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by jeegsy 2469 days ago
"The fall of the clueless nerd" indeed. The headline in the wired story linked triggers the hell out of me. I suppose we have come full circle, Nerds suck, then they were cool and now they have been consigned back to uncool again. For the life of me, based on the snippets i've seen regarding his interactions with women, the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period. Which causes other problems but I will gladly have those problems than have an icon of an industry/space that I love be exiled in such an ignominious fashion.
1 comments
speedplane 2468 days ago
> the only advice I can give him and ppl like him if they could have a do-over is stay away from women period

Stallman could have been a quirky, uncompromising, and passionate personality and still treat women like equals. Being a "genius" is not a good (or even sensical) excuse to treat people poorly. If anything, it shows you're not really a genius after all.

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nessus42 2464 days ago
> If anything, it shows you're not really a genius after all.

Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein, who was a staunch defender of civil liberties at a time when most of his peers weren't, wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal.

I agree completely that being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

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speedplane 2460 days ago
> Plenty of geniuses have not treated people well. Newton was a complete asshole. Even Einstein ... wrote some rather unpleasant things about the Chinese in his personal journal. ... being a genius is no excuse for treating people poorly. But unfortunately history is littered with such people.

I suspect that many of these "geniuses" only became difficult personalities after they recieved recognition and had a taste for power. Power corrupts, it allows people to do things without regarding people that may be affected by their actions.

I don't think there's just a simple correlation between people deemed geniuses and them having difficult personalities. Rather, I suspect there's a causal effect between being granted the "genius" title and abusing the accompanying power that leads to a difficult personality.

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