4 ms·

All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping, and seems to me to be reflecting the authors

All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping, and seems to me to be reflecting the authors own poor experiences with a subset of geeks coupled with a lack of exposure to the same problematic elements in other social groups. I believe the author meant well, and these are social fallacies, but attaching them to “geeks” seems more out of bias than fact.

lupire 8y ago
"geek" is a meaningless genericized hypervague word, like "smurf".
- FakeComments 8y ago
  I disagree, and would say that was even less true in 2003 when this was written — but there’s a fair bit of variance in how the word is used, and it’s on a trend towards improved status now that, well, (some) geeks seized substantial assets and syncophants have to suck up to (some of) them now. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geek https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geek
- gnode 8y ago
  Vague, but hardly meaningless. Most people have a concept of a "geek". A more valid criticism might be that the shared concept is harmful to the discussion of people, as it doesn't fairly communicate a reality of their personality, like the concept of "monsters".
coldtea 8y ago
>All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping There's no such thing as "stereotyping" geeks. Geeks are already a stereotype -- they refer to specific category of people with specific traits (not everyone having exactly the same, but in a "family resemblance" kind of way). If you want, you can say that invoking geeks is already stereotyping. But I don't think it's valid to say this is "stereotyping" geeks, as if geeks themselves weren't a stereotype. So, "Geeks" already implies certain traits, and a narrow set at that. In other words "geeks" is not like saying "programmers" (which is a much more varied group with hardly much in common). Attributing something to programmers in general would not be very successful (though, even programmers, are statistically more alike in some aspects between them than between the general population: e.g. for one, all of them use computers). Stereotypes serve a purpose: they are ways to refer to collective traits and behavior shared by groups of people. It's expected that not everybody called an X is an X (we might mislabel someone). But it's not very logical to never make collective observations about groups. We do them all the time, in polling, in business, in politics, in medicine, in social studies, and so on. People are not exactly unique snowflakes, they also tend to have certain traits, and can be categorized into groups by the traits they have. (And again, nobody expects the categorization to be 100% perfect. It's enough that it's close enough to be usable).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

lupire 8y ago

"geek" is a meaningless genericized hypervague word, like "smurf".

FakeComments 8y ago
I disagree, and would say that was even less true in 2003 when this was written — but there’s a fair bit of variance in how the word is used, and it’s on a trend towards improved status now that, well, (some) geeks seized substantial assets and syncophants have to suck up to (some of) them now. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geek https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geek
gnode 8y ago
Vague, but hardly meaningless. Most people have a concept of a "geek". A more valid criticism might be that the shared concept is harmful to the discussion of people, as it doesn't fairly communicate a reality of their personality, like the concept of "monsters".

coldtea 8y ago

>All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with “geeks” in particular seems like stereotyping There's no such thing as "stereotyping" geeks. Geeks are already a stereotype -- they refer to specific category of people with specific traits (not everyone having exactly the same, but in a "family resemblance" kind of way). If you want, you can say that invoking geeks is already stereotyping. But I don't think it's valid to say this is "stereotyping" geeks, as if geeks themselves weren't a stereotype. So, "Geeks" already implies certain traits, and a narrow set at that. In other words "geeks" is not like saying "programmers" (which is a much more varied group with hardly much in common). Attributing something to programmers in general would not be very successful (though, even programmers, are statistically more alike in some aspects between them than between the general population: e.g. for one, all of them use computers). Stereotypes serve a purpose: they are ways to refer to collective traits and behavior shared by groups of people. It's expected that not everybody called an X is an X (we might mislabel someone). But it's not very logical to never make collective observations about groups. We do them all the time, in polling, in business, in politics, in medicine, in social studies, and so on. People are not exactly unique snowflakes, they also tend to have certain traits, and can be categorized into groups by the traits they have. (And again, nobody expects the categorization to be 100% perfect. It's enough that it's close enough to be usable).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]