I'm not sure what group specifically you're referring to derisively as the "intellectual crowd." I'm guessing that this is different from the "intelligent crowd," but I certainly regard the college professors and such I know as an intellectual crowd, and they are absolutely open-minded, would take their time solving problems, and would consider other opinions.

(Not all of them, of course, but in general they are at least as intellectually-curious and open as anyone else I know.)

There is a certain type of person that clearly gets a sort of intrinsic pleasure from being correct. This leads to a lot of wasted time as this goal only serves to help one “win” in a competitive, social environment. As such, they often miss the forest for the trees.

I gather you may not know any of these types yourself but they’re certainly abundant here on HN, dismissing Dropbox as easily replicated with rsync and other such sentiments.

A good example of an "intellectual crowd" are the Linux neckbeards who deride users for daring to ask how things are done and not liking the Holy And Divine Terminal(tm).

A good example of an "intelligent crowd" are the Windows wizards who will helpfully advise how something is done so the user can get on with their day.

This is a perversely negative take where you pick a team and assign negative characteristics to the opposing team to ameliorate your own frustration. You don't HAVE to use the terminal but Linux is fairly unsuitable for users who regard themselves as power users who are simultaneously are apt to shy away from terminal usage or text files. You should probably stop being angry and the people who told you this. They probably aren't reading your words here.

I'm a Windows wizard and couldn't care less about Linux neckbeards, I already tried to make Linux a part of my arsenal only to meet repeated failures. Linux isn't suited for me, and probably most users at that, and that's fine.

That doesn't mean I won't take easy potshots when the occasion arises, though. If they (Linux neckbeards) don't like it, they can work on improving their act and reputation.

> I'm a Windows wizard and couldn't care less about Linux neckbeards, I already tried to make Linux a part of my arsenal only to meet repeated failures. Linux isn't suited for me, and probably most users at that, and that's fine. > That doesn't mean I won't take easy potshots when the occasion arises, though. If they (Linux neckbeards) don't like it, they can work on improving their act and reputation.

Next time you can shorten your comment to "me=good, them=bad". It saves time for everyone.

Quoted in full for posterity.

As a hater of all three mainstream operating systems, I can say you've managed to upgrade my opinion of linux neckbeards, and downgrade my opinion of windows neckbeards all in one post. Incredible work.

as someone that loves linux for a server and only uses terminals on them nowadays, wishes it was better as a desktop machine, really dislikes windows for most things outside of games(even though they have gotten better at their terminal game with wsl2)... mac is great for a lot of power user things. way more configurable than windows while being a first class citizen in the gui world. the power of the message passing system of cocoa is really not matched in windows or linux. it's a sweet spot in gui computing imo

Shit, I thought I was browsing some kind of verbose 4chan for a second there.

Sure, but I guess my point was the use of the term the "intellectual crowd" (used, as above, unironically, without scare quotes, etc).

"Intellectual" is a fine word for an intelligent person who does the kind of thinking college professors do. Indeed, Wikipedia defines one as "a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection."

We similarly use the term "anti-intellectual" to refer to those in our society who choose not to engage in this kind of critical thinking.

I dislike turning it into an insult, so think we should use a different word to refer to such people.

Ironically(?), many in the "anti-intellectual" crowd don't really have a choice about tbeir membership.

Ironically, you’re doing exactly what the parent is describing: being pedantic to prove a point/win an argument because the OP was too hasty and forgot to append “pseudo” to his “intellectual.”

I’m certain most of us know what the parent is talking about on an intuitive, vs verbal level (i.e. the idea was communicated, even if the words used to communicate it were not 100% on point)

Did the joke go over my head?

There are also those types of people that get intrinsic pleasure from being needed and being the principle engineer of a technology and shunning and abstaining the use of anything that they aren't the primary contributor to. The types of people who sprint towards having solutions in hand without bringing anyone else along because they never intended to give up that control. These people drive me nuts and yet they are also the kind who can be very considerate of the needs of software, but they seem to not value other people's considerations. They are insular and therefore myopic.

> There is a certain type of person that clearly gets a sort of intrinsic pleasure from being correct. This leads to a lot of wasted time as this goal only serves to help one “win” in a competitive, social environment. As such, they often miss the forest for the trees.

Yes.

> dismissing Dropbox as easily replicated with rsync

This is a strawman of the actual post. Please don't use it as an example like this.

> There is a certain type of person that clearly gets a sort of intrinsic pleasure from being correct.

And they all seem to want to reply to HN comments.

The "thought time" required to actually get to the root cause of an issue can be rare due to both internal and external pressures, some of which are real and some only perceived.

I'm 6 months into my current role and only just starting to feel the confidence and comfort to question the approaches to problems we've dealt with in that time, in order to, hopefully, modify the approaches we take in future in the hopes of improving the quality of the output.

It takes time to "find the water level" and also working through applying that knowledge to each problem, and if time is 'pressurised' it can lead to suboptimal resolutions. On the flipside, no one will wait forever - and it feels as if the world is currently oversensitive to waiting time.

Find the water level. But that also takes time.

There is almost no greater pleasure than having a very difficult problem to solve, or systems to design, then going to do something enjoyable like having a beautiful sleep, swim, or hike and then letting the answer come to you.

There is almost nothing to be done but just wait patiently.

>This is my big gripe with the intellectual crowd - because they want to be smart solely for being smart's sake so they'll sacrifice the due diligence it takes to correctly solve a problem in order to "get further" and appear smarter, and it misleads a lot of people on what true intelligence is.

That's a remarkable generalization. In reference to the article, perhaps you should have thought longer about it.

The book Disciplined Minds discusses how the more educated and professional workers are more often than not the more conservative thinkers, somewhat by virtue of having been institutionalized and thus tunnel visioned in what's a "right" answer. So the generalization is not off base and not without precedent.

Adding to that there is indeed what called “Divergent thinking” [1], it is a way to explore thoughts in a diverse way and the ability to come up with creative solutions.

This is different from the more linear directed thoughts promoted in institutions. I often find people in the HN crowd to be more in the latter crowd than the former, but nonetheless intelligent.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking

Thanks for the link!

When I speak to artists or people in more creative fields, I find that, typically, the conversations are more improvisational in nature. The conversation just ebbs and flows naturally, with energy and a lot of spontaneous thought building. The strange book Impro is a good read for this.

Whereas, when I speak with engineers or scientists, it feels like the conversation has a much higher chance of lurching, especially when you start to veer off the beaten path.

I consider myself to be a bit more divergent than most, but being in a technical field is a bit of an impedance mismatch. I think a component of divergent thinking is sometimes extreme thinking, wondering about what if and ignoring, for the time being, how to get there.

I hear that. I usually have the same, I studied art and all of the people I met in that sphere are different from a general crowd, and quite a contrast to the offices I later worked in as a front end dev or designer. I usually ended up with meeting like minded people from other departments rather than my own (which often was interpreted as not being loyal to any team in the department —-ack office politics, what a minefield!—-

The book impro, who is it’s writer? I see a couple of results coming up.

The book I was referring to is Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone: https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Joh...

It's called overfitting to me.

The generalization is absurd and it's not intellectually honest to defend it.

It never ceases to amaze me to see how often what is necessary becomes a necessary evil.

Dialogue is a necessity for the correct development of knowledge. To engage in dialogue we have recourse to language and a vocabulary of discourse. As knowledge is gained, dialogues branch off and specialize. The system of thought inherent to the ~unique arrangement of the elements of these dialogues partition thought into acceptable (an opening) and unthinkable (a closing).

Throughout history you will find minds that navigated these intellectual currents by stepping away from their dominant belief system and gaining knowledge of the universality of meaning, and saw hidden (filtered) vistas previously unseen, and then step back into their home grounds to contribute to the development of the field, in a positive manner, adding new elements into vocabulary of the dialogue. They extend it, and create the possibility of synthesis in the future.

Equally, you will find that the further necessity of establishing schools, cults, churches, and institutions, which lend social prestige to its members and satellites, introduce incentives contrary to that of pure love of knowledge, and this attracts a certain type of people, beyond the already present danger of vanity and self regard.

What is to be done about it?

Helpfully suggest that tolerance of this necessary evil may be the remedy for your gripe.

The problem is this type of intelligence is hard to define or quantify. Its like asking the question " what is art and what is not art".

Data driven hiring practices require hard definitions. One of these hard definition of intelligence is IQ. IQ is very correlated with job success and also various other skill sets related to job success.

From the company perspective, successful hiring using a data driven scientific approach is the right call simply because its the best metric we have on intelligence.

Obviously their are aspects to intelligence that currently aren't quantified but is it wise for a company to bet their future on gut feelings that are subject to bias and aspects of intelligence not in the realm of science?

Unfortunately no.

I'm pretty sure the Google interview process is somewhat of a data driven process but I can't be sure. Are any googlers in the know? Are specific interview question and answer pairs measured and correlated with the success of the employee? Or is it all qualitative judgement?