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"My point here is that you become what you invest time in becoming. If you want to ascend to elite-level hackerdom, then you almost have to put things like attr

by timr 13y ago

"My point here is that you become what you invest time in becoming. If you want to ascend to elite-level hackerdom, then you almost have to put things like attractiveness and popularity on the back burner." No, you really don't. You believe this because it's what you've seen around you, but that's a selection bias. Someone else on this thread pointed out that Von Neumann was an exceptionally stylish guy, but he's far from the only example. Only in the peculiar little world of computer programming do we seem to equate slovenly behavior with competence. One of the great qualities of smart, capable people is that smart, capable people tend to have a lot of different interests. There's no reason that you can't be attractive and smart. "Specialization is for insects." -- Heinlein

guard-of-terra 13y ago
- Hackers tend to do things sequentially. First get really good at something, look around, become good at something else. Compare that to people who just try to be "good enough" at (a limited scope of) everything. - Hackers tend to have their own path in doing things. A teenager hacker might look stange and alien to his peers because they do everything in the same way, extremelly conformist. Same thing for beauty: teenagers care less for beauty, more for copying things they understand. This means that even social and stylish hacker might seem a freak in their teens.
gwern 13y ago
> Someone else on this thread pointed out that Von Neumann was an exceptionally stylish guy, but he's far from the only example. So your solution is to suggest everyone be as smart as John von Neumann so they can master subjects while still being a snappy dresser? Does this seem like something people can do? The proverbial 10k hours of practice have to come from somewhere. Time is limited, activities are zero-sum.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- arrrg 13y ago
  I don’t think anyone was suggesting that. Many hackers I know do have other hobbies besides hacking and they devote lots of time to those hobbies. Beer brewing, coffee making, writing poetry, music, languages, … What if one of those hobbies is dressing fashionably? Or makeup? Or whatever? Beyond a certain point activities are zero sum but do you seriously suggest that to be a proper hacker you have no time at all for anything beside that? I don’t think anyone should ever feel obligated to be into dressing fashionably or makeup or even just feel obligated to dress a certain way. That’s awful. (I especially hate gender policing.) But telling someone they can only be part of the group if they aren’t into makeup isn’t all that much better than telling someone they should wear makeup to represent women better. It’s a heuristic for identifying in-group people that makes no sense and to me seems highly destructive.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    It’s a heuristic for identifying in-group people that makes no sense and to me seems highly destructive. I suspect this heuristic started out as a way for the outcast, socially unwelcome hackers to finally find a group to which they could belong, an activity that didn't judge them for their intellect or their appearance. I further suspect that some of the pushback against lifting this heuristic comes from those same people, who feel that they will lose the only thing that gave them a reason to feel good about themselves in the face of total rejection by their peers. It would be just as tragic to force these people out of programming as it is tragic to prevent others from coming into programming.
    - arrrg 13y ago
      Oh man, even more zero sum thinking. Outcasts making others outcasts, bullied becoming bullies. Nice. The general point is this: rejection because of the way you dress (no matter how) or look (no matter how) is not cool. The direction doesn’t really matter. But this groupthink is pretty disgustingly exclusionary.
      - nitrogen 13y ago
        From the article: Most of all, I'm disappointed. I had a haven, a place where no one cared what I looked like, what my body was like or about any ephemera—they cared about what I could do—and this culture shift has robbed me of my haven. At least I had that haven. The girls who follow me missed out on it. You know what's disgusting? People getting disgusted over issues that don't warrant disgust.
spikels 13y ago
Specialization is almost entirely responsible for all the gains in our standard of living since the stone age. This includes almost every technological advance. Heinlein is wrong on this and a specialist himself: a writer who requires other specialists to meet his every basic need (water, food, shelter...). Don't dismiss specialization as it is the key to both past and future success.
- d4rti 13y ago
  Additionally the line is spoken by a character who lives for over 2000 years.[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long
- sjy 13y ago
  Maybe the quote would make a bit more sense in context. "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
theorique 13y ago
If anecdotes count as evidence, we can point at Erdos for a counterexample (dedicated only to mathematics, could barely dress himself, lived homeless and traveled from friend's house to friend's house to work on mathematics). So much of this depends on individual interest and temperament.
leoedin 13y ago
I agree that it's not a binary situation - I know many people who are capable programmers and have an acceptable sense of style, social skills and other interests. However, time is limited and unless you're exceedingly capable you have to make tradeoffs. It takes an extraordinarily large amount of time to become a truly competent programmer, and if you're spending that time in front a computer you're not actively working at building friendships, thinking about fashion, thinking about music or working on any of the other things that might be equated with being attractive or popular in the vicious world of teenage social structures.
epsylon 13y ago
> Von Neumann You couldn't have picked a more outlying outlier. Von Neumann was one of the most brilliant minds of the century.

by timr 13y ago

guard-of-terra 13y ago

- Hackers tend to do things sequentially. First get really good at something, look around, become good at something else. Compare that to people who just try to be "good enough" at (a limited scope of) everything. - Hackers tend to have their own path in doing things. A teenager hacker might look stange and alien to his peers because they do everything in the same way, extremelly conformist. Same thing for beauty: teenagers care less for beauty, more for copying things they understand. This means that even social and stylish hacker might seem a freak in their teens.

gwern 13y ago

> Someone else on this thread pointed out that Von Neumann was an exceptionally stylish guy, but he's far from the only example. So your solution is to suggest everyone be as smart as John von Neumann so they can master subjects while still being a snappy dresser? Does this seem like something people can do? The proverbial 10k hours of practice have to come from somewhere. Time is limited, activities are zero-sum.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
arrrg 13y ago
I don’t think anyone was suggesting that. Many hackers I know do have other hobbies besides hacking and they devote lots of time to those hobbies. Beer brewing, coffee making, writing poetry, music, languages, … What if one of those hobbies is dressing fashionably? Or makeup? Or whatever? Beyond a certain point activities are zero sum but do you seriously suggest that to be a proper hacker you have no time at all for anything beside that? I don’t think anyone should ever feel obligated to be into dressing fashionably or makeup or even just feel obligated to dress a certain way. That’s awful. (I especially hate gender policing.) But telling someone they can only be part of the group if they aren’t into makeup isn’t all that much better than telling someone they should wear makeup to represent women better. It’s a heuristic for identifying in-group people that makes no sense and to me seems highly destructive.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  It’s a heuristic for identifying in-group people that makes no sense and to me seems highly destructive. I suspect this heuristic started out as a way for the outcast, socially unwelcome hackers to finally find a group to which they could belong, an activity that didn't judge them for their intellect or their appearance. I further suspect that some of the pushback against lifting this heuristic comes from those same people, who feel that they will lose the only thing that gave them a reason to feel good about themselves in the face of total rejection by their peers. It would be just as tragic to force these people out of programming as it is tragic to prevent others from coming into programming.
  - arrrg 13y ago
    Oh man, even more zero sum thinking. Outcasts making others outcasts, bullied becoming bullies. Nice. The general point is this: rejection because of the way you dress (no matter how) or look (no matter how) is not cool. The direction doesn’t really matter. But this groupthink is pretty disgustingly exclusionary.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      From the article: Most of all, I'm disappointed. I had a haven, a place where no one cared what I looked like, what my body was like or about any ephemera—they cared about what I could do—and this culture shift has robbed me of my haven. At least I had that haven. The girls who follow me missed out on it. You know what's disgusting? People getting disgusted over issues that don't warrant disgust.

spikels 13y ago

Specialization is almost entirely responsible for all the gains in our standard of living since the stone age. This includes almost every technological advance. Heinlein is wrong on this and a specialist himself: a writer who requires other specialists to meet his every basic need (water, food, shelter...). Don't dismiss specialization as it is the key to both past and future success.

d4rti 13y ago
Additionally the line is spoken by a character who lives for over 2000 years.[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Long
sjy 13y ago
Maybe the quote would make a bit more sense in context. "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

theorique 13y ago

If anecdotes count as evidence, we can point at Erdos for a counterexample (dedicated only to mathematics, could barely dress himself, lived homeless and traveled from friend's house to friend's house to work on mathematics). So much of this depends on individual interest and temperament.

leoedin 13y ago

I agree that it's not a binary situation - I know many people who are capable programmers and have an acceptable sense of style, social skills and other interests. However, time is limited and unless you're exceedingly capable you have to make tradeoffs. It takes an extraordinarily large amount of time to become a truly competent programmer, and if you're spending that time in front a computer you're not actively working at building friendships, thinking about fashion, thinking about music or working on any of the other things that might be equated with being attractive or popular in the vicious world of teenage social structures.

epsylon 13y ago

> Von Neumann You couldn't have picked a more outlying outlier. Von Neumann was one of the most brilliant minds of the century.