Why Technical Smart Asses are Technically Dumb Asses

http://sociosage.tumblr.com/post/14922798020/why-technical-smart-asses-are-technically-dumb-asses

by curenote • 15 years ago

40 55 15 years ago

sociosage.tumblr.com

AznHisoka4• 15 years ago

Being consistent means learning new habits. You might require some self discipline initially, but as time goes along, it becomes a habit and you don't need as much discipline, especially when you start to see tangible progress. So I can see why he would be anal about it.

aGHz• 15 years ago

I can testify to this, I have pretty low self-discipline in the sense that I find it very hard to force myself to do something I don't want to do. When I do manage to build a habit or a routine though, I find it pretty easy to stick to it.

It's not even being anal, if I was telling someone I love tangerines and they tell me that's awesome, oranges are really good for you... I'd be a little baffled I suppose.

I really love how the author complains about the other missing the bigger picture, when there's a bigger picture they themselves are oblivious to: the ideas in your head are really awesome and all, but if you don't learn how to use language properly to communicate them then they're useless to everyone else.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

But what you've described is almost the textbook definition of discipline.

"calm controlled behavior: the ability to behave in a controlled and calm way even in a difficult or stressful situation"

The pedant was able to create new habits that allowed him to be controlled and stick to a routine even in the presence of stimuli that would cause him to no longer exibit this control.

The term consistency, when applied to human behavior, is almost always a form of discipline -- except when it comes to certain bodily functions... like heartbeat or going to the bathroom.

AznHisoka4• 15 years ago

I think the distinction is between the need to use willpower and our logical/rational abilities vs. not needing to use it. The Rational Rider vs. The Elephant/Lizard Brain. When we make something a habit, it just naturally becomes a normal behavior.

When we need to use discipline, we need to use self control in order to fight against a natural instinct that's more pleasurable. Of course, there's always a combination of the 2 that's needed, but habits generally rely on learning new behaviors that become natural.

billpatrianakos5• 15 years ago

Your comment is a perfect example of this author was saying. The point of the post had nothing to do with the definition of self discipline or consistency. The point was that his friend was, as you say, being anal about this. There's no reason to be hung up on definitions in that case at all. They were both very obviously meaning the same thing and in contex it made total sense no matter what word you choose as correct. When I say you're a perfect example, I'm not trying to be insulting so please don't be offended. I'm just pointing it out. Can you see it?

AznHisoka4• 15 years ago

Yes, I see the point. You're right, you're 100% right. It's all about ego satisfaction. Your response was even a better example :)

VikingCoder3• 15 years ago

Smart ass posts article about how smart asses drive him nuts...

...irony missed.

vbtemp• 15 years ago

My thought exactly -- does the author lack the self-awareness to realize that he is himself a smart ass?

dextorious3• 15 years ago

Do you guys lack the reading-comprehension skills to understand that he talks about a SPECIFIC kind of smart-ass called a "pedant" which he is not?

jgreer• 15 years ago

@AznHisoka hit the nail on the head. It's ironic that the author missed the bigger picture of what his/her friend was trying to say when that was the point of his/her post.

rkon2• 15 years ago

Well, self discipline isn't really the same as consistency, but his point still stands.

To be fair though, you could completely lack self discipline and be extremely consistent when it comes to watching TV on the couch all day.

mwd_• 15 years ago

One common problem I see is that some people tend to turn every conversation into an adversarial situation because they focus on poking holes in whatever the other person says. A more pleasant and fruitful way to talk to people is to try to see things from their perspective -- ask questions instead of saying "no". Finding common ground and learning from other people is far more important than ironing out whatever flaws you see in their logic.

poutine• 15 years ago

I believe the term he's looking for is pedantic.

pushes glasses up on nose

platz• 15 years ago

Also known as 'conversationally anal-retentive'.

noahc2• 15 years ago

I am torn on this issue. I try not to be like this, but words have meaning. And if words don't have meaning or have arbitrary meaning then we can't communicate. Some words have more specific meaning than others.

One thing that drives me absolutely nuts is when people (my girlfriend) use supposedly to not mean anything. My girlfriend uses it when someone else told her something. So she might say, "Supposedly, She went into town today to buy food." and that just means someone told her she went into town.To me this is an empty meaning and "supposedly" implies that maybe she didn't go into town or maybe she went into town to meet her lover and not really to buy food.

eli2• 15 years ago

Some people believe the dictionary prescribes how words are to be used. Others believe the dictionary merely captures descriptions of how words are already being used. I think the truth is probably somewhere in between.

LukeShu• 15 years ago

These aren't so much beliefs of "what dictionaries do", but what they should do. For example, Websters aims to be descriptive, not prescriptive. How much they succeed is debatable. The point is that this issue isn't solely in the mind of the reader.

billpatrianakos5• 15 years ago

That's probably true but I think this really speaks to the fact that many of us get all technical for lack of certain social skills. Like your comment's parent... The example he gave says a lot. On the one hand if you get what the person means even if they don't use the technically correct term all that really matters is that you both understand the intended meaning. On the other hand I think it's perfectly fine to nitpick at times. Those times would be if someone is very obviously ignorant of what a word means, especially if they use it wrong constantly.

But in the end I think being able to know when to pick those battles is a subtle social skill some people need to learn. It's really hard to explain. It's an interesting topic because it entails all the different ways humans communicate. It's not just words. It's tone, facial expression, volume, gestures, context, and even knowing a person's background or history can give you those subtle clues as to whether this is an ignorant person who needs to be corrected or if it's just an isolated fluke that still allows you to get the intended message and therefore requires no corrections from you.

Me? Well most of the time I think people get what I mean, dictionaries be damned and nitpicking a definition is a petty way to argue sometimes.

aMoniker• 15 years ago

As your girlfriend wasn't there to observe that person going into town, the word 'supposedly' makes sense.

subLimb• 15 years ago

Maybe technically, but the word doesn't really add anything to the statement if someone uses it anytime they didn't observe what happened. Supposedly is akin to saying "Assuming what this person said is true, ..." which in many cases implies doubt (why not just say "so and so said she went into town").

I think his point was that it makes literal sense, but it doesn't help the process of communication, which is why he's torn on the issue.

RyanMcGreal• 15 years ago

As a technical person, am I allowed to complain when non-technical people follow sloppy reasoning to faulty conclusions?

earbitscom2• 15 years ago

Shouldn't you complain when anybody does it?

He wasn't saying technical as in technologists, and this isn't West Side Story. He meant when you're making a technical correction for the sake of it, being "a technical smart ass". "Non-technical" people do it, too.

funkah• 15 years ago

This comment section is a suitable demonstration of the author's point.

ryandvm• 15 years ago

So... you got into an argument with your friend because he could have just said "whatever". Or you could have done the same thing.

cbs• 15 years ago

When I find myself in a situation like this, I say "we're being pedantic, take a drink".

It works great. It makes us both realize we're acting stupid, and the next day neither of us is going to write a blog post about how our pedantry didn't line up with someone else's.

_ea1k• 15 years ago

They both seem like they are thinking the same way to me. Both of them are wrong in some ways (self-discipline != consistency, and consistency alone was unlikely the key to the weight loss).

dextorious3• 15 years ago

This is a nice take by Miguel De Icaza on the subject:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

espeed• 15 years ago

It's a matter of perspective. Self discipline has a certain connotation and evokes certain emotions. For some people it may be associated with negative feelings built up over years of failure.

Maybe your friend realized this and decided to change the game. Thinking about it in terms of "consistency" instead of the dreaded "self-discipline" evidently worked for him, and he may be sticking to his guns in the argument because he doesn't want to fuck up the mental hack that been working so well.

vitalychernobyl• 15 years ago

I love that this made it on Hackernews so as to prove the non-techies point! :-D

He is right too - when dealing with the hard sciences it's most important to BE RIGHT (it's either a 0 or 1 - and it matters), but when dealing with relationships it's much more important to BE EMPATHETIC.

If you aren't - you'll be seen as a contrarian/confrontational.

I think we need to practice "being ok with being wrong" when the relationship matters more than the subject matter. Cheers!

jaekwon2• 15 years ago

Oh I get it -- you're trying to show that Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem applies to humans. Haha.

* All consistent axiomatic formulations of semantic arguments include self-unaware bigotry.

You are brilliant, sir.

hemancuso• 15 years ago

I find the title of the post misleading, technically.

flueedo• 15 years ago

I don't talk in technical terms with people who won't understand them. I would never get in that kind of semantic debate if I were the friend who had lost weight. I would however most definitely get into a discussion like that if we were both translators, linguists, behavioral scientists or something like that.

Consistency means self-discipline in his case. But many 'consistent behaviors' in living and non-living agents mean something else entirely.

That said, this made me think of one particular type of "technical smartasses" that have pissed me in the past: Lawyers and their legalese.

billpatrianakos5• 15 years ago

Not to disparage anyone but actually see this technical smartass stuff in the comments on HN all the time. Someone makes a good point then someone else nitpicks the most irrelevant detail or pulls out the dictionary definition of the word even though the person's point is clear as day.

I agree with the author on a lot of this and personally feel that this sort of thing is a sign of poor social skills and an inability to see different perspectives or the bigger picture. It can get pretty exhausting.

It's funny that a number of comments on this story exemplify the author's point perfectly. Don't get me wrong though. Please don't take this as me complaining. I'm actually really happy with this community but you've got to admit that what the author is talking about goes on so often around here it's not even funny.

Most of the time focusing on the technical details will get you nowhere but missing the point, totally off track, and arguing something very much unrelated to the original topic. Case in point: see the comments on the post about SpecialForces.com getting hacked. People started missing the point and talking about the user's password strength instead of what was really at issue (the security of the admin's access methods and credentials).

quanticle• 15 years ago

>Most of the time focusing on the technical details will get you nowhere but missing the point, totally off track, and arguing something very much unrelated to the original topic.

That's true some of the time. A lot of the time, though, the technical details are important. Look at the SOPA hearings. The reason they were so cringe-inducing is because all of the technical details were glossed over. You had uninformed Congressmen hand-waving their way past very important questions of implementation and side-effects.

billpatrianakos5• 15 years ago

Yeah. I guess you're right. But my point still stands otherwise. I can't really think of another way to word that eight now, it escapes me but you still know what I mean. I stand corrected on that point though.

Terretta• 15 years ago

Which one of these things is not like the other one?

forgottenpaswrd• 15 years ago

For me HE IS the technically dumb ass.

Wow!!, writing in his blog that his friend is a dumb ass because he wants to be right all the time!! My passive aggressive sensor just goes off scale. He NEEDS to be right because his internal insecurities so he gets angry with his friend and then ridicules his friend in his blog.

BTW, his friend is totally right, consistency has nothing to do with self discipline(discipline means you have to do constant effort against something), you really do not need that much effort to change something once you integrate it on a routine, he is the one that does not get it, but is in denial, because he does not want to be wrong.

rkon2• 15 years ago

No, they're both wrong, but his friend misses the more important point: self-discipline is necessary to alter the status quo, not consistency.

earbitscom2• 15 years ago

I believe the more important point was, "Dude, you know what I'm talking about. Getting to a point of consistency requires discipline, so stop trying to correct me for the sake of it."

portmanteaufu• 15 years ago

"Technical smart asses often have a narrow view of the world. They only see what’s in front of them."

I find this to be a tremendous leap in logic from the rest of the author's narrative. Some of the most technical, rationally driven people I know are also some of the most open minded, willing to judge new concepts on their own merits rather than deferring to culture or tradition.

Being a stickler for semantics does not mean you're incapable of objectivity, empathy or lateral thinking.

rickmb• 15 years ago

Or alternatively, you could just say what you mean instead and avoid the whole discussion in the first place.

But that would mean admitting that you were wrong...

Florin_Andrei• 15 years ago

I have a much less flattering term for that kind of person: intelligent idiot. Extremely capable to deconstruct tiny details, utterly incapable of letting the details go. This type of person seems to be attracted by the computer industry for some reason.

kstenerud• 15 years ago

It's interesting to see how the OP approached the argument: telling his friend straight out that consistency and self discipline are the same thing, rather than saying that self-discipline breeds consistency.

Had he gone with the latter, the argument likely would not have happened. Instead, he misspoke, and then when his friend corrected him (they aren't exactly the same thing, after all), his ego got the better of him and he pushed on into a pissing match rather than clarifying his position. And then be blogged about what a dumb ass his friend is.

There are many lessons on relationships to be learned here, and the OP has pretty much missed all of them.

theprodigy• 15 years ago

You can watch this type of behavior in abundance on the show Big Bang Theory.

Why Technical Smart Asses are Technically Dumb Asses

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