If we’re going to armchair psychologize, then I much prefer Paul Graham’s model.
Honestly, I think that is the worst model. I remember how we, the 3-4 nerds in the class, how bitter we were about the popular kids and how we have gladly sacrificed our intelligence or books or anything to be like them, be boys who are respected by boys and loved by girls. Our lives were characterized of bitter envy of the popular kids, with the occasional desperate sour-graping.
Paul Graham is used to productive nerds, teenagers who at 16 are already writing useful software or learning science and really ignore what others do. Perhaps this model is useful for them.
But it is not useful at all for the larger number of less productive, more escapist nerds in the local D&D or MtG club. (And the difference is not intelligence but personality type, interests and so on, there are people in the Mensa who are like this.)
Yeah, I do consider it armchair psychology. He seems to be generalizing too much about the psychological characteristics of the empirical cluster to which he refers as nerds. I found the interesting part of the essay to be the hypotheses about perverse incentives explaining the similarities between the milieux of American prisons and American public schools, and that’s really why I brought it up here.
I was under the impression that US schools have far more surveillance. I mean my school experience was like that, but it was a poor school at the ass end of Europe, no campus police no security guards no cameras no staff nothing, just teachers and kids, and teachers usually spending the breaks in their lounge, drinking coffee, so nothing kids did to each other was noticed and punished, pretty much free reign. I sort of expected US schools to be under far more surveillance. Prisons, too. There are no privacy rights in prison, none at all. If a country can afford it, there is supposed to be camera in every corner?
That depends. US schools are run by local (not even state) governments, usually towns, and there is huge diversity in what a school might look like.
Public schools in big cities (NYC, Philly, etc.) basically are prisons with wire fences, metal detectors, cameras everywhere, etc. I’ve seen a school with no windows—it was designed this way so that there were no windows to break. But schools in e.g. rich suburbs are nice places, similar to college campuses.
I don’t quite understand your point. At any rate, in my experience, I only encountered two surveillance cameras that were privately owned by tech-savvy teachers, there was usually one (sometimes two) ‘SRO’ (school resource officer), a police officer assigned to the campus, and we were almost always supervised by adults. Graham’s hypothesis is plausible even given poor supervision. The only requirements are 1) adults and children not being invested in the ostensible purpose of the educational system and 2a) the presence of obstacles to refusing to participate in or 2b) reforming the educational system.
Honestly, I think that is the worst model. I remember how we, the 3-4 nerds in the class, how bitter we were about the popular kids and how we have gladly sacrificed our intelligence or books or anything to be like them, be boys who are respected by boys and loved by girls. Our lives were characterized of bitter envy of the popular kids, with the occasional desperate sour-graping.
Paul Graham is used to productive nerds, teenagers who at 16 are already writing useful software or learning science and really ignore what others do. Perhaps this model is useful for them.
But it is not useful at all for the larger number of less productive, more escapist nerds in the local D&D or MtG club. (And the difference is not intelligence but personality type, interests and so on, there are people in the Mensa who are like this.)
Yeah, I do consider it armchair psychology. He seems to be generalizing too much about the psychological characteristics of the empirical cluster to which he refers as nerds. I found the interesting part of the essay to be the hypotheses about perverse incentives explaining the similarities between the milieux of American prisons and American public schools, and that’s really why I brought it up here.
I was under the impression that US schools have far more surveillance. I mean my school experience was like that, but it was a poor school at the ass end of Europe, no campus police no security guards no cameras no staff nothing, just teachers and kids, and teachers usually spending the breaks in their lounge, drinking coffee, so nothing kids did to each other was noticed and punished, pretty much free reign. I sort of expected US schools to be under far more surveillance. Prisons, too. There are no privacy rights in prison, none at all. If a country can afford it, there is supposed to be camera in every corner?
That depends. US schools are run by local (not even state) governments, usually towns, and there is huge diversity in what a school might look like.
Public schools in big cities (NYC, Philly, etc.) basically are prisons with wire fences, metal detectors, cameras everywhere, etc. I’ve seen a school with no windows—it was designed this way so that there were no windows to break. But schools in e.g. rich suburbs are nice places, similar to college campuses.
I don’t quite understand your point. At any rate, in my experience, I only encountered two surveillance cameras that were privately owned by tech-savvy teachers, there was usually one (sometimes two) ‘SRO’ (school resource officer), a police officer assigned to the campus, and we were almost always supervised by adults. Graham’s hypothesis is plausible even given poor supervision. The only requirements are 1) adults and children not being invested in the ostensible purpose of the educational system and 2a) the presence of obstacles to refusing to participate in or 2b) reforming the educational system.
There quite possibly is. Not that it stops prison gangs from dominating prisons.