough is.

It was also a reminder to myself that I needed to get back to coding rather than indulging in this intellectual tangent over the state of geek intellectualism.

It's not ant-intellectualism, it's anti-pendantry.

The entire article is honestly just an overly verbose, misguided, disorganized, incoherent straw man.

Geeks say classics are worthless because they're long and hard to read? Peter Thiel is out to ruin college just because it's 'elitist'? Books are no good because they're written by one person?

Give me a break -- he doesn't even bother citing anything to support his premises. These points are so laughably far from reality that no one should waste their time addressing them. It's not even worth reading this article except as an example of faulty logic and how not to write a persuasive piece.

And the only "classic" mentioned was "War and Peace". I haven't read that one but I've read Anna Karenina, also by Tolstoy, and a few of Dostoevsky's books. Yeah they're long, but they're long like concept albums are long. They're classics 'cause they're awesome, not 'cause some imaginary egghead wants to bore you with them!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com