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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.'"
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.
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.