Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Rectifying Nerd Arrogance?
An anonymous reader writes "Like some Slashdot users, I began attending university last month for computer science. The experience represents my first time away from home and I'm almost constantly with my peers, many of whom are also computer science students. Recently, I have become cognizant of the many negative opinions associated with a 'normal' person's perspective of what a nerd is like. Conversing with my college computer science peers (many of whom are quite nerdy), I have noticed that many of them are extremely arrogant. Upon introspection, I have come to the realization that I am also very similar to them and am very curious, but worried. I have noticed similar personality characteristics on Slashdot. Where does this nerd arrogance come from? How can it be rectified? I am concerned that, if I do not abolish these annoying tendencies, I may have trouble later on in life with my career and relationships. Has anybody run into problems in life with the arrogance that seems to be so prevalent with nerds? If so, how did you handle the situation?"
I'm pretty sure that's not unique to CS students. If you think arrogance is a trait only CS majors have, head over to a 500-level philosophy class sometime and talk to some of those majors. Hell, go to pretty much *any* high level class in *any* major.
The problem isn't the major, the problem is the combination of youth and a little knowledge. Most 21-year-olds are just knowledgeable enough to be cocky, but not knowledgeable enough to appreciate the fact that they really don't know shit. I believe Socrates observed this phenomenon even in his time, and commented on it. "Stop being such cocky pricks! You don't even appreciate how dumb a bunch of shits you are yet, you little fuckers!" he would tell his students (I paraphrase the Greek).
No worries, though. Ultimately, life will fix the problem.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Everyone in the universe gets that. Nerd arrogance comes from the basic insecurities that all “not normal” people have. The more you love math and science the further you'll be from people who live for the next episode of Jersey Shore.
The insecurity is addressed by the assumption that being great at computers/math/science means you don't have to be good at all those other “human” skills. But as Admrial Akbar will remind you: “It's a Trap!” If you're an amazing nerd, people will put up with your crappy attitude at work, but if your kind, decent, patient nerd, people will beg their bosses to have you on their team.
I have 50 square feet of window, can see a full third of the skyline, take long lunches and get to design super computing clusters, and this job is more due to my people skills than nerdy ones. I design AI algorithms on the weekend when I need extra-nerd time.
To your worry about being corrupted by nerdfluence, “It all comes down to choice.” I recommend:
Read XKCD to be reminded that you're not alone, and you don't have to be a jerk to be nerd.
Keep in mind that we were all beginners once. You may not have been a beginner since you were 11, but there was a time when it was all new and intimidating. Whether someone is 11 or 55 doesn't change much, and at 11 your job didn't depend on you getting it right the first time.
The people who had a date for prom, and fix cars, and cook well were no different from you when you were a computer beginner. Dateless people who have to cook for themselves, and fix their own cars may get to call themselves Independent, but they have missed the fundamental advantage of living in a society. Being a decent human, you don't have to have every existing skill, and can instead focus on being a more proficient nerd. It's a trap worth avoiding.
YMMV
Shut up, N00b.
It's tough being the smartest person in the room.
After living for many years in Cambridge, I have become accustomed to this attitude. I want to make a T-shirt "I act like I am smarter than you because I am. I go to MIT".
Who didn't think they were king shit of fuck mountain when they were in college?
Eventually you learn that either 1) you aren't and get over it, or 2) you are and learn to hide it so as not be be though of as an ass.
The key is to realise that even if you *are* smarter than everyone else, they'll be more cooperative if you let them maintain their delusion of equality.
I too noticed nerd arrogance in myself and my peers when I started at university. It bothered me a little bit. When I was done with university I went for a graduate somewhere else, and brought my nerd arrogance with me. But here, it was justified. The people around me were actual computer illiterates, despite being in technology-oriented environment and courses. It only got worse when I took a job as an IT gnome, and I REALLY started to see all the shenanigans the stupidity of some people can cause. Arrogance comes from thinking that you're better than people around you. Sometimes it's actually true.
You don't realize it now, but you, like most freshman, are very silly naive creatures
After a year or two you will collectively learn a log more about the world and calm down a lot. You'll notice the entering freshman are .need to go out of your way to do anything about it
PerletuLly like this (eternal September), but your peers as a whole will collectively mature. You do not
Having the humility to admit you have a problem like that is the first step, so you've probably got a good head start right there. Just think to yourself when you want to say something smart, "Will I sound like a prick if I say this (this way)?" I usually forget that part...
In literature, this type of arrogance is attributed to bureaucrats and technicians.
The reason is that they are masters of the machine, whether a political/paperwork machine or the literal machine.
This gives a lot of power to someone, but it's all negative power. They have the power to say no, or to wreck things, but don't yet (or perhaps never will) have the power to create.
I think you will find that, on Slashdot and in the world, those who have actual power (more than negation) tend to be confident, proud and perhaps "arrogant," but not in the way a lot of internet users are.
The people who are most arrogant in the way you describe are the frustrated ones who have a lack of options, and to compensate, create an inflated sense of self-importance which they refresh by imposing their will on others.
It's no different than any other kind of power abuse. Some fields (law enforcement, computing, bureaucracy) tend to attract more of these people than other fields do.
Has anybody run into problems in life with the arrogance that seems to be so prevalent with nerds? If so, how did you handle the situation?
Easy, I just stopped hanging out with so many people who were wrong all the time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People try to show off how smart they are by buying more expensive cards. If you want to make a nerd less arrogant, burn his magic cards.
I think you've stumbled upon the answer: you are being self-reflecting. I find a lot of nerds aren't self-reflecting. They question everything but themselves and it's up to everyone else to prove them wrong, otherwise they must be right.
Mind you, anyone who is arrogant probably has not done any self-reflecting either, or believe they don't need to do any self-reflecting.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Professional arrogance has no place in the professional world, so get over it. Always do things like code reviews and ask for constructive feedback, from people from other disciplines and also people with less experience.
Anyone who can't do this has no place working on teams... at least to me. I am a software engineer, but I do not know everything - nobody does, and nobody should be free from constructive criticism. Get over it.
I think SNL's Nick Burns series characterized people's typical views of Nerds pretty well: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/nick-burns/2786.
I gotta have more cowbell.
What you are observing is natural human egos. People tend to place unreasonable value in the things they know/are good at. So athletes over emphasize physical prowess, singers/actors claim a unique grasp of 'creativity', cs/math folks value their type of intellect. Everybody does it. Don't beat yourself up, this is just you maturing as an adult. Dependency -> independence -> inter-dependency. Appreciate the value of those that think differently than you, together you can move mountains.
I was once an arrogant nerd, now I am a stately sage! Over time I have come to accept that most people have less CPU and RAM than me and require things explained in English rather than showing them dumps of logs and config files, shouting "LOOK, THERE'S YOUR PROOF".
I serve Saturn with pride, I run its machines for the destruction of human health, freedom and happiness.
What are you? You are nothing!
Step 1: Use smaller, more popular words when speaking. Be happy that you can communicate with the largest number of people that way instead of just an elite group. I'm just too lazy to look up "cognizant". :P
Step 2: Don't give advice to people in a slightly insulting way.
Step 3: .... oops.
In our industry a bit of arrogance isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it can come across to people as you are confident, either in your ability or your knowledge of a certain thing, even if you have little knowledge of it, if you act like you do and are confident (or slightly arrogant) it can help you through.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
College students are often pretty unadapted to begin with. First isolate them with their computers most of the time. Add to that a complete lack of accountability for most of the (digital) interaction they do have. Top it off with entitlement and verification of their peers and you get nerds with personality issues.
It's important to define arrogance when having these conversations. If I have to go out of my way not to make another person feel inferior, I am willing to do so up to a point. But there's nothing wrong with being assertive while being willing to consider new and different ideas. In addition, another person may actually be inferior when discussing a particular field, in which case you try not to make them feel bad (it's not their fault they don't know) and to helpfully explore any questions they might have. But I don't consider it arrogant to talk about stuff you know, and knowledge is hardly the province of age alone, for example.
We have a tendency to say anything which distorts the notion of equality is bad. But the tendency is often over-applied, IMHO.
Incidentally, my favorite definition of arrogance measures it as a ratio to ability. :)
"the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others" - Kruger, Justin; David Dunning (1999). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (6): 1121–34.
Arrogance is universal. Jocks are arrogant because they're jocks. Nerds are arrogant because they think they're smarter than everyone else. (A couple of them even are smarter than everyone else, but not that many of us are as smart as we think.)
Recognizing your arrogance is the first step, as they say. Pay attention to the things you say and people's reactions to them. The only way to fix it is to recognize the specific instances where you come off as arrogant and change the behavior then and there. Apologize for it when you realize your arrogance has offended someone.
Also, spend time around people from all different backgrounds and majors. Don't just hang out with people like you. It will help a lot.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
By being better than everyone else. Duh.
One of my favorites:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-02-11/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
listen to what other people have to say, pay attention, dont interrupt, even if you think theyre wrong. ask questions and show interest in things other than nerd stuff. volunteer at an animal shelter or womens shelter or soup kitchen or suicide hotline. dont be a dick.
I know that the stereotypical nerd is socially awkward, but is actually worrying about it going to make it any better?
There is arrogance between golfers on the price of clubs you use.
There is arrogance between bikers if you use clips or not.
There is arrogance between classic car owners on whether you use original parts or not.
Hell, I even experienced arrogance when I "fixed" my RC Plane to fly itself because it "was cheating."
In short, go out and find something else to worry about, or better yet DON'T be that arrogant nerd and go make lots of money through people who actually want to work with you.
Dreams
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Respect people. Having or not having lots of specific knowledge (read: being a nerd) is not a sufficient condition for respect. Try to see where others are coming from. Maybe they've never been put in the situation you are in, such that nerdiness is so important. You will find that other people who are worth being around will respect you. Your problems with arrogance will be no more. Maybe some of your arrogant friends will act this way too. At least you care already.
P.S. Your post has a high level of vocabulary. That could be off-putting to a lot of people. Your first goal in speaking should be to communicate. That doesn't always mean using the most specific words. Good luck!
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble, when you're perfect in every way...
A lot of the nerd arrogance that I've seen comes from two categories:
1) Nerds tend to figure out/understand how things work and get easily frustrated by those who don't.
2) Nerds who act like that because that's how their nerd friends act.
Much of the time #1 can be rectified by people getting older, learning patience, understanding people better, etc. That takes time, practice, patience, and a willingness to explain things a few different ways when you're speaking to someone who doesn't understand you. Also, understanding that people don't all think the same is a big revelation to a lot of nerds (and most of the time comes in their late twenties)
Most of the time #2 is solved by hanging out with different people, growing up, and having a little more self confidence.
so he became a karate nerd.
It seems to me the simple adage is correct, that they're trying to overcompensate for self-perceived shortcomings in other areas, like social life or happiness, x.
That's why people try to one-up each other in life, in the office, everywhere - because they fear it themselves.
...and start using muggle-speak. Try cheap stuff like "I've noticed" or "I realized", it might just work.
Just think about how other people feel.
I've known people like you describe. They think it's unbelievable and hilarious when somebody doesn't understand technology, they think all professors are stupid and challenge them in class (wasting time), they talk shit about people they perceive as being less intelligent.
Well if you were on the receiving end of that kind of talk, you'd feel like shit. Nobody wants to feel bad.
If you are worried about becoming that kind of person, think about how what you'd say would affect others first. And avoid the groupthink/hivemind you get when a lot of CS students hang out together.
I'm going to get burned for this - but I'd say arrogance in students is mostly a coping strategy of particularly bright students (not just CS) that emerges with a lack of confidence or belief that they will fail. I've worked with some quite brilliant students and struggled to channel that arrogance you speak of in a positive direction. There is nothing worse in a group to have someone who is arrogant and, at the end of the day, while the brightest do well one has to think of team dynamics. So I encourage social engagement to try and break down barriers and help people see that others can make a contribution.
I think most nerds are successful in at least one specific area of life - whether it's mathematics, Python signal-processing libraries, building LEGO drones or understanding a larger part of quantum physics than others. I also think that we are generally prone to generalize our success - now that we're superior in one area of their life we really are superior (fullstop). One other area where this often happens is money - rich people tend to think that they are "successful" people, despite just having success in earning money :)
There are however many areas where a smart nerd can fail - relationships? Being useful to the community? Financial success? Parenting?
Advice? Humility takes a change of character and cannot be easily learned by reading a Slashdot comment thread :)
Like the preps/jocks/etc. when I grew up didn't affect how arrogant I became after post-grad?
It's life. The dumb-asses who poorly treated the geeks and nerds (not just computer geeks and nerds) get to become the whips of arrogant intelligent people when they graduate.
The problem is how long it takes those to grow out of that phase of life. Hell it took many years to reduce my own arrogance in my field. I still struggle with it from time to time.
Watch The Big Bang Theory, it's a really good analogue.
Really, it's not just nerds. If you stop and pay attention to people, you'll find that they're generally pretty arrogant and proud. We tend to believe that our way of seeing things is the only correct way. We're dismissive of people who disagree. We think that other people are inferior, and we tend to praise people who share similar strengths and virtues. That is, if I'm smart and unathletic, then I'm likely to believe that being smart is much more important than being athletic. If I'm athletic but not very bright, my opinion would be reversed. People tend to be smug and too sure of themselves.
Nerds are commonly arrogant in their youth. We pay attention to how things actually work and drive towards accuracy and truth/fact. In a sense it is the expression of dominance as a counter to the manners in which we are not dominant and this has been rubbed in our faces through a lack of mates, popularity, et cetera. However, it is an artifact of youth as a true nerd will quickly identify the limitations of his or her knowledge and thereby gain humility, will also gather a peer group in which they are not always the brightest and thereby gain the insight of having been a big fish in a small pond only en route to the ocean amongst the whales, and will experience the failures and manifested risks of arrogance learning to function in a world of people where our interests are joined and others have decisions.
Our strengths are long term in nature and, of course, not all of us successfully develop. We fail to continue growing and developing at our own peril. At the same time, the majority of our world's leaders and powerful people were once considered nerds.
Many assume that because they're stronger than you, that their opinions are also more "correct" than yours.
I guess might = right?
A Schottky diode will probably be a good start.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
ego often fades with age when you realize the pitiful skills you have are no better than those of a banker, lawyer, doctor, or anyone else that truly knows their shit. On the other hand, you could just be a raging asshole, those exist in any field of study.
I recommend you start drinking heavily....... Dr. Bluto.... remember he's PRE-MED !!!
I really don't mean to sound arrogant here, but let's not confuse arrogance with confidence.
And to prove my point, go stand around a water cooler. Any water cooler.
What do you think lawyers talk about around the water cooler? They talk about those "idiots" who try and represent themselves.
What do you think CPAs talk about around the water cooler? They talk about those "idiots" who think they're bean counters.
What do you think engineers talk about around the water cooler? They talk about those "idiots" who think they're MSEEs.
And finally, what do you think nerds talk about around the water cooler? They talk about those "idiots" who think they're IT experts.
Yes, perhaps some of the time it can be construed as pure arrogance and attitude. But most of the time, it's simply confidence among experts in their respective fields.
I realize that you may be in a good position to comment but I question both if it's arrogance and, if it is, is that a problem? Is it possible it's just the fact that they know more?
Timothy, as a woman in this field, you have done a great job summarizing why so few women join this field. The arrogance of most IT personnel is astonishing and quite frankly, silly. The best way to start altering your own attitude is to step outside of yourself and ask yourself why you believe that having knowledge about xyz makes you smarter or better than someone else. Once you realize that it doesn't, and that each person has value to add in the world regardless of what they know about IT, you will begin to adjust your mindset.
After being accused of being a know-it-all because he went to college, a friend replied, "I went to college and learn how much I didn't know!" That's a really good answer. It's probably a quote from Oscar Wilde or someone very profound. However, if you really believe that answer, your attitude won't get you ahead. As someone else wrote earlier, anyone with advanced education/knowledge about a subject is bound to sound arrogant (if not actually be arrogant). But I've known my share of jerks who didn't know squat and were arrogant. They still got ahead.
While nerds may be eloquent when it comes to tech, ask about fiction or girls (but not fictional girls) and they'll sound like anyone else.
In summary, if you know your stuff, go ahead and sound and act arrogant. If you don't know your stuff, go ahead and sound arrogant. Humility only worked for Sister Teresa, and even then, some people said she was arrogant.
I have noticed this as well in myself during some of my classes, I think the best way to combat it, at least for me is to not focus on it or other people, like how they act or however stupid their answers are, and try to keep an open mind. It may not work for everyone, but i feel it works for me. Another thing is to just keep quiet, you learn more from listening than talking, and you can't sound stuck up if you don't talk, just do your work, as you are there to learn, not goof off, get in trouble, make friends or be socially popular. But to combat arrogance, just find how you get to that point and combat it from there. Basic step though, is to be nice to everyone, even those you hate, it helps a lot later on, as teachers, co-worker, and bosses will be more likely to write you recommendations, and i think it helps to be a better person.
" I am concerned that, if I do not abolish these annoying tendencies, I may have trouble later on in life"
No reason to worry. Life will abolish them for you.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Sorry, but I'm pretty sure this is a permanent situation. Perhaps some worldwide catastrophe, were it to eliminate 99% of the population and allow for a "do over", might rectify the situation (at least for the first 75-100 years) - but, generally we're stuck with it. A better solution might be to make the rest of the populous smarter, and therefore not as obviously idiotic to the nerdy masses. Similarly, another possibility is that the entire population become nerds (been moving that way, slowly, for years). A skill to cultivate until such a time as we're able to execute the above: Biting your tongue.
If you haven't yet figured out that you know absolutely nothing, you really haven't learned very much at all.
If you are an asshole, sooner or later you will get what you deserve.
It is easy to hold other people in contempt when you only play to your own natural talents. If you have an aptitude for math, for example, that others do not it can be easy to think they're lazy, stupid, or not worthy of respect when you see them struggle. If, having this aptitude, most activities in your life revolve around math it is all too easy to become deluded and arrogant.
Find something you're bad at and struggle. Find something for which you have no natural talent and learn what it means to learn from others. I'm not saying switch your major or career choices. On these you should naturally play toward your strengths because that's why you have them. But if you're not good with, say, physical activities, or visual and creative arts, or music, or language, then take on one of these as a hobby. Take your two left feet dancing, pick up a martial art, play tennis, take a course in poetry, learn a language, try an instrument, take up woodworking. Most importantly, stick with it weekly, especially when it gets hard. It will make you a better person, help you to understand (and indeed to teach) others when they struggle and, almost as importantly, it will teach you how to be confident at what you're good at without being filled with pride and arrogance.
Seriously, good on you!
IMHO, it comes from years of being right. nerds are problem solvers. it's a thing they do, and they have years of experience in finding answers and having many moments where they can experience the feeling of not knowing something, thinking about it and then at some point finding out they were right. I am simplifying of course but the constant feeling of "being right" leads them to believe they will always be "right". Thus they become arrogant.
The problem is learning how to cope with people who will need your "brains" and not alienate them with your" arrogance" . try not talking. it's best to listen instead.
Just remember, you need the others too. No one will pull you from the wreckage if they don't like you. And you make a lot of mistakes being arrogant but you don't see them. so you are not really that smart.
good luck smart ass!
"Like some Slashdot users, I began attending university last month for computer science. The experience represents my first time away from home and I'm almost constantly with my peers, many of whom are also computer science students. Recently, I have become cognizant of the many negative opinions associated with a 'normal' person's perspective of what a nerd is like. Conversing with my college computer science peers (many of whom are quite nerdy), I have noticed that many of them are extremely arrogant. Upon introspection, I have come to the realization that I am also very similar to them and am very curious, but worried. I have noticed similar personality characteristics on Slashdot. Where does this nerd arrogance come from? How can it be rectified? I am concerned that, if I do not abolish these annoying tendencies, I may have trouble later on in life with my career and relationships. Has anybody run into problems in life with the arrogance that seems to be so prevalent with nerds? If so, how did you handle the situation?"
You might start by dialing back the flowery and mostly unnecessary vocab. Eschew obfuscation!
Because it's been my experience that "normal" people don't talk like that. I know it's a perfectly legitimate English word, but I've met no end of people who find that people who use longer words when a shorter one would do (eg: "fix") are being snobbish, or trying to talk down to people who might not be as familiar with the term.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Congratulations! You're in the process of joining the human race by displaying a sense of self-awareness and an awareness of other's feelings! You've already solved half the problem simply by noticing that you're acting like an arrogant jerk. Next step: When you notice you're about to say or do something arrogant or jerk-like just invoke Wheaton's Law.
Where does it come from: As for where it comes from it is pretty easy to see. Most hardcore nerds spent their youth getting picked and teased for being hardcore nerds. Get them into a field in which most people still regard as Voodoo/High Wizardry (Come on, you have to admit that even though people in general are more familiar with tech now most of them are fairly ignorant of how anything tech-related actually works. This is not a dig against anyone, it is simply a statement that most individuals don't know or care how a given piece of tech works, just that it does.) and it is easy to see how a level of arrogance might develop.
Rectifying it (Issue status - Won't Fix): Luckily this is a self-rectifying problem. Once said arrogant jerks get out into the real world most of them will go through the post-grad school of hard knocks. No one wants to work with an arrogant jerk. A lot of them will either self-correct their behavior and try to play nice with their co-workers, family, friends, etc. The rest won't have enough self-awareness to see what is causing the problem in the first place and will quickly either be out of a job, spouse, friends, etc. Problem solved either way. I've seen both scenarios play out.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
You should hear what they thought of the pilots.. They really know how to wreck a perfectly good airplane. Sometimes they come back with more damage than a B-17 coming home from a mission.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Nerds tend to have more logic and less social understanding. So a nerd might be running a company and say "fire the bottom 10%" this is logical and in theory the correct idea; but they forget that it will freak out the other 90% into thinking they are next and probably be worse than just keeping the useless 10% or at least shedding them in a less efficient but more tactful way.
Another good example of this is how so many IT departments make rules that treat the employees like children. It is a fact that most employees, at say an insurance company, would cause many disasters given unlimited access to the various company systems. But they often take this fact way too far; extending it to issuing Blackberries that are horribly crippled (no internet access even through wifi) or not letting managers deploy systems for their department. Again this often backfires and results in their employes referring to IT as the department of NO; so the managers and whatnot end run the IT department and outsource things like a sales management system or a new time management system. I experienced this first hand a while back when I was giving a presentation of a system for a company. Early in the presentation the network connection went very weird. The IT head had a shit eating grin on his face. I then switched over to a cellular connection(very rare at the time) and the presentation went smoothly while the IT guy frantically pounded on his keyboard trying to figure out where my internet connection was coming from. It was clearly his goal to keep the work in house. The people who did hire us showed us all kinds of tricks they had to get around IT. This was a major company and these were top guys. The problem was simple they couldn't out logic the IT people; but they could outsmart them.
The last place that this logic really gets companies in trouble is that IT people become religious about their favorite technology. I have met Windows zelots, linuz zelots, Novell zelots (the worst), Sun zelots, even adabas zelots. Often these people have mastered some technology, been certified up the wazoo, and now have final say in decision making. So some little snot nosed kid comes along and says "Hello you are still using Novell? Time to move on." And poof it is the snot nose who moves on. Can you imagine arguing with someone with 20 years Novell experience under their belt? Even now in 2012 I see companies deploying Novell into new departments.
BTW Novell gives administrators stunning abilities to control the user experience. There are few better systems for treating the users like infants.
Hanging around here makes it obvious that nerds know everything, that everyone else is an @sshole, and nothing matters except technology.
Do you realize where you are? Why in the FSM's name would you ask how to be more humble on this website?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
"Where does this nerd arrogance come from?"
Knowing better than others.
"How can it be rectified?"
Educate the others to know as much as you do.
"Has anybody run into problems in life with the arrogance that seems to be so prevalent with nerds?"
Yes...
"If so, how did you handle the situation?"
Told the others to educate themselves better but in the end I learned to keep my better understandings to myself, unless seriously warranted. So, it has been a life-long learning for me, and others.
We think for a living. We build worlds in our head -- like a novelist, except software instead of novels.
Is it any wonder that we are jealous of our genius? We build worlds in our head!
-kgj
Conversing with my college computer science peers (many of whom are quite nerdy), I have noticed that many of them are extremely arrogant. Upon introspection, I have come to the realization that I am also very similar to them and am very curious, but worried. I have noticed similar personality characteristics on Slashdot. Where does this nerd arrogance come from? How can it be rectified?
If you're maybe accidentally observing arrogance and social dysfunction in general, and just happen to be surrounded by "nerds" and CS majors due to that being your own major, I'd suggest don't worry about it, because that's just part of growing up.
If you've genuinely noticed that "nerds" are effectively more pissy than the other social sects that you've hopefully also interacted with (for your own sanity, but also simply for the sake of a control in this experiment), then I posit the following:
It's basically just an acquired/adaptive defense mechanism that some people develop, based on an entire lifetime (middle school and HS for you guys, but basically a lifetime) of being judged for no apparent reason (yes high school is harsh), while being told by those with authority (teachers, parents, administrative staff, etc.) that you are doing a good (and better than your "peers", relatively) job.
The worldview eventually evolves into one that comes to expect two things:
1. People will judge and mock me for no reason
2. I'm actually better than them
This leads to the logical conclusion that since a good defense is a strong offense: "I will judge them first, and based on metrics I know are more important, such as computer skills, grades, worldviews, etc." and everyone else will just look and think "lol what an angsty nerd".
Ultimately though, I still think don't worry about it. If you think "nerds" are bad, try sitting in a room next to third and fourth year English majors desperate to justify the tens of thousands of dollars they've spent to be very very unemployed, and I think you'll see that nerds are relatively well adjusted.
And finally, best way to fix yourself if there really is an issue? Learn to dance, gain some confidence, get laid. Your past is erased in college if you choose so (hell, some people can look desperate if they choose the opposite). Social constructs disappear, and you'll have a much better chance of people liking you for who you are, rather than judging you for what they see at first glance. But that's only if you give them the chance and don't come off too much like a dickish nerd right off the bat!
Intelligence makes you better at some things, but it doesn't make you a better person. Looking down on someone just because they aren't as smart as you are is no better than looking down on someone because they are weaker, or shorter. View your intelligence as a gift, and use it to help people. Try to have some perspective and humility, and reserve the arrogance for people that deserve it.
Some of this is the effect of youth, as it is pretty common for an 18 yr old to think they already have all the answers, and their parents are stupid and don't understand the way things are now. But high tech nerds especially seem to hang on to this arrogance for a long time. Part of it is problematic socialization abilities. The standard borderline Asperger's that nerds are often so proud of. Part of it is that they only interact with non-techies in the context of their area of expertise, and so they tend not to see that other people are very good at other things, even if they aren't so good at computers. Even if you are great at everything you put your mind or your hand to, if you are arrogant, there is one thing you suck at, and that is dealing with people.
For most Nerds they had a hard time in school with the popular crowd. They may not have been good at sports, or had the best friends, or had the best style of clothing. However they knew more about a particular topic much more than anyone else. In that area of topic such as Computer Science you get recognition of being an Alpha in that area. Right now in history Computer Science is very Male heavy, so all the CS Nerds having gone through High School with their main source of being recognized as Alpha was in their computer skills, they will do so in college.
Now instead of being humbled with working with a class if rather skilled people the CS students will then specialize more in particular areas, Linux, Windows, GUI, AI, Java... Whatever they feel they can be better then someone else is and excel at it, just so they can still be Alpha in that area.
Now for non-nerds males will often be Alpha in other areas, but being that they weren't in the bottom class in the social hierarchy in school they are less sensitive to it and do not try as hard to be an Alpha, especially in their academic areas. Also other academic areas have a closer to a 50/50 gender split where the Woman are less apt to show their Alpha qualities, and creating a culture where the proverbial chest thumping is less common.
In college I minored in Music, I did some focus on Jazz. Now the Jazz Majors were predominantly male too. However, due to the nature of Jazz where the band works as a team, there is less arrogance, however their culture has them competing to be the Jazziest including a lot of Smooth Jive talk (independant of race).
But Comp-Sci in school is a lot of independent work so there is more of I am better than you. They feel the need to Prove that they are smarter. Now they may not be smarter but they will take that one area where they have more knowledge and but a lot of weight on it.
To Rectify it? I would say some things we would need to do in the class is more teamwork projects, also have them work on cross department projects with other students who have different areas of interests. A statistical grading software for the education majors so they learn how to track grades, the CS-Developer learns skills of creating analytical programs. Work with Art Majors they do the art, you do the code behind it... Work with foreign languages majors to try to come up with better translation algorithms. That way they are forced to work with people with their own skills, and if you put them in areas where they have no idea about it, they are forced to work with the other students and ask questions, and not just be the one with the answers.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This has always baffled me too, especially among programmers, because programming involves endless iterations of writing code and then having the computer laugh in your face. How can you think you're such a genius when a zillion times a day, a machine tells you you're not?
With college students it makes sense though. Because they don't really notice things which haven't happened to catch their interest, they live in a tiny subset of the real world, and they've largely mastered that subset, so as far as they know they ARE geniuses. It takes them an annoyingly long time to realize that the 95% of the universe that they don't care about matters too.
Always remember that.
Pick up a copy of "How to Win Friends and Influence People".
Read it.
Then read it again.
Then keep it on your bedside and dip into it from time to time.
It's mostly aimed at salesmen, but the advice it contains is invaluable for people in all walks of life.
It comes from being nearly 100% correct throughout academic life, often correcting teachers because we know all the subject matter better than them. It's a learned trait. I remember becoming arrogant in 4th grade because my teacher insisted that the plural of deer was deers. After that point, I realized that I could be more knowledgable than a teacher. That has stayed with me to this day and has served me well throughout life. I've learned to hide my opinion of others for social reasons, but it's rare for me to ask their opinion on anything.
Plus chicks dig it.
The difference between arrogance and confidence is that arrogance fails to recognize that same ability in others (at different things, perhaps.) And so often, the nerd environments of which you speak are inhabited mostly by those who have either actively or passively had their own competence go unrecognized.
The arrogant ones will stop learning early (because they *already know best*) and will rapidly become mediocre. Arrogant people are annoying, so I stopped hanging around them. The smartest guy in my classes was also the most humble and hard working - he assumed he was the weak link and would press on with hard problems...the annoying ones would blame the professor or bemoan the compiler, etc, and give up. Dunning-Kruger in action, man.
Smart people do things that are smart, arrogant people talk about how dumb other people are. Hang around smart people - it will make you feel dumb and *should* motivate you to learn more. If you are still in school and don't feel like an idiot, then you aren't learning anything.
It's a life style based on a personality defect. Never being willing to accept that others are your equal, or betters, puts you in the lowest class of humanity. I have done what you're learning to o and am better at it simply because it is colored with experience. I have also rebuilt engines and transmissions for heavy equipment and made a decent living at it. Yet I except that there are others out there who have it faster and better then I have.
You'll either learn to accept people and your place among them or grow up to be another Sheridan.
Once you hit the real world, the "best guy in the room" won't be 3 years ahead of you but 20, and once the greybeard shuts you down for the first time and patiently explains why you're "awesome idea" a) will fail, b) will cost the company millions, c) is the first obvious naive solution everyone always comes up with you'll get a little bit of that chipped out of you.
I generally learn something new every day at my job, and that fact humbles me.
Everyone is right sometime, and that fact humbles me, and helps me listen and see their point of view.
Have I been arrogant? Yep. Am I still? Yep. I'm pretty good at what I do, and confidence can spill over to arrogance. But once you've had your first taste of humble pie, you realize it won't be your last, and that arrogance will be tempered a bit. If you're truly good and know it, I wouldn't worry about it. If you think you're better than you are, well, that'll take care of itself too. :)
Oh, please. Am I the only one who can tell that the entire article is a troll? It was obvious to me from the start.
IMO, rectify it with logic.
Ask them about a medical issue they wont know, or perhaps a plumbing problem.
Then you get the Sheldon Cooper effect whereby they dismiss the information as trivial and/or uninteresting. Never underestimate the extent of youth and arrogance.
At this age the do believe that P &= ~( 1 << B) is a very clever to express setting a port pin to 0 and they're mesmerized by their own ability to understand such.
At 20, Alexander the Great began a military campaign that established one of the earliest great empires in human civilization. From beyond the grave, the private words of a young jewish teenager named Anne Frank dares us to ignore the human cost of surrendering to fascism. No more than a few weeks ago. A young Pakistani continued to carry on that spirit showed the world even a child can have the courage to stare down the Taliban and make them blink first. What have you and your arrogant peers done for society to justify your ego?
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Plumbing can be done badly by someone without smarts; a proper plumbing job -- knowing when to use copper, when PVC, when something else, what the optimum grade for laying the pipes is, etc. is just as technical as anything a technologist or medical practicioner does. In fact, the parallels between plumbing and PCB layout are striking -- with the difference that you have to deal with gravity and environmental impact instead of RF interference, and have a wider selection of materials to choose from. There's also the fact that each plumbing job is done by hand instead of just having to do the layout and then sending it to the printer for replication.
I started college as a computer engineer in 2005. Thank god I had taken AP computer science in high school, because even CS101 expected that you were a proficient programmer. I still don't know what was worse.... the professors and their RTFM attitude towards people who don't even know where the manual was or what to look for, or the kids whose parents brainwashed them into CS at the age of 5 and spent half the class correcting the professor. Bottom line is everyone thinks they are smarter than everyone else... and asking the wrong question will quickly make your entire major label you as an idiot. My first three years i never associated with a single CS, CPE, or EE kid because I was better than ass kissing to learn things the easy way. All my friends were business majors. However after three years I came around and started to get interested in specific areas of study and found a decent group of nerds that had average social skills. In the end I graduated with what i think was the best and highest paying job out of all of them. Just be practical and eager to learn and it should get you far.
This is exactly the same as anyone else's arrogance. You're very good at something, so people who aren't as good at that thing seem inferior. But as other commenters have said, I'm sure that as you get older you'll run into more and more people who are much better than you in this field. You'll also run into people who are just as good in some other field as you are in this field, while you completely suck in their field just like they suck in your field. Everyone is a genius in some field(s) and an idiot in other(s).
The key is to remember that both of you have strengths and weaknesses. If you don't want them to be an arrogant prick to you when their field is involved, don't be an arrogant prick to them when your field is involved.
P.S. The Big Bang Theory is pretty good for a major network sitcom. It does a good job of capturing the different mentalities of "geeks" vs. "normal people". Sheldon Cooper is an extreme exaggeration of the geek with a superiority complex. He's always condescending to his friends, even though they have doctorates in astrophysics and similar. He acts especially superior to the one who only has a Master's from MIT. However, even his geeky friends realize that his behavior in normal social situations is severely lacking. Sheldon is also taught the lesson that there's always someone better when Stephen Hawking points out a simple arithmetic error he made early on, completely invalidating all of his conclusions. In one episode, another character has to study up on the game of football, so that he can go to his girlfriend's party and attempt to fit in. He sounded just as moronic to those people as these "inferior" people sound to you when talking about computers. To keep things in perspective, just keep in mind how much Sheldon seems like a jerk with his superiority complex, and realize that's exactly what you're doing on a smaller scale.
i find a good slap to the face can fix arrogance issues pretty quick
I believe that the absolute best way to obtain an appropriate perspective on the value of others is to serve them. Make service part of your everyday life. There are endless opportunities and ways. It can be something as simple as opening the door for people and saying hello with a smile. You can join a service oriented club at your school. You could join a local church on some service project. You could visit people in a retirement center or hospital. You could volunteer whenever the chance arises.
Nothing has helped me appreciate other people more than serving them. I have found an awful lot of happiness in holding doors open, greeting others in a kind way, picking things up for people when they drop them, and participating in service groups. When you serve someone with a smile without expectation of reward, you obtain a happiness and humility that cannot be found in any other way.
I seriously doubt he used the word to be intentionally snobbish. In fact, forcing people to talk down so that "the plebes can better understand you" is arrogance in its own right. One situation where it is appropriate to use simpler language is when speaking to someone who's first language isn't English. But even then they might appreciate hearing and learning a word like "rectify", which is pretty commonly used.
I recommend learning "mindfulness". I good, non-religious, non-dogma path is through our friend Eckhart Tolle. I recommend his books, The Power of Now and A New Earth. They have both helped me tremendously.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Now-Spiritual-Enlightenment/dp/1577314808
http://www.amazon.com/New-Earth-Awakening-Purpose-Selection/dp/0452289963
Also, learn to listen to females in your life. :-)
Peace
If your school has a drama department, take the Introduction to Acting class. You will learn to
control how you act, and become sensitive to how to affect the audience. The class will be very hard.
Your future will include meetings, presentations, and job interviews. And it will give you something to be
cocky about to your CS peers. The gender ratio is more balanced than CS.
There is no such thing as unearned arrogance. If you're arrogant, you've been successful at something, and you have every right to think highly of yourself. It's a trait to be celebrated, not scorned. If you are humble, you see some value in prostrating yourself and exuding weakness. Unless you're religious, there is no reason to promote it as a positive trait.
If you're religious, then being a humble sheep is somehow of some value to you -- and seeing those that are not conforming, and making the sacrifice of self that you have would be reason for resentment. But being religious is a choice like anything else. I should never be asked to change because of the choices you've made. That's not a reasonable thing to ask of another human being.
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Au contraire mon frere, as a licensed plumber you have to basically know the contents of the National Plumbing Codes, and any State and Local codes, up to or better than the inspector who will be checking your work. You have to know how to apply these codes, how to do the work, no less be physically capable of doing it; and if you don't do your job correctly, you might be liable for property damage, and if you don't know to how install that vent pipe correctly, you might even be liable for someone's death, as has happened many times before.
And like a doctor, when you need a plumber, you often really, really need a plumber, and you need him NOW. Perhaps plumbing or other trade work doesn't involve higher levels of mathematical and physics understanding, but I'd advise you not to look down your nose at one when he's looking down your shitter.
Rectifying nerd arrogance: Yer gonna need a nerd diode for that.
But watch out. Indiscriminate use of a bridge style rectifier will get ya 1.414 x the nerdiness. That can blow out yer nerd capacitors if you don't spec' 'em right.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why not just be blunt with them and tell them the truth that you find their arrogance offensive?
Or, you could try the school-yard model: lead by example and be humble and open and good to your peers. If and when someone tries to trample all over you with their arrogance, socially boot-stomp them in public so they learn that they can't just be a fucking douchebag without social consequences.
Example: My old manager could be highly arrogant and sometimes pious... A coworker snapped one day over a GoToMeeting and yelled at our manager for habitually speaking to him with disdain (which happened all of the time to most people). My manager's tone changed very quickly after that. Very risky move by my old coworker, but it did work out in the end.
We're just smarter than you.
I'm going to assume that you're serious, and that you're male, and a student.
Did you know that half of the human population are women?
Make friends with the girls studying with you. They may have a slightly different perspective on everything around you.
Since you're lucky to be a student: go out for a dance every once in a while. Don't give a shit if people laugh at how you dance. Learn to cook well. Be brave: the advice is "do something every day that scares you".
I'm sure things are a lot better in this century, but I remember having a cow-orker decades ago who had studied computer science at a technical place, and he said with pride that there was one (1) girl in his entire year, and they pestered her so much that she had to leave.
(Did I mention with happiness that I never studied computer science except as an aside?)
Good luck living your life to the full!!!!
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Well, I think it's important to know there's ALWAYS someone smarter than you in this world, either because he is smarter in YOUR domain, or because you don't know anything about HIS domain (I include "hand workers" - as opposed to "intellectuals" - here, because using your hands requires a great amount of brain).
This plus what crazyjj and others said. Having said that, just the fact that you spotted this issue makes you a bit more intelligent than your peers, but don't get arrogant because of that ;)
Daniel
It's for this reason that I don't hire people who have only done one thing in their life. They tend to believe that their way is the only way; that they know more about whatever I need them to do than I do; that they are a gift to me; that they are irreplaceable.
None of those are usually true.
They need to get out there and experience real people and real life.
I want someone who has tried various majors, someone who has taken philosophy and computer science and physics and photography and history of jazz and has hiked the Appalachian Trail (in reality and in euphemism) and has made their own kite and has attended a political rally and has volunteered at a homeless shelter and has babysat and has restored a classic muscle car and has participated in toastmasters and is training to run a marathon and watches soccer and plays cribbage and...
I don't want someone who spends their days sitting at a computer figuring out how to make ext4 work 0.1% more efficiently. They may know the details of that code, but they'll be useless as an employee.
I struggled with this myself when I was studying CS at CMU in the early '90s. I'm naturally a very ego-driven, arrogant person. I'm very much driven by other people appreciating me, liking me, and thinking that what I do is really cool or good. I think geeks, more than others, are like that. When we walk around with, say, a geeky t-shirt, or walking stick, or Doctor Who scarf, or some other affectation, what we're saying to the world is, "Look at me! I'm cool!" Even when we're socially introverted, once other people engage us we want so badly for them to think we're cool.
And the funny thing is that many of us geeks actually do have a lot of interesting, cool things about us (even if not the traditional "cool" of Fonzie, Mr. T, Dawson, etc.). I learned through a lot of self-examination (and a few very patient, non-geek girlfriends) that people gave me the reaction I wanted ("I like you, you are interesting, and I want to listen to you") much more often if I became less arrogant.
Here's what I had to do to become less arrogant. First, I had to stop arguing with people. I had a habit of arguing to completion, especially using pedantic arguments. With other geeks, this was great. With civilians, this really pissed them off and made me a very frustrating person to deal with. I would win an argument through logic and rhetoric, but then the person would never really talk to me again, or treat me poorly. I decided that I would rather lose the argument but win the friend. An interesting side-effect of that was that when I listened to other people—actually listened, not just waited for them to stop talking so I could make my next argument—I discovered that they often had something interesting to say. Sometimes they were even right, and I was wrong!
That was the second thing I had to learn: that sometimes I was wrong. This was a difficult thought for me, because I am so used to being right. But just like I didn't always ace every test in college, I also didn't always walk into every discussion knowing everything. The more I listened to other people, the more I realized that the world was more complicated and less obvious than I thought it was. I started to dismiss people less, even people who seemed stupid or wrong, because even if they only had one thing to say, they might still be good company—and if they liked interacting with me, they would give me more of that recognition from others that I craved (and, if I'm honest with myself, still crave today).
Finally, I had to recognize that social skills, like all other skills, improve with practice. I used put my foot in my mouth all the time: I'd say something that would commit me to a fact, idea, or opinion, often an extreme one (said very loudly), then I'd have trouble walking back from it. That would be really embarrassing, especially when it turned out what I said was something I didn't really want to say, or was wrong. Sometimes I would blurt something out that would bother me for days afterwards. It really helped when I started treating this like a skill to be improved. I tried to treat each of those things as a learning opportunity. What did I say wrong? How could I prevent myself from doing that in the future? Almost always, the answer turned out to be to qualify absolute statements with phrases like "I think" or "It might be true that" or "Maybe." Often, the answer would just be to keep my mouth shut for a few extra sentences and listen.
My interactions with others improved a lot after that, and my arrogance naturally started to deflate. It's amazing how much less arrogant we become once we start listening to other people, even people we assume at first are wrong because they disagree with us.
The biggest social skill improvement, for me, has been to recognize that other people really like being right as much as I do. When someone else said something that was right, I would grudgingly admit they were correct, then I would try to one-up them: "Yes, you're technically correct, but here's my idea which is so much better!
Building Better Software
When I looked back I realized I really did deserve it. It took till I was 47 before I grew up and cast off the arrogance of insecurity. Work hard, be confident in yourself and the arrogance should go away.
I know pay isn't neccessarily the best guide as to level of skill required, but there's often some sort of correlation. As such, I don't know any unemployed plumbers, and all the plumbers I know make plenty of money. Not just "comfortable" money, but pretty damn good money.
Think about what a good person would do. Do that. Imagine what you want to see from the people around you. Try to be like that.
This is not hard. You're already 80% of the way there, and better than probably 95% of your "nerd" peers.
And make some non-nerd friends.
Arrogance? Naaaah! Just confidence :-) When you're right about everything, it is very frustrating to deal with wrong/stupid people/Republicans.
:-D
What do I do? I'm a life-long computer nerd but studied my other passion in college - political science. So, I've gotten to be real good with rhetoric, to disguise my strong language in sweet-sounding prose and occasionally throw a few qualifying statements in there so that I don't make them feel so stupid.
But in similar fashion, it sometimes drives me crazy to argue with a fellow computer nerd who ~does~ know what they're talking about, but just has polar-opposite opinions from my own (like Mac users... tho they are more like idiot-savants).
I have an opinion on everything, it's always correct, and it matters more than everyone else's!
I don't know if arrogance is more prevalent in nerds than in the general population. I do have the impression that there is an inverse correlation between arrogance and actually being knowledgeable. Generally, the more you know, the more you realize that (1) things tend to be more nuanced than they first appeared, (2) there are a lot of things you don't know (3) there are a lot of areas where others know more than you do. That's one thing.
The other thing is being interested in other people and getting along with them. Speaking for myself, for a long time, there were a lot of things I was more interested in. At some point, that changed, and I became very interested in how people work and what sorts of things make them happy. I read a few books about this, and "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is a classic that I would recommend.
I've always enjoyed making people happy, and I don't think I've turned away a lot of people by arrogance or other annoying characteristics, but, looking back, I can see that I have definitely improved a lot in how I deal with people. As a result, I am now much happier. It's not just that I have more friends and am receiving signs that they appreciate me more, it's also that this has really helped me get ahead in life. As it turns out, a lot of things in life depend on who you know more than on what you know. And really, dealing with people and making them happy is very rewarding.
To answer your questions: I think nerd arrogance tends to come from the feeling that they generally know better than other people. You may actually know better. There will also be cases where you are wrong. In either case, it's probably better to be humble about it. Feel honored that someone values your knowledge and considered opinion and asked for your input. Don't present it as the ultimate truth, but say something like "The common way to do that is $technique_that_is_well_known_In_your_circles" or "I think that $something_you_have_concluded_from_observations". That way, the other person can feel that they learned something and draw their own conclusions, rather then having been told the truth by some person who thinks they know it all.
As for trouble in your career and relationships, yes, that's a very good point. I think most people will encounter trouble in those areas, and getting more knowledge on how to deal with common situations will definitely help you do better than you would just blundering through. Besides "How to Win Friends and Influence People", I can also recommend "Getting to Yes", "Further Up the Organization", and "101 Things I Wish I Knew when I Got Married" (it applies equally well to relationships not involving marriage). Think of it as the nerd approach to life: read the manual, and you will know more and do better than the average person. ;-)
Finally, the fact that you asked about it shows that you are interested in doing better. That's the most important step. Now that you know you care about this, you have the motivation to work on it. In all honesty, I think this already puts you in a great position to do better than many people. Good job! I hope you find my input helpful. Let me know how it goes!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You shouldn't worry about it. You already noticed the trait in yourself and that's at least half the battle. A few years of practice at things like explaining your ideas without getting impatient or insulting the other person when they don't get it right away will take care of the other half.
They act like this because it's all they have in life. They never fit in with any other crowds growing up, and now they are actually surrounded by similar people. Together, they amplify their nerdy ways to make it a chosen lifestyle.
What they fail to realize is that wearing a ribbon cable as a belt will do nothing for you but chase the girls away. And college is the only time you'll be surrounded by easy girls.
Relax, act like a normal human being. You can be a CS major and still have social skills. You may never be the king geek, but you leave college with the ability to get a job AND a girlfriend.
I believe a lot of this comes from frustration of the environment. Fellow employees/students that simply do not agree with you, nor understand what you do and who you are. A lot (maybe most) of SMART people are horribly introverted and poor communicators. Have you ever had to give tech support and got more and more angry as the conversation continued? Have you ever had to explain yourself rather than just saying, "I'm right. Go look it up." A lot of people simply give up, go in their corner and code/develop/engineer. You appear to be one step ahead in that you are already self-aware. Not everybody is built the same. Try not to get frustrated and realize that not everybody has the same genetic makeup and education as you do. But that doesn't make you better. It just means you are talented in your area of expertise. Make sure that reflects respect and not contempt.
We're just better than them!
"Where does this nerd arrogance come from?" Ignorance. "How can it be rectified?" With time, education and humility (i.e. being smacked down a few times) "Has anybody run into problems in life with the arrogance that seems to be so prevalent with nerds? " Not really but being smarter than most nerds helps. I am sure nerds, themselves, are there own worst enemies. "If so, how did you handle the situation?" It usually works its own way out. If the arrogance goes beyond a person's 20's then lack of promotion and lack of engaging work usually snuffs out that problem. Most professional adults can overlook some arrogance if the work product is good. At some point arrogance needs to turn into confidence and authority. If it doesn't the arrogant shit will end up sitting in his mom's basement shaking his fist at the world.
it means you are probably not as smart as you think you are. You stop being arrogant by free will, nobody is forcing you to be that way. It's not really that difficult...
I learned that the best way to succeed at the workplace is certainly not by being arrogant, but to at least act as if you respect the people you work with, and to thank them every chance you get. If nobody likes you you will never succeed, no matter how smart and hard you try.
The key is to realise that even if you *are* smarter than everyone else, they'll be more cooperative if you let them maintain their delusion of equality.
"Their delusion of equality."
Yeah, right.
Like that bone-deep arrogance and sense of superiority you can barely force yourself to hide won't be seen in your face from a mile off.
This. Furthermore, if you're even going to university in the first place, you are not "normal," and neither is anybody else there. That's one of the humbling things I found when I went to university for the first time. I was suddenly surrounded by people who were just as if not smarter than me.
At least where I'm from, it's okay to actually talk at your own reading level in university.
Jocks are arrogant because the are way better than others at football. It's their job to kick ass. Nerds are arrogant because they are better at something than most people (math, science, computers, whatever your nerd thing is). The nerds also think that the thing they're good at is more practical or valuable than what the jocks are good at (which they consider barbaric or irrelevant at best) which inflates their heads more. Thing is, the jocks are fucking the cheerleaders, so which thing is better to be good at? ;-)
Then Get Laid!
that is what MIS majors are training for, they will be conduit to management, treat them nice
Look, it's human nature. It isn't limited to just CS or the technical folks. As others have noted, go to any other college on the university campus, and you will find arrogance in its many wonderful and sickening forms. You note that you hang around with your fellow CS students most of the time. That is part of the problem. Hang out with people from all walks of life and from all backgrounds. Artists, Physicists, Mathematicians, Engineers, Writers, Sociologists, Dancers, etc. Guess what? That arrogance is there in all fields and backgrounds, just in different forms. And just as there are arrogant jerks in CS and all of those fields, there are the happy go lucky nice personalities who exist in those fields, yes, in CS as well.
Mix things up and get to know people from different backgrounds and different goals in life. This will help you to gain perspective and understanding of yourself and of those around you.
Arrogance comes from either ignorance or delusion. You believe that you are better than everyone else. Sure, everyone is better than everyone else at something. But that doesn't make you a better person than they are. Just better at something. And there are plenty who are better at that than you are. And others better than them.
Perspective. If you are truly concerned and want to improve your view of the world, then gain some perspective.
In my mind, arrogance is the negative form of pride. You can have pride in being able to do something well. Having too much pride breeds arrogance and closes your mind to opportunities.
It should be noted: you can change yourself, but don't try to change others. They have to want to change. Otherwise, you are just fighting an uphill battle.
In any case, good luck with your career in CS. Like any other field, it is full of endless ups and downs. :)
Ahh, don't worry about it. First time you pull the nerdy arrogance around 'norms' and get your butt kicked or stuffed into a trash can you'll figure it out. Either that, or you'll spend a lot of time walking around with pre-torn underpants to prevent atomic wedgies.
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
The immortal words and motto of Wil Wheaton.
I have become cognizant of ... Conversing with my college computer science peers...
Stop using words like "cognizant" and "conversing" when "aware" and "talking" will do.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Isnt it arrogant go online and post a blurb about how you a self styled nerd is percieved poorly and talk about nerd arrogance as if you and your fellow clique members are above or beyond it looking down at everyone else with pity and contempt? Trying to publicly say "How do we fix this" when the whole thing reads more youre talking at people instead of too them?
Youre in college, the vast majority of college students from what Ive seen are incredibly arrogant in their own way. Paticullarly how they think they see the worlds problems, know how to fix them, etc. They will never see it about themselves but to everyone else they seem pretty pretentious and know it alls. I think its mostly because they are out and away from home, they feel like they are suddenly mature, youth still drives them to assume to know things and get really rilled up over nothing and take overly strong opinions of subjects they know little about. Being around others like them just strengthens that and makes them more narrow minded. They seek out others to encourage their beliefs or will adobt others beliefs because they want to be with other "mature and open minded and intelligent people". Despite being in college your just an older highschool student following the same patterns and still havent experinced life or grown a lot.
And no it isnt arrogant on anyone elses part normally. Usually arrogant people are the ones who think someone else is arrogant and that stems from the other person not having the same opinions as you. So you tend to think they are arrogant because they dont act or think like you.
The real problem is no one minds their own business. If everyone would stop worrying what others say or think and just concentrated on themselves and those who are close to them then this whole world would be a much better place. Because at the end of the day, what does it matter if you think others are arrogant? Does it effect you personally? No it doesnt effect you at all.
Of course read the right way everything I said sounds arrogant.
If you think the source of arrogance is that you are smarter than most people around you, then you are doomed to remain arrogant.
If you think the source of arrogance is that you are more focused on technology and ideas than interpersonal experiences, then you are becoming wise.
I see lots of Slashdot postings along the lines of "smart people tend to be arrogant" or "You were probably smarter than the people around you so you developed this tendency..." Those people are the ones who don't get it. Ignore their advice. Arrogance is a form of asshole-ishness and people respond accordingly. Don't let the arrogant people make you think that your own arrogance is an indication of superiority or that it is acceptable.
It's because we're scared that what we do is secretly actually easy... or because many people think it is, and annoy us. If we don't project elitism, we'll be replaced by people half as good as us who just barely know how to do technical stuff, but convinced management that they are just as good.
Spend a great deal of effort becoming humble and courteous. In every interaction you have with somebody, be patient, and humble. Your work will speak for you, and people will gravitate to your opinion out of respect for your work. People will feel comfortable approaching you, as they will learn that you will be the exception to the "nerd arrogance" rule. Personally, my sense of humor is aimed at myself a lot of the time. I provide IT support to a small business (about 75 employees) and feel so appreciated that I try even harder to make sure I never let my sarcastic side damage my work relationships. If you need help becoming humble, get married, and have kids. :) That worked quite nicely for me.. Nothing wipes away arrogance quite like changing a diaper on a child with explosive diarrhea.
I find that beatings work quite well. Nothing sends the ego to the shitter better than a good thumping :X
Liberty.
People would tell me - "you always have to be right, don't you!". It took a long time for me to realize this was criticism and not praise.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
A: Stop reading the comments in Slashdot.
Seriously. If you listen to Slashdotters, they'll convince you Bill Gates is history's greatest villain, that Windoze can't go two seconds without crashing, and every computer user in the world is being forced to use Windoze.
Then they'll claim Teh Lunix is both a floor wax and a desert topping, it was crafted by the keyboard of God, and it is innately perfect despite bug fix "new versions" coming out twice a month.
A2: Go outside once in a while, talk to real people, and realize that understanding how a computer works isn't the greatest thing anyone can ever do with their life. There are people out there busy being doctors, lawyers, mechanics, whatever... and you aren't expected to understand all about their area of knowledge, so don't expect them to know all about yours.
The fact that you are introspective enough to understand this about yourself is a good indicator that you're going to be just fine in life. Just continue to re-visit that introspection every time you start to feel arrogant.
On the flip side, keep in mind there is a difference between being arrogant and being confident. If you truly have the facts and/or feel your opinion is overwhelmingly the correct opinion, don't be ashamed or afraid to share it with others or defend it against scrutiny just because you feel you may be coming across as arrogant.
Lastly and possibly the most important, arrogance is usually the result of style rather than substance. If you're right, you're right, you can either humbly keep it to yourself, or scream it to everyone who happens to disagree with. Pick your battles and try to be respectful of other people's opinions or interpretations.
I am a CS grad and worked with a bunch of Naval Architects. They were arrogant know it all bastards that could run Math and Physics circles around me. They had massive funding and did lots of amazing theoretical work. Yet they programmed like first year CS students. They made 2000+ lines functions in C with 10 to 20 lines of comments, used variable names like x, y, z and said everyone knows what this means it's basic stuff. When I left they still didn't have the code working but they were almost there(after 2 years). That project lost it funding because they weren't producing results. They wouldn't listen to a word I said about fixing it, since I only had a BS and they were PhDs.
On the flip side, I got my degree while in the medical field in the military. The people I worked with weren't on my level but knew everything about working in the Cardiac Cath lab. They knew what diameter guide wire fits inside of every different catheter (and when to use which cath), which is pretty damn important when it's in someone's heart. They thought I was an idiot because I didn't know that stuff. But then one of them was so clueless about CS, he actually said, "Why did you have to get a college degree to work on a computer? You didn't learn much, you don't even know Windows that well."
Your classmates may know some things in a narrow area but it is a big world outside of University. Even in the CS/IT world the knowledge and tech is vast. Programming is just a portion of the work. Do they know how to: Calculate the BTU load for a server room, reset keys for crypto equipment, change out a brick on an SGI node, manage people, set up queuing management software to make engineers happy, setup up and optimize a database, manage a ldap server, set up vlans, make a requirements document, track software changes, do a "use case", ISO/SEI/CMM level requirements? They don't even know what's really involved once they get out into the business world.
Like other have said respect others and what they value. That "idiot" Nursing student who has a hard time with Stats may be taking care of you one day. Do you really want to piss them off?
I take it you never been around med-students. Art-students or indeed ANY first year student. It is the arrogance of youth not nerds and don't worry, life will soon beat it out of you and make you one of the broken ones who slug through life and pray for an early grave.
And stop buying word of the day calendars.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
At least with other latin languages, picking a more formal / longer word is usually better. Then, there's at least a good chance they have a similar word in their own language from the same roots.
Interestingly enough, the Spanish word for rectify is rectificar. The closest word I can find for "fix" (with online dictionary help) is "reparar." Of course using the word repair is probably harder to do without it sounding wrong.
Some of the problem and fault lies with how people use the internet and to a lesser degree other media. Basically, on the internet you can find reinforcement for any wack-bag psychotic opinion you may have. Research the polar opposite opinion from yours own on any subject. Enjoy the knowledge. Maybe you will move your opinion towards the center or maybe you will have better understood how to defuse the opposition.
If you only interact with aggrogant nerds then an arrogant nerd you will be. Even if you are the least arrogant nerd of the group, it still is a problem. As others have mentioned humility in general usually only comes after a major explosive and destuctive realization that upsets your status quo.
You are already questioning the norm of arrogant nerds and that puts you ahead of the game. If you are only exposed to the opinion that all nerds are superior mentally and all ...say "jocks" are inferior mentally, you will only paint yourself into a corner where your paradigm does not answer all life's questions. You are headed for an explosive and destructive of your religiously held belief.
What happens when you meet me? Sorta jock plus nerd plus other traits? A better example would be someone in MUCH better shape and also carrying double BA's who performs at the top levels of TWO careers at the same time.
Someone like Shane Carwin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Carwin
UFC Champion, Mechanical Engineer, and Enviromental Technologist. He could probably embarrass many of us mentally and 99.999% of us physically.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Reminds me of this article I read a while back: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html Oh and this one too: http://lifehacker.com/5944221/you-cant-be-effective-when-youre-too-smart-for-your-own-good?utm_source=io9.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation
To build on this, my Father-in-law is an electrician. Sure maybe he's not overly technical and can barley use a computer, but when he's working he's making $60/hour + materials. I say when he's working, because there's so much work for him he chooses when and who he works for. So I'd argue that he has a much better job than most of the technical people I know.
Trades people should be respected, with out them we wouldn't have buildings to store our computers, power to turn them on, or running water to make coffee with for those late night programming sessions.
I agree with the summary I've observed many co-op students that work under me thumbing their noses at our co-workers. They think because I have a degree I'd be on their side, but I'm not. A piece of paper says you survived university, now a days that's probably living at home with your parents. Most of my co-workers may not have degrees, but self taught with 20+ years of experience will kick a piece of paper in the nuts any day and I'm quick to remind my co-ops of that.
You may be misconstruing arrogance with the way some people perceive the world that is different from the average person. In engineering and CS you will find a much higher percentage of people who have brains that work differently than those that gravitate toward the humanities and other fields. These folks have a form Autism Spectrum Disorder know as Asperger's Syndrome. These folks (overwhelmingly male) tend to have a highly defined sense of right and wrong and thus they tend to view most things as either black or white, right or wrong, correct or incorrect. They also tend to be very honest and lack many social skills that nuerotypical (NT) people have, thus they will tend to tell you exactly what they are thinking even if that offends you or makes them come off as arrogant. Generally these people are not trying to be mean or condescending, they are actually trying to be helpful by correcting your when you are obviously wrong. As people with AS are also typically very bright, they usually are correct when they talk about a subject as they usually refrain from talking about subjects in which they do not have knowledge (unlike used car salesmen).
People with AS also tend to use language more formally. Your use of correct but unusual word choices like cognizant, rectify and abolish plus your admitted interest in CS, might be indicators that you too have AS. Your ability to perceive arrogance and other subtle human interactions may be an indicator that you do not have AS. But AS (and Autism itself) is a spectrum so you may have some typically AS traits but not all of them. If you are interested you can take the AQ test online to see how far along the spectrum you score. http://www.aspergerstestsite.com/75/autism-spectrum-quotient-aq-test/#.UIlxo4baJ8E
Many people who are truly geeky or nerdy, with all the insight into and love of technology but without many of the social skills many of us take for granted, most likely score highly on the AQ test. There is some movement toward removing the AS classification of a disorder or abnormality and changing our view of AS to reflect the variation of normality in humans. People with AS do think differently than the rest of us, but it turns out that these people that think differently may be primarily responsible for many of the technological advancements in society. Without them, we may still be living in caves. So it is not perhaps the best idea to try and fix all these "arrogant" people you notice, but learn more about how they think and develop ways to interact with them. They too will learn skills over time to help them better interface with NT individuals but NTs should also make the effort to learn how to interact with Auspies.
I think that is what you would think, but I don't believe it is the case I think most plumbers and even inspectors don't know the codes that well.
I had some recent work on my house done (multiple inspections, plans approved etc, not very complicated work 2 bathrooms and removing a wall, all official). Every inspector told me different things, one inspector would say you had to do X when the other didn't mention it. I got another electrician to check the work and they said that the first was not up to code.
I don't blame the contractors, regulations change constantly, and are complicated to read. We need to make them simple an easy to follow, and easy for anybody to check that they are met.
But I agree plumbers aren't dumb they have their own field of expertise as we all do.
to rectify it. Just by realizing you are overly arrogant you have taken the first step towards rectifying it. Just keep in mind that in many subjects you will not be the most knowledgeable person. When you know you are correct about something be honest and forthcoming, and when you find out you're wrong on something admit it and accept the new knowledge. And, never ever hold something over other people. No one likes to be shut down in a conversation, it can be painful to deal with but you'll find that when you don't shut other people down you may actually learn from them too.
And it actually results in poor communication.
If you're in CS, you need to be able to communicate with non-native English speakers. Use simple words. And stay away from idioms, pop-culture references, jargon, nerd-speak, and slang.
When you're talking to someone, it's not about you, it's about them. If you want it to be about you, talk to yourself.
As for where it comes from, I remember when I got my first IT position. Working Tech Support for an ISP back in the late 90's. I was 17 years old, and I remember having a conversation with a few of the other guys regarding this exact subject. One of them went on to explain, how it is only natural that we would all gain a bit of arrogance. Think about it.... most of us are still in High School, yet we have everyone from House Wives to C.E.O's calling us to help with their computers. On top of that, for the previous decade before that we've had family members and friends calling us for help when their computers break, because we were that kid who is "good with computers". As a snot nosed 17 year old brat, this naturally induces a bit of arrogance.
As for how to get over it, mostly it will come with time. Most of us learn, eventually, that there is always someone out there smarter than us.
Jocks are arrogant about their sports skills
politicians are arrogant about their power and connections
bankers and CEOs are arrogant about their financial control.
Celebrities are arrogant about their social status.
Why are you blaming the nerds for being top of their game in designing computers that basicly make 21st century society possible in the first place.
Nerds are the ones who keep society going, as no one today can funciton without a computer.
That said, society still spits on people who do the most good and most of the work, while celebrating people who have no productive, and sometimes have negative and destructive value to society.
Most computer nerds(geeks really), go through school being outcast by their peers and under constant suspicion of being digital terrorists by administrators and governments alike, instead they hold their heads high, continue to function, in spite of, not because of it.
So when they go on to great things later, mabey they have a right to look down on the people who tried holding them back.
Just do something where you're not an expert. It will also increase your chances in relationships in the future. I mean one day you're probably going to marry someone, probably of the opposite sex, who operates on a completely different form of logic, someone who can be right for all the wrong reasons. (Deniers of the "married geek" reality should also take my advice.) Either they're going to be a doormat or your arrogance is going to be a hindrance. Like someone else said, learn it now, or life will beat the lesson into you one way or another eventually. Sounds like your self-awareness is going to put you on the right track anyway.
Were these by chance promoted to management?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
.
If you look at any cross-section in the colleges and universities, you'll find similar percentages of arrogant people, regardless of the field of study.
Check out the attitude of the vice president of the USA. http://youtube.com/watch?v=D1j0FS0Z6ho
I'm pretty sure that's not unique to CS students.
I agree. It may be that some CS majors (been there, done that) have a lower social IQ and are more prone to say or do things that display the "internal" arrogance. A person with a higher social IQ may be more likely to see how other people will take their words or see their actions and apply some self restraint and/or modify their words/actions.
If you are correct, it's knowledge. If you're wrong, it's arrogance.
Sadly, many employers do not understand this little bit of wisdom.
Back in ancient times they year started with the Freshman Picnic in the Great Court. Most of us were turned off by strangers trying to impress each other with their intellectual exploits. The final nail in coffin was when average score on the first physics test was like 50%. Few MIT students had ever seen less than a 90 in their lives. Or when your dorm throws a party and no women from neighboring colleges come (worse than the Social Network movie).
It's fine to *know* you're better at something than others. It's good to use your skills to improve things for the group-at-large/company.
It may even be OK to bring up your credentials if you are actively challenged on a technical decision etc by somebody less experienced.
It's *not* cool to smugly hold a sense of superiority over others in everyday situations. You are *NOT* better than people around you. You may be better at some things, or be more skilled, but judging from your post I'd say that social skills aren't among the things that you excel at.
From observing too many sheeple who are clueless and militantly unaware of the environment they exist in?
For instance, the tediously moronic (and indoctrinated) response to every fact and factoid in America today is...
"Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory....."
Our politicians answer only to the lobbyist class (some 35,000 to 40,000 operatives) -- so what are the backgrounds of some of those lobbyists?
(A bizarre assassination witness and the corporate consolidation of the U.S. media)
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has played a pivotal role, along with other individuals and several other organizations since the late 1970s, in the overall consolidation of the media. Recently, they filed a legal action against the FCC in federal court to bar the inclusion of data on political advertisements; such data explaining who and what financed said political adverts.
During the Bush administration, the chief lobbyist at NAB was the son of a senior partner at the conservative law firm, Wiley Rein & Fielding (presently, Rein & Fielding), a major contributor to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns, and the law firm which successfully won two separate federal court cases for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, whereby the federal ruling allows Fox to fictionalize the news. (Many may ask, “When has Fox not fictionalized the news?”)
To repeat: two separate federal court rulings establishing the legality of Fox News to fictionalize the news; equally important, a significant portion of the corporate membership of the NAB filed an amicus curiae brief (“friend of the court” brief) on behalf of Fox --- that is, they were supporting the right of Fox, and any other news station, to fictionalize the news!
A senior (married) partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding was rumored to be having an affair with an attractive young female attorney at the firm, who tragically died aboard one of the four airliners involved on 9/11. Also tragically, the third wife of the Solicitor General at that time, Ted Olson, also died aboard the same flight. Tragic, yet some might suggest convenient for the senior partner and the Solicitor General who, after the insurance settlement, quickly moved on to wife number four, while the senior partner no longer had to worry about divorce from his very wealthy wife. (Ted Olson was last seen prepping Paul Ryan for his VP debate, and before that Olson successfully litigated the Citizens United case before the US Supreme Court.)
The legal counsel at the NAB, who could also be described as a legal lobbyist, as she filed the legal actions and lawsuits, was for at least thirty years, beginning in 1980, one Valerie Schulte.
Ms. Schulte, a graduate of George Washington law school, matriculated as an undergrad at the University of California where the only unusual event in her life was her most bizarre appearance as the mystery witness at the Robert F. Kennedy assassination trial --- the trial of Sirhan Sirhan.
Over eleven eyewitnesses, ranging in ages from fourteen to a couple in their seventies, identified a mysterious woman in a polka dot dress, described as an olive-skinned brunette in her late twenties or early thirties, who spoke with a foreign accent.
The mystery woman the police brought forward as their witness? Valerie Schulte, a fair complected, petite blonde 20-year-old student from UC, who at the time of the assassination was supposed to have her leg in a full cast and used crutches to get around. (She had a photo of herself back then.)
Nobody recalled seeing Ms. Schulte at the scene of the assassination that night?
What never came out during that travesty of a trial were some curious facts from Ms. Schulte
When I was younger I acted elitest too. I used to loath m$ users and scoff at mac users. I used to think if you didn't know x86 or RISC ASM that you weren't really a programmer. I used to think ANSI gfx would never die and 64k was more than enough! Now I'm older and use all OS's, code ruby and java while sipping coffee in a yuppy coffee shop full of types of ppl I used to despise. The ones that point to the case and call it hard drive. But now when they do it I don't want to beat them to death with my skateboard, I calming explain the difference and go grab a beer. Because after college you know that with enough beer it doesn't matter how stupid other people are.
You will be constantly corrected when behaving or dressing inappropriately. In my case, I sometimes balk at her "help", but overall I'm thankful because if not for her social skills I'd have very few friends.
Having said that, there are a few useful responses amid all the defensive knee jerk reactions. Recognizing you want to move beyond your current nerd limited comfort zone is the most important step, as others have already said.
Women generally have much better social skills then men, particularly men who are technically oriented. If you seek out situations where you interact with more women you will have the opportunity to better your social skills. This will help counteract the arrogance that you are worried about.
I'm not talking about dating here, I'm talking about being in situations where you are interact with the opposite sex as an intrinsic part of whatever activity is going on. Dating might be a consequence, but it should not be the sole reason you are there. (I can already imaging the kind of response this is going to elicit here, but that's another issue.)
Since you are in school, I would suggest taking some courses in the humanities, specifically music, literature or art. These courses are likely to have a less one sided gender ratio and they also have the benefit of expanding the kinds of thing you can talk about. Studio classes, where you actually do art, are good because you are expected to talk about what you are working on.
Remember, asking for help, or offering to help someone is always a good way to interact. Generally women are better at men at this, so admitting to a woman that you need assistance will often get a useful response.
And take some cooking lessons, or find a cooking class on or off campus. It's a skill that everyone should have, and people who cook love to talk about their favorite recipes.
Good luck. You are already on the right path by realizing that there's more to life then being a nerd.
Why is Snark Required?
Your post is very well written and thoughtful. Your introspection and social consciousness are strong indicators that you will find the right path.
I tend to believe that arrogance is a maturation stage in the development process of individuals with a pronounced strength. Like any other stage of development, some take longer than others to grow out of it. Those who persist the longest require an awfully exceptional strength, or far more likely, a growing ecosystem of isolation and denial.
I think humility, in a sense, distinguishes truly bright individuals from those who are merely clever. The acquisition of knowledge is useful, but true understanding requires comprehension of scope and context. Understanding the outer limits of a thing necessarily leads to humility: the expansive nature of most heady subjects is such that no individual can master the whole. Thus, the path to humility is a holistic one, where the path to arrogance requires a myopic view of the world.
I'm pretty sure that's not unique to CS students.
We just witnessed a bunch of absolutely thieving, plutocratic soundrels, called corporate CEOs, ring the bell at the NYSE and claiming "we" must do something about their debt they created which accounts for those thieving billions they claim as their own --- that is the epitome of arrogance, of course!
Where does this nerd arrogance come from?
The real problem comes from the fact that most people count as complete idiots. Those with a love of learning new things generally do not count as complete idiots (though make no mistake, you can certainly find exceptions to that).
You want to know why I sometimes come off as arrogant? Because with any low-skilled task, I can quite likely do your job better than you do. With more highly skilled work, I may never attain the mastery of someone doing it forty hours a week for thirty years, but I can (and do, as part of my nine-to-five) shadow you for a week and find ways to automate half your department out of a job.
That said, acting like you recognize any of the above will have negative consequences on your social life. Even if you lack "true" humility, learn to fake it, for your own sake. Learn to bite your tongue when you watch someone struggle through the simplest of tasks, and resist the urge to rip the mouse from their graceless hands so you can finish the task for them. Don't correct people's atrocious grammar (cue someone finding a poorly conjugated verb in this post). Don't explain to them that "literally" doesn't mean "figuratively", and that "irregardless" doesn't mean anything (no, really, it doesn't. Yes, you can find it in some dictionaries. You still sound ignorant trying to use it). Don't point out that they never have any money because of their $8 soy lattes, or that soy lattes count as merely one symptom among many.
And don't suggest playing the four of diamonds on the five of clubs while taking the train into work, either.
Unless you are Yoda.
Has anybody run into problems in life with the arrogance that seems to be so prevalent with nerds? If so, how did you handle the situation?"
Chunky swirlies. Nuggies. Combinations thereof or variants on the theme. They've been conditioned to react properly to those inputs, so it's best to apply time tested methods rather than create new ones.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Get used to it and learn how to deal with it.
One of the best things I learned as a CS major was how to deal with other CS people. Now when I'm involved with those types in a project, my other team members get agitated while I let it roll off my back.
Having said that, I did just interview at a place where they said they were "very friendly to the developer types". Basically that meant they let the arrogant assholes run the place because everyone was an arrogant asshole. I never went back for the followup.
Love this. So true!
Expand your social circle. Work on your empathy. When you talk to people or even just read something or watch something on TV or video, try to see things from the other person's point of view. Work on your communication skills. Avoid being condesending.
You are absolutly correct that these things will have a big impact on your life. These things are at least as important as your computer skills, if not more and college is a great time to do that.
I would also suggest taking up a non-nerd focused hoby. Even if it isn't something your aren't all that interested in. Find something to break you of of your norm and introduce you to people you would have never met otherwise.
Big Red what?
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
They are arrogant because most of their life they are surrounded by people that compared to them, have a legally defined mental problems.
The only way to cure this is:
Experience with other people of their same level.
I.E. COLLEGE
A good college should be entirely consisting of people in the top 1%. That is, everyone around them should be just as smart as they are, if not smarter.
It's going to take at least four years to teach these people that just because the average guy is not up to their level, doesn't mean Now, if they are going to a lesser school, then it might take more time. By Graduate school, that problem should be fixed.
But nothing less than four years of realizing how smart everyone else is will make them lose their arrogance.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Step one put yourself in their shoes, challenge yourself and think outside the box. Nerds typically love challenges. INTP/INTJ nerds often have difficulties reading other peoples reaction. Given this, when you suspect you are coming off as arrogant find a subject that both you and the other person don't know very well and explore it together. You will find that you are far less arrogant and you will be able to read the other person better because there won't be a "right" answer. Also a fun fact to learn is that most of the time, especially with small talk the "answer" does not even matter. You could be completely bullshitting the other person and if they are not able to call you on it they are forced to take you for your word. Arrogance enters when you make people feel like they are either not important enough or knowledgeable enough. Show compassion with a little bit of self deprecation(admit to being wrong). Finally, you can't make everyone feel comfortable, relax and realize that nothing really matters.
Except for graduation. Good luck on your studies!
PS It is perfectly acceptable to be arrogant to your peers, IT folk have to be arrogant to offset the arrogance of the Business folk.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Comes from social inferiority complexes. They are trying to compensate for lack of social prowess by /sounding/ intelligent. Whether or not they actually are has nothing to do with it.
I'm quite annoyed by it myself. I tend to call nerds out on it, and really don't have any nerd friends anymore. I stopped being that way when I fixed my social issues. Most of my friends are non-nerds, and I enjoy frequent sexual intercourse (with vaginas).
BTW, I've also grown to hate computers. Working with them all day every day this many years has done that to me.
This old sales guy we had working here demonstrated something to me when he overheard me bitching to a friend/coworker about how much of an arrogant know-it-all another coworker was. This was a guy that would remove the mouse from your hand because he grew impatient waiting on your clearly inferior brain to process information on a computer display.
Anyway, the demonstration involved writing a nonsensical problem on the whiteboard. I don't remember the specifics. Me and my friend were not aware of what point he was going to make. He asked the three of us (including asshole tech) what the answer is. Me and my friend looked at it for 5 seconds and said we don't know and went back to our business. The asshole tech spent every bit of 15 minutes trying to figure it out and would never admit that he didn't actually know the answer (or how he planned to figure it out). The point was that people with these know-it-all problems will sit there and try to figure it out. People that don't have to compensate for lack of social skills will say they don't know, don't care, and move on with life.
Pretty funny. Man, that guy was a fucking douche.
According to this study, nerds and bullies are similar. This would lend insight as to why each acts in very similar ways. Arrogance can be viewed as a way of self defense. It is the psychological equivalence to a physical response.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=bully-or-victim-more-similar-than-w-10-07-10
Is there any profession that comes to mind that *doesn't* have a whiff of arrogance about it?
Just about everyone -- not just nerds and college students -- thinks they're hot sh*t at the start of their career or field of endeavour.
Think of young cops who think they're going to save the world through over-enforcement, mechanics who see their customers as idiots or construction workers who think all we hoity-toity geeks do is sit in a chair and press buttons.
The learning curve of a lot of fields causes a sort of psychological tunnel vision, which, in turn causes you to believe that the whole world revolves around your field, more or less.
But, if you learn to take off your blinders, you realize that most fields (not just yours) have detailed knowledge and nuance, and that they're much more than they appear to be on the surface. Once you accept this, treating everyone more respectfully becomes a lot easier.
I think it's a misguided arrogance that comes from have a bit of knowledge about something that others are clueless about. The funniest thing is, arrogant computer science people don't get far due to their complete lack of social skills and empathy. They just can't create anything that would appeal to the average computer user.
How to avoid this? Stop hanging out in groups of comp sci people. A mutually reinforced sense of superiority seems to creep into those groups. In fact, avoid comp sci people altogether. Apart from the rare inspiring or brilliant individual, there is really little you will gain from hanging out with people who like and do the same things.
Try doing or learning something you know you won't be good at. Dancing? Public speaking? Sport? Do it for fun, do it to see what it's like to struggle at something you don't have a natural aptitude or talent for.
Meet some really smart and humble computer science people. I think everyone who thinks they are smart should experience this regularly, the feeling of talking to someone whose mind moves at a completely different pace to yours, so that you're struggling to keep up. Those people are rare, but I doubt you would be able to feel smug watching others struggle to use online banking for a quite a while after having your ego destroyed so comprehensively.
.
Agreed. I assure you that I indeed speak in the same manner that I type & write, and that I don't mean to be snobbish in the least while doing so... (Note the run-on sentence and ellipses to indicate a pause or trailing off where I could instead go on further, but won't -- Except I did. Also note the parenthetical statement indicating that this aside would be spoken in a slightly different tone of voice to differentiate it.)
I blame this on my childhood experiences growing up with my own BSS and frequenting IRC rooms. Being able to use my embiggened vocabulary freely and include any cromulent word or language construct regardless of validity certainly had an affectional relationship with my verbal skills. I considered those "normal" people who would tease me about my "nerdy" speech patterns to be little more than bullies. Ultimately, what does it matter in the end if you get the gist of the information I'm trying to convey? Language is a poor tool for mind to mind data transfer, but it's the only one we've got right now! My English is far from correct, proper or common always, but sometimes are better than none at all...
...fucking problem in the first place. Arrogance? Bullshit.
The world can accept that the sun shines out my arse, or not, but shine it will!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I think the problem is that geeks, think the outside world looks down on them, so to make up for it, they become arrogant to the outside world (talking down to people like they're idiots) and even amongst themselves.
It's called Hubris
well CS is not IT and a 4 year BA / BS for phone support is extreme over kill with a big skills gap.
Well maybe with there was a real trades based plan for IT work then people will be better off.
I have to post anonymously for this one, and you'll see why in a minute.
First, it's good that you notice this and recognize it as a problem. Both in school and in the "real world" I've experienced the same things you're describing. There aren't a ton of people like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons out there, but those that are there sure make it hard for the rest of us technically minded people to get ahead. And when I do run into one of these people, I'm constantly reminded that I have to try damn hard to not be one of them!
I've managed to be reasonably successful at my job, and am married with children, this despite being seriously interested in technology. I'm on the IT side of things, not development, and do systems integration for a small but global IT services provider. True systems work (i.e. across platforms, network, software, storage, and the support that goes with it) is neat -- it's very involved technically and also forces you to play nice with people. You can't be an arrogant jerk when asking for help from one of the other experts you need to get you out of a jam. My specialty is servers and operating systems, but I regularly need help from our network gurus and definitely need help from the support teams I need to deal with to get information about a customer problem. Note how I said, "play nice" rather than "jump into phony, salesdroid happy mode." There's a big difference, and those who can do this well know this difference. Take this, and add in timezone and culture differences, and it really becomes a balancing act. But for me, the reward is an engineering job with an incredibly flexible schedule, and the ability to learn basically anything technology-related that one of our customers needs done.
So what do I do differently than the typical nerds I sometimes have to work with?
- Don't be a negative ass. No one wants to deal with someone who complains all the time.
- Even if someone is making you furious, it's just business, and pissing them off isn't going to make it any better.
- Know that no matter how deeply you care about (insert arcane technology or sci-fi meme here), almost nobody else gives a crap. If you find someone who is equally interested, great, but understand that normal people just don't care. And that's OK -- just smile and nod politely when they spout off about celebrities, TV shows, etc.
- Don't assume you know everything. You don't, and there's almost certainly others out there who know more than you do.
- In work situations, if things are really borked up, find a NICE way to explain this, not sugar coating it, but not saying, "We're all going to die because PERSON X is a lazy ass who doesn't do his work." (I recently inherited a mess that an arrogant nerd type sat on for over 5 years and let fester until he got fired. Handling that one diplomatically was a challenge, but it sure put me in a better light than if I said what I was thinking.)
Now, here's the anonymous part. I know an arrogant nerd very well -- my brother. Think of most of the negative nerd stereotypes, and he's got 'em. He still lives at home, and has had a string of girlfriends who have all broken up with him after seeing what they're in for. He has an OK job, but very little opportunity to grow beyond what he's doing (web/SW development.) Thing is, while I recognized that my occasional nerd tendencies pissed people off and worked on fixing these, he's gotten worse. It's so bad that I don't even like talking to him anymore, because everything's an argument that he has to win. That's really sad to say, but 100% true.
So my advice to you is to work on being normal. Especially since you realize you might be heading down the wrong road, try to fix it before you get too far out of school. Heck, just get out of the nerd circle for a while and see what the rest of the world likes. I'm not a social butterfly, and would rather read about cool stuff than play the whole social game. However, one of the important things to do while you're in school is to find a life partner if tha
I got a healthy dose of respect for carpentry when my brother helped me build soffits with recessed lighting when I redid my kitchen. There's a fair bit of math involved in it, from making the various angled mitre cuts, plus you have to allow for the thickness of the wood in your measurements too, nail lengths/widths, etc..it's easy for screw up. In retrospect, it all looks like common sense but hindsight is 20/20. Especially in an old house where nothing is modern standard!
In any case, the "he works with his hands" stigma is bullshit. Contractor type workers work with their heads too.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Just train yourself to act in a traditional nerd fashion during the work day and model your behavior after those around you in non nerd settings when away from work. This seems obvious but the key to making this work as second nature for you is to consume reasonable quantities of caffeine during the work portion of the day and consume reasonable amounts of alcohol during social outings. In no time you will have your brain trained to act like a self righteous jerk at work and the life of the party when you are out. I have always assumed that was why schools tried to push students to have enough going on that it would be difficult to get adequate sleep while at the same time never completely cutting off access to alcohol at parties.
Nonsense. Everyone knows there's only three rules in plumbing:
for the most part, those who are introverted tend to come off as arrogant. whether they are actually arrogant or not is a different story. the reason this is the case is that they tend not to socialize with others much(outside of video games where they can act like someone they are not), so they dont have as much education as to what to say and what not to say to others. im speaking from experience here, as i am a CS major... and i am quite arrogant
There's just "arrogance", and it comes from all sorts of people from all walks of life.
So don't treat it like it's "special" (it actually is somewhat arrogant to think that your "brand" of arrogance is unique ;) ). Be aware of it, and stop yourself BEFORE you open your mouth and say something that's arrogant.
Don't interrupt others when talking. Don't talk over other people. Learn how to be an "active listener".
See, that's arrogance right there. I happen to be a computer nerd who has (for reasons too complicated to get into) also spent a good four years in the trenches (literally) with plumbers, and I can inform you that there's a little bit more to plumbing than you seem to think. That ground you're walking on is actually moving. All the time. Especially if you happen to live in a place where the temperature varies from -30 degrees C in the winter to +30 in the summer. Water leaks tend to occur just about one meter (or 3 ft) outside the point where it enters the house, do you know why? No, because you don't have that kind of training. That's why you don't have the slightest clue how to avoid it from happening either, so when your pipe starts to leak you have to pay for a professional to come and fix it. It looks just as easy as installing Linux but that's because the guy knows what he's doing. Hopefully.
Time flies when you don't know what you're doing
What arrogance? I'm perfect.
I think nerds are in their own class in terms of arrogance.
Once I was in a “Jobs Club” where people met to discuss how to get employed and support each other in finding work.. One nerd proudly told us of a story in which he took an group employment test which had the question “There are 365 in a A) week; B) month; C) Year?” He finished the test than explained to the testing person that “Of course I could not finish this question. It is badly written and does not state what there are 365 units of.”
I pointed out to him that in the context of the question it was rather easy to infer that they meant 365 days in a year. He sneered and said “Yes of COURSE they meant days. That is OBVIOUS. I was pointing out that they were asking a STUPID QUESTION.”
I said that if he was trying to get hired then he should probably be as polite as possible. For example, say something like “I notice there’s a small problem in this question you might want to know about.”
“HA!” he replied. “By THAT point I was sure I would NEVER want to work for that company, since they can’t even get their test right!”
So this unemployed programmer had decided that based on this one question, the company does not meet his standards in terms of employment. And it was more important to him to point out the flaw in a test than increase his own chances of finding a job.
After I had this experience I realized that books like “The Dilbert Principle”are filled with stories like this. These books are funny mainly because we nerds agree that “the least competent, least smart people are promoted.” That says at lot about our low ability to assess what managers look for when promoting people.
Hang out with jocks. Hang out with arty people. Hang out with punks. Hang out with EVERYONE. Don't limit yourself to just one type of person.
Hanging out with only one type of person is a recipe for stunting one's social growth, regardless of what that type is.
When I went to college I made it a point to hang out with different types of people. I joined clubs and did activities that I had never before considered, took classes that were totally outside of my major, and did everything I could to broaden both my social and intellectual life, and I wouldn't trade those experiences and the growth I had for anything.
So, to answer your question - hang out with lots of different types of people and I guarantee that enough of them will call you on your shit. Spend your time doing things outside your comfort zone and I guarantee that you will be humbled when you realize that you aren't amazing at everything. You'll also have some amazing experiences in the process and become a better person.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You know what it feels like to be with someone who is kind and understanding. Oh, yes you do.
Do that. How tough could it be?
Try taking these classes first so that you understand your Nerd in order to understand how they created the iPod, iPad, HDTV, Cars, Computers, etc. Try taking Sociology and Psychology first. I think every person should have to take classes on ethics, morale values, sociology, etc.
Plumbing can be done badly by someone without smarts; a proper plumbing job -- knowing when to use copper, when PVC, when something else, what the optimum grade for laying the pipes is, etc. is just as technical as anything a technologist or medical practicioner does.
Strongly disagree, and here's why. Any asshole with a book full of tables and instructions can do what a plumber does. Any asshole with a book full of tables and instructions is probably going to kill anyone they try to perform surgery on. "Technologist" doesn't mean anything. Probably anyone can be trained to administer a thing. Probably not everyone can be a successful all-encompassing systems administrator, who is a sort of digital renaissance [wo]man.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When was the last time you talked to two different IT consultants about something complicated and got the same answer? For instance, what's the best platform for an intranet server with about 100 users?
Time flies when you don't know what you're doing
I totally agree about plumbers. I can do most labor around my house, but I limit plumbing to replacing toilet floats and flappers. I have tried working with copper tubing and compression fittings and decided that I could afford to pay a plumber.
Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com
All people are arrogant - it's human nature.
Now, what a person is arrogant about is typically a product of education and upbringing.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I used CTRL+F jocks to find someone who touched on the right answer.
The right answer is that jocks (aka Alpha Males) treat nerds like crap, so nerds use arrogance as a defense mechanism to preserve what little self-esteem they have left: "At least I'm smarter than that airhead jock." After that it quickly becomes a competition to be the "Alpha Nerd."
It's all about pecking order.
I had this discussion recently with some friends, and it comes down to this. Assume you're in the 95th percentile in terms of "Intelligence" (whatever that means). In general, you'll have spent your entire life realizing that 95% of the time, you're smarter than the people around you. At some point, you self-select a peer group of similar percentiles, and begin to believe that you and those around you are average and that everyone else around you is simply an insufferable moron.
The best medicine, I've found, is to make friends in different groups, both socially, economically, and intellectually. Travel. Hang out with farmers. Meet people and try to see the world through their eyes. You might be intellectually "smarter" or "faster" than 95% of the people you meet, but everyone brings a new perspective and world view. If you pay attention to it, and start to try to look at the world through their eyes, you'll build your empathy, and increase your problem solving skills at the same time, as all good problem solving starts by looking at a problem from a new perspective.
Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice!
Read as much as you can in different fields — get outside of engineering. Take courses in different fields, surround yourself with people who study different fields, attend lectures in different fields.
Not all programs can be rectified. Some have to be sent to the games grid.
Plumbers have saved more lives throughout history than any other profession, because they prevented disease.
"Nerds" are only perceived to be arrogant by the ignorant masses. Don't confuse arrogance with confidence and superior intelligence. We're just smarter than the average LUSER.
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
- John W. Garner
emacs, right?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Be careful with rectifying, it can be darn right polarizing!
You would be surprised. I know a lot of people with four year CS degrees working at one of the big 3 PC makers supporting laptops and desktops on the phone, as it is the only thing they can get in the field.
It sucks, but the market is what it is, and it is damn hard to get out of the phone support "typecasting" into any meaningful department of a company these days, degree or none.
It's not about computer support here, I know. But the following quote (by Phil Agre, I'm sure the name will ring some bells here) just hits the attitude of arrogance of nerds and what's wrong with it just too well. For a while I had this actually printed and pinned to the wall.
Here it goes (from http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/how-to-help.html):
From the Oxford online dictionary
sophomoric Pronunciation: /sfmrk/
Definition of sophomoric
adjective
relating to or characteristic of a sophomore: my sophomoric years
pretentious or juvenile: sophomoric double entendres
Here is an IQ chart
http://www.iqtestforfree.net/IQ-chart.html
As you can see, if you have an IQ of at leat 115, you are smarter than 86% of the population.
As you can see on this chart, the average software engineer has an IQ of 116
http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2011/01/average-iq-by-occupation-estimated-from.html
Here is another chart that shows that 75% of computers occs have an IQ of 101 or greater
http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Engineer_vs_engineer_Who_has_the_higher_IQ-article-fajb_engineer_vs_engineer_jun2012-html.aspx
So yes, most "nerds" are arrogant in the fact that they are smarter than everyone else, and they are correct in that assumption in a majority of cases.
21st Century Renaissance Man
If you're still reading (down here), then you're just here for the laughs and I'm afraid I'm not that funny.
Regardless, this is an important question to ask and asking it is the first step toward your answer. YMMV, but the answer that I found for myself was to stop finding the bad in people and focus on the good; better to stop worrying about what other folks think, say, and do and just get on with life. My biggest issue was that I projected my faults onto others and blamed them for their dislike of me. As soon as I took responsibility for my own faults and foibles, it was easier to get along with others because they were just as flawed as I was.
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
-Rudyard Kipling
I find that masking my arrogance with the requisite amount of false humility tends to work quite well. ;)
Okay, here is the problem. You say that they are "nerds" when you mean "geeks" Most Nerds are going to know a hell of a lot more about a whole hell of a lot more than you think . Unfortunantly Nerds are a breed that is slowly loosing because of the influx of geeks into society. Geeks tend to be the posers of the Nerd world giving Nerds an even worse reputation. Example, Wil Wheton, Geek icon, but total idot when it come to true intelignce. If you are a true "nerd" accept the fact that the rest of your peir group are geeks, and get away from them they will only drag you down.
One key is remembering that you can learn something from anyone you meet. I particularly learned this in working with developmentally-disabled people and in retail before I got into IT. And, while it's taken the better part of 50 years, I've learned that it's best for me to just shut up and listen to what other people are saying. I've learned that plenty of people are smarter than I've given them credit for, and I've learned all kinds of interesting things that would have otherwise eluded me.
It may also be worth spending a little bit of time with a counselor to learn some interpersonal skills. S/he can likely recommend some books on the subject. I especially liked Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand. It's more about male/female conversational styles, but it's a good introduction to the out-of-band messaging that occurs in conversation.
The fact that you're aware you have personality traits that you find obnoxious in others is a good thing and will help you become a very likeable person -- which you probably are already.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
...at one when he's looking down your shitter.
We're still talking about the doctor here, right?
Self-awareness ftw.
You can learn quite a bit about why people do the things they do by reading Edward Deci's book, "Why We Do What We Do". One of the biggest lessons of cognitive psychology is that learning which occurs within a social environment which is at all controlling is different in nature than learning which is purely autonomous. It's a very tricky situation though because there is also a need with learning for "relatedness" -- which is basically fitting into some community. So, what you will oftentimes observe in geeky communities like Slashdot is that people will make compromises with respect to their belief systems in order to maintain access to the knowledge of the community. But, a person could spin their wheels like this for literally decades, thinking that the knowledge gained in this manner is all there is that is of any consequence. Oftentimes, it's not until much later in life that people come to realize that the prejudices which they picked up from their community, in order to secure access to it, led them to ignore certain promising avenues of investigation.
Edward Deci's findings can actually be used to understand what's wrong with how we teach science in the United States. However, actually fixing these problems requires a very different book -- Immunity to Change, by Kegan and Lahey.
The key to humility is recognizing your flaws and your mistakes. But you can't just assume they'll be obvious, you'd be surprised just how spotty your memory can be. You really have to actively seek them out.
Nerds aren't the only people who are arrogant. But they are the most likely to go trough life being arrogant without anyone reigning them in. That's because a minority of people have technical skills, so arrogance is generally accept from nerds. They don't need to be socially aware in order to get by.
The BS degree program at my university requires that we take two life sciences, so I ended up going through a semester each of zoology and botany. I had a miserable time with the zoology lab; it was a bunch of pointless memorization that I'm reasonably confident I'll never fully utilize, and we had to turn in a binder with some thirty or forty sketches (colored) of organisms and diagrams copied out of the book. It was a lot of work in a subject that I really didn't give a shit about.
Out of around twenty people in the class, four people actually passed the lab midterm. I was overjoyed to have made a 72. The person across the table from me, a biology major, made a 94. It was sort of bizarre to me, then, when a few days later, she was fretting about whether or not she was going to pass trigonometry, a class that I made it through with minimal effort. She demonstrably was not stupid; she just didn't give much of a shit about math.
That's the moral of the story, I guess. Interacting with people from other majors can help you realize that just because someone is ignorant about a subject that you're gifted in doesn't imply that they're any less intelligent than you. It's very possible that they just don't give a shit about it.
When you're born, you're born a blank slate. As you grow, you see the world outside of you. But soon you also start to see yourself in the way others see you (which is natural, because we cannot watch ourselves). Ego forms as your view of yourself reflected by others.
Nerds/geeks have the unique distinction of having a negative reflection shown to them. Maybe someone made fun of them, or teased them, or never included them. Maybe their parents never seemed to care, or cared too much. Maybe they just never learned to fit in. Their ego is now small, cramped, painful.
Suddenly, they find something they can attach themselves to. A game. A computer. A TV show. They begin to associate with it so closely that it begins to define their self worth. It's very important to them. If anyone tries to slight it or judge it, they become defensive, as if they themselves are being judged.
Sometimes the thing they attach themselves to is based on intelligence. If someone challenges their intelligence, they also become offended. If someone says something that is factually incorrect, it's as if they're refuting that which the nerd/geek is associating with themselves. Just making a false claim becomes an attack on the ego.
In these cases, the ego is used as a shield, because the person thinks their ego is what defines them. They must defend themselves lest their idea of their self be challenged or put down. So they get arrogant. They begin to snarl responses to incorrect statements as if the other person needed to be scolded. Their intelligence becomes a trophy. They begin to excuse their rude behavior by believing that their intellect makes them better than others. Putting someone in their place intellectually becomes a way to show dominance and superiority, which they need because the rest of their ego that isn't based on intelligence is frail and bruised.
tl;dr Nerds and geeks need to prove they're smarter than everyone, and putting people down makes them feel better, hence intellectual arrogance. Kill your ego and be happy.
Many folks perceive nerds to be arrogant, but in my experience it's usually because IT folks are used to supporting bunches of people who are clueless about technology, don't care to learn about technology, and expect IT to do everything for them. When you have to show Susie Q something for the 10th time, you're usually past the phase where you're cheerful about doing so and they perceive that as arrogance.
ASPERGER'S SYNDROME
Being told you're wrong repeatedly, proving yourself, and getting negative acknowledgment. It's a pretty simple feedback loop for creating arrogant personalities, especially when a lot of nerds are very analytic and passionate; those nerds see average people apparently not thriving in production of useful things, yet thriving socially (or whatever), and there's jealousy to feed the ignorance. The only way to solve any of this is for people to be more honest with themselves and genuine with the world.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Nothing will make you feel like a loser quite like ballroom dancing. And it is a skill that once you are no longer a loser at, can have wonderful pay offs later in life. Plus a great class to take while in college: get out and meet some people you wouldn't normally run in to and have a lot of fun doing it.
Plumbing can be done badly by someone without smarts; a proper plumbing job -- knowing when to use copper, when PVC, when something else, what the optimum grade for laying the pipes is, etc. is just as technical as anything a technologist or medical practicioner does.
Strongly disagree, and here's why. Any asshole with a book full of tables and instructions can do what a plumber does. Any asshole with a book full of tables and instructions is probably going to kill anyone they try to perform surgery on. "Technologist" doesn't mean anything. Probably anyone can be trained to administer a thing. Probably not everyone can be a successful all-encompassing systems administrator, who is a sort of digital renaissance [wo]man.
True to some degree. Except that any asshole with a book full of tables can't actually do what a plumber does, as they need to have an advanced enough level of abstract thought and general competence to grok the tables and instructions. Plus, good soldering takes practice.
You do have a point in that anyone who knows their way around building up a circuit board (including routing, parts selection, soldering) can probably do the job of a plumber with ease, and many plumbers would never be able to build up a board. But the tasks really are equal -- they take patience, research skills, a good memory, a steady hand, decent eyesight and a solid understanding of the task at hand.
The problem is that when most people think "plumber" they think "guy who plumbs in a new sink". That's equivalent to calling a surgeon "the guy who cuts people open" or a circuit board designer "the guy who puts chips on a board". A real master plumber is someone who can design the entire water system and implement it at lowest cost and highest efficiency, in a way that it will last for over 30 years without problems. I've known a few of these guys, and they are just as sharp as the others we're discussing. There's a reason plumbers use the apprenticeship model, and don't just take a written and practical test to get their master's in plumbing.
Remove the arrogance: Just wait until the nerd wants to mate. The arrogance just fall off when he finds out he is such a loser.
Body
I think you need a bit of arrogance just to keep from washing out and having the balls to do some things in college that you might not normally feel comfortable with. Unless the source is from deeper seeded part of your psyche, it will temper its self once you've settled down in your job (or whatever you plan to do with your life) and don't feel like you have to prove yourself any more.
Reminds me of two things: A CS prof told us that we'll spend the first year of our career fighting to get 'root' and the rest of our career trying to get rid of it. Also, when I was involved in hiring I was reminded that a college degree doesn't necessarily mean you know what you are doing, but it does show that you can make a major commitment and follow through.
People who project arrogance, in reality, are insecure say behavioral scientists. They are covering up with a strong offence, pun intended. The lack of socila skills and ability to interact appropriately with others and give and recieve affection would explain that...
is ignorance of the equality of human skills, the compromises necessary to significantly advance a skill, and the reasons we start at different skill levels (insert scientific[genetics?] or spiritual reason[reincarnation] here.)
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Appropriate that this story shows right above the placement of the Richard Dawkins story.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
It is the social awareness cousin of the Dunning-Kruger effect. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) If nerds were introspective/reflective enough to realize how out of order they were, they would be shocked. Most live the majority of their lives in complete denial. If I found them generally likable it would be sad.
ibogane, on the other hand, will make you experience the wrongs you have committed on others as if you had committed them against your "self"
Where most nerds don't know the difference between patent and copyright, yet they have extreme opinions on whether patents or copyrights are valid? It's exactly the same thing. It is arrogance of the worst kind - assuming you know better than everyone else, when in reality, the average /. user doesn't even know the different between a patent summary and an independent claim.
So what I'm hearing is you're an arrogant engineer.
If somebody is dumb, he'll think that whatever little knowledge he has makes him special.
If somebody is brilliant, he'll think his huge amount of knowledge is what all his peers possess.
Arrogance is usually a sign of stupidity.
I believe Mark Twain once has a nice quote on this, though I can't find it right now.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
A nerd must be confident with his/her intellectual capacity as well as knowledge to qualify as a nerd. Nerds may compensate or permit social deficiencies by "offsetting" those deficiencies with mental strength much like a social butterfly can compensate for not knowing what sqrt(2) is by being popular.
In my experience, and through my own introspection, I've concluded that, as part of the mental discipline maintaining proper intellectual models of knowledge and working theory, it's important to be able to reject conflicting or bogus information. That equilibrium in the acceptance of information carries itself out by an "argument" barrier beyond which you accept information and update your intellectual model. It's a way to accept new information where that information may have attributes that conflict with some prior belief.
Because of this intense focus on validating new information combined with the need to be able to externalize the validation process, sometimes the social norms are overlooked and a perfectly valid challenge externalized in response to new information can appear as arrogance. That is especially true if a 3rd party observes these types of high level exchanges between two nerds.
The only way to overcome the appearance of arrogance as it appears to a non-nerd 2nd party is to develop and observe more social norms/skills. To overcome the judgements of a non-nerd 3rd party, formalization for information exchanges and challenges need to be made. The most perfect and elaborate formalization of such a thing is defined as the Rules of Civil procedure as used by our court system. I will add that the players in that arena also display as much arrogance as any arguing nerd group despite the formalization, which obviously was conceived with the idea of humility to the courts in mind.
From a life of nerdiness and people-watching, I have learned this:
Every superiority complex has an inferiority complex beneath it.
Arrogance is the expression of a superiority complex. It's a coping mechanism, to preserve your self-worth when you feel less than others in some way. Generally, with nerds, this inferiority complex is social. It's more difficult for most of us, and growing up you see evidence of that failing every day in school, while we huddle together with other socially-awkward nerds. But feeling inferior sucks, so we take what we're naturally good at - coding, reasoning, some technical specialty, and judge others against that, and it doesn't hurt so much. We reject them before they can reject us.
At their base, the two complexes are more alike than not. Feeling superior and inferior both separate us from others, and it's that social connection that we miss. Nerds want to be liked and accepted just like anyone else. We're social creatures.
Step 1. The "Gods" give you and your friends the gift of "arrogance, or pride."
Step 2. For the rest of us, the Comedy begins.
Don't mistake "self-confidence" for "arrogance", which many people do. There's a difference between believing in yourself and believing other people have nothing to teach you.
There are lots of things you can do to appear less arrogant to other people, but the first and most important is to become a *disciplined* listener. I stress "discipline" because that's what it takes when you're used to beating other people to the punch. Here are the steps, in order.
(1) Let the other person finish what he has to say -- beyond any reasonable doubt.
(2) Demonstrate that you heard everything he had to say.
(3) Demonstrate you understand everything he had to say.
(4) Show you recognize whatever truth is in what he had to say. All of the truth you can find. If you can't find any truth, recognize good intentions. If you can't find any good intentions, pretend that they're there anyway.
(5) Then, only then, give your opinions. Be sure to salt any points of disagreement with admissions of your own fallibility.
That's how you get people to see you as being as smart as you see yourself. As you can see, it's all about resisting the impulse to smack the buzzer and say "Bzzt! WRONG!"
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm gonna generally agree with you on this, although I wouldn't call it so much a coping strategy, but a defense mechanism. Instinctively, most folks want a turf to own as it feed their ego and sense of self worth. How you learn how to defend that turf is really a learned mechanism.
It's sort of like commanding by yelling, or commanding by whispering. You can't usually do the later, unless there is some amount of built-in respect for your command, so in a new situation, you do the former. Yelling commands is basically a form of arrogance. It attempts to convey a sense of importance when there is no other social context: e.g, I can yell because I have the authority to yell at people.
Of course it is possible to for people to apply learned behaviours in inappropriate circumstances or develop bad habits or fail to learn new defense strategies (e.g., applying an arrogant stance when confidence is low), but that is basically a learning deficit (or perhaps in the case of someone with ASD, a learning disability). As with most learning deficits (disabilities), additional training can probably help. Usually friends that are willing to put up with your bullshit and call you on it are most helpful training partners.
Or we can just throw people into the deep end of the pool and see who can swim (as suggested by many postings in this thread).
people who becomes an expert in one field, start to assume they are experts in other fields.
It's worse at the bachelor level, and decline at the master and PhD level programs. Note: I said DECLINE, not GO AWAY.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I will agree with a vast majority of people that say it's more than just CS majors. I have studied and worked in academia for more than 20 years. Not all geeks are tech nerds, too. There are plenty of history, architecture, and English literature geeks out there that would give any CS geek a run for their money! Being a pompous ass is not unique to any major nor is it missing from the corporate world. The one thing I can say is that the more varied your social web is--economically as well as culturally--the more well rounded a person you will be. I would add to that the more time you take to listen before you speak no matter what crowd you're in will help you hear and understand other viewpoints before stating your opinion. You seem interested in human development as well as developing technical skills, so use some electives to learn more about people by taking some psychology, philosophy or other humanities classes. Basically, vary your experience and you won't think your master of the universe because you're really good at one (or a few) things. You may find that everyone is good at something and that's what makes the world go round.
Arrogant nerds won't listen to you unless you're either on par or further up the nerd hierarchy than they are. You've got to demonstrate your powerful nerd skills to do this. One opportunity to prove your nerd credentials is to do something the arrogant nerd states emphatically can't be done, and then you do it, but just throwing down with the right nerd track record can sometimes work, too.
After you've demonstrated your nerd qualifications, then you need to deliver a *withering* attack and follow up with a play-by-play of their arrogance at the start of the argument, because if you don't, by then, they will have forgotten their crime, as they're generally only dimly aware of the arrogant affectations of their delivery.
But it's a long shot even if you pull this off. For a lot of them, it's just too late. They didn't get the right parenting to temper their arrogance, and without great parenting, you generally don't get great kids.
This is obviously hampered by the fact that good engineers are exceedingly rare, and all kinds of bad behaviours are tolerated in order to secure their continued employment.
Very true. MDMA and Ayahuasca are also among those drugs that open the mind up to possibilities that it has previously shut down. There are a number of credible studies showing miraculous benefit from combined administration of entheogenic substances and personalized psychotherapy. I have personally witnessed a lot of success with non-traditional pharmaceuticals. Modern psychiatry seems to be much more about suppressing some aspects the mind rather than opening up blocked pathways. In a way, that's a false distinction, too... I'd post some papers but I think they are a little heady because they are medical in nature.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
I think for a lot of nerds/geeks, who never had dates in high school or many friends, and never were anywhere near the top of the social pecking order, college is the first time that they get a glimpse of hope. They see and understand that with their skills, they'll be able to get a decent job that takes them out of Mitt's 47%, probably make a few dollars more than the HS quarterback, who despite his local celebrity, isn't exactly NFL material and is just as likely to wind up a bartender. Even the nerdiest nerds stand a chance in the gene pool if he's pulling down six figures five years after graduation ... or so it seems.
There is no such thing as unearned arrogance. If you're arrogant, you've been successful at something, and you have every right to think highly of yourself. It's a trait to be celebrated, not scorned.
Oye... where do I begin...
1. Arrogant != successful (these are orthogonal things)
2. Although you have every right to think highly of yourself, others have the right to scorn you. No particular reason, that's just their right.
If there is something to be gained by cooperation (and there usually is) an evolutionary stable strategy is one that cooperates more than not, but punishes folks for being non-cooperative (think a tit-for-tat). If practicing continued arrogance is considered by people to be non-cooperative, it could potentially be out-competed by other strategies (e.g., being humble until confronted with someone that is arrogant). No need to toss religion in there: that's a red herring...
Of course you also have the right to follow a non-optimal strategy in social interactions, but as with all choices, there are potential consequences.
Why I don't respect tradespeople
have helped me gain a degree of humility. The three are intricately connected in my opinion.
The first taught me I know pretty much nothing. If I know something, I wouldn't know what it is anyway.
The second taught me that Life isn't Ultimately so Serious. I think ultimately everything is pointless and meaningless; what I believe the nihilists miss is the fact that it means that everything is pointfull and meaningful. You are Free to make your own meaning, and so is everybody else.
The third had showed me that every distinction, definition and word which I thought was clearly defined are fluid and fuzzy. Most importantly, the line between what I do and what happens to me isn't so clear cut; I don't decide to decide - it just happens. I am a Reaction to everything else, not a Source of anything. I am a product of circumstances and chance. You could also say I don't really exist; for what is it that we mean when we use the word I?
I used to think Religion was about (false and outdated) Beliefs - just goes to show how arrogant I was. Stripping away the Beliefs associated with Religious institutions and fundementalism, I found that at the root of all Mysticism and Spirituality that Life is mostly Mysterious, Ineffable and Inexplicable. And Funny. Very very Funny.
So don't take yourself or anything you do too seriously. This gives you tolerance towards your own mistakes and humility at your achievements.
a small Bibliography:
For skepticism, I would recommend reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Karl Popper (a Critical Rationalist, but relevant nonetheless) and Socrates. For Ludicism and Non-Dualism, I would recommend reading Discordian texts like Principia Discordia or the Illuminatus! Trilogy, listening to Alan Watts tapes (many are found on youtube), Reading the Dao De Jing, Listening to Comedians, Dancing, and (with caution and appropriate understanding) the consumption of Weed, MDMA and Psychedelics.
Aw hell, what happened to hrefs? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.oracle/msg/29f1684073028648
Isn't that like asking broke people how to be wealthy?
Remember, it's bloody hard to outsource plumbing or electrical work...
The answer is staring you right in your face. You do what the rest of the world has always done and avoid nerds, geeks, and dweebs and have a meaningful and very rewarding life. Having worked with these people for nearly 40 years, the current generation are so arrogant to believe that they are demi-gods that can do no wrong, but most of the time can't do it right the first five times.
nerds (at least taking nerd to mean myself, i have no idea how other people understand what it is to be a "nerd") pride themselves on what they know. it is how they define their self-worth. there is nothing wrong with intellectual pride but you are right, it is important to understand how it can metastasize into intellectual arrogance.
nerds will be arrogant for as long they think that to admit they do not know something is the same as admitting they cannot know something. that is an admission that strikes at the core of their sense of self-worth so they (do i presume to say, we?) will not make it.
one way out of this damaging sense of arrogance is to realize that not knowing something is almost never equivalent to being unable to know something. to take one's own ignorance as a challenge to learn, often from others, is something that can prevent the formation of this arrogance.
Han Yu, Chinese writer of the 10th century said in his "investigation into the psychology of attacking others"): "He who would expect perfection from others but is willing to tolerate mediocrity in himself, cannot be said to have any self respect." Nerds everywhere should try to remember this and challenge themselves to focus on remedying their own mediocrity, at a minimum this will prevent arrogance.
Tolerating a lack of perfection in others is very difficult and i cannot say i can do this either. but i do not think it is true arrogance as long as you truly challenge yourself.
In my experience, CS students tend to have come from the high end of their high-school classes. In a CS program at a small, top engineering school, we're talking maybe 50-75% of those students were validictorians or salutatorians of their classes. The problem was that many of these students came from high schools that graduated maybe 100 students at a time and were in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Meanwhile, I graduated along with 600 of my closest friends in the suburbs of a big US city. Heck, my high school had a larger student body than the entire university I attended.
Anyhow, being smart (as defined by getting good grades and scoring at the top of your class) tends to make you feel smart (why not?). And when you feel smart, you have a lot of self-confidence and are willing to a) make educated guesses about things you aren't an expert in and b) feel compelled to, ahem, share your big brain with the world. That combination turns people off. I've even had a (very good) friend of mine tell me that sometimes talking to me felt like he was attending a lecture. Cause for pause.
One of the best lessons I ever learned was this: there will always be somebody dumber than you, and there will always be someone smarter than you. A corollary to that is: if you're the smartest person on the room, your doing it wrong.
So yes, nerds can be arrogant. You yourself will likely be a little arrogant. That's okay. Just remember those two lessons above and you'll turn out fine.
Don't worry about it.
Everyone else will just have to accommodate you.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
It's amusing that human brains are not fully mature until around age 25 - in particular, frontal areas involved in executive control.
The fact that we let people with impaired brains vote and drive cars, let alone drink - shocking to most people who know about neural development...
Consulting?
Oh, wait, you were serious?
Finally, I had to recognize that social skills, like all other skills, improve with practice. I used put my foot in my mouth all the time: I'd say something that would commit me to a fact, idea, or opinion, often an extreme one (said very loudly), then I'd have trouble walking back from it. That would be really embarrassing, especially when it turned out what I said was something I didn't really want to say, or was wrong. Sometimes I would blurt something out that would bother me for days afterwards. It really helped when I started treating this like a skill to be improved. I tried to treat each of those things as a learning opportunity. What did I say wrong? How could I prevent myself from doing that in the future? Almost always, the answer turned out to be to qualify absolute statements with phrases like "I think" or "It might be true that" or "Maybe." Often, the answer would just be to keep my mouth shut for a few extra sentences and listen.
You can admit you are wrong without speaking in weasel-words. That's part of confidence. Be unafraid of making mistakes and unafraid of owning your mistakes.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
interesting post. i think that it goes to nerd pride in what they know, in the association of knowledge with self-worth, and the mistaken belief that to admit igorance means the impossibility of ever knowing, which is damaging to that self-worth. When in fact ignorance is simply a challenge to learn, often from others. Like Han Yu said so long ago in his "On The Pyschology of Attacking Others", "He who would expect perfection from others but is willing to tolerate mediocrity in himself, cannot be said to have any self respect." Perhaps as long as we nerds remain strictly intolerant of mediocrity in ourselves, we are not truly arrogant. It would be great if I, at least, could be better at not being so demanding of others, bu hopefully making stringent demands on oneself will be enough to save me and other nerds from the worst effects of arrogance...
MOOOOVEEEEE -Nick Burns -The Company Computer Guy
Slashdot not withstanding.
Have you noticed how both sides of the political spectrum exhibit this trait so eloquently? They both talk as if they have a mandate from God (pun intended) or that they invented the Truth (again, pun intended). Look closely and you may not like what you see.
I think that it has a lot to do with human nature. Also seems like it would fit well as an evolutionary trait to ward off cognitive dissonance.
It has been posted before but bears repeating. Treating the other side with respect and realizing that they may have a point will go a long way to tone that down.
Hack away
Fourty-two!
This is very true. Check out http://www.maps.org/ for more information on MDMA-assisted-therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, Psilocybin-assisted-therapy for terminal cancer anxiety and depression, and much more. This country is generally afraid of some of the most promising drugs for psychotherapy simply because the peace and well-being they impart is recreationally useful. We do this in spite of many legal prescriptions being recreationally-useful themselves: opiates, stimulants, anxiolytics.... Entheogens are a very promising path but one to tread carefully because of how little legitimate information makes it through the filters of political and social rhetoric.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
It's a nerd meme that has become tired and overdone to the point of becoming a wearisome cliche. It's a positive sign that you have noticed it and called it into question here on slashdot.
Strongly disagree, and here's why. Any asshole with a book full of tables and instructions can do what a plumber does. Any asshole with a book full of tables and instructions is probably going to kill anyone they try to perform surgery on. "Technologist" doesn't mean anything. Probably anyone can be trained to administer a thing. Probably not everyone can be a successful all-encompassing systems administrator, who is a sort of digital renaissance [wo]man.
You're probably thinking of replacing a leaky pipe in a kitchen sink - the easiest task a plumber will do that actually involves plumbing - and comparing such task with surgery, a massively delicate job that is probably medicine's most delicate part. I could just as easily say that any asshole can write perscriptions for flu medicine for snotty-nosed kids, but try to get a doctor to defeat Bowser and you'll end up with a boring tetris clone that no one likes.
Comes from spending too much time on the anonymous Internet, you stupid fool.
Fuck 'em.
That's exactly the response I got when I asked my non-technical physical assistant wife how she could possibly not be curious how the television works.
It's an excellent response, really, and points out something fundamental. There are *lots* of fields out there, each one has deep knowledge. Most of the practitioners in those fields are occasionally perplexed about why more people aren't curious about their little corner of the world. Most of them are not, however, as obnoxious about this as the people on Slashdot.
The more you love math and science the further you'll be from people who live for the next episode of Jersey Shore.
"The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly."
Like the preps/jocks/etc. when I grew up didn't affect how arrogant I became after post-grad?
You can't control what other people do but you (should) have total control over how you react to it. If you were or are arrogant then that is entirely on you. You don't get to blame others for your arrogance because you and only you control that. I used to be a pretty arrogant guy but I had to own that. Nobody else was to blame for my behavior. Yeah, I got picked on like pretty much everyone else but the thing I had to control was how I reacted to it. Once I did that the results turned out consistently much better.
1. Don't be a dick
2. Don't yell out the answer
3. No cell phones
lose != loose
How can it be rectified?
You're supposed to cultivate it.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
This is sort of a repost because my comments have not been showing up... but I can find them in a search so *shrug* slashbug!
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
With low self esteem comes the need to feel impressive. But when that is not backed up by solid moral training, you get wankers who feel they can get by on words, instead of deeds. When the solid truth is that people will remember your deeds and your empathy much longer than your knowledge. "Its nice to be important, but much more important to be nice." "You can be oh-so clever or oh-so pleasant, we recommend pleasant" Since the atheistic, liberal, humanistic life leaves you empty, what have you got left besides puffery? You can research this topic by watching Big Bang Theory. Pro-Tip: If you think BBT is funny, you're part of the problem the OP is describing. If you find the men in BBT sad and strange, there is hope for you.
Well to start, you have to see that there may be a problem, so you're already a big chunk of the way there.
One thing would be to expose yourself to as much experts in non-knowledge-oriented fields as possible. I worked for a gas station in high school, and I enlisted in the military reserves. For the first two years I was in the reserves, I dreaded going for my monthly weekend training, because I knew that at least once per weekend I would do something really stupid. (Like, "Hey, I'll save weight in my pack by not bringing any extra socks." When we're going to be training outside all weekend. In February in Michigan. Socks don't really weigh that much, but having dry ones sure helps keep you from getting frostbite...) Every month it was something different; and the other guys, most of whom were attending 2-year community college or trade schools, would say, "Aren't you going to [major state university]? How can you do something so dumb?" Honestly, I don't know.
Anyway, eventually I must have run out of stupid things to do. But the whole experience -- not just me doing stupid things, but seeing the really wise things that other people did -- gave me a lot of respect for people who didn't have book-smarts.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
If you can beat everyone else at big game hunters, you've earned a little arrogance.
Oye... where do I begin...
1. Arrogant != successful (these are orthogonal things) 2. Although you have every right to think highly of yourself, others have the right to scorn you. No particular reason, that's just their right.
If there is something to be gained by cooperation (and there usually is) an evolutionary stable strategy is one that cooperates more than not, but punishes folks for being non-cooperative (think a tit-for-tat). If practicing continued arrogance is considered by people to be non-cooperative, it could potentially be out-competed by other strategies (e.g., being humble until confronted with someone that is arrogant). No need to toss religion in there: that's a red herring...
Of course you also have the right to follow a non-optimal strategy in social interactions, but as with all choices, there are potential consequences.
Givalt!
You've totally missed it my friend. Arrogance is absolutely a survival plus strategy.
1. Woman love arrogance. They can't help themselves. They know what it means, and they simply can't get enough of it. That's because evolution has pre-programmed them to seek and mate with men who are confident in their ability to provide. Men provide, women make babies. This is the way nature works. The more incredibly arrogant you are, the more likely that you are to breed. The more likely you are to breed, the more likely you are to survive.
2. Arrogant people are better team players. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true. When you've got a team, or a group, you want people that can express strong opinions, figure out the best way to do something and move on. If you've got nothing but passive, humble, sheep like people... you might get the job done, but you'll never get optimum results. Not good for survival, my friend.
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Dude...the reason you are a nerd is that you care that people think you are cocky. Exude confidence and people will give you respect. We are going to need more confident, intelligent people in the future to solve the challenges of the 21st century.
I love how 75.3% of the posts in this thread are rated +15 Insightful!, or +20 Interesting!.
We seem to have hit a nerve on the inner nerd in most of us. We all have knowledge and many have experience when it comes to how people perceive us ... and remember - "perception is reality". If you're perceived as arrogant, you really are arrogant for all intents and purposes, especially when it comes to the boss, customer, etc.
On a related note - some may prefer "geek" vs "nerd" - but remember that NERD = Network Emergency Response Dude and maybe it will help you find your place.
I would think about the number of times you've gotten laid in the last year. That's pretty humbling for most slashdotters.
Can you say this about yourself in a variety of other situations? How about at a dance club?
That is what makes a nerd what they are. They know what they are good at and proud of it, they avoid the rest like a plague because they know how bad they are at it.
Simple and well adjusted. It is those that don't self reflect at all and not care about judgement who are maladjusted. Hell, I bet they don't even know how to compike a kernel.
I shit you not.
I think you've hit on something and, for what it's worth, I encourage you to continue looking at this.
I have a perspective from the dumb side. My boyfriend is a smarty pants engineer, and lo if he doesn't let a day go by without throwing his cocky "I'm right, you're wrong" attitude at me. His friends are the same way. I chalk it up to smart people can't relate to common folk. If you want to correct your behavior, why not try hanging out with some people, who, as my boyfriend would say, are simpler minded. If you can get along with them, then you can definitely learn about how to have a normal conversation without being a jackass about it.
That's how he learned. He hung out with my artistic friends, that talk about photography and movies and creativity. Nothing he is interested in, but he had to converse and be social. Now he's a little less mean.
How can it be rectified?
Two things:
1) Drugs
2) Reading
I'm serious. Get your hands on some psilocybin (aka 'mushrooms'). Read up on the effects and dosages. Start with a very small dose and trip two or three times over the course of a month. Get in tune with your body and mind and learn how to let go of your ego. If you find that you enjoyed it, invite a few close friends to share the experience. Take it slow, be cautiously optimistic, and don't push yourself or them too hard.
And fucking read. Read read read. There comes a point when you learn enough about a subject to realize how truly vast it is - you could never hope to know all of it, let alone well enough to be arrogant about that knowledge. Watch lectures on YouTube about things you don't understand. I particularly recommend Richard Feynman - I've learned a lot from him about science, but even more about how to balance intelligence and grace.
The disclaimer here is that some people are just fucking assholes who can't be helped. If they're arrogant and right, listen to them - you might learn something even if they refuse to. If they're arrogant and wrong, just ignore them. There are too many brilliant, kind, and humble people in this world to get hung up on the few rotten pricks.
Remember that your primary duty is to the self. You are not responsible for other people's actions or words, regardless of what you have in common with them. First concentrate on bettering yourself then use the insight you have gained to set an example for your peers. In recognizing the problem in yourself and others, you've taken the first step. The journey from here is yours - keep all three eyes wide open so you don't miss a thing. And finally, enjoy.
In 1976 I managed a group of software developers. The company hired a young man of 22 years with a BS and MS in comp sci. For sake of discussion I'll call him Dave. Dave had lived in his parents home while getting both degrees. To say the least, he was brilliant, if inexperienced. He was a very fast learner. He was arrogant in that he had near zero tolerance for less than genius level intellectual horsepower. This persisted for years. He made virtually zero mistakes in his work. He made exactly zero mistakes on anything of substance he worked on. Zero. He could do no wrong. He was hard to get along with to the extent he had to work alone as best we could manage it. When he had to work in a group, we had a lot of HR intervention with the intent of soothing ruffled feathers but Dave had to be kept on.
I think it was 1992. Dave had been working (more or less) alone on a difficult experimental project for a few years. He'd had a few false starts and it was not going well. Others had tried solving this same technical problem but had gotten nowhere with it. After a few months the executives pulled the plug on the project. To my knowledge, the problem was never addressed again.
Dave took a vacation immediately after the bosses pulled the plug on the project. When he came back from vacation he was a new man. His whole demeanor was changed. He had a new found tolerance for less than genius intellect. He was introspective. He was deliberate in his approach to technical work. He had no artifact to his visible personality that would suggest arrogance. He was a pleasure to work with. He was nice to be around. He was always quiet in social settings, but now when he spoke he had something to say that didn't elevate his own image relative to others. When he spoke it was direct to the issue and not about himself in relation to the issue. He asked others opinions. He took others POV under consideration which was later reflected in his own POV. He gathered some real friends.
Many of his colleagues, self included, talked about Dave's transformation. We came to believe that his failure on an important project, regardless of whether it was solvable or not, was the trigger that humbled him for the first time in his life. We speculated that before this failure, he had never failed at whatever he had set himself to do. He had never felt the disappointment of failure. He had expected perfection in himself and others.
Last I heard of Dave, he was married with a couple of kids and VP of engineering at a now very successful startup of the doc-com era.
I wish him well.
Arrogance is a good pathway to success. Think about the people who tend to be favored and get all the perks. Sports stars. Salespeople. Managers. All arrogant sons of bitches who consider nerds beneath their notice. Politicians, even worse. Being loudly self-assured of one's own superiority seems to be very helpful for success; being unassured of it leads to being stepped on, and being quietly self-assured of it leads to bitterness.
The world's a hierarchy, and you need to display dominance to move up. You only need moderate that arrogance when in the presence of someone who can ruin you. The rest of the time, keep it on full.
You might consider meditation.
Like boolean zen, it's quite useful -- you'll probably like it a lot too!
...is the same. I totally second the suggestion to "hang out with lots of different types of people". I like to think that I've managed to avoid the greater part of the arrogance that we're talking about here, and I put it down to the fact that in addition to my own nerdy activities, I've also maintained involvement with groups like musical societies, sporting groups and a drawing club, I've used vacations to do labour like in a mine and in a sawmill, and I work constantly with kids. It's the breadth of experience and human interaction that keeps one well-rounded and open-minded.
If i really am better than you is it still arrogance?
"Like some Slashdot users, I began attending university last month for computer science.
Conversing with my college computer science peers (many of whom are quite nerdy), I have noticed that many of them are extremely arrogant. Upon introspection, I have come to the realization that I am also very similar to them and am very curious, but worried."
While a few of you are assholes for whom there's no hope, most of you are that way because you're young and not done growing up.
Your situation may be exacerbated by the college admissions process, where kids compete amongst each other to be in the top x% or 0.xx% to get in. Appearing to be better than the remaining xx.x% seems critical to your life.
Most of the real world doesn't work that way - you just need to get your work done well enough on time whatever that means.
"I have noticed similar personality characteristics on Slashdot. Where does this nerd arrogance come from?"
Many people are more obnoxious on-line where it's entertaining for them than in real life where it'd be a problem that gets in the way of relationships and promotions.
As do I... and neither am I.
I have, however, been previous chastised numerous times... most often by my wife, but occasionally by certain other friends of mine, for using words that "not everybody knows", even though the vocabulary that I'm using is quite natural for me, and I'm not intending to speak down to anybody either, but simply trying to say what I am thinking. That some of the people listening may not be as familiar with the terminology I'm using isn't something that always crosses my mind until after it's been pointed to me, but it's something I have been making an increasing effort to be consciously aware of in recent years.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm a truly arrogant nerd tradesman. I've done compression, flare, and sweat joints. I installed the expansion tank in my current house, as well as the recirculation system. I did the base moldings in several rooms (coped joints, not just miter). I installed the disposal, including a new circuit -- and when I had my kitchen redone by professionals, that circuit was the only piece of electrical they didn't rip out and replace (I've had to rip out a lot of the previous owner's electrical "work" -- he didn't do it himself, but I suspect hired his "electrician" on a street corner). I did a gas connection too, no prob....hey, what's that smell?
(no, just kidding; the gas connection I did was for an outdoor grill)
I have seen a few new grads fired on the job because of their attitude. They believed that because they went through computer science at a specific school that won't be named, they were better than everyone else. Reality was that they were not (actually the worst) and no one could work with them. Hopefully they learned valuable lessons.
Plumbing is easy - hot on the right and shit always flows downhill.
It's hard to be arrogant when you have the giggles.
Smoke DMT and join my cult, motherfucker.
Seriously. It is ego erasing and has little/no risk of lasting side effects from 1-3 doses.
In my experience I've found that people who thumb their noses at others are just trying to hide their own failings.
The arrogance is caused by poor social interaction caused by poor communication between two brain hemispheres. By listening to 10Hz brainwave, you can make it much better, if you got this problem because of too much coding.
The Bell curve is exactly what it is. It's a distribution curve of IQ test scores for adults. By definition, half of the people are below IQ 100 and the other half are above it. They make up test scores based on a proper bell curve distribution, not on how good people do the test. This makes for interesting differences in scores for the same test, if you look at different areas/countries. Even though the USA scores a 100 average IQ for a test, they have to give higher marks to the same number of questions right than certain other areas of the planet to achieve this.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Best. Slashdot. Troll. Ever.
It goes away as you get older... unless you are a FoxPro developer...
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Most arrogant nerds double your age don't realise what they're doing. You're obviously mature enough to realise what you're doing. You'll be OK. Don't worry about it.
Meanwhile, things like avoiding hammering and annoying resonance can be a black art. Then there's designing a system such that it can actually be assembled as designed. It's not just where things end up, it's also about how they get there.
Arrogance is a self defence mechanism for people with low self esteem to (try to) feel good about themselves.
Mechanical changes in your persona just don't cut the mustard. You really need to find a way to feel good about yourself which isn't dependant upon anything but your own self opinion (in an introspective, not egotistical fashion). Until you can really accept yourself, with all of your failings and strengths, then you can't draw a realistic opinion of yourself. Without a realistic opinion of yourself, you'll spend an awful lot of energy and effort trying to make yourself feel better about the low self opinion you're deriving of yourself from the opinions of others.
Take some time for introspection.
What are you afraid of? How can you overcome those fears?
How do you treat people? Do you judge others?
Are you constructive in situations with other people?
Do you recognize the immense value in the diversity of human kind?
Are you sincere, honestly emotional and balanced?
Can you really understand why that jock-like character demeans you, and feel compassion for his failings?
Can you feel compassion for your own failings?
Are you reactive or thoughful?
It's not about abolishing your shortcomings, they're part of you, serve a purpose and are not something you can or would want to just throw away. But if you find the root cause of your failings, not only will you understand yourself but you'll be a better person for the understanding and most likely, very constructive for your arrogant geek friends to be around. And be gentle and kind with yourself, there's not a single person alive who doesn't have failings who hasn't overcome them.
Learn to love yourself like you'd love your own children, no matter what.
All your binders are belongs to us
To me, and to keep it simple.. It comes from them thinking they know everything about everything. There is no question they do know more then the average person, however it is limited to what there interested in. If you asked a nerd about streets smarts, or sex, they will act like they know it all, but throw them in those situations and they spaz out. I do not like to stereo type people, so what someone considers a nerd, could be very wrong and they are into criminal activities, or things the stereo type for a nerd simply do not fit.
They keep to themselves and there interests, but they like to mouth off, and think they are better then most. It is interesting why most are like this and why they have no sense of being humbled? Funny part is people who you would consider arrogant outside the "nerd factor" are some of the most humble people, they are knowledgeable and you can learn a great deal by asking, you ask a nerd and they give a snotty attitude, even if they are wrong and someone else shows them how far off the facts they are. They have to have some type of social interactions with other people outside there group, my thinking is because they stay away from social interactions they end up with a smug attitudes, if they do not think the same way they avoid those people.
It may be because the stereotypical nerd probably grew up getting abused at school by their peers (the luddite-sort-of-jock types). They felt weak, insignificant and lacking in control. As they grow older, they develop a skill in something which runs the planet's industries, etc. Unix, Linux, programming skills, etc - these all empower the nerd and allow him/her to feel in control and worthy of respect.
I went to a small technical talk, being presented by a well-known member of a certain technical community. He was typing an example of something he was presenting, and he happened to make a small typo, and a few chars later (literally within 1 second), just a split second before he recognised his mistake, more than half of the class angrily shot up/out of their seats to point at the projector, uttering some sort unintelligible nuance attempting to convey "you made a mistake". I was so dismayed that almost involuntarily, I put my head into my hands and uttered "f***kin hell......"...
It got Obama elected president, it can work for you.
You deal the same with all kinds of arrogant people, it doesn't much matter if they are nerds or not. If they have grounds for being arrogant - which you can usually find out pretty quickly -, then you might just simply acknowledge it, and live with it. If they don't, then just forget about them, get into ignore mode, and move along. Reading too much into it won't do you any good. There's just so much time you spend living, you should minimize wasted time - especially on idiots - to a minimum.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Whatever you do, don't read comments on YouTube.
In Sheldon Cooper's voice.
1. Nerds tend to have less developed social skills or have a different cultural basis. Thus it's very easy for both of you to misunderstand each other. There are social queues you're sending that they won't pick up and queues they're sending that you won't pick up. That's just a communication issue.
2. They do actually know stuff you don't know and it isn't unreasonable when in their field of expertise for them to get a bit of respect. All other experts get that... why not them?
In either case, I've rarely had a problem with anyone if I was both patient and respectful. It costs me nothing and while occasionally aholes will attempt to take advantage of it on balance it serves me better.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It's not the nerds that are arrogant that's the problem or issue.
It's the ignorance of that other crowd. The arrogance is just a healthy response to a f****d up situation where idiocy is promoted.
Water leaks tend to occur just about one meter (or 3 ft) outside the point where it enters the house, do you know why? No, because you don't have that kind of training.
You sound arrogant. Frost heave is one reason. And I shouldn't need to know this because I don't live in a place where the ground undergoes those sorts of temperature changes, nor have I ever worked in the trenches. I don't need to know everything, but I do value having enough understanding to evaluate multiple bids and know who's likely BS'ing me. One of my rules of thumb is, if he can't educate me on what he's doing, he's not worth paying for.
The common strategy in trying to be liked is to play the system, i.e. trick people into liking you by saying the right things at the right times, while not changing anything about your actual attitude. People do this all the time, but it's very transparent so it doesn't work very well.
The real way to change your behavior is to change your opinions. Change your current judging thoughts to not caring, thinking "whatever". It takes time to get yourself to stop judging people, but it helps to realize that we're all just people being led by our environment which is subject to much randomness.
If you don't have judging thoughts, you can be likeable while remaining honest; it doesn't require as much effort as trying to manipulate everyone the entire day, and it saves you from being annoyed by other people, or more generally, things you can't control.
It's so obvious yet I've never realized.
Most of the nerds speak very less except the topics they like. Even I do that. Even my silence is arrogance for my office staff. They gossip about me like 'that guy don't teach us anything, that guy don't talk to us at all,etc,etc'. I stopped talking to girls when I realized that they want to sleep with someone else and just want knowledge about technical stuff from me which will be useful for them to get promotion. Even if I speak to one girl others become jealous. And I am sick giving explation to those emotionaly disordered people.
I had a masters degree and 6 years of tech experience in the Israeli Defense Force, and I thought I was god's gift to tech companies. Being rejected by Google fixed my arrogance for me. Working with some excellent people at another startup also helped me show some humility.
Postmortem - I reapplied to Google after 3 years, got hired, and subsequently resigned after 5 months. They're a great company, just wasn't what I was looking for.
If you think being smart is your problem, then taking drugs is probably a reasonable solution. A few years of acid and mushroom use, and you'll be entirely average.
Huxley didn't predict that alphas would willingly choose to be deltas.
In general, the more technical and detailed in nature, the more the people tend to be socially inept. A lot of folks seem to have asperger's traits, but this is the same thing that makes them extremely competent and badasses too. Unfortunately "intellectual bullies" are always around but they deserve more pity instead of any retribution.
Great technologist's are very bad liars, meaning they have a great propensity to tell the truth. This is the core of what makes them great technologist. There are many, many times when they tell the truth and others do not like hearing it whatsoever for lots and lots of reasons. If the person next to you is geeking out and crossing the boundary by being arrogant or an intellectual bully, then challenge them and let them know what they are doing and why they are being an ass. I good technologist will recognize the truth and say, "you are right...." and actually grow as a person. That is all they need.
My observations after spending 30 years around folks like this.
There are many variations of this saying. This one being the Chinese proverb.
The question is where do you want to fit in this proverb.
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool...shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is willing...teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep...awaken him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise...follow him.
Other variatioins can be found here.
http://www.xenodochy.org/ex/quotes/knowsnot.html
I work for a large company and am in a position to conduct interviews for our IT team. We had an applicant recently who we considered to be very arrogant. Moreover, he had built some very negative opinions on certain methodologies we use everyday (things that are now becoming industry standards). When asked why he felt this way, he didn't have a clear reason. We surmised that it was his lack of experience in the emerging methodologies, and an aversion to things unfamiliar to him. He covered his discomfort by just being negative (as if he was "above" using these emerging methodologies).
We didn't hire him.
I would say, being cocky isn't so bad, as long as you keep an open mind. Have opinions, but formulate those opinions based on actual experience and curiosity--not just a fear of unfamiliar things.
I was introduced to my first computer at age 7 (1975) and thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Pretty much from that point on, I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life, and because of that I wanted to go to MIT. I spent the next ~10 years with that goal in mind, got good grades, great test scores, AP classes, etc. And because of that, I was invited to a special event that MIT held in the D.C. area to recruit the top students, and they had many of their current students from the area attending. It was the most excruciating couple of hours I had spent--they were the most arrogant, conceited individuals I'd ever spent time with. I couldn't possibly see spending the next 4 years of my life like that. And that ended any thought I had of going to MIT. I ended up at the next best dual-degree program I could find (Washington University). Interestingly, my best friend had the same experience as I did--ended up going to Georgia Tech. I've been up to Cambridge a few times, and sometimes really think it might have been a great place...if it weren't for that attitude.
See what I mean?
LOL at getting all your knowledge of "drugs" from government propaganda?
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
over-analysis != intelligence
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Kudos to you for seeing the arrogance. You're not imagining things. The arrogance is the main reason why I want to get out of IT. If you don't want to be arrogant, make an effort not to be. Treat others like you want to be treated and listen twice as much as you talk.
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Ah - it has been said before, but I'll say it again, "Youth is wasted on the young."
When you are young you think you know it all. Once you get any significantly deep understanding of any technical or scientific subject you'll quickly learn how little you really know. You will learn to couch your words with more caveats and less certainty as reality (and possibly physics) beats you down - if you are being honest with yourself and others.
There is only one certainty: nothing is certain.
My advice - start working on humility now - and quest for wisdom (truth) in all things.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I know you didn't ask about this - but consider, at the very least, expanding your group of friends. Maybe meet a girl from the business school? Hanging out with normal people can teach you a thing or two about life and can be a lot of fun.
Yes, it's quite common, despite some of the timid stereotypes we've been given by the media. I would assume it stems from some combination of genuinely being more intelligent and more knowledgeable than the average person, and wanting to assert your self in the face of social pressures you've probably faced and may continue to face as a result of being a nerd.
It's probably also related to the fact that as a nerd you put a high value on intelligence and knowledge. There's a remark in Cryptonomicon to the effect that nerds, particularly young nerds, tend to reactive aggressively to any assertion of fact, as they take it to imply that they did not already know it.
In your case, and the case of your peers, it may also have a lot to do with the fact that you're in college. It's a ripe age of arrogance, and being in a relatively cloistered and academic setting only exacerbates the issue.
The good news is that you've identified it as a negative personality trait which you'd like to keep in check, so there's no reason you can't, at least mostly. It's actually something I've worked on over the past few years as well, so I can offer some general tips, though they're probably pretty obvious: Listen to other people: don't ignore them, don't cut them off, and don't block them out (bonus, you'll be amazed what you can learn from surprising sources). Don't assume you know everything, you most certainly don't. Ask questions when you don't know something: it's more awesome to actually know stuff than to just pretend you do. Allow people to make mistakes, it happens to all of us. When someone says "hey did you know that...", they're hoping you'll say "no": it's not a quiz to see how smart you are, they just want to share something interesting that they most likely just learned themselves. When somebody doesn't know something, it's usually more fun to teach them than to make fun of them (obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1053/). People open themselves up for insults all the time: limit how often you seize those opportunities, even if it's just in fun. Insulting someone isn't necessarily being arrogant, but it just a negative atmosphere around you which will tend to bring out the negative traits in you and those around you.
Overall, just keep it in your head that you want to be a nice guy. That's really all it takes. Any non-psychopathic person past the age of 5 or 6 should be able to tell the difference between being kind and not being kind, the key is just noticing it and making a decision about how you want to act.
Oh, and tone is everything: if you're used to being a smarty-pants know-it-all, then even when you're trying to be nice or helpful, it can come off as condescending. Just take a beat and think about what you're about to say and how you should say it before you actually do. It might take some practice: I gave up being condescending to my wife for lent a couple years back, and it stuck. Trust me: I'm much happier now.
Lastly, don't be self-righteous. Clearly, I'm still working on that one.
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
Moron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Casteism
I first encountered "nerd arrogance" when I was in middle school and high school. Most of my friends were boys. I would see them working on electronics projects or on a computer programming project and, if I asked what they were doing, the response I got was," you wouldn't understand because you're a girl." I was constantly referred to as stupid. Even though prior to living in the state I reside in now I had won a regional and national science fair for bio-chem and I was part of a group called the "young astronauts" which gave me a chance to go to NASA for space camp, etc. I had the love for the sciences but no one gave me a chance because I was a girl and I don't take anything too seriously. Now that I am in college I still put up with the same garbage. Even outside of school my future father in law made me read an article about how oblivious and unsafe female chemists have been in the past; he assumed that I never took my own safety into account nor the safety of others. So now instead of being a loud mouth arrogant nerd like the people I have dealt with before, I listen to those loud mouths and then research what they are talking about to talk with them later. It does irritate me but I think the best way to deal with it is to get those tendencies under control. Remember that not everyone is as smart as you are but the fact that they are asking means they have a desire to learn; this also means they wish to be one of your peers. Also there are no such things as stupid questions ONLY stupid answers...I am sure someone on here will disagree with me but I am hard pressed to care since its faceless name on the internet. Give people a chance and remember that people are watching you be this smug, arrogant, asshole...that's why you will end up only having those friends at the table and ladies usually aren't attracted to that sort of arrogance.
As for whining "normals"? Fuck 'em. Choose an orifice (or a protrusion, if that's your fancy) and fuck 'em.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Wow, this guys just managed to flamebait the Slashdot in the OP. Amazing!
Bow before me, for I am root.
The first day I walked onto the MIT campus I was confronted by an upper-classman weilding a cane who tapped the HP programmable calculator hanging on my belt, saying "It's orientation week! You can't possibly need this now, take it off, you are making us [nerds] look bad!"
I quickly came to realize that, though I was already a nerd -- perhaps a larval nerd -- there were extreme examples of adult nerds to be observed here. Impressive, in anthropological sense, but a bit scary in terms of arrogance, lack of empathy for "mortal" humans, and a tendency to live in internal mental worlds of abstraction, divorced from interpersonal "reality" or emotional awareness.
It took me more than a decade more of life experience put more than one tenuous toe into the pool of non-abstracted human experience; protective defenses can be difficult to transcend. But it's possible. It takes grace -- or love, spirit -- take your pick of terms. I think relating across the divides of abstraction and Autism/Aspergers spectrum is going to be a bigger and bigger issue as our culture careens into producing millions of people with tendencies like these.
Perhaps this is an evolutionary survival tactic -- we're going to need a lot of geniuses these next generations -- but I fear it's going to be a rough (and exciting) ride.
If you're a neuroscientist then why are you claiming that MDMA is habit-forming? Every possible action or inaction in the world is habit-forming given the right user and mindset. There must be some research to back up your claim, right? I keep up with modern medicine quite a bit and it seems that as soon as politics are out of the picture, the demons of "illegal" drugs mysteriously up and vanish. I can't possibly recommend listening to the advice of a faction that censors itself for political and not medical reasons. Big pharma has long ago lost my trust by approving a number of terrible medicines and never trying to fight for a lot of wonderful ones -- because it is not profitable enough. The bottom line, helping the individual, is not important enough. Sad.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
nerd herds:: That kind of arrogance and belief in superiority of your "own tribe" is also a part of herd behaviour , where people in a group can act without preplanning and the kind of bullying behaviour that is re-inforced by being part of a pack, though there is no specific article about pack behaviour. So I would think it would definitely also occur in a herd of nerds, and where do they congregate? Often at university.
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Lots of people consider a respect for the truth in intellectual matters to be arrogance.
They interpret any disagreement as an arrogant disregard to their power, authority, or status, or an attack against their self esteem. How dare you disagree with me?
What nerds do is trust their own minds, and assert the truths they believe, regardless of power, authority, status, or feelings.
Nerds aren't arrogant. They are the least arrogant people you're likely to meet. When do nerds assert privilege over other people? They honestly assert what they believe, as opposed to others who will profess agreement they don't believe for social advantage.
People don't like to be told they're wrong. They like it even less when they are *shown* that they are wrong. They are arrogant. Nerds are about the only people who will admit to being wrong, and thank your for correcting them. The word for that is humility.
Become active in IETF, kernel development, or similar. If you think you can code, trying to keep up with T'so, Torvalds, and the like will put you in your place. I thought I was a "10" and I was right. I found the scale goes to 1,000.
Your instincts are right. You'll find that arrogance comes from those who lack self esteem or a healthy sense of self worth. They act superior to keep people at arms length, lest we find out their skill set is all they have. Widen your friend circle and avoid the real idiots. Draw off those CS major who are just "going along to get along" and form your own group. Let yourself fall to group think and you'll fall on your face.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
There are Good Nerds, there are Bad Nerds, and there are Immature Nerds. Most Nerds under 25 years old are still in the Immature Nerd phase, and so the Arrogance you are encountering comes from that group. These folks are in general socially dysfunctional, spend 90% of their thought time wishing they had a sex partner, and the other 10% trying to prove to themselves that, even though they do not have sex partners, they are still "cool." Being Arrogant is a symptom of wanting to prove to the world that they are "cool." If you can overlook their arrogance and reach them as people, you'll find the arrogance dissolve and be replaced by a level of loyalty and help that you'll find amazing. Once you break through their protective bubbles, you'll find folks willing to spend an all-nighter to help you with your technical needs. Immature Nerds that grow up to be Good Nerds replace arrogance with earned and deserved pride. Immature Nerds that grow up to be Bad Nerds keep their arrogance, and acquire all the other traits you'd associate with the Parent Class of Bad Nerds, A**h***s. Embrace the Immature Nerds who are acting arrogantly. You will find great future friend lurking within that set. If you discover a true Bad Nerd, stay away from such a beast in all aspects of school, work and life. No matter how smart or productive a Bad Nerd can be, "life's too short to work on projects you don't believe in with people you don't like."
A bit of personal history first. I live in Brazil. Here the "quality" (quotes will be explained later) education comes from public universities. And the selection process is a straight forward test we do at our last year of high school and later if you can/want. We call that Vestibular. Pubic infrastructure is very small, thus statistics points that only around 2%-3% of students end up into a spot inside a public school.
When I was 17, my last year at high school, I got through this test without studying at home and got a spot in the 3rd best college into CS out here. If that don`t inflate egos I don`t know what does. First semester from 6 class I attended I got approved at 2. The problem was my ego telling I did not need to study (based on the misconception that the Vestibular was the hardest test I would ever go through) and the teachers that did not give 2 flying f**** for proper teaching.
Teachers in public universities here can`t be fired unless they kill or someone gets them with their hands on the cookie jar. If they stall 80% of the class they don`t care and no one will make them pay any mind. I had math classes where the teacher reproved literally 99% of all the students he was teaching at that semester with no remorse. That teaches you that a single self-righteous teacher, that has more ego than you can ever do, can do whatever he feels fit just because he thinks his ways are the best. So this is my recipe for ego crushing
P.S.: The quotes on quality means that it`s not the university that teaches the right stuff or the right way, but the ecosystem makes sure that only the most badass student has any chance of finishing a math-related graduation.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Get knocked in the head with a 2x4, see you aren't as arrogant anymore
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You can start by not using words like "rectifying"
I don't know why; it’s a perfectly cromulent word