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hi everyone: this is the author here. i'm pleasantly surprised to see this pop up on HN. please reply to my comment if you have any suggestions for improving

hi everyone: this is the author here. i'm pleasantly surprised to see this pop up on HN. please reply to my comment if you have any suggestions for improving this article. thanks!

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
corysama 17y ago
The line "awkward silences often arise because the geek doesn't pay enough attention to his partner's attention level" struck me as a misunderstanding. Often when in a group, I'm doing nothing but focus on everyone else's rhythm because following it doesn't come naturally to me. I find everyone else trading off speaking and often just interrupting or talking over each other without issue. But before I've phrased my thought and found a place for it, the topic has moved on.
midnightmonster 17y ago
It's terrifying to consider that you wrote this article without knowing me and in fact without living inside my head. Anything in your list that I don't do I avoid only by conscious effort. Of course many of these behaviors are not bad so much as different, but my "best" categories are: * Most of the time I actively analyze conversations for signs that people are talking past each other, so I usually catch myself if I'm using jargon without adequate explanation. (Of course this is fed by the commitment to accuracy and desire to educate, though.) * I don't think I often evangelize technology, but that's mostly because I discovered some time ago that if I recommend it I'm going to end up supporting it. Thing I'd most like to improve on in myself is struggling with turn taking in conversation. Like many of these categories, I can behave more normally, but it's amazing to me how much effort and attention this one requires. Most cognitive dissonance for me is the whole issue of caring about the "how" more than other people do. I think I appropriately focus on what and why when making decisions, and on one level I know that most people do not in fact care about the how. But on another level I can't quite believe that (e.g.) anyone who watches American football wouldn't want to know how they make the yellow first down line show up.
dkarl 17y ago
Your observation about geeks fearing phone conversations is spot on, but I think it has to do with more than just turn-taking. I think it's a general social anxiety that manifests more strongly with phone calls because they're easier to avoid or procrastinate and because they often intrude social anxiety into a very safe, non-challenging social environment. I would guess that face-to-face conversations that are easy to avoid or postpone are just as anxiety-provoking as phone calls. Anyhow, I am certainly a phone-phobic geek. When I was a young child, I was terrified of talking on the phone. I was too geeky to understand the social aspects of a phone call, but I was smart enough to know I didn't understand most of what happened during a phone conversation. When my parents called somebody to ask a question or invite them somewhere, it would take fifteen minutes. Typically, I had one goal in mind, such as asking my friend Jon if he wanted to play. That was all I understood, but I also understood a phone conversation was supposed to be more complicated than that, and that I had to be polite to whoever answered the phone. I had terrible performance anxiety. Strangely, I still have an aversion to making phone calls to people I don't know well. Even simple, low-risk, impersonal tasks like calling to ask a restaurant's hours or calling the dentist to make an appointment produce a significant amount of anxiety. The more often I talk to someone on the phone, the more the anxiety decreases, though. Talking on the phone to my family and close friends generates no anxiety.
Mz 17y ago
I'm kind of appalled at the negative tone and unpleasant assumptions behind most of the comments. Let me suggest an alternative view: Most geeks have been "weird" their entire lives. From kindergarten on, they didn't quite fit in with the other kids. The teachers actively made their social lives worse by setting them up as an object of scorn: The kid to hate because they get the answers right while the teacher acts like a) you, too, could get the answer right if only you studied more (never mind that is not why the geek kid knew the answer) and b) see, this kid is proof I am a wonderful teacher and your failures are on your own head for being lazy (never mind that she or he isn't responsible for the geek kid's stellar performance either). They have had scorn heaped upon them until even the ones who started out as extroverts have probably become gun-shy. The vast majority of people around them were also inculcated in this sick, twisted social system so even when you are in your 40's, you run into this "5-year-olds-on-the-playground"-style bullshit harassment and get abused by it no matter how hard you try to "behave" the way other people try to dictate you "should". Someday, after you have twisted yourself all out of shape trying to do what other people claim would make you "socially acceptable", you eventually figure out that just knowing more than other people or just thinking differently about problems is inherently verboten and there is no social disguise that will make you "acceptable" to most people. It doesn't matter one iota that you are sharing information out of genuine enthusiasm for a topic or out of a genuine desire to make the lives of other people better, you will still be treated like an egomaniac, a threat, a bitch/bastard...etc. So maybe if the more "normal" folks who think "social skills" are vastly more important than "hard"/technical skills would exercise some genuine compassion, refrain from being too quick to judge and other types of social wisdom that they like to brag they have more of than the "geeks", they would find that geeks aren't so dreadful after all. They can be coaxed out of their shells if you don't start off by automatically labeling them and being openly hostile. And if you don't hate them on sight for simply existing and are kind and patient with their foibles, they may not need to act like know-it-alls in self-defense, which is probably the only ego defense they had in many ugly social situations.
- epochwolf 17y ago
  This pretty much describes my life until college. It took a lot of work from a bunch of friends in college for me to develop enough social skills to handle non-geeks.
asdflkj 17y ago
"I've worked in both low-level systems programming languages like C as well as some high-level scripting languages like Python. What further details would you like to know?" ~= "I've worked with COM-PU-TERS. I type using a KEY-BOARD. What further details would you like to know?" Another annoying geek habit is assuming everyone else is a drooling imbecile.
AndrewDucker 17y ago
You might find this interesting: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/1e5a957c26a3ce37?hl=en&pli=1 http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/1e5a95... It's a report from a speech therapist who attended a Science-Fiction convention on the way that fannish speech is different to "normal" speech.
sethg 17y ago
As the father of a geeky seven-year-old, the “struggling with turn-taking” section really hits me where I live. (Not that I ever exhibited such maladjusted behavior when I was seven, or seventeen, or thirty-seven. No, never! Well... hardly ever.) A special-needs teacher at my son’s school has suggested that he get training in what’s called “social pragmatics”; this is an actual subfield of speech-language pathology that focuses on the social use of language as distinct from pronounciation, syntax, etc. We’re not convinced that he needs to spend 45 minutes a week focused on this subject, but other people might be interested in knowing that this kind of training exists.

hi everyone: this is the author here. i'm pleasantly surprised to see this pop up on HN. please reply to my comment if you have any suggestions for improving this article. thanks!

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

corysama 17y ago

The line "awkward silences often arise because the geek doesn't pay enough attention to his partner's attention level" struck me as a misunderstanding. Often when in a group, I'm doing nothing but focus on everyone else's rhythm because following it doesn't come naturally to me. I find everyone else trading off speaking and often just interrupting or talking over each other without issue. But before I've phrased my thought and found a place for it, the topic has moved on.

midnightmonster 17y ago

It's terrifying to consider that you wrote this article without knowing me and in fact without living inside my head. Anything in your list that I don't do I avoid only by conscious effort. Of course many of these behaviors are not bad so much as different, but my "best" categories are: * Most of the time I actively analyze conversations for signs that people are talking past each other, so I usually catch myself if I'm using jargon without adequate explanation. (Of course this is fed by the commitment to accuracy and desire to educate, though.) * I don't think I often evangelize technology, but that's mostly because I discovered some time ago that if I recommend it I'm going to end up supporting it. Thing I'd most like to improve on in myself is struggling with turn taking in conversation. Like many of these categories, I can behave more normally, but it's amazing to me how much effort and attention this one requires. Most cognitive dissonance for me is the whole issue of caring about the "how" more than other people do. I think I appropriately focus on what and why when making decisions, and on one level I know that most people do not in fact care about the how. But on another level I can't quite believe that (e.g.) anyone who watches American football wouldn't want to know how they make the yellow first down line show up.

dkarl 17y ago

Your observation about geeks fearing phone conversations is spot on, but I think it has to do with more than just turn-taking. I think it's a general social anxiety that manifests more strongly with phone calls because they're easier to avoid or procrastinate and because they often intrude social anxiety into a very safe, non-challenging social environment. I would guess that face-to-face conversations that are easy to avoid or postpone are just as anxiety-provoking as phone calls. Anyhow, I am certainly a phone-phobic geek. When I was a young child, I was terrified of talking on the phone. I was too geeky to understand the social aspects of a phone call, but I was smart enough to know I didn't understand most of what happened during a phone conversation. When my parents called somebody to ask a question or invite them somewhere, it would take fifteen minutes. Typically, I had one goal in mind, such as asking my friend Jon if he wanted to play. That was all I understood, but I also understood a phone conversation was supposed to be more complicated than that, and that I had to be polite to whoever answered the phone. I had terrible performance anxiety. Strangely, I still have an aversion to making phone calls to people I don't know well. Even simple, low-risk, impersonal tasks like calling to ask a restaurant's hours or calling the dentist to make an appointment produce a significant amount of anxiety. The more often I talk to someone on the phone, the more the anxiety decreases, though. Talking on the phone to my family and close friends generates no anxiety.

Mz 17y ago

I'm kind of appalled at the negative tone and unpleasant assumptions behind most of the comments. Let me suggest an alternative view: Most geeks have been "weird" their entire lives. From kindergarten on, they didn't quite fit in with the other kids. The teachers actively made their social lives worse by setting them up as an object of scorn: The kid to hate because they get the answers right while the teacher acts like a) you, too, could get the answer right if only you studied more (never mind that is not why the geek kid knew the answer) and b) see, this kid is proof I am a wonderful teacher and your failures are on your own head for being lazy (never mind that she or he isn't responsible for the geek kid's stellar performance either). They have had scorn heaped upon them until even the ones who started out as extroverts have probably become gun-shy. The vast majority of people around them were also inculcated in this sick, twisted social system so even when you are in your 40's, you run into this "5-year-olds-on-the-playground"-style bullshit harassment and get abused by it no matter how hard you try to "behave" the way other people try to dictate you "should". Someday, after you have twisted yourself all out of shape trying to do what other people claim would make you "socially acceptable", you eventually figure out that just knowing more than other people or just thinking differently about problems is inherently verboten and there is no social disguise that will make you "acceptable" to most people. It doesn't matter one iota that you are sharing information out of genuine enthusiasm for a topic or out of a genuine desire to make the lives of other people better, you will still be treated like an egomaniac, a threat, a bitch/bastard...etc. So maybe if the more "normal" folks who think "social skills" are vastly more important than "hard"/technical skills would exercise some genuine compassion, refrain from being too quick to judge and other types of social wisdom that they like to brag they have more of than the "geeks", they would find that geeks aren't so dreadful after all. They can be coaxed out of their shells if you don't start off by automatically labeling them and being openly hostile. And if you don't hate them on sight for simply existing and are kind and patient with their foibles, they may not need to act like know-it-alls in self-defense, which is probably the only ego defense they had in many ugly social situations.

epochwolf 17y ago
This pretty much describes my life until college. It took a lot of work from a bunch of friends in college for me to develop enough social skills to handle non-geeks.

asdflkj 17y ago

"I've worked in both low-level systems programming languages like C as well as some high-level scripting languages like Python. What further details would you like to know?" ~= "I've worked with COM-PU-TERS. I type using a KEY-BOARD. What further details would you like to know?" Another annoying geek habit is assuming everyone else is a drooling imbecile.

AndrewDucker 17y ago

You might find this interesting: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/1e5a957c26a3ce37?hl=en&pli=1 http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.fandom/msg/1e5a95... It's a report from a speech therapist who attended a Science-Fiction convention on the way that fannish speech is different to "normal" speech.

sethg 17y ago

As the father of a geeky seven-year-old, the “struggling with turn-taking” section really hits me where I live. (Not that I ever exhibited such maladjusted behavior when I was seven, or seventeen, or thirty-seven. No, never! Well... hardly ever.) A special-needs teacher at my son’s school has suggested that he get training in what’s called “social pragmatics”; this is an actual subfield of speech-language pathology that focuses on the social use of language as distinct from pronounciation, syntax, etc. We’re not convinced that he needs to spend 45 minutes a week focused on this subject, but other people might be interested in knowing that this kind of training exists.