6 ms·

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

by zackattack 16y ago

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.

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.