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MIT's Charm School For Geeks Turns 20
Hugh Pickens writes writes "It's been said that social graces may be just as important as intelligence and engineering prowess to success as an astrophysicist or computer engineer. But how do you take someone who's grown up in the world of pocket protectors and get them thinking about suits, bow ties and the proper way to hold a wine glass. Now Jennifer Lawinski reports that MIT's Charm School just celebrated its 20th birthday with classes in alcohol and gym etiquette, how to dress for work and how to visit a contemporary art museum. 'We're giving our students the tools to be productive members of society, to be the whole package,' says Alana Hamlett. 'It gets them thinking about who they are and what their impact and effect is, whether they're working on a team in an engineering company, or in a small group on a project, or interviewing for a job.' At this year's Charm School students were free to drop in and participate in any of the 20-minute mini-courses being offered that day and students who participated in 10 of the mini-courses were awarded doctorates of charm. Computational biology graduate student Asa Adadey said the free meal was a draw and said he learned in one mini-course not to cut up all his meat at once before eating it. 'Who knows? Down the line I may find myself at a formal dinner.'"
They pay money for this. A lot of it.
$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski
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Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.
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I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.
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You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusive emails to the operator of OSY, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke threatening to sue him for libel,
What always fascinated me about MIT is the seeming lack of a "university neighborhood." It was like MIT people never left campus and had no social lives to speak of. I think it went out of business, but one of the few bars close to campus was themed like a laboratory, where you drank beer out of beakers. During the day, people would scurry out of the buildings to the food trucks, awkwardly scarf down their lunches, and then scurry back. I used to love watching them try to play Frisbie when the sun came out, which I can can only describe with a direct quote from Dodgeball: "It's like watching a bunch of retards trying to hump a doorknob out there." I had always thought the jokes about just how nerdy MIT was were exaggerations, but that has to be the highest concentration of nerd-stereotypes that I have ever seen; super-smart, interesting people, but I can certainly see how the Charm School has lasted 20 years.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
The typical nature of nerds is such that we generally behave oddly in public perception in cases where expected behavior does not match optimal behavior. The example of cutting up a whole piece of meat therefore makes no sense, because it is not optimal behavior.
If you were to cut the meat into little pieces prior to eating, the meat would be cold by the time you were eating the final pieces, which is clearly an unacceptable outcome. On top of this the piece of meat makes logical sense to nerds as some sort of stack or queue. Cutting up the meat is akin to converting the stack into an array before operating on the data. Since you are intending to not sort but eat the pieces, an operation which can be run on either a stack or an array, this clearly makes no sense.
Also I have never heard of this so called "American Style" of eating, whereby the fork is tossed from hand to hand. We do not do that here in Ohio, so I don't know just how "American" it can be. Sounds more like something they would do in Texas.
From the last link, about dining etiquette:
10. Licking Your Fingers/Using Fingers to Push Food Onto Your Fork.
Always use a napkin to remove food from your fingers, and a knife to push food onto your fork. If the situation were reversed, would you want to shake hands with, or take a dinner roll from, someone after their fingers have been in their mouth or on their plate?
I agree on the point but not their rationalization. Considering the number of men who don't wash their hands after using the urinal, shaking hands with someone who might have had food on their fingers before they wiped clean is the least of my concerns.
Look, yes, it's important to be respectful and polite and blah, blah, blah... but, at some point, you have to admit it that a lot of it smells like bullshit snobbery. And, at some point, all those invented "manners" are superseded by what's simply reasonable. Others, like not chewing with your mouth open, are so obvious that they're not even worth mentioning.
But, I mean, the correct way to cut a piece of meat or the correct order in which to slice it? Who the hell cares?
Small wonder business people take so damn long to do anything, they're so caught up in all the piddly, useless bullshit that they have no brain space left to concentrate on getting shit done.
If you are smart enough for MIT then perhaps that can be your charm. Whether or not you can wear a suit and tie is irrelevant in 2013.
We've managed to get to the point where it's no longer mandatory for women to wear dresses and high heels everywhere. Can we please move on and also stop requiring men to wear suits and ties? If you're looking for an engineer, look for an engineering degree. If you want to hire a model, look for someone who looks good in a suit. Confusing the two is just unprofessional.
Computational biology graduate student Asa Adadey said the free meal was a draw and said he learned in one mini-course not to cut up all his meat at once before eating it.
Anyone with a brain capable of dealing with science, engineering and math would know that cutting all food before eating it increases the surface area while keeping the total mass and volume unchanged, thus causing the food to cool and dry faster, relative to its original, supposedly optimal for consumption, state. Anyone who is surprised by this, is probably not good at recognizing reasons behind other decisions and rules. He may be is a "trade school" kind of student that collects assorted morsels of prescriptive knowledge and expects it to provide him an easy, comfortable job. Real geeks hate those people, because they pass themselves as competent, cause enormous messes, and a real engineer has to clean up after them instead of doing actual work.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
One might imagine 'alphas' would be fully aware that social behaviour that meets the approval of 'beta' and lower groups in society is nothing more than cultural relativism, with the 'acceptable' behaviour patterns in any given culture having been created by other sociopathic 'alphas' as a 'cosmic' joke at the expense of those stupid enough to think that such conventions matter.
For instance, in Egypt, most families (Christian, Jew, or Muslim) circumcise their females in the most extreme form. For the people of Egypt, such bizarre and hurtful behaviour has the SAME justification as all the 'rules' the idiot Alana Hamlett will give to those moronic enough to attend her courses. A 'formal dinner' and a 'tribal ceremony' are the self same thing. Only cretins value their subservience to rituals dreamt up by vicious and manipulative 'alphas'.
Now would be psychopaths (Dexter types) who needs the skills to slip up the greasy pole so the power they can wield over others is maximised, will most certainly have an interest in these 'training' services. I recall reading recently of an African teacher- Christian and well educated- who decided to take the role of a ritual priest as well as headmaster of the town school. Why? Because in that part of Africa, ritual priests are served by so-called 'temple-slaves', young virgin girls given up to sexual slavery by superstitious families who believe they are defending against karma-like punishments for sins committed by members of their family at some point in time. The African teacher knows this is nonsense, but he is an 'alpha' psychopath, so he takes advantage.
The responses to this article are mostly expressing shock that peeps at a place like MIT would engage in such 'beta' like behaviour, but MIT will have very few 'alpha' types as students. Academic achievement alone poorly correlates with 'alpha' types.
Of course, 'alphas' will frequently participate in the cretinous and meaningless rituals of their own culture in order to be 'polite'. However, 'alphas' are usually happy to have this participation be seen as 'clumsy' by the idiots to whom ritual is everything.
Here's a fact for you. A common psychological experiment takes a group of similar people, with similar backgrounds. The group is split into two 'tribes' and each tribe asked to draw up a list of reasonable rules for itself. The tribes are allowed to function separately for a number of weeks. Then the tribes are requested to merge into one group again, by reconciling the two different sets of rules. The result is always that the process of reconciliation proves very difficult or impossible. Neither tribe wants to back down on the validity of their 'rules'. This shows how people cleave to arbitrary pattens of behaviour, and yet believe said patterns of behaviour are anything BUT arbitrary.
On this understanding, the so-called coming of age 'sex' rituals of tribal people are ALWAYS a consequence of the influence of powerful 'alpha' sex criminals who took great delight in influencing groups of weak willed people to ritualise sexual abuse. When every child of the tribe has been abused in the same way, psychology ensures the abuse is now seen as an essential cultural necessity. It is a frightening thing when you realise the role of powerful, influential criminals, in the most abusive cultural rituals. Maybe the rules given by Alana Hamlett are not as evil as 'widow cleansing', but they come from the same mechanism of manipulation.
I suspect the reason most nerds are bad at social etiquette simply because they don't see the point and don't care. It's a waste of time and/or something beneath their intellectual pursuits. If you are on the verge of a breakthrough in a new black hole theory, or revolutionary AI algorithm, everything else might seem unimportant by comparison.
If they started caring, picking up proper social etiquette is really not that hard. You don't need a school a class or an instructional manual... Just mirror whatever other "smooth" and "cool" people are doing. (The hard part is to hold an engaging social conversation talking about nothing, but that's a story for another day.)
So the key is to convince the nerd of the importance of social etiquette. Ironically, those who do go to this school probably don't really need it, and those who really need it haven't realized what they are missing... but sooner or later, they will do.
It also makes it easier to shovel it all in your mouth as quick as possible instead of taking 3 hours to eat while holding conversation. To each their own tho.
The most important thing in any field of endeavor is to hold power, which is to say to hold the power to allocate money. There are many ways to gain such power; for example, you could just be born with a shitload of money. Assuming you weren't, however, there are a number of ways to gain it. You could get really lucky. This is the best way to make money, because nobody can prove you were lucky, so you can go around claiming you got it by being awesome somehow.
OK, but let's assume you're not rich and you're not particularly lucky; how else can you make it? By being smart, talented and hard-working? Haha, no. The next way to make it is by knowing somebody who has power (i.e. money or the ability to allocate money). Once you know this person, you must convince them to wield their power in such a way that you can accrue power of your own. Maybe they have grant money you can spend on a project. Maybe they have startup funds you can use to incorporate. Maybe they can funnel taxpayer money to you or defend your monopoly. Whatever. This is the reason social skills are the most important skills, and the richest people tend not to be the most intelligent.
This plays into two things: Firstly, that the best way to know somebody with power is to be somebody with power, which is why the rich get richer, and even when they lose all their money through incompetence or bad luck, they can immediately bounce back. Secondly, this is where talent and hard work actually come in. If you know somebody with power, why would they want to give you anything? You must be useful to them. A stupid, lazy, unconnected person is useless. Your talents only get you anywhere when you can use them to gain leverage with people who wield power, and it doesn't matter if you're a brilliant astrophysicist from MIT if you can't talk your way onto a faculty shortlist or funding grant.
So try learning some things about etiquette, charm and all that political bullshit, because that's what really counts.
The problem here is that optimality is not an absolute condition, and a good engineer should know that.
If you're trying to optimize how much time you spend cutting up your meat so you can spend more time doing other things, then cutting it up all at once is the optimal choice. But to talk about any option being an optimal one, you have to also factor in all the conditions and constraints.
Maybe in a European or American setting, it's optimal for avoiding the derision of your peers to cut your meat one bite at a time. But if you're in Japan, you should generally serve your guests food that is already cut up and able to be eaten with chopsticks (or soft enough to cut with chopsticks).
The conditions and constraints matter and there is very rarely a single optimal solution that applies in all conditions and satisfies all constraints. People who don't recognize this, while passing themselves off as competent, cause enormous messes, and a real engineer has to clean up after them instead of doing actual work.
You're not a computer geek.
What you are saying is that it is faster to first use one core (hands) to cut the pieces, then switch between using one core (hands) to deliver the pieces to the other core (mouth), and then wait while the other core (mouth) is eating the pieces.
If you eat European style, you use one core (hands) to cut the next piece, while the other core (mouth) is busy eating the previous piece, keeping both cores busy at the same time. We also don't shuffle the knife and fork around, the fork stays in the left hand, and the knife in the right.
Cutting the meat all at once allows the fork to be inserted once and several slices of meat cut in succession.
In the typical use case, the efficiency gain is illusory because the fork must still be inserted into each slice afterwards in order to transfer it to the mouth (where the fork will be efficiently removed). Nevertheless, the Stationary Fork algorithm is of importance when the meat slices must are to subsequently be processed in a distributed fashion by multiple forks and/or mouths.
Oh for christ sake implement some parallel processing - come to the UK and learn how to use a knife and fork!
Anyone with a brain capable of dealing with science, engineering and math would know that cutting all food before eating it increases the surface area while keeping the total mass and volume unchanged, thus causing the food to cool and dry faster, relative to its original, supposedly optimal for consumption, state.
A True Geek would, however, not assume that food is served at an optimal state that demands instant consumption, on the basis that food takes a certain time to eat, which would be factored into the serving temperature.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Maybe in a European or American setting, it's optimal for avoiding the derision of your peers to cut your meat one bite at a time. But if you're in Japan, you should generally serve your guests food that is already cut up and able to be eaten with chopsticks (or soft enough to cut with chopsticks).
Yes, but presumably if you're teaching etiquette at MIT, you're teaching the etiquette that applies to the Eastern US. I don't think anyone would disagree that there are cultural differences between human beings in the US, Japan and Afghanistan.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Perhaps he is just unconcerned with the minutia involved in fields in which he is not an expert, kind of like the loose syntax displayed in your post (extraneous comma, maybe, s/that/who/, mixed construction.) No one thinks that you're "dumb" because of this.
Maybe he's overweight, and would rather consume his food cold in order to burn more calories.
Maybe he has some degree of Autism, which hinders his ability to distinguish between the taste of cold steak and warm steak.
It is possible to ride your bike to work without being Lance Armstrong. In an ideal world, no one would have to choose between being admitted to MIT and knowing exactly how to cut a steak at a formal dinner. But this ain't it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
In an ideal world, "how to cut your steak at a formal dinner" would be subject only to one's own personal preferences, not to some arbitrary dictate. And arguably in a such a world the concept of a "formal dinner" would not exist in the first place.
I give an example of what happens because Caltech doesn't have similar classes.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
A real engineer understands that "optimal" depends on the requirements. It's pretty telling that you would so quickly read decide what was optimal without even knowing what *HE* wanted. Maybe Asa valued time efficiency over the temperature of the food. So what he was doing was optimal for his needs, not necessarily what was prim and proper. In actuality YOU sound like the know-it-all engineer that are a pain to work with and that I've come to loathe.
The OP really comes off as a pompous douche nozzle. I wouldn't want to work with anyone who has such contempt for their peers. You can just feel the seething anger in his post. Real geeks generally aren't cunts and are passionate about what interests them.
...has described the "tossing" of the fork from hand to hand as the proper form.
This is my problem with a lot of so called "rules" of etiquette, it's entirely arbitrary and typically just one person's overly judgmental opinion. While I have no desire to offend anyone (most of the time) the notion that holding your knife and fork together or switching hands could possibly have a right or wrong answer is absurd. The point is simply not to gross anyone out with your eating habits and possibly give the impression one is attempting to be social.
Keeping your knife in the right and and the fork in the left is ok too, but that supposedly gives the impression that you are in a hurry...
See, I would think that the actual rate at which you shovel food into your mouth would be a more useful measure. I could make an equally valid (and just as absurd) argument that the noise from constantly switching eating implements is disruptive and distracting. If someone is reading that much into how you manage your tableware then they are being rude and judgmental and I doubt I'd care to dine with such a person.
Perhaps a more gimlet eyed evaluation rather than a crush: Perhaps she had realized the relative levels of income stream between English (non-pre-law) majors and Engineers? Starving in a garret while you create sounds romantic but sucks in many ways.
Everyone looks good in a suit that fits.
That is a matter of opinion. While that might be the consensus it is not a universally held opinion. And in my opinion they often look quite silly. An attractive person will look attractive in casual or formal clothes. An unattractive person will be made at most marginally better looking with nice clothes but it is demonstrably true that not everyone looks good in a suit no matter how well it is tailored. 20 seconds on google images will reveal lots of ugly people in nice fitting suits.
I don't understand the nerd hatred of suits and ties at all.
Partly because a lot of suits and all ties are uncomfortable. (a good suit is comfortable but usually expensive) Worse a tie is a completely useless piece of clothing worn just because people expect it. It is purely decorative and does not even look very good for that purpose. Partly because circumstances that dictate wearing a suit tend to come with a lot of fussy social conventions that frequently make little sense. Partly because suits and ties are costumes without any fun clearly attached. Partly because suits and ties are expensive. Partly because nerds tend to value how people act more than how they look.
That has as big of an effect as charm school. The guys have more opportunities to socialize than when I attended at 90% male.
You're going to have a hard time putting together an outfit that looks as good as your bog standard suit.,
That's a wager I'd be happy to take and I'd probably win. Furthermore it is circumstance dependent. Suits are appropriate clothing for a fairly narrow range of circumstances. Outside of those circumstance and you look silly or pretentious.
Ten seconds of thought and you're all but guaranteed to be the best-looking guy in the room, and that matters.
I have news for you. If you are ugly, a suit isn't going to fix that.
And seriously why would you not want to look like hot shit in a sharp suit??
Because I am comfortable with how I look without one. I own several tailored suits and I wear them at appropriate times. But I really don't care a fig whether anyone except my wife thinks I'm attractive or not.
THANK YOU. Regardless of the specific subject at hand, GP has completely overlooked that fact that optimization is dependent upon constraints.
Maybe I don't give a good goddamn about the temperature or tenderness of my food: I just want to forget about cutting it.
The ability to socialize and represent oneself well in social situations is important, but it's not that important. If it is that important to you, your intelligence or engineering prowess may not be as great as you'd like to think.
Fact is, falling somewhere in between Social Retard and Master of Etiquette is just fine for most people.
Etiquette is silly anyway. I care what kind of stories you tell and how you view the world around you, not how you hold your fucking fork.
It is infinitely more important to be an interesting person than it is to be a well-mannered person.
around here we can't afford a separate knife for every diner, so you have to cut everything you'll need and then pass the knife along.
Wow. In America, it's not unusual for people to have more than one knife per person! Maybe Americans really are spoiled. I can't imagine everyone having to pass around the knife every dinner.
But if you're in Japan, you should generally serve your guests food that is already cut up and able to be eaten with chopsticks (or soft enough to cut with chopsticks).
But not in China. Dinners frequently include big lumps of food that can't be cut. You are expected to have sufficient dexterity with chopsticks (like any Chinese four year old) to hold the food with them and take bites from it. The potential for mess and embarrassment is great. I tended to avoid such food.
or any politician or venture capitalist when you need funding or special zoning for your new data center. Social graces do matter when you're doing big things. And at MIT, seems like the students become leaders of the social fabric instead of just a tool inside a closed office. It's a large world out there and most people aren't in IT. If you can't negotiate through the social graces, you'll just be limiting yourself and your experiences in the world.
Trust me. I used to be like you, reliant only on data and believed in meritocracy. Politics is an art form, whether it's with your in-laws, local city council, or state rep. Humility is another thing I've learned is important through the years (but have yet to learn).
I dress up because I got tired of looking like an intern. Or people telling me my work is "so good, it's *almost* professional." Dressing up was a revelation like night and day. It took me years to learn, but several things come to mind:
1) People respect me more
2) A nice fitting suit is like lingerie to women. Seriously, I can't argue with that.
3) If you dress nice in a work environment where everyone is shloppy, you'll be hated. When in Rome.... you know. but you can still dress up chic hobo.
4) More likely to be promoted.
Took me 2 years (on and off) to learn how to wear properly, thanks to my wife. I'm still learning. But if you guys need some help, read GQ or some similar mindless fashion mags. Also, there's plenty of blogs - my favorite is Sartorialist and Trashness
I don't know if you noticed, but the higher you go - no just career, but social ladder - the more value is placed on looks. Yes, it's a costume, but you'll be judged on it. Not everyone is judged on merit and actions alone.
I've seen ugly people look good in suit. Yes, it's harder but it's possible. A tie is useless, but so is a watch. Or any clothes really. You should go to your office in several layers of Snuggie. Why not wear Depends (adult diapers)? It's much more efficient and productive if you shit in your pants at the office too.
Anyways, my point it's better to over-dress than under-dress. People will and do judge you. If you think it doesn't matter....well, good luck.
I've met plenty of people who looked good in suits, CAR SALESMAN included (had to shop for a new car in November last year). Who do you hang out with? Are the lawyer you see are the court-appointed ones or the ones who charge $300/ hr consultation?
See Sartorialist website. It's mostly women, but men can look good too. The only people I know who dress poorly are underperforming workers or poor people. So there's this social stigma attached to poor fashion choices - at least on the east coast.
Everyone I know, and I mean EVERYONE, will be really shocked to find out I'm not a computer geek. However, I'm not a computer, at least not of the electromechanical kind with cores.
But to follow your analogy, it generally takes much less time to cut a piece of meat than it does to chew it. Under your model, the hands-core spends a lot of time idling while it's waiting for the mouth-core to finish. That's probably okay if the only thing you're doing is eating meat. But there are probably other foods on that plate, and beverages in a glass not far from the plate, and a napkin you may wish to dab your mouth with between bites. But your hands-core is occupied, holding the knife and fork and doing nothing, so you have to waste cycles putting down the knife and fork when you decide you want a drink or a piece of bread.
Generally it's more efficient to bring a whole chunk of memory into the cache all at once (cutting the meat up at once) than it is to keep going out to memory (or disk) to get your data one byte at a time.
Food that is intended to be eaten while hot, over an unpredictable and possibly significant amount of time, is served in a condition when it's ready to eat, and will remain so even over the course of a relatively long dinner. This is easier to achieve with the lowest rate of cooling over time and initial temperature close to the upper boundary of the acceptable range. The less is the expected rate of cooling, the farther from the upper boundary this starting temperature can be set, and the food will be the closest to the optimal temperature over the whole time.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.