"They'll stop going to the company picnic if it becomes an occasion for everyone to list all the computer problems they never bothered to mention before."
Why even try to show there is a "norm" as opposed to a multimodal distribution of traits?
These are probably different peaks in the spectrum.
Unfortunately, this truth runs counter to people who want to control everyone... or at least predict.
The description of the anti-nerd would completely fall apart in Asian culture for instance.
I don't really think his concept of a nerd works, since he lumps in lots of extraneous charateristics and values.
I think a more explanatory description would be, a nerd is somebody who is primarily interested in technical questions. That predisposes nerds to avoid ambiguity - but by no means excludes nerds like literature professors, who are absolutely obsessed with ambiguity.
It's generally a better idea to categorise people by priorities, as opposed to preferences - since preferences tend to be very variable.
I think there's several sub-categories in the nerd culture. Geeks, Dweebs, Nerds, etc.
I think Geeks are the literature/pop culture equivalent of nerds. Whereas nerds deal with more scientific obsessions Geeks deal with more cultural obsessions.
> It would be nice to have nerdy interests and sensibilities be the norm for once; to get to feel as if society is organized with me in mind, and not feel a bit like an anthropologist observing an alien civilization.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 40.5 ms ] thread"They'll stop going to the company picnic if it becomes an occasion for everyone to list all the computer problems they never bothered to mention before."
These are probably different peaks in the spectrum. Unfortunately, this truth runs counter to people who want to control everyone... or at least predict.
The description of the anti-nerd would completely fall apart in Asian culture for instance.
Funny, the inverse world.
I think a more explanatory description would be, a nerd is somebody who is primarily interested in technical questions. That predisposes nerds to avoid ambiguity - but by no means excludes nerds like literature professors, who are absolutely obsessed with ambiguity.
It's generally a better idea to categorise people by priorities, as opposed to preferences - since preferences tend to be very variable.
I think Geeks are the literature/pop culture equivalent of nerds. Whereas nerds deal with more scientific obsessions Geeks deal with more cultural obsessions.
Here's a Nerd/Dweeb/Geek Venn diagram.
https://www.popsugar.com/tech/Geek-vs-Nerd-vs-Dork-vs-Dweeb-...
For real though...