You're the Smartest Guy In The Room ... but please, try to restrain yourself.

http://www.plope.com/smartest_guy_in_the_room

by fogus • 17 years ago

137 139 17 years ago

This is basic strategy really - being a dick to people will almost never bring you closer to a goal you've set, which means there's no point in doing it. The success rate of "calling people stupid until they agree with me" is quite low...

chasingsparks2• 17 years ago

I think it depends on your intent. Being a dick is a clever strategy if you want attention. Being a dick by calling someone very popular (or visible) stupid gets you attention. Instead of people ignoring the dick, they pile on and then criticize him -- which is giving him attention. Then, people who find some reason to agree with him pile on and defend him. Bamb, the dick has now usurped some of the targets authority.

(P.S. I am not defending this strategy. I find it annoying -- but entertaining in a checkout line gossip rag type way.)

rick20472• 17 years ago

I totally agree with you.that is just very close to the human nature

coglethorpe• 17 years ago

"Being a dick is a clever strategy if you want attention."

Imma let you finish, but BEYONCE HAD THE BEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME.

thejash• 17 years ago

I find it a little ironic that the server hosting this article is down.

slig2• 17 years ago

Why that would be ironic?

ihumanable• 17 years ago

We get it, you're the smartest person in the room, you know the definition of irony, you are not Alanis Morissette.

dasil003• 17 years ago

What's actually ironic is the main thread on this story.

oliveoil• 17 years ago

Can someone from the python community say if this is pointed at someone in particular?

albemuth• 17 years ago

Zed Shaw maybe?

slig2• 17 years ago

I think you got it: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/statuses/4502578820

mikeryan• 17 years ago

It could be Zed, but the funny thing is in that case, Zed got 100% test coverage for Lamson done about a month ago.

http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-08-22.html

Readmore• 17 years ago

I'm up-voting this article just because it's aimed at Zed ;)

leif• 17 years ago

Dunno, but while the GIL may not be stupid, per se, it sure is a horrible evil bitch kill it now kill it with fire you fools

Raphael_Amiard• 17 years ago

I don't know who this is for, except it's not me, but, after reading it in with no person in mind, i read it again, like it was adressed to me, and i thought "He's right"

amichail• 17 years ago

Parents and teachers need to take part of the blame for making a big deal out of innate intelligence.

siddhant• 17 years ago

I've seen people around me trying to unnecessarily add irrelevant technical jargon to the simplest of matters which they want to tell me. In 99% of the cases, it turns out to be something I have a really good laugh on.

nopassrecover• 17 years ago

The tone is hilarious. Love the build up.

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

I was with him until he said "I could care less".

Couldn't damnit, could not. This irks me to no end.

</grammar nazi>

DannoHung• 17 years ago

I've always thought that could be a clever turn of phrase, like, "Well, I could care less, but that would actually require effort." Like, utter and complete apathy, even unto apathy for the apathy.

mcantor2• 17 years ago

I commend you, good sir, and assert that you are no grammar nazi. A nazi is crude, unreasonable and thoughtless. You are none of these things. You have merely demanded a minimum amount of effort from the people around you, an infinitesimal moment spent in quiet reflection that could perhaps result in a magical epiphany resembling, "Wait a minute, if I could care less, that means I am caring more than the minimum! That is not what I am trying to express! Alack, I must duly backspace."

Edit: And to whoever downvoted this man, I officially call you a knave.

thismat2• 17 years ago

Spot on sir.

I up voted the both of you as this is a huge irk or mine as well.

Say what you mean, don't just rehash phrases you've heard before! This says a lot about how much thought we put into what we're saying and hearing, as I've seen and heard this on all types of media, from TV, movies, radio, books...

Periodic• 17 years ago

This has always been my understanding. Why would I state that I could care less about something which I am trying to express that I don't care much about at all?

There's the theory that it implies you could care less, but that would require effort. I don't buy it. It's pretty easy not to care about something, in fact, I think it takes no effort at all. It's not like I'm straining myself by not caring about Joe Smith's new job in northern Minnesota. In fact, I couldn't care less.

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

I think the key metric is that useful grammatical suggestions are ones that make the communication more clear. At the end of the day, clarity should be the focus. It bothers me when people make silly grammatical errors, but many of them end up in the final text because our minds auto-correct for them and as such they rarely pose much of a problem in terms of actual clarity.

noonespecial3• 17 years ago

It is important to write correctly. If you allow "I could care less" to congeal on top of "I couldn't care less" in one big idiomatic mess, you more or less lose the ability to express "I could care less".

A more extreme example that also bothers me to no end is "begs the question." Its now quite impossible to use this phrase to call out the logic error to which it originally referred as it is now used interchangeably with "raises the question". When I want to call the error, I have to do a mini exposition on circular reasoning. I feel cheated out of this fine piece of language.

There's a difference between nazism and simply insisting on correctness. I also commend.

alnayyir• 17 years ago

I love you both.

idlewords• 17 years ago

"I could care less" is sarcasm that has fossilized into idiom. Notice how it has a different intonation than you would expect from a simple declarative statement.

khafra• 17 years ago

Indeed--parts of speech up to entire subjects or objects may be omitted where they're understood from context. Here, it's obvious that the full, time-worn phrase is "I could try to care less, but I might strain something."

pohl• 17 years ago

I don't buy that theory. I'm fairly sensitive to intonation, and have never heard it intoned in the manner you suggest.

I think it's more likely that people parrot the sounds without thinking of the words and/or the meaning. Compare to "for all intensive purposes", for example.

gojomo3• 17 years ago

Exactly. I suggest run4yourlives and others with this peeve simply read it with an implied "as if" beforehand:

As if I could care less.

Words that have opposite meanings depending on context, intonation, and tradition aren't that uncommon -- even single words, such as contronyms.

Writers, remember: you can't put too much effort into precise language.

lanstein• 17 years ago

tag parse error

WilliamLP2• 17 years ago

You could be more anal about this issue.

gojomo3• 17 years ago

As a community, I hope we could sanction comments like this.

coconutrandom• 17 years ago

He COULD care less. But instead he cared just enough to go on for several paragraphs.

I could care less that this irks you (but I care enough to hit reply).

calambrac4• 17 years ago

While we're being pedantic assholes:

I was with him until he said, "I could care less."

Couldn't, dammit, COULD NOT. This irks me to no end.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/01/

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=damnit

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dammit

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

Touché.

I won't grant you that first comma in the second sentence, however. Superfluous, really.

camccann2• 17 years ago

More quibbling:

The period inside the quotation marks isn't clear-cut. Standard American usage is punctuation inside the quotations and is a hold-over from practical considerations of typesetting. Standard British usage is punctuation inside only if part of the quotation itself, outside otherwise. The British style also sees some use in scientific and technical contexts even in the USA, due to being regarded as more logical.

run4yourlives being a programmer as well as, apparently, Canadian, is perfectly entitled to use the more logical British style without regret or hesitation.

hughprime3• 17 years ago

I would consider "dammit", "damn it" and "damnit" all to be acceptable. As soon as you leave "damn it" you're in slang territory anyway, so personal variations are acceptable.

(I will also accept "dagnammit", "dognarnit" and "magnabbit".)

daniel-cussen2• 17 years ago

Sometimes it's fun to be pedantic, provided you're not an actual asshole and the other posters are being pedantic too.

Pistos22• 17 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescriptive_linguistics

For the record, I generally lament the "flattening" of language. However, I still find myself pulled by the current. Examples: I no longer care to avoid splitting infinitives; I say "could have went" now and then.

Ultimately, we might suppose one need only concern oneself with two goals: (1) communicating what one intends to communicate, and (2) making a satisfactory impression upon others on account of one's speech/writing.

Use "common" language to achieve the former; use "correct" language to achieve both.

derefr• 17 years ago

The splitting of infinitives admonition was created, artificially, by a prescriptivist who had studied too much Latin and thought that languages ought to reflect their heritage. It wasn't a prevalent conception until the 1800s; Shakespeare even split infinitives (once.)

dkarl• 17 years ago

Careful writers teach readers to read carefully. Careless writers teach readers to read carelessly. If your writing is full of confusing constructions which, on examination, prove to be sloppy prose, then your readers will start to error-correct everything they read to match their expectations of what you're trying to say. If you say anything interesting, clever, or unexpected, they're likely to skim right over it and miss your meaning.

MaysonL• 17 years ago

I could care less about this topic. [but the mental energy required to change my emotional response to your flame would be more than the subject is worth]

lucifer• 17 years ago

It is grammatically correct. (Not that I could care less.)

tvon• 17 years ago

Amusingly enough, this one tidbit has been the primary subject of conversion this article has spawned, both here and on reddit.

endtime• 17 years ago

I lived in England until I was 7, and I grew up saying "couldn't care less". I'm American now, and it's always bugged me that the vast majority of Americans can't get that phrase right.

keefe• 17 years ago

this grammar error always amuses me - people that say I could care less generally not only could but SHOULD care less...

immad• 17 years ago

Site is down. No Google cache yet either...

brutimus• 17 years ago

Copy of article text: http://dpaste.com/hold/100477/

masomenos• 17 years ago

... which is relevant since Chris seems to have removed the original from his webserver

rick20472• 17 years ago

You know many people actually try to intentionally not become something like the intended audience of that article. People around us can be really dumb, you know like in a high school (or like in my case even college). Now the key here becomes not to let yourself be pampered by such pseudo eliteness. I always try to be with people who have a greater intellect than me, just so i can beat them. but when i cant help it, i make it a point to keep reminding myself this is not the crowd i can judge myself with

ilyak• 17 years ago

Is that the "permafrost" Stevey wrote about?

jriddycuz• 17 years ago

The guy who introduced me to Python originally had that kinda dickish attitude, and for some dumb reason I assumed the whole Python developer community was like that. It really biased me against using the language for quite some time, which is a shame because now I've come to really like it.

The moral of the story: some people have Asperger's, and you shouldn't let their (pathologically?) contemptuous attitudes affect you.

hellotoby• 17 years ago

This article has described elitism. Humility is the true sign of intelligence.

_pius• 17 years ago

Brilliant.

raffi• 17 years ago

I can always tell the smartest guy in the room types, my solution? I talk about my visual basic projects and what a great language it is. It's a great game to play.

jrockway• 17 years ago

It is worth nothing that just because something is an active community project doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things. And also, just because the right way to do things is not implemented in your favorite langauge doesn't mean that the wrong way is not wrong.

You're the Smartest Guy In The Room ... but please, try to restrain yourself.

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