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Assorted links
1. Camille Paglia: save the arts with religion
2. Gayle King flirted with me a lot
3. What's a nerd anyway? No way is it, at its core, "a rebellion against the cool white kids and their use of black culture..." Genetics, anybody?
4. Let companies run for electoral office?
5. How are autistic and aspie girls different from the boys? In the article, Skuse is the guy who nails it.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 5, 2007 at 10:55 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
"Nerdiness, [Mary Bucholtz] has concluded, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.”
Long considered victims in their own right, the nerds are now herded into the ranks of the oppressors.
"the code of conspicuous intellectualism in the nerd cliques Bucholtz observed may shut out “black students who chose not to openly display their abilities.” This is especially disturbing at a time when African-American students can be stigmatized by other African-American students if they’re too obviously diligent about school. Even more problematic, “Nerds’ dismissal of black cultural practices often led them to discount the possibility of friendship with black students,”
Right... it's all the nerds' fault.
But I guess that the code of political correctness prevents her from writing that "black culture's dismissal of scholasticism often leads African-Americans to discount the possibility of friendship with nerds."
Posted by: Russ R at Aug 5, 2007 11:51:37 AM
"Let companies run for electoral office?"
Businesses in the City of London can vote for representatives to the Corporation of London.
Posted by: Robert Scarth at Aug 5, 2007 12:51:47 PM
In England a corporation can hire an MP and put them on their payroll. It puts the influence buying, etc., out in the open.
So when a firm's MP speaks on or proposes legislation that impacts that industry everyone know where the MP is coming from. OK, he is speaking for the firms interest and that can be taken into consideration when evaluating what the MP says.
I've never looked into this in detail, but my first impression is that it seems to be a good idea.
Posted by: spencer at Aug 5, 2007 1:40:36 PM
Mary Bucholtz has produced some really twisted conclusions.
Posted by: Tia at Aug 5, 2007 2:33:29 PM
The problem is not corrupt individuals. Its offices with too much power that are, as a result, corrupting. A company would have the same, if not worse, incentives as any individual in that office.
Posted by: cljo at Aug 5, 2007 2:36:56 PM
I take it that this researcher wouldn't number herself among the "nerds"? And it's always odd that this sort of researcher tries to turn everything into some sort of black&white racial affair.
It's especially odd since her university has plenty of non-white - and non-black - nerds...
Posted by: Foobarista at Aug 5, 2007 3:29:57 PM
Hmm, where are the Asian nerds in this research?
Posted by: at Aug 5, 2007 5:15:56 PM
So Camille Paglia seems to be a self-hating secular humanist ... pity she can't see any other option than the push the opium of the masses on society. Hey Camille, as an atheist part of your lot in life is to figure out how to live a full life without religion, not to tell others that they need religion in order to save the arts.
Posted by: at Aug 5, 2007 6:08:30 PM
If the NYT argument on the racial component to nerddom were correct, nerdcore wouldn't exist, and Weird Al couldn't have based White and Nerdy on ChaMillionnaire.
Posted by: Eric Crampton at Aug 5, 2007 7:05:18 PM
Nerdishness appears to me to be one of the main manifestations of masculinity, although radically different from the more famous hunter/warrior/jock/leader mode (let's use a term from African politics and designate representatives of the better known form of masculinity as "Big Men"). Certain fundamental trade-offs tend to distinguish nerds from Big Men. In the realm of intellectual traits:
1. Nerds are more "object-oriented," Big Men are more people-oriented.
2. Nerds tend to focus narrowly but deeply (single-tasking), Big Men broadly but shallowly (multitasking). Nerds lack the "situational awareness" that the Air Force prizes in fighter pilots, but their ability to concentrate obsessively makes them good at designing the planes that pilots fly.
3. Nerds work best asynchronously (as Howard Bloom says, they never say the right thing at the right time -- I can vividly recall walking along after a college history class, thinking about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when some black friend passing by said, "Hey, what's happening?" "Hmmhmmh????," I thought to myself in consternation, "What exactly is happening? Well, the Austro-Hungarian Empire is definitely not happening, but what is?" About five minutes later, I came up with a clever, but by now useless, reply, which later I could never seem to remember the next time somebody asked me "What's happening?). In contrast, Big Men are better when they are "in the flow" (of the discussion, the hunt, the battle, the basketball game, or whatever).
Interestingly, in terms of cerebral skills, nerds tend to be more stereotypically masculine than Big Men, who benefit from stereotypically female mental skills like emotional intuition and multi-tasking. In contrast, nerds tend to be less traditionally masculine than Big Men in physical/emotional traits like muscularity, self-confidence, aggressiveness, etc.
As Mike Waller points out, cave-nerds probably made the stone axes for early cave-Big Men to hunt with. I suspect that nerdishness has been symbiotically related to the prosperity of communities. (Howard Bloom makes a similar point.) In nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, nerds' object-orientation would not be very useful since objects tend to be heavy to carry. Similarly, in tribes that need just about every man to hunt, nerds' ineptness at making correct split-second decisions would tend to get them eaten by wild beasts, or at least shunned by women who want men who bring home meat. On the other hand, sedentary communities that have been able to free some men up from food provisioning or war-making, make greater degrees of specialization possible, allowing nerds to flourish as craftsmen. In turn, these nerdy technologists make the tools that allow even more men to stop hunting and farming and turn to nerd-work. Thus begins a virtuous cycle of economic growth.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Aug 5, 2007 7:30:59 PM
Now I can say: I'm not a nerd, I'm Asian.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Aug 5, 2007 9:33:34 PM
Cave nerds. The mind boggles but, it certainly must have been true. Imagine the conversations where the cave nerd tries to explain how to reboot that campfire thing that has crashed again.
Posted by: Tia at Aug 5, 2007 9:56:47 PM
Reading about autism and aspergers is very interesting and very painful.
Ironically it has become easier to raise my autistic son (high functioning)
than my aspergers son as they've gotten to the middle school years.
At worst my autistic son is treated with benign neglect; it is obvious
that he is developmentally disabled. My second son, with aspergers, is
subjected to the cruelest sort of treatment - ridicule and exclusion.
I am reminded of what a very dear friend related to me when he was
discussing his daughter's condition with a doctor soon after diagnosis.
After they discussed medication possibilities for his daughter, he asked
if there was anything that the doctor could prescribe for him.
Posted by: Martin Kennedy at Aug 6, 2007 6:39:36 AM
You know that your points #3 and #5 are like totally related, don't you?
The article you reference in #5 ignored the existence of science fiction and fantasy fandom, which is our tribe par excellence. Expecially the female-heavy fantasy and media fandom. I mean, people, WHO SAVED STAR TREK? And revived it?
But we're invisible to the Main Stream Media, being female, not powerful, and not beautiful. Or as I put it, the adolescent males the Trek producers went after by putting Seven of Nine and T'Pol in skin-tight catsuits are usually menopausal, and less than or equal to 10% are interested in heroines in catsuits. We want our heroines to kick ass, not show it.
Posted by: Pat Mathews at Aug 6, 2007 10:22:09 AM
Tyler - your anti-robot protection screen not only screens out robots, but people with poor or failing vision. Like me.
Posted by: Pat Mathews at Aug 6, 2007 10:26:52 AM
Oh my wow. Mary Bucholtz comes up with a lot of specious arguments and conclucions. I'm fascinated by the research she's done, and though it frightens me, I can see how a lot of the pieces add up and how easily it can be to logically draw these conclusions.
To me, this is an example of how dangerous it is to analyze such extremely complex aspects of our society in microcosmic perspectives. It is clear from her data-set (i.e. the apparent exclusion of non-caucasian-non-male-nerds) that her conclusions are based on a presupposition of what those conclusions will be. The methodology of begining a study of something with a presupposition, which you then try to prove is great in hard science. In the study of linguitics, society, and culture, it ENSURES a flawed outcome.
Speaking as a nerd, I find her conclusions insulting and racially biased. I personally know several African, Asian, and Female nerds who can out-nerd many caucasian male nerds. The essence of nerdiness is not racial. It is academic and scholastic. The linked article references linguistic patterns that avoid the cultural influence of african-americans on the english language and prefers scientifically derivative cadence and word-choice. I wonder if it has occured to Ms Bucholtz that there may be other reasons for their language choices than racial disdain or cultural purity?
1) The most important attribute of a nerd is his/her intelligence combined with his/her practicality.
2) Nerds don't use slang because nerd culture identifies slang as inaccurate and untrue. The use of slang terminology degrades the ability of language to communicate clearly. (Point in case, as a child I would refuse to respond to the slang meaning of the word 'cool,' insisting that cool meant 'less warm than the surrounding atmosphere.')
3) Nerds don't typically exclude anyone from their society. If you can cope with socially inept, scholastically driven people who will judge you based on your intelligence, and ability to communicate that intelligence in a clear and detached way, then the nerds will welcome you with open arms. Especially if you can show them how to solve that tough equation they've been stuck on.
Posted by: theo at Aug 6, 2007 10:37:20 AM
Instead of "hyper-whiteness" I would instead say that nerds try to signal superior intelligence in relatively cheap ways: maximizing syllables, proper grammar, memorization, and academic preparation in general. They tend to be over-literal, rigidly objective and obsessed with the future. One female nerd that comes to mind is Ayn Rand.
Posted by: Jason Ruspini at Aug 7, 2007 6:01:59 PM
The point of nerd-speak is to project erudition. Nerds are just as willing to engage in cultural appropriation as the "cool" kids, but they appropriate it in different ways and with different timing in order to differentiate themselves from the "cool" kids. Thus we have not only "nerdcore" rap, but the casting of jazz as music for intellectuals, and the ironic usage of out of date slang (including African American slang), etc. The point about contrasting nerds and AA culture for humor value is puzzling, since similar contrasts are used just as often with non-AA non-nerds (see Jackie Chan in Rush Hour for example) and AA nerds rarely portrayed in popular culture (How many can other than Urkel and Carlton (who is debatable since he's more so a AA acting like a stereotypical EA country club member than a nerd) can you think of? If anything Urkel and similar exceptions are often due to the principle characters all being AA.). AA youth culture is often portrayed as being anti-intellectual while nerd culture places a high value on intellectualism, but it is unlikely that the later is a reaction to the former (it's much more likely that the reverse is true, since some anti-intellectualism is typically an element of non-AA "cool" youth cultures). It's also worth noting that nerd culture exists in similar form in societies where African American culture doesn't have the same relation to "coolness".
Posted by: MattXIV at Aug 7, 2007 6:14:21 PM
tahnk you , it's very good
Posted by: خوخ at Oct 21, 2008 8:37:20 AM
