8 ms·

Why Are Nerds Unpopular, An Alternative To PG's Essay

58 points by semmons 16y ago

zackattack 16y ago
Lots of bizarre rationalizing. "Nerds" tend to be unpopular because they lack emotional and social intelligence.
- Semiapies 16y ago
  Reading TFA might be useful.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- trominos 16y ago
  What? I mean, of course, if you define "nerds" to be "people without social intelligence" you're gonna see that nerds are unpopular. The premise beneath PG's essay (and this one, I think) is that if you instead define "nerds" to be "people with a lot of interest in some academic subject, and/or people who are quantifiably 'smart'" you still (seem to) find that nerds are unpopular. So are you saying that that's not actually the case, that smart people aren't disproportionately unpopular? Interesting if true. Definitely needs some kind of justification, since it flies in the face of most people's intuition. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm leaning more towards the position that intelligence is negatively correlated with popularity. Smart people aren't necessarily outcasts, but IMX you'll tend to see fewer of them at the top of the popularity curve and more at the bottom than you'd expect from a random distribution. And I imagine that there are a lot of reasons for why this is. PG's argument in particular is closer to the truth than it seems at face value, I think. He says that smart people's problem is that they don't spend enough time on socializing; I'm not sure if this is really the prime cause of smart people's ostensible unpopularity, but it applies to my experience in middle and high school. My parents were rich enough to send me to good private schools that valued intellectualism (which probably more closely parallel schools outside the US) so I was never really unpopular, but I was definitely less popular than I wanted to be. In retrospect it's pretty clear that I could've been way more popular if I'd doubled or tripled the amount of time I spent on it; instead, I spent my free time programming and doing math. The only place that I disagree is with PG's rationalization of why nerds don't socialize more. In my case, it wasn't that I wanted to build great things (although to some extent I did). I'm pretty sure it was just that solving math problems was a much more reliable and straightforward endorphin trigger than socializing. Anyway, all this is to say that a) I disagree with you and b) you should be less pithy and more explanatory.
  - nearestneighbor 16y ago
    > if you instead define "nerds" to be "people with a lot of interest in some academic subject, and/or people who are quantifiably 'smart'" So, the Comic Book Guy is not a nerd? Even Wikipedia calls him that.
    - aharrison 16y ago
      This is drifting offtopic, but CBG was a member of MENSA[1] and therefore falls under the "quantifiably 'smart'" category. [1] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Comic_Book_Guy_a_member_of_MENSA http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Comic_Book_Guy_a_member_of_MENS...
      - nearestneighbor 16y ago
        You win this round, The Simpsons Cartoon Guy.
    - trominos 16y ago
      The terminology is secondary; the important point is that it seems like smart people are unpopular, but it's not clear whether that's true and if it is true it's not clear why.
  - j-g-faustus 16y ago
    > So are you saying that that's not actually the case, that smart people aren't disproportionately unpopular? I think they aren't. As an example, we could hypothesize that people have a few simple attributes - say IQ (math), physical skills (sports), looks (hot or not), empathy (good at getting along with others) and political skills (good at influencing others). I imagine that looks and physical skills are the most important factors for popularity, with empathy and political skill next, while IQ is basically irrelevant - unlike good looks, high IQ in and of itself does not cause popularity. So let's say that popularity is a function of a weighted average score of looks, physical skills, empathy and political skills. When we say that someone is "popular" or "smart", we don't mean "average" but more something like "top 10%". Obviously 10% of the population will be among the 10% most popular, and 10% among the 10% smartest. But if popularity and IQ is statistically independent, only 1% will be among the top 10% in both. So people that are both smart and popular can indeed be rare even when IQ and popularity are independent, we don't need more than a random distribution to explain that. If we add the fact that people tend to focus on (and thereby improving) things they are good at and ignore (and thereby fall behind in) areas where they suck, it will only strengthen the trend. I think nerds and jocks both follow the path of least resistance by putting most of their efforts into areas where they have a natural advantage. But doing so is rational behavior, it's hard to argue against it.
- thribbler 16y ago
  They lack social skills because they lack emotional intelligence. To take it further: nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have learnt to ignore the relevant emotions. That is why bullies are able to bait nerds; they both feel that the nerds' denial of group emotions makes them culpable.
  - zackattack 16y ago
    "They lack social skills because they lack emotional intelligence." --> I agree "nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have learnt to ignore the relevant emotions." --> Maybe. "That is why bullies are able to bait nerds; they both feel that the nerds' denial of group emotions makes them culpable." --> I would love to hear you expand on this, and I loved that you invoked a concept of "group emotions", which I had never before heard formulated as such.
    - thribbler 16y ago
      Part of my explanation would be that you can only insult a person with their compliance. If they become offended or defensive then they are implicitly conceding that you have a point. So, although nerds are consciously unaware of their denial, it lurks beneath the surface and effects their emotional response in ways that other people can detect.
      - AndrewDucker 16y ago
        If they become offended or defensive then they are implicitly conceding that you have a point. Not at all true. Especially with children. Shouting rude words at kids, threats of physical violence, and implication of things they don't understand make kids feel awful very easily.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    Note: I consider myself a nerd. But honestly, all of this pointing at other people is kind of annoying. We are just as culpable in our social ostracism as everyone else. Nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have categorized it as pointless - at least seemed to have convinced themselves of that point. I disagree that they've learned to ignore the relevant emotions, it's more like they've convinced themselves that fitting in and being part of society is unimportant, and that the world is simply out to get them with their dumb social expectations. Of course, many nerds never truly believe this deep inside, which causes all kinds of angst for them, but that's another topic entirely. IMHO nerds on the whole have developed this giant victim complex. It's not us refusing to fit in with the group that causes our ostracism - it's clearly because we're smart and they fear our intelligence. Yeah, that's it. People don't like us because a large portion of our community are quite simply arrogant jackasses. They pride themselves in being nerds, see themselves as smarter than the rest, and generally just lord their intelligence over everyone else. No wonder people hit us at our weak point: our lack of social skills. This isn't meant to be a complete diatribe against nerds - I love being one, but honestly, a lot of the responsibility for the anti-nerd thing is our fault.
njharman 16y ago
Is the common perception of "nerds" (as in socially awkward/inept unpopular people) is that they are universally smart? Cause that's not been my experience at all. Some nerdly hobbies require (at least some) intelligence, programming, building robots, etc. Other nerdly activities that I'm part of don't require nearly as much, RPGs(pen and paper), and fandom as in trekkies, browncoats etc. And boy am I here to tell you there are some dumb "nerds". In my experience "nerds" have the same ranges of intelligence as non-nerds and intelligent people range from popular jocks to social handicapped nerds. In other words, over my 35 years I've not seen a significant correlation between "intelligence" and popularity, or "intelligence" and social grace/ineptitude.
- Qz 16y ago
  Don't confuse 'nerds' with 'geeks'.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    I find the quibbling over nerds versus geeks or whatever other term one wants to use silly. You may subscribe to that distinction, but most people don't - which makes it hard to communicate meaningfully with those terms.
    - Qz 16y ago
      It is silly, and I wasn't being entirely serious...
    - sophacles 16y ago
      Yeah, this is why I never distinguish between jocks and musicians and other forms of "popular kids", quibbling over terms is pointless.
    - endtime 16y ago
      Whatever your favored labeling, the distinction is valid. If people in general don't distinguish between "nerds" and "geeks", then people in general are suffering from a misconception, and encouraging usage of two distinct terms is surely a good way to combat that misconception. No?
douglasputnam 16y ago
Considering we're gossiping on PG's dime, are we allowed to describe his Nerd's manifesto as "a steaming pile of stereotypes"?
- timwiseman 16y ago
  You are certainly allowed to, but I for one would respectfully disagree. He certainly discusses stereotypes, but that was the point. Moreover, many stereotypes exist because they reflect a facet of the truth (this is definitely not always true, but it sometimes is). His essay explores why the truth behind a couple of specific stereotypes is there.
petercooper 16y ago
The populist definition of "nerd" has shifted significantly with the times. In the 1980s, saying you had a computer at home could have you cast as a "nerd." In the 1990s, saying you used the Internet could automatically make you a nerd. In the 2000s, saying you met your girlfriend (or had a girlfriend you'd never met) online could automatically make you a nerd. A similar shifting of definitions over time even occurred earlier.. consider the reputations of "sci-fi" between 1950 and 1980 (Star Wars, anyone?) I think nerds are, perhaps, just "edge cases." The activities aren't nerdy, per se, but it's just that the mass public hasn't caught up with the ideas yet. What's nerdy right now might be the next big craze.
- orangecat 16y ago
  What's nerdy right now might be the next big craze. Heck, it's now less nerdy to be on Facebook than not.
lukev 16y ago
I wonder why people spend so much time deconstructing and perpetuating a classification that has absolutely no meaning outside of highschool.
- demallien 16y ago
  If I had to guess, it's because a lot of us here found highschool to be a highly traumatising experience, and it comforts us to know that there were others that went through that hell. Personally speaking, it took me more than 5 years after graduating before I could even start to believe that people actually liked me. Even today I can still see little emotional tics, learned behaviours, that I developed during that period, that I actively have to work against, as they will lead me into unsuitable responses today.
- moultano 16y ago
  Many people never escape the conception of themselves they developed in childhood. As banal as it is, this stuff is important.
  - orangecat 16y ago
    This. See http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/this-ones-for-all-the-little-people-out-there/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/this-ones-for-a... . Salaries for men are positively correlated with height, and even more strongly correlated with height in high school.
- psyklic 16y ago
  I disagree that it has no meaning outside of high school. In any big city, there are still many scenes which play on the old stereotypes -- the club/bar scene, rock n roll scene, bohemian scene, gay scene, etc. For example, if you bring up that you work with computers or have a desk job in a club, it is very noticeable that you are stereotyped as "boring" and "geeky" (at least in LA). It's all part of the popularity contest that we're familiar with from high school.
  - jrockway 16y ago
yason 16y ago
I'm a nerd and I wasn't popular in school because I simply wasn't very interested in what the others talked about. Thus, I had nothing to say really, which makes a great ground for having nothing much in common between me and other students.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Reminds of a an account I read about a kid whose hippy-throwback parents didn't own a TV. He did ok socially, however, because he had access to their old music collection and played Jimi Hendrix tunes on the electric guitar.
  - Shorel 16y ago
    Cool. I plan to be one of those parents that don't own a TV.
    - chbarts 16y ago
      > I plan to be one of those parents that don't own a TV. The modern equivalent is denying your kids Internet access. According to a (somewhat) recent Variety article, the median age of TV viewership is 50. (Yes, I do trust Variety to get entertainment news right.)
moultano 16y ago
We've created popular culture that doesn't value intelligence. This has an intergenerational compounding effect. When smart people aren't socially valued for their intelligence, they mate with less attractive people, and the effect is reinforced in the next generation. The opposite is happening in India. Intelligence is a high ideal, and seen as insurance against abject poverty. Men with prestigious degrees and good careers regardless of their attractiveness generally have their pick of wives through arranged marriage. This ends up resulting in a lot of people that are both intelligent and beautiful, and the preference for intelligence is reinforced.
- angelbob 16y ago
  Interestingly, that "arranged marriage" thing may also compound it. Dating/marrying intelligent, hardworking unattractive people is something that almost all of us approve of -- for other people to do.
- luckystrike 16y ago
  Men with prestigious degrees and good careers regardless of their attractiveness generally have their pick of wives through arranged marriage. I would say its more about 'good careers' than prestigious degrees or intelligence here in India. I am pretty sure even a guy with a 'prestigious' degree but an 'unsettled' career (Startup? NGO Worker?) would have a lot of trouble going through the arranged marriage routine. (Most of the gal's families would reject him even before they get a chance to meet each other.) But doesn't a guy with a career that is perceived to be good, have an advantage everywhere else in the world as well, when it comes to selecting a mate?
  - GFischer 16y ago
    Hmmm... as a single 29-year old here in Uruguay... I'd say that the advantage starts to show only when you're older than, say, 25 - the older girls realize their looks aren't going to last forever, or want to have a baby and start to worry about having a husband able to provide. It's a bit cynical but I believe it's mostly true. That said, I think there's hope for love too :) - only not always the kind you see in the movies.
Jun8 16y ago
I think one of the more interesting points in the article was: "The bottom line is this : don’t assume that an American public school experience is universal and broadly applicable social lessons can be derived from it." In European countries, AFAIK, there's very little "Jock worship" in junior-high and hing schools, definitely nowhere near the levels I have seen here. My high school also had sports teams but the people who were in the teams were not necessarily popular. So, my simplistic answer to this social problem: downgrade the sports teams and cheer leading squads in high schools and colleges :-)
stcredzero 16y ago
We must also consider that popularity is also complex I thought that was a premise of PG's essay. To be fair, the point being made is that there may be many specific tradeoffs with many nuances.
tokenadult 16y ago
I learned a lot about my cultural assumptions on the meaning of high intelligence when I traveled from the United States to Taiwan to study the Chinese language twenty-eight years ago. Here in the United States, I had imbued the idea that high-IQ people are disliked because they are smart, and that above a certain IQ, a person has no hope of having a friendship relationship with a person of average IQ. (I especially got that idea from a short story by Philip K. Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick I read when I was in ninth grade, but in fact this idea that high IQ causes an inherent social gulf is commonplace in Western literature on education of gifted children.) I got a big surprise when I arrived in Taiwan. I found out that in east Asia, the cultural assumption is that there are few finer uses for intelligence than getting along with other people. It is expected that anyone who is generally smart will be able to make friends with lots of people. (This emphasis comes straight from the writings of Confucius and the successor Confucian philosopher Mencius, which I studied in the original literary Chinese as part of my language studies.) It helps, of course, that Chinese-influenced culture in general also honors literacy and intellect in a way that is not quite as direct or pervasive as in Western culture, but the main point is that the 知識分子 ("intellectual") is a person who has his own responsibility to get along with other people and lead society (by EXAMPLE) so that all of society is harmonious. Once I learned not to whine to myself so much about how people don't appreciate me because I'm so smart (doesn't it sound gauche to hear me say that?), I learned to appreciate my fellow human beings a lot more, and succeeded in making more friends. I'm glad I went overseas to learn a new perspective, a perspective that helps me now that I am back in the United States. Confucius had a great saying about how to appreciate other people and learn from all of them: 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). I can learn from anyone in my environment, and I can make friends with more people than I realized at first.
- apsec112 16y ago
  I think there's a bit of confusion here. People up to roughly 90th percentile or so intelligence will be able to use their smarts to make more friends, get along better with others, etc. The problem that Paul Graham is talking about is the 10% above the 90th percentile, who are sufficiently different from the average as to make relating to normal people difficult. Not coincidentally, the intelligence of Congressmen averages around 90th percentile.
pauldirac137 16y ago
Nerds are unpopular because people don't like to hang out with anyone who is much more intelligent than they are. This transcends any arguments about social ineptness or pursuing popularity. If you're 30+ IQ points above your peers, you would need an awful lot of social skills to make them feel comfortable being around you. Let's say you're a theoretical physicist and you meet someone who has an average intellect. The first thing they ask you is "What do you do?" If you say (truthfully) "I work on supersymmetric string theories in order to unify all the fundamental forces of the universe" (or whatever; I'm not a physicist). You want the other person to say "Wow, that's cool!" What actually goes through their head is "Oh my God! This person's main interest in life is something that I not only do not understand, but _could not_ understand no matter how hard I try!" Then they just want to get away from you as fast as they can, because being around you makes them feel diminished. This is why nerds are unpopular in high school. If you're a nerd in high school, and you're lucky, you'll get shunned. If you're unlucky, you'll get beaten up.
- toby 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure answering the question "what do you do?" in that manner indicates social ineptness. A physicist could instead say "I do physics research" and potentially entertain an "average" person with stories about departmental feuds or something else he might relate to.
- dagw 16y ago
  You don't need a lot of social skills to know that when people ask you what you do, they probably don't want to hear the abstract from your latest paper, but will be quite content with "oh I work at the university". The only reason any one will feel diminished around you is because you go out of your way to make them feel that way. I know several very smart people with PhDs in very complicated things, working on very hard cutting edge research problems, and they don't have a problem hanging out with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. The whole "no one likes me because I'm too smart" smacks of lies mothers make up to make their anti-social kids feel better about being bullied at school
apsec112 16y ago
This seems to basically be: Paul Graham: X, Y and Z are generally true, except under conditions A and B. These guys: But X, Y, and Z aren't true all the time! And they aren't even true most of the time, given conditions A and B! The only substantial part of this appears to be "nerdiness is becoming cooler", and I find that highly questionable.
araneae 16y ago
Why do we believe that intelligence and nerdiness go hand in hand? Not to be all anecdotal or anything, but the top 6 GPA ranked people in my high school class were normal. They weren't popular, but they certainly weren't nerds. I was 7th, and I didn't really count as a "nerd" until college, when I started going to anime club. In high school, I was so socially awkward that even the nerds wouldn't let me play DnD with them. The nerds were all kind of middle-of-the-pack intelligence. I suspect that we believe this because there are some powerfully intelligent and powerfully nerdy folks out there. But if you just look at academic performance, I bet the reality isn't so strong. There are a lot of dumb nerds out there.
akkartik 16y ago
Adds detail, but misses the main thrust. PG's essay illuminated, for me, the social dynamic common to prisons, schools, and Victorian England: when you take away consequence, people build a 'cruel and stupid world' for themselves.
bootload 16y ago
"... I went to a prep school, and I can tell you that the culture was somewhat flipped – the academically successful kids tended to be more generally popular. There were still subcultures and different groups with different interests and characters – but generally, being smart was considered a virtue. The culture of the school generally respected hard work, integrity, and achievement. ..." The author might have benefited from reading the redux of of pg's article, "Gateway High School, 1981" ~ http://paulgraham.com/gateway.html http://paulgraham.com/gateway.html to get some context. In the social graph of the described school pg went to I can imagine the half life of the author would be a tenth of Cobolt 56. Try "hard work, integrity, and achievement" on these chums ~ http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/paulgraham_2102_11802106 http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/paulgraham_2102_11802106 Look at the clenched fists and how close they are standing together.

58 points by semmons 16y ago

zackattack 16y ago

Lots of bizarre rationalizing. "Nerds" tend to be unpopular because they lack emotional and social intelligence.

Semiapies 16y ago
Reading TFA might be useful.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
trominos 16y ago
What? I mean, of course, if you define "nerds" to be "people without social intelligence" you're gonna see that nerds are unpopular. The premise beneath PG's essay (and this one, I think) is that if you instead define "nerds" to be "people with a lot of interest in some academic subject, and/or people who are quantifiably 'smart'" you still (seem to) find that nerds are unpopular. So are you saying that that's not actually the case, that smart people aren't disproportionately unpopular? Interesting if true. Definitely needs some kind of justification, since it flies in the face of most people's intuition. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm leaning more towards the position that intelligence is negatively correlated with popularity. Smart people aren't necessarily outcasts, but IMX you'll tend to see fewer of them at the top of the popularity curve and more at the bottom than you'd expect from a random distribution. And I imagine that there are a lot of reasons for why this is. PG's argument in particular is closer to the truth than it seems at face value, I think. He says that smart people's problem is that they don't spend enough time on socializing; I'm not sure if this is really the prime cause of smart people's ostensible unpopularity, but it applies to my experience in middle and high school. My parents were rich enough to send me to good private schools that valued intellectualism (which probably more closely parallel schools outside the US) so I was never really unpopular, but I was definitely less popular than I wanted to be. In retrospect it's pretty clear that I could've been way more popular if I'd doubled or tripled the amount of time I spent on it; instead, I spent my free time programming and doing math. The only place that I disagree is with PG's rationalization of why nerds don't socialize more. In my case, it wasn't that I wanted to build great things (although to some extent I did). I'm pretty sure it was just that solving math problems was a much more reliable and straightforward endorphin trigger than socializing. Anyway, all this is to say that a) I disagree with you and b) you should be less pithy and more explanatory.
- nearestneighbor 16y ago
  > if you instead define "nerds" to be "people with a lot of interest in some academic subject, and/or people who are quantifiably 'smart'" So, the Comic Book Guy is not a nerd? Even Wikipedia calls him that.
  - aharrison 16y ago
    This is drifting offtopic, but CBG was a member of MENSA[1] and therefore falls under the "quantifiably 'smart'" category. [1] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Comic_Book_Guy_a_member_of_MENSA http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Comic_Book_Guy_a_member_of_MENS...
    - nearestneighbor 16y ago
      You win this round, The Simpsons Cartoon Guy.
  - trominos 16y ago
    The terminology is secondary; the important point is that it seems like smart people are unpopular, but it's not clear whether that's true and if it is true it's not clear why.
- j-g-faustus 16y ago
  > So are you saying that that's not actually the case, that smart people aren't disproportionately unpopular? I think they aren't. As an example, we could hypothesize that people have a few simple attributes - say IQ (math), physical skills (sports), looks (hot or not), empathy (good at getting along with others) and political skills (good at influencing others). I imagine that looks and physical skills are the most important factors for popularity, with empathy and political skill next, while IQ is basically irrelevant - unlike good looks, high IQ in and of itself does not cause popularity. So let's say that popularity is a function of a weighted average score of looks, physical skills, empathy and political skills. When we say that someone is "popular" or "smart", we don't mean "average" but more something like "top 10%". Obviously 10% of the population will be among the 10% most popular, and 10% among the 10% smartest. But if popularity and IQ is statistically independent, only 1% will be among the top 10% in both. So people that are both smart and popular can indeed be rare even when IQ and popularity are independent, we don't need more than a random distribution to explain that. If we add the fact that people tend to focus on (and thereby improving) things they are good at and ignore (and thereby fall behind in) areas where they suck, it will only strengthen the trend. I think nerds and jocks both follow the path of least resistance by putting most of their efforts into areas where they have a natural advantage. But doing so is rational behavior, it's hard to argue against it.
thribbler 16y ago
They lack social skills because they lack emotional intelligence. To take it further: nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have learnt to ignore the relevant emotions. That is why bullies are able to bait nerds; they both feel that the nerds' denial of group emotions makes them culpable.
- zackattack 16y ago
  "They lack social skills because they lack emotional intelligence." --> I agree "nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have learnt to ignore the relevant emotions." --> Maybe. "That is why bullies are able to bait nerds; they both feel that the nerds' denial of group emotions makes them culpable." --> I would love to hear you expand on this, and I loved that you invoked a concept of "group emotions", which I had never before heard formulated as such.
  - thribbler 16y ago
    Part of my explanation would be that you can only insult a person with their compliance. If they become offended or defensive then they are implicitly conceding that you have a point. So, although nerds are consciously unaware of their denial, it lurks beneath the surface and effects their emotional response in ways that other people can detect.
    - AndrewDucker 16y ago
      If they become offended or defensive then they are implicitly conceding that you have a point. Not at all true. Especially with children. Shouting rude words at kids, threats of physical violence, and implication of things they don't understand make kids feel awful very easily.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Note: I consider myself a nerd. But honestly, all of this pointing at other people is kind of annoying. We are just as culpable in our social ostracism as everyone else. Nerds lack emotional intelligence because they have categorized it as pointless - at least seemed to have convinced themselves of that point. I disagree that they've learned to ignore the relevant emotions, it's more like they've convinced themselves that fitting in and being part of society is unimportant, and that the world is simply out to get them with their dumb social expectations. Of course, many nerds never truly believe this deep inside, which causes all kinds of angst for them, but that's another topic entirely. IMHO nerds on the whole have developed this giant victim complex. It's not us refusing to fit in with the group that causes our ostracism - it's clearly because we're smart and they fear our intelligence. Yeah, that's it. People don't like us because a large portion of our community are quite simply arrogant jackasses. They pride themselves in being nerds, see themselves as smarter than the rest, and generally just lord their intelligence over everyone else. No wonder people hit us at our weak point: our lack of social skills. This isn't meant to be a complete diatribe against nerds - I love being one, but honestly, a lot of the responsibility for the anti-nerd thing is our fault.

njharman 16y ago

Is the common perception of "nerds" (as in socially awkward/inept unpopular people) is that they are universally smart? Cause that's not been my experience at all. Some nerdly hobbies require (at least some) intelligence, programming, building robots, etc. Other nerdly activities that I'm part of don't require nearly as much, RPGs(pen and paper), and fandom as in trekkies, browncoats etc. And boy am I here to tell you there are some dumb "nerds". In my experience "nerds" have the same ranges of intelligence as non-nerds and intelligent people range from popular jocks to social handicapped nerds. In other words, over my 35 years I've not seen a significant correlation between "intelligence" and popularity, or "intelligence" and social grace/ineptitude.

Qz 16y ago
Don't confuse 'nerds' with 'geeks'.
- scott_s 16y ago
  I find the quibbling over nerds versus geeks or whatever other term one wants to use silly. You may subscribe to that distinction, but most people don't - which makes it hard to communicate meaningfully with those terms.
  - Qz 16y ago
    It is silly, and I wasn't being entirely serious...
  - sophacles 16y ago
    Yeah, this is why I never distinguish between jocks and musicians and other forms of "popular kids", quibbling over terms is pointless.
  - endtime 16y ago
    Whatever your favored labeling, the distinction is valid. If people in general don't distinguish between "nerds" and "geeks", then people in general are suffering from a misconception, and encouraging usage of two distinct terms is surely a good way to combat that misconception. No?

douglasputnam 16y ago

Considering we're gossiping on PG's dime, are we allowed to describe his Nerd's manifesto as "a steaming pile of stereotypes"?

timwiseman 16y ago
You are certainly allowed to, but I for one would respectfully disagree. He certainly discusses stereotypes, but that was the point. Moreover, many stereotypes exist because they reflect a facet of the truth (this is definitely not always true, but it sometimes is). His essay explores why the truth behind a couple of specific stereotypes is there.

petercooper 16y ago

The populist definition of "nerd" has shifted significantly with the times. In the 1980s, saying you had a computer at home could have you cast as a "nerd." In the 1990s, saying you used the Internet could automatically make you a nerd. In the 2000s, saying you met your girlfriend (or had a girlfriend you'd never met) online could automatically make you a nerd. A similar shifting of definitions over time even occurred earlier.. consider the reputations of "sci-fi" between 1950 and 1980 (Star Wars, anyone?) I think nerds are, perhaps, just "edge cases." The activities aren't nerdy, per se, but it's just that the mass public hasn't caught up with the ideas yet. What's nerdy right now might be the next big craze.

orangecat 16y ago
What's nerdy right now might be the next big craze. Heck, it's now less nerdy to be on Facebook than not.

lukev 16y ago

I wonder why people spend so much time deconstructing and perpetuating a classification that has absolutely no meaning outside of highschool.

demallien 16y ago
If I had to guess, it's because a lot of us here found highschool to be a highly traumatising experience, and it comforts us to know that there were others that went through that hell. Personally speaking, it took me more than 5 years after graduating before I could even start to believe that people actually liked me. Even today I can still see little emotional tics, learned behaviours, that I developed during that period, that I actively have to work against, as they will lead me into unsuitable responses today.
moultano 16y ago
Many people never escape the conception of themselves they developed in childhood. As banal as it is, this stuff is important.
- orangecat 16y ago
  This. See http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/this-ones-for-all-the-little-people-out-there/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/this-ones-for-a... . Salaries for men are positively correlated with height, and even more strongly correlated with height in high school.
psyklic 16y ago
I disagree that it has no meaning outside of high school. In any big city, there are still many scenes which play on the old stereotypes -- the club/bar scene, rock n roll scene, bohemian scene, gay scene, etc. For example, if you bring up that you work with computers or have a desk job in a club, it is very noticeable that you are stereotyped as "boring" and "geeky" (at least in LA). It's all part of the popularity contest that we're familiar with from high school.
- jrockway 16y ago

yason 16y ago

I'm a nerd and I wasn't popular in school because I simply wasn't very interested in what the others talked about. Thus, I had nothing to say really, which makes a great ground for having nothing much in common between me and other students.

stcredzero 16y ago
Reminds of a an account I read about a kid whose hippy-throwback parents didn't own a TV. He did ok socially, however, because he had access to their old music collection and played Jimi Hendrix tunes on the electric guitar.
- Shorel 16y ago
  Cool. I plan to be one of those parents that don't own a TV.
  - chbarts 16y ago
    > I plan to be one of those parents that don't own a TV. The modern equivalent is denying your kids Internet access. According to a (somewhat) recent Variety article, the median age of TV viewership is 50. (Yes, I do trust Variety to get entertainment news right.)

moultano 16y ago

We've created popular culture that doesn't value intelligence. This has an intergenerational compounding effect. When smart people aren't socially valued for their intelligence, they mate with less attractive people, and the effect is reinforced in the next generation. The opposite is happening in India. Intelligence is a high ideal, and seen as insurance against abject poverty. Men with prestigious degrees and good careers regardless of their attractiveness generally have their pick of wives through arranged marriage. This ends up resulting in a lot of people that are both intelligent and beautiful, and the preference for intelligence is reinforced.

angelbob 16y ago
Interestingly, that "arranged marriage" thing may also compound it. Dating/marrying intelligent, hardworking unattractive people is something that almost all of us approve of -- for other people to do.
luckystrike 16y ago
Men with prestigious degrees and good careers regardless of their attractiveness generally have their pick of wives through arranged marriage. I would say its more about 'good careers' than prestigious degrees or intelligence here in India. I am pretty sure even a guy with a 'prestigious' degree but an 'unsettled' career (Startup? NGO Worker?) would have a lot of trouble going through the arranged marriage routine. (Most of the gal's families would reject him even before they get a chance to meet each other.) But doesn't a guy with a career that is perceived to be good, have an advantage everywhere else in the world as well, when it comes to selecting a mate?
- GFischer 16y ago
  Hmmm... as a single 29-year old here in Uruguay... I'd say that the advantage starts to show only when you're older than, say, 25 - the older girls realize their looks aren't going to last forever, or want to have a baby and start to worry about having a husband able to provide. It's a bit cynical but I believe it's mostly true. That said, I think there's hope for love too :) - only not always the kind you see in the movies.

Jun8 16y ago

I think one of the more interesting points in the article was: "The bottom line is this : don’t assume that an American public school experience is universal and broadly applicable social lessons can be derived from it." In European countries, AFAIK, there's very little "Jock worship" in junior-high and hing schools, definitely nowhere near the levels I have seen here. My high school also had sports teams but the people who were in the teams were not necessarily popular. So, my simplistic answer to this social problem: downgrade the sports teams and cheer leading squads in high schools and colleges :-)

stcredzero 16y ago

We must also consider that popularity is also complex I thought that was a premise of PG's essay. To be fair, the point being made is that there may be many specific tradeoffs with many nuances.

tokenadult 16y ago

I learned a lot about my cultural assumptions on the meaning of high intelligence when I traveled from the United States to Taiwan to study the Chinese language twenty-eight years ago. Here in the United States, I had imbued the idea that high-IQ people are disliked because they are smart, and that above a certain IQ, a person has no hope of having a friendship relationship with a person of average IQ. (I especially got that idea from a short story by Philip K. Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick I read when I was in ninth grade, but in fact this idea that high IQ causes an inherent social gulf is commonplace in Western literature on education of gifted children.) I got a big surprise when I arrived in Taiwan. I found out that in east Asia, the cultural assumption is that there are few finer uses for intelligence than getting along with other people. It is expected that anyone who is generally smart will be able to make friends with lots of people. (This emphasis comes straight from the writings of Confucius and the successor Confucian philosopher Mencius, which I studied in the original literary Chinese as part of my language studies.) It helps, of course, that Chinese-influenced culture in general also honors literacy and intellect in a way that is not quite as direct or pervasive as in Western culture, but the main point is that the 知識分子 ("intellectual") is a person who has his own responsibility to get along with other people and lead society (by EXAMPLE) so that all of society is harmonious. Once I learned not to whine to myself so much about how people don't appreciate me because I'm so smart (doesn't it sound gauche to hear me say that?), I learned to appreciate my fellow human beings a lot more, and succeeded in making more friends. I'm glad I went overseas to learn a new perspective, a perspective that helps me now that I am back in the United States. Confucius had a great saying about how to appreciate other people and learn from all of them: 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). I can learn from anyone in my environment, and I can make friends with more people than I realized at first.

apsec112 16y ago
I think there's a bit of confusion here. People up to roughly 90th percentile or so intelligence will be able to use their smarts to make more friends, get along better with others, etc. The problem that Paul Graham is talking about is the 10% above the 90th percentile, who are sufficiently different from the average as to make relating to normal people difficult. Not coincidentally, the intelligence of Congressmen averages around 90th percentile.

pauldirac137 16y ago

Nerds are unpopular because people don't like to hang out with anyone who is much more intelligent than they are. This transcends any arguments about social ineptness or pursuing popularity. If you're 30+ IQ points above your peers, you would need an awful lot of social skills to make them feel comfortable being around you. Let's say you're a theoretical physicist and you meet someone who has an average intellect. The first thing they ask you is "What do you do?" If you say (truthfully) "I work on supersymmetric string theories in order to unify all the fundamental forces of the universe" (or whatever; I'm not a physicist). You want the other person to say "Wow, that's cool!" What actually goes through their head is "Oh my God! This person's main interest in life is something that I not only do not understand, but _could not_ understand no matter how hard I try!" Then they just want to get away from you as fast as they can, because being around you makes them feel diminished. This is why nerds are unpopular in high school. If you're a nerd in high school, and you're lucky, you'll get shunned. If you're unlucky, you'll get beaten up.

toby 16y ago
I'm pretty sure answering the question "what do you do?" in that manner indicates social ineptness. A physicist could instead say "I do physics research" and potentially entertain an "average" person with stories about departmental feuds or something else he might relate to.
dagw 16y ago
You don't need a lot of social skills to know that when people ask you what you do, they probably don't want to hear the abstract from your latest paper, but will be quite content with "oh I work at the university". The only reason any one will feel diminished around you is because you go out of your way to make them feel that way. I know several very smart people with PhDs in very complicated things, working on very hard cutting edge research problems, and they don't have a problem hanging out with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. The whole "no one likes me because I'm too smart" smacks of lies mothers make up to make their anti-social kids feel better about being bullied at school

apsec112 16y ago

This seems to basically be: Paul Graham: X, Y and Z are generally true, except under conditions A and B. These guys: But X, Y, and Z aren't true all the time! And they aren't even true most of the time, given conditions A and B! The only substantial part of this appears to be "nerdiness is becoming cooler", and I find that highly questionable.

araneae 16y ago

Why do we believe that intelligence and nerdiness go hand in hand? Not to be all anecdotal or anything, but the top 6 GPA ranked people in my high school class were normal. They weren't popular, but they certainly weren't nerds. I was 7th, and I didn't really count as a "nerd" until college, when I started going to anime club. In high school, I was so socially awkward that even the nerds wouldn't let me play DnD with them. The nerds were all kind of middle-of-the-pack intelligence. I suspect that we believe this because there are some powerfully intelligent and powerfully nerdy folks out there. But if you just look at academic performance, I bet the reality isn't so strong. There are a lot of dumb nerds out there.

akkartik 16y ago

Adds detail, but misses the main thrust. PG's essay illuminated, for me, the social dynamic common to prisons, schools, and Victorian England: when you take away consequence, people build a 'cruel and stupid world' for themselves.

bootload 16y ago

"... I went to a prep school, and I can tell you that the culture was somewhat flipped – the academically successful kids tended to be more generally popular. There were still subcultures and different groups with different interests and characters – but generally, being smart was considered a virtue. The culture of the school generally respected hard work, integrity, and achievement. ..." The author might have benefited from reading the redux of of pg's article, "Gateway High School, 1981" ~ http://paulgraham.com/gateway.html http://paulgraham.com/gateway.html to get some context. In the social graph of the described school pg went to I can imagine the half life of the author would be a tenth of Cobolt 56. Try "hard work, integrity, and achievement" on these chums ~ http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/paulgraham_2102_11802106 http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/paulgraham_2102_11802106 Look at the clenched fists and how close they are standing together.