In reality, I think the most common academic/"nerd" game, by a long shot is "acquire as much useless/non-actionable/niche knowledge as possible, so that you can rub other peoples' noses in the fact that they don't possess said knowledge".
With very few exceptions, it's not "the long game", a "good fight" or anything else worth valorising - it's lonely, miserable fucks who are mad that other people are happy.
That was my takeaway from this article, that it's easy to see investment in hard skills as innately better than soft skills.
Yes there is a power balance. But being able to simply be recognized, seen, having anyone else out there who can rate, understand your game, much less critique or review: some games are overt, visible noticeable, but the world has only superficial stupid indicators to gauge nerds on. They literally dont have the capacity to understand the nerds game. That's high tech gothic, thats what nerds have to adapt to & thrive within.
I agree with the parent, that it's an interesting tale about waking up to the fact that others have been optimizing for other goals in life, and in many cases those make a ton of sense, perhaps even moreso than his science game.
Your take on this however, seems to be some kind of idea that no one else can gauge or judge the depths of your contributions, etc. In fact I'm not completely sure what you're saying, but it appears to be almost the opposite of the original article.
I've had my time of thinking what I do is especially valuable and unique. Then I grew up and realized we all (well, many of us) contribute to this world in our own way. A little humility goes a long way.
I do think we all have ways we want to be perceieved, things about ourselves we want to be recognized, strengths, and that there is a huge massive range of how visible/over/obvious and esoteric/exoteric and other dimensioms that goverm how visible these attributes/behaviors/characteristics/accomishmemts are.
> In fact I'm not completely sure what you're saying, but it appears to be almost the opposite of the original article.
I agree with the article. The article is telling nerds to recognize & acknowledge other people on their grounds, to look generally for good, in many forms.
> I've had my time of thinking what I do is especially valuable and unique. Then I grew up and realized we all (well, many of us) contribute to this world in our own way.
Picking up where I left off, my point is that some games are easier to understand than others. Im not trying to make any value judgement. I havent said being esoteric made anyone better.
I am trying to communicate how isolating & alienating the experice can be when it feels like others done understand your games. When other people perpetually see the score differently.
This post is communicating among other things some straightforward & overt things we can look for in others. Nerds can present as incredible, powerful, respectable people sometimes, they can be appreciated for their game, sometimes. But it can also be readily apparent & hard when it becomes clear people dont really know the score. It can be isolating seeing only superficial respect, or seeing what feels like uncomprehending or undeserved respect given to ourselves or others. Finding real peers, who are fit to judge & assess, is a real life challenge. For everyone. And especially for those a little more outside the mainstream, for the nerds. My posts here are just an attempt at fair warning, about what we can expect, about how hard it all too likely will be to find people who can appreciate your game. You very good excellent people's game especially.
If anything I think what Im saying amplifies the need for humility & mutual respect, & yes, some camraderie among technical peers.
I have no idea what world you're living in, but it's not mine.
From a personal level, few people have the capability to appreciate what we care about. They can measure us with yard sticks & jira points & dollars-of-valued-delivered, but none of these outsiders can adopt our value system & see us as we see ourselves, none can rate us by what matters to us & how we go about & care about our lots.
This post is about opening one's view & recognizing other peoples game. Im contending nerds find few who can rate their game, see what they're really playing at, what real success is & what matters to them. Who else out there has hard really hard to understand games, has a value-system alien to others? That is the defining question to me.
Often we see mis-allocated respect too. Nerds given undeserved respect, sourced in shallow understanding, undermining our trust in the world's sensibility & discernment. The "cowboy coders" and 10x discourse revolves around these outsider/alien/unsensing values being used to determine respect & rank, causing endless offense & distrust & alienation to nerds, confirming to us we are alone in chasing our good game.
The respect you consider is shallow & exterior & the respect we want & that matters to us is often trapped & esoteric. Real success - often yes of the business - often derives from what others cannot see.
100% of employees are regarded as human resources for management's usage, so "nerds" aren't unique in that regard. The idea that money goes in and business value comes out applies to business nerds, facilities management nerds, HR nerds, accounting nerds, etc. Everyone is beholden to a business operating system responsible for creating value.
This can seem like a bit of a downer when viewed through the "what's it all mean?" lens, but hey, that's capitalism.
I'm a nerd, and I consider myself pretty successful in life. I totally agree with the other poster that your view on the world is very different.
According to what metrics?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
I know lots of engineers and scientists are devoted to art, opera, literature, history.
Next to zero artists or singers who are familiar with say, the laws of thermodynamics.
You don't have to dig very deep to find counterexamples. Dr. Brian May was the lead guitarist and a founding member of Queen. He holds a PhD in astrophysics. Tom Scholz was a founding member of Boston and has a master's degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. Dr. Brian Holland is the lead vocalist for The Offspring and has a PhD in molecular biology.
As a more personal example, I spent my high school science classes competing on each test for top marks against Wesley MacInnes, who today is an actor and country music singer. (He was the school bully in the last Power Rangers movie. It was an amusing role. Wesley was an extraordinarily kind person in real high school.)
> graduated as class valedictorian in 1984. During high school, Holland was the best student in mathematics in his year,
from wikipedia
In my school, the top athletes were also good students. The dux was the linchpin of the football team and also wrote poetry.
But I agree with him that nerds get little respect from non-nerds.
There's a whole idea of "workwife," as in, the professional partner that can comprehend & share & commiserate & bond over the "other" 40 hours of our lives. Someome else to co-play the work game with. Because so so rarely are our partners positioned to be able to, no?
The post is about a lot more than respect. We can give each other respect for all kinds of things, all manner of reasons & successes. Respect can says more about the person giving respect than it can the person getting respect. This post is about a different kind of empathy, of understanding people as they want to be be seen, find ways to meet people on their courts & finding ways to be good witnesses to their moves/triumphs.
Even basic plans like Build Back Better childcare get wrecked... by Democrats. You're so right but it feels so hopeless & bleak & impossible to try to do good & live at the same time.
Bruce Sterling had, in a reboot talk[1], an archetype he called high tech gothic. Advanced, wired to the nines, committed & dedicated, defended in position, but trapped alone in your castle too, with unwashed barbarian hordes ravaging the lands all about.
Too real, over a decade ago & the world's just gotten worse & vastly more out of touch with it's real self/tech (eg Bill Gates & Obama being vocal frontmen for ignorant state-based authoritarianist information-control). There's no signs anything will ever get better, except your belief, your caring, your trying.
I am so so so mixed here. This post is such a valuable lesson, such a needed recognition of the rest of the world, of seeing other's potential. And we need to see & believe, see the different games, appreciate each other. But nerds in particular get shit for respect (or such distant respect). Right now we land some big salaries (but Facebook has stopped hiring, winds change). But our game almost always comes last. Everyone else employs us, tells us what product we're building, tells us not to do a thing directly in front of us/simple because the priority is such and such. No one can play our game. Our game always comes last.
High tech gothic. Welcome to earth. Good luck. Fight the good fight.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27443836