Author Topic: Are Programmers, Engineers and V. Technical IT people Really "Aspie Retards? (Read 349 times)

G0ddard B0lt · « **on:** December 09, 2018, 04:41:38 pm »

Unix stumbled (or reasoned) his way into a really insightful observation in a discussion in the private section. This was a side point, not the main purpose of his post, but the idea is interesting enough that it deserves its own thread.

Quote from: unix on December 09, 2018, 08:36:55 am

...the problem is squarely that IT people are just utter, sheer imbeciles by and large with very little business or survival sense. Very low political awareness and zero interest in personal growth. CNN is their medium of choice. Washington Compost is the other one.

yeah, they know IT stuff but outside of that very small bubble, they know beans.
and I am describing just the DC area, maybe it's radically different outside of my (very small) bubble. There is no Silly Valley vibe here at all.

After much reflection recently I think this is a more accurate statement: I don't believe that IT people are uniquely clueless. I think that:

IT people excel at seeming more wise and worldly than they actually are in most cases. Partly that's due to sheer intellect and partly due to an inflated sense of their "rightness".

The almost inevitable disappointment at finding that most IT people have world class smarts but in MOST cases below average to middling wisdom - the disconnect between those two attributes of wisdom and knowledge/talent - leads to our frustration with our own kind, our "facepalming".

How can you be SO SMART and yet be SUCH A BLEEPING RETARD about normal things?

We're not willfully stupid. We just all look that way to others.

This opinion flies completely in the face of my rants and vents over the years here and on related boards.

IT people (this includes current board members here) are uniquely intelligent compared to the general population. But in general, intelligence is never a reliable or even highly correlated proxy for wisdom or insight.

Our tribe's failing, which is my own also, is that intelligence clutters up survival skills and intuition. That is what I really believe. You may have instincts, a conscience, an ability to "read" people, but high IQ and the ability to do complicated worldly things well can clutter up your ability to draw accurate conclusions from an analog world.

Example ... I "went native" on Facebook and joined a few groups there, one of which gave me the stupidest clients by far I have ever suffered with, including the fraudulently useless narcissist owner. The members were all aspiring freelance copywriters.

Those people on that FB group, unlike just about ANYONE here - generally had:

NO logic; NO real skills; NO talent; and almost everyone I ran into there had a Walter Mitty complex about becoming wealthy based on a prosaic skill like "travel writing". Also, inflated ideas of self-worth and generally incredibly high senses of entitlement.

I'm using that group as a case study. Those people were generally literate, although tending to be "Facebook retards" (social lives revolving around Facebook), and many were college educated. I would peg them as upper half of the population in terms of IQ and cognitive ability.

They were still pretty stupid and herd-following. For all of these "professional copywriter's" hubris about being top of the heap - all most of them were qualified to do well was post on Facebook.

So, compared to technology people like us, the presumed "aspie retards":

Non technical people, "normies", are cannon fodder and are by and large much lesser people overall than the average technology professional.

Our peer group can build such complex, useful stuff. Our peer group can also neglect basic facts such - almost everything else having to do with operating a business, becoming a well-rounded human, encouraging one's fellow man, being social, applying REAL common sense, understanding and appreciating real life tradeoffs such as "cheap, fast, excellent - pick any two."

My calling programmers or IT people "aspie retards" is the expression of my frustration that really smart individuals don't "get" normal stuff, common sense, office politics, etc, which FAR less capable people do fairly well to awesomely with.

As far as Unix implying that a "Silly Valley vibe" might indicate smarter tech people... I don't agree and I believe that the issue/problem of tech people being world/analog reasoning-illiterate is pervasive and part of our makeup as technology "thing" experts.

Let's take apart the current brouhaha over social media and cloud services deplatforming as an example. The tendency for high tech providers of social media, payment systems, and ancillary technology services to lump all conservative/right leaning people together as scum needing to be suppressed...

I see the Silicon Valley SJW fad as a clear sign of technology peoples' inability to see past their idealistic cerebral constructions. Deplatforming is a case in point.

I'll bet that every 20 to 30 year old anointed Google or Facebook or Twitter employee believes that their unique programming, development or admin background also gives them exceptional, Godlike personal insight into human nature. And that all they need to do is use their technical powers to persecute their enemies, and then the world will be perfect.

Silicon Valley is also socially unique because hundreds of thousands of these technology wizards live in a fairly small geographic area, about the size of several medium cities put together. So a tech geek in the Valley assumes that the norm for all of humanity is to be geek, woke and liberal.

Deplatforming makes absolutely no sense if want to marginalize your opponent. It makes it likelier that they will despise you even more, and that they will come back with even more resolve. So there's an example where geek desire results in a "negative" outcome.

WildRiver · « **Reply #1 on:** December 09, 2018, 06:31:35 pm »

In my experience, there are all kind of people in the tech world. I have worked with EE, ME, Physics, Chemical engineering people and so on. Computer field tend to have more aspie type. I don't know why but there are some normal people in computer field. What do I define as normal? Let see...if you drink beers, hunt or shoot weapons, like cars, you can play some sport or do some physical exercise, you understand office politics and political events on national level, you know or read history, you sky diving or fly a plane, you play musical instruments or do photography, you understand the difference between book smart and street smart, then you are normal!

If all you do is head down programming and building circuits like Steve Wozniak, you are an aspie! You want to be like Richard Feyman.

unix · « **Reply #2 on:** December 09, 2018, 07:02:30 pm »

I just started reading your post, will process it later - this popped into my head so wanted to share it before it drifts away. To further elaborate on this point.

I used to play chess competitively, in tournaments, in my teens. I wasn't any good, just mediocre, average, kept up with the players, lost some, won some.. Reason I quit was because at every tournament one or two kids would come and wipe out mostly everyone they played against. There were that much better and more gifted. There were the 1% at the top and truly bright and I realized I could not keep up with them no matter how many openings and end games I studied. It wasn't just memorization, but creativity and seeing what nobody else could see.

Now looking back at it, I think all of the gifted players had an extreme social disability, a high functioning form of autism, or Asperger's syndrome or something along those lines, lack of social preparedness. In order to function at a high level like they did, something had to give. I think IT professionals who are good, and smart have what amounts to a disability. You cannot be a great IT guy without some kind of cognitive dysfunction I think that interferes with great social skills, emotional IQ and just feeling situations and selling one self along the lines of what I can do to help versus "I am great at X,Y,Z".

I know some will disagree but I think social handicap is a necessary part of being an IT guy. It interferes with other functions. Yeah, they are smart. And some are very smart, and what of it.

I think this is why some 'smart' IT guys are stuck in dead-end jobs, going nowhere, like the stapler guy in "Office space", who may be smart on paper, and smart IQ-wise but at the same time, retarded. Their IQ is not an indication of where they are in life. Bullshitters get much farther.

This is why forum participation is what it is. How many IT people are there in the country. None of them want to engage in creative thinking, or critical thinking, a critical look at their careers? Or the world?

I mean what's more important, imagination or knowing syntax of the Assembly language. Retards. Gifted but retards nonetheless. Maybe I am a part of that crew, I don't know. I don't think I am either gifted or retarded, maybe that's the problem.

there is a huge wide world outside of the keyboard.

G0ddard B0lt · « **Reply #3 on:** December 09, 2018, 10:09:03 pm »

Quote

I think IT professionals who are good, and smart have what amounts to a disability. You cannot be a great IT guy without some kind of cognitive dysfunction I think that interferes with great social skills, emotional IQ and just feeling situations and selling one self along the lines of what I can do to help versus "I am great at X,Y,Z".

And you said - in order to function at a high level something has to give.

Exactly, precisely. Well said.

I'm seeing this even when I check out Youtube videos about IDEs and coding tools in Linux. These guys generally can't explain their ways out of a paper bag. Videos about almost ANYTHING OTHER THAN IT, like car repair, or cooking, or traveling, are usually very helpful. When I watch a video given by some dude explaining how features of Atom (an IDE) work, the guy is basically always mumbling through the fine print of a desktop, on the screen, which you can't even read.

unix · « **Reply #4 on:** December 10, 2018, 04:52:22 pm »

I hear you.

ilconsiglliere · « **Reply #5 on:** December 10, 2018, 05:15:35 pm »

IT people are for the most part are social retards. I have worked with them my entire career and have never understood them and they don't understand me. They seem to have a myopic view of how the world is and are self absorbed in their "thing" whatever that thing is.

As a child I was not into what typical IT people were into as a kid. They were into math, computers, science, chemistry, physics, chess, dungeons and dragons., star trek, star wars. All the typical stuff you hear that typical geeks like.

What did I like? The outdoors, exercise, sports, art, drawing, painting, architecture, cars, guns,ships, military stuff, woodworking and oh yeah WOMEN. I couldnt do math to save my life. I am better now at it but was horrible than.

I started college as a fine arts major and when I went to comp sci it was a rude awakening. I went from people centric to computer centric. And oh yeah where are the women? Found out I could code like a fiend despite being a math moron because I could see the code in my head just like art. I was only in the field about 3 years when I thought of quitting. I hated the culture and people that much. But the money was way too good and they kept telling us the gravy train would never end. When I transitioned into PM I realized that I liked talking and organizing things far better than sitting at the computer all day being tortured by some block of code.

Here is the thing with IT people - they may be intellectually smart but they don't have any street or political smarts. Some of them are so dumb about this its amazing they can function at all in normal life. I attribute it not that they can't do it but they choose NOT TO DO IT. They don't view it as important so they make no attempt to be better at it. Normal people don't have the intellect to fall back on so they are forced to learn social skills when they are young. Because IT people have the intellect they have no need to learn the social skills and they focus on that thing. Thats why I said they had a myopic view of things in the beginning.

Example: when the H1B invasion started the IT people should have self organized into a union or guild and stopped this shit cold. But did they do that? NOPE. They sat around intellectualizing about it: is stopping it right? do h1bs have a right to be here? how are we impacting h1bs by helping them and whatever vomit worthy material came into their thick skulls. And businesses used the fact they were social retards to destroy their career.

Can you imagine doing this with long shoreman? They long shoreman would have gone out and split some head and had very violent and vocal walk outs. And guess what? The business capitulates.

And this is why IT people are their own worst enemy. They can't see the forest through the trees.

Silly Valley is another prime example. These tech prima donnas live in a virtual tech bubble where they don't interact with the outside world. They don't understand that the rest of us don't believe what they believe. On top of this these snot nosed aspie morons think they know whats right for the rest of us while not having any real world experience. They are all brave behind their keyboard but what happens when the day comes they are facing a mob who wants their ass? Are they going to intellectualize their way out of it? I doubt it. They will be snuffed out.

G0ddard B0lt · « **Reply #6 on:** December 10, 2018, 06:15:29 pm »

The entire point of this thread was to re-examine the standing notion of IT people as aspie tards.

What I am saying in this thread (again, differently):

In the general population OR in specific degree-requiring professions, is any particular group so much better than IT people?

I'm saying "no".

My limited exposure in the real world: (take professionals first)

Attorneys are condescending pricks.

Ex-military are generally very rigid, lock step thinkers who can't go outside narrow constraints.

Accountants are dweeby.

Writers are flakes with absolutely no real world skills or talents. They write so they make you THINK they have high competence but they are incompetent humans.

Dentists are about like accountants. Plus often have weird antisocial tendencies (in my experience.)

Doctors and medical specialists are VERY geek-like and probably rise to and exceed IT people in intellectual rigor as applied to real life. But they do far better for themselves as professionals.

How about non-degreed non-professionals?

Pot luck. People of Wal-Mart. Some highly intelligent unread types, but most are unwashed Kardashian watchers. How about normies who follow network news semi-religiously - and who rarely understand larger issues without having those issues spoon-fed.

My point is that IT people, as klutzy as they are, are in general the very best society has to offer as examples of humans, on average. We are smart, hard working/work ethic, and we try to build things and make things better.

No other segment of society does all of these things and has these attributes. If some particular group does, you tell me!

Quote from: ilconsiglliere on December 10, 2018, 05:15:35 pm

IT people are for the most part are social retards.
...
And this is why IT people are their own worst enemy. They can't see the forest through the trees.

And I've stated exactly the same sentiments and reasoning myself.

Again - I'm saying that the reaction of calling IT people "aspie retards" is due to the cognitive dissonance of super-smart people who do ABSURDLY dumb things outside the context of technology piece work. In other words if IT people were not as brilliant, their shortcomings (as articulated so well by Unix) would not be so glaring.

Super-smart but we can't change a light bulb.

ilconsiglliere · « **Reply #7 on:** December 11, 2018, 02:59:10 am »

I agree with your thesis but the difference between these groups you mention and IT people is that most of these groups have the social intelligence to protect and promote themselves. IT people have nothing.

Doctors: the AMA and you need a license.
Dentists: ADA and you need a license
Accountants: you need to pass the CPA and there are accounting groups
Lawyers: you need to pass the bar and there are to many lawyer groups to mention
Military: the govmt is the official recognizer and licensing organization

As for writers: not sure if they have any organization and many of them do indeed starve. They seem to be idiots as well.

As for people like plumbers, electricians and others that own small local businesses they usually are super shrewd and are completely about the $$. In the case of plumbers, electricians and HVAC it requires intelligence and license as well. Thats why you hear stories about plumbers making more than doctors.

I don't think IT people are capable of self organizing to promote themselves nor to combat their own demise. In the entire time I have been in the field I have never seen any of them get together to either help or protect themselves. They are all for lack of a better word - libertarians. All are lone wolfs that end up losing.

And the root cause of this is the lack of social skills and intelligence. Its like my example of an interview being a sales presentation, many people never figure this out.

G0ddard B0lt · « **Reply #8 on:** December 11, 2018, 07:06:54 am »

I agree with those points too.

It is a shame, to me, that engineers are such wonderful, superior, value-creating, constructive people compared to the general population and even to members of degreed occupations ... but suffer from being geek as well as being mocked, ostracized, and humiliated in the world.

I'm just saying give geeks their due. But you're correct that they are their own worst enemy. They just don't need me or anyone else as an enemy.

WildRiver · « **Reply #9 on:** December 11, 2018, 07:49:16 am »

All are lone wolfs that end up losing.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This has been so true at my last company. For some reason, no single programmer in this company wants to work in a team. They are all lone wolfs. In my previous jobs, I worked in a team and I love it. I learned so much and we helped each other. I spent 10 years in the last company and it killed my team work spirit. That's why I never like it when they say "oh, x is extremely smart. He can do anything". I know that 90% chance he just wants to work by himself.

In general, IT people are like children. They just want to be given some toys and left alone. Never mind that the barbarians are outside the door wanting to come in and kill them.

G0ddard B0lt · « **Reply #10 on:** December 11, 2018, 08:04:45 am »

Questions:

Are such programmers and IT people deserving of outright contempt? Like a virtual "bitch slap" for being so out-of-it?

Can such geeks ever have their situation improved? If so, how?

Do the geeks want their situation to improve?

ilconsiglliere · « **Reply #11 on:** December 11, 2018, 10:08:34 am »

Quote from: The Gorn on December 11, 2018, 07:06:54 am

I agree with those points too.

It is a shame, to me, that engineers are such wonderful, superior, value-creating, constructive people compared to the general population and even to members of degreed occupations ... but suffer from being geek as well as being mocked, ostracized, and humiliated in the world.

I'm just saying give geeks their due. But you're correct that they are their own worst enemy. They just don't need me or anyone else as an enemy.

I agree that they should be given their due but its not going to happen. For whatever reason American society looks down on them. Geeks provide tremendous value but they are treated like shit.

And that treatment is because geeks ALLOW IT. If others treated them like shit and they took up a call to put these others in their place it would stop. Instead they just suck it up. Companies realized long ago that they could outsource, lay them and just generally treat them like garbage and they are like a dog with treats.

Its not like this everywhere on the globe. Both Germany and Japan worship engineering. Its rare to find a German or Japanese CEO who is not a PhD in some kind of engineering. Try to find an American CEO who is like this? There arent many.

ilconsiglliere · « **Reply #12 on:** December 11, 2018, 10:10:51 am »

Quote from: The Gorn on December 11, 2018, 08:04:45 am

Questions:

Are such programmers and IT people deserving of outright contempt? Like a virtual "bitch slap" for being so out-of-it?

Can such geeks ever have their situation improved? If so, how?

Do the geeks want their situation to improve?

They dont deserve it. Nobody really deserves it (SJW douches excluded).

I think the improving of the situation is not possible now. That time is past. Improving something like this requires both leverage and marketing. The leverage is long gone due to the H1B and outsourcing. As for the marketing, thats also tough because the American media is far more sympathetic to the poor H1B than to the average American.

Hell they love illegal aliens more than Americans.

I will give an example of what I am talking about. Years ago when I was in telco land they decided one day to outsource the systems that controlled fattest most profitable line of business which was 800 services. They carved everyone up into 3 categories - all of which had to train their new counterpart in India. The categories were like this:

1. Majority of employees (like 90%) had to train their replacement immediately - after 1 month they were totally gone.
2. 8% of employees had to train their replacement immediately - would be held on for 3-6 months.
3. 2% of employees were to transition over to the company taking over the systems.

We are talking about 400 IT people of all kinds - programmers, dbas, analysts, pms, etc... I had been laid off the previous year and was back as a contractor so got to watch it unfold. They also cut their severance to 2 weeks regardless of how long they kept you.

It dawned on me that if these people walked off the job all at once the company would have been screwed 1000x over. We are talking about double digit billion dollar line of business.

But what did they do?

They meekly accepted their fate and just did what the company wanted. Keep in mind the company had treated these people like dirt for years. No raises, no bonuses, constant pressure, blah, blah. But thats how IT people behave.

WildRiver · « **Reply #13 on:** December 11, 2018, 11:45:09 am »

You are so right, ilconsiglliere! It is so depressing. All the colleges/universities aren't teaching the student the fact of life. I wish they show a video of what you said in every high school and college in this country! I remember we watch all kind of videos in our biology class in high school. The sociology class in college also show some videos.

We need to make a video of this situation and show it to all freshmen class in all American college!!! I feel like we need to do this. Can I use your story line? I can get someone to make a video about this (need actors and scenery). I just don't know how to get it out in our society. Most people probably don't care.

ilconsiglliere · « **Reply #14 on:** December 11, 2018, 04:00:03 pm »

Quote from: WildRiver on December 11, 2018, 11:45:09 am

You are so right, ilconsiglliere! It is so depressing. All the colleges/universities aren't teaching the student the fact of life. I wish they show a video of what you said in every high school and college in this country! I remember we watch all kind of videos in our biology class in high school. The sociology class in college also show some videos.

We need to make a video of this situation and show it to all freshmen class in all American college!!! I feel like we need to do this. Can I use your story line? I can get someone to make a video about this (need actors and scenery). I just don't know how to get it out in our society. Most people probably don't care.

College is la la land. They are out of their minds nowadays, its the land of the snowflake and SJW idiots.

Take what you want from my stories, I am fine with it.

Considering what they have done to IT people, I would never recommend this field to anyone.

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