(2003-02-18) Paul Graham Nerds

Paul Graham on "Why Nerds Are Unpopular". Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular. But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart... Bullying was only part of the problem. Another problem, and possibly an even worse one, was that we never had anything real to work on... Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it... I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia?... As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed Teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they're made to lead. Teenage apprentices (ApprenticeShip) in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere... The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: Specialization. As jobs become more specialized, we have to train longer for them. (I don't agree - BS)... When groups of adults form in the real world, it's generally for some common purpose (Shared Goal). The leaders end up being those who are best at it. The problem with most schools is, they have no purpose (Product Oriented Unschooling)... Since the group has no real purpose, there is no natural measure of performance (FeedBack) for status to depend on. Instead of depending on some real test, one's rank ends up depending mostly on one's ability to increase one's rank. It's like the court of Louis XIV... I lost more than books. I mistrusted words like "character" and "integrity" because they had been so debased by adults. As they were used then, these words all seemed to mean the same thing: obedience (vs Subversive)... I don't think it would work to turn them back into apprentices. Adults in past times didn't have teenagers as apprentices because it made the kids' lives Meaningful. They did it because it made economic sense. And it just doesn't anymore. Like mothers, teenagers have been left high and dry by the receding waters of Specialization...