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.
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".
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.
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.'"
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.
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.
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!
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."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
No, unfortunately by your own standards you are arrogant here. Its how you deliver the information. Patience and tolerance for ignorance go a long way towards people having respect for your knowledgebase.
I consult for a living. Having the knowledge is the relatively easy part. Being able to deliver it to the client in a way which will allow them to understand their ignorance, and the content of your information bolus, without making them feel stupid and inferior... That takes diplomacy, and compassion, and work. When you can interact with others on a subject which you are expert in and they are not, without making them feel inferior and imparting part of your knowledge to them at the same time, then you are a success.
Chuck
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 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.
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.
The true character flaw though is when you extend this to things you're not successful or even good in and think that you're a better person just because you're good in your field. Others may be very good in *their* field. And even if they have no field they're really good in this does not mean you're a better human being. Maybe you're just an arrogant asshole that's good in computers. People won't tell you when they need you but that's it then.
And learning to be humble is not a sign of weakness. Fearing to appear weak is a sign of underlying weakness. If you're strong being humble is easy if you try. It's only unbearable if you're weak.
It's the same as with patience: If you treat every opportunity where you have to wait for something as an ideal opportunity to learn patience you can't fail at getting better at patience, which will make you happier and your life much easier. If you treat it as an opportunity to rage and to be impatient and to unnerve others you'll get worse and worse at it and be unhappy and someone nobody wants to have around.
Trying to be a good, humble, patient, friendly person is of course totally selfish. Nothing wrong with *that*, though.
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
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.
Jane, are you sure you want to use that criterion? Let's reminisce...
Nonlinear crystals can change a laser's color by absorbing photons and then emitting others of a different frequency because photons are mediators of the electromagnetic force, so they interact with comparatively large (~10^(-10) m) electron clouds. But neutrinos only interact via gravity (irrelevant here) and the weak force which has a comparable range of ~10^(-18) m. Since the cross section determines how likely interactions are, neutrinos are roughly ten thousand trillion times less likely to interact with matter than photons. This is just an approximation, but experiments yield similarly tiny cross sections.
If neutrinos have to interact with intervening matter before hitting the detector, an extra interaction is involved. That's why Chris Burke pointed out that detecting neutrino flavor change due to an interaction with intervening matter would depend on the square of the interaction probability. Detection in the conventional flavor oscillation theory just depends on the interaction probability because it only involves a single interaction, so it's trillions of times more likely to explain the observed electron neutrino events.
In fact, that T2K paper acknowledged a much bigger source of noise on page 8: the muon neutrino beam was slightly contaminated by electron neutrinos. This contamination doesn't invalidate their results because it only explains ~1.5 out of 6 observed electron neutrino events.
Anyway, the processes that change a laser's color are given names like "second-harmonic generation" (where a crystal combines two photons into one, commonly used in green laser pointers) and
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
It isn't always proper to operate from the lowest common denominator. You can say blue or you can say azure. You can say thingy-ma-bob or you can say electrolytic capacitor. The former may be correct, however, so much meaning is lost compared to the latter. It is more appropriate to speak at (or slightly above) the level of your audience in as much as you are able without feeling or worse, sounding condescending. This fellow was soliciting his peers for advice based upon their common experience trying to relate to and interact with those having a different or lesser station.
Also, the words we use represent our culture as well as personal style. It would be unfortunate if everyone spoke in the same, plain, unsophisticated manner much as it would be if there was no diversity and expression in our art. Unnecessary? Yes, but so too the styles and colors of our clothes, our cars, our homes. You may not appreciate his speech but I may not appreciate your car. Would it be proper for me to tell you to get the more practical Camery (assuming you had a Hummer) for your daily commute?
To the fellow asking the question: By the time we've moved on to college, us geeks/nerds have more than had our fill of the attitude that we must conform to the the level of the dumbest kids in class. We're tired of being picked on because we inherently understand what they cannot comprehend. We're tired of being ostracized if we don't follow the social norms. College is the time for us to unshackle ourselves from the fools, the morons, the wannabes, the clones. We finally have peers and it is our time to shine. Surely we cannot be blamed if our pendulum swings a bit in excess the opposite direction. Who could fault us for wanting to gloat at the mediocrity of those we've left behind? The trouble is, we may have the brains but neither of us the maturity. There is wisdom in not personally trying to settle the score. Life has a way of doing that for us anyway. It is far more preferable to live the overwhelming remainder of your life in peace than to act on grudges. Many of your tormentors will now be your customers and employees. The quality of these relationships and your ensuing success or failure will be directly tied to your ability to conduct yourself with humility. This isn't so much a rote set of behaviors you must learn but an attitude you must mindfully adopt. You might speak like a geek but do you harbor compassion as a friend?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
Thank you, that was informative and interesting. I also appreciate the replies from several other AC's.
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.