[chairface]

> After the opening section I think the rant goes completely off the deep end with a rapid succession of wrong-headed generalizations.

Hang on - there was a part without wrong-headed generalizations? The way I read it, the first two sentences tripped my generalization alarm. The guy constantly extrapolates from his tiny sample and says that the whole world is that way.

[rorymarinich]

This is the world that I know. I write about it. Very often I find that I'm wrong about something, and when I do I write about that as well.

Are you saying that a young, bright 18-year-old shouldn't write at all because he knows that most of what he says is wrong? Because that sounds kind of stupid. I'd rather more people my age write and be entirely wrong and start talking back and forth amongst one another, so they all mature and get wiser. This is merely my contribution to that.

[chairface]

> This is the world that I know. I write about it.

Except you didn't limit yourself to that. You wrote about the world that everyone experiences, and essentially told a bunch of other people that they are wrong about their own experiences.

> Are you saying that a young, bright 18-year-old shouldn't write at all because he knows that most of what he says is wrong?

I'm saying that anyone, regardless of age or intelligence, should try to avoid generalizing from their almost certainly narrow experience.

Also, the tone of your comment has certain elements of the martyr mentality that you have criticized in your essay and in these comments.

[rorymarinich]

You wrote about the world that everyone experiences, and essentially told a bunch of other people that they are wrong about their own experiences.

Is it wrong to say that when they are?

I don't know everything. I only know my specific narrow field. But I do know that everybody I know who is actually unpopular - that is to say, not somebody who lacks friends due to lack of social skills, but somebody who people actively dislike in the way that nerds seem to think happens - is counterhostile in a way that turns people off, and that that usually is the reason why they are disliked.

I'm saying that anyone, regardless of age or intelligence, should try to avoid generalizing from their almost certainly narrow experience.

But everybody does that. Paul Graham does that in his essays. The great writers of fiction wrote from their own experience. It's why they were good. Most of them also generalized: look at Steinbeck and the way he turns entire groups of people into black-and-white heroes and villains.

I'm not saying this essay is as good as Why Nerds Are Unpopular. PG put a lot of time and effort into that essay; this piece was dashed out. But I'll also point out that among the people I've shown this to that aren't the sort of people who use HN, there's a much more widespread agreement that what I'm talking about makes sense, and that I've nailed an element of nerd/programmer that's given the whole subset of people a bad name. That doesn't make me instantly correct about it - I certainly overgeneralize - but to say that generalization is a bad thing because it's generalization ignores the fact that you almost certainly like and agree with and think in generalities. Just because this one is not one you agree with doesn't make generalities in writing wholly bad.

Also, the tone of your comment has certain elements of the martyr mentality that you have criticized in your essay and in these comments.

Martyr? I'm saying that I have a right to write what I think is right, and that a lot of this criticism that's aimed at me rather than at this piece simply because this piece is a poor one offends me. I'm not defending its being on Hacker News. I wish you all would flag it and remove it. It's not worthy of this site. Criticizing that is fine. But the criticism against me for writing this piece in the first place offends me, and I don't think I'm being an asshole martyr for saying that.

[jimbokun]

"Paul Graham does that in his essays."

Paul writes brilliant essays, but I find that if he has a weakness as an essayist, it is probably in over generalization. Many of his essays have pretty sweeping generalizations, but a dearth of data justifying them. His brilliance is that he usually overcomes this by appealing to his reader's intuitions, and it usually works. But there are times when I find myself wondering if he is just extrapolating from his own experience to a larger scale than is warranted.

[rorymarinich]

In his Why Nerds Are Unpopular essay, I think he absolutely is extrapolating. I've read that essay many times. I guess in some ways this could be called a response, but it wasn't directly inspired by his writing.

[dasil003]

I don't necessarily think Why Nerds are Unpopular is correct in general. Many of Graham's essays are convincing but ultimately specious. However one thing Graham does very well is to pick a thesis and then support it rigorously through a series of straight-to-the-point examples and cogent reasoning. In the end he may be wrong due to omission or bad axioms, but the argument is always convincing at a superficial level.

Your thesis is probably just as defensible as Graham's, but the way you supported it was scattershot and just plain unconvincing to anyone who's been out of high school a few years. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been written or even that the style is bad (it was quite readable), just that the argument could be better made if you cut it down by half and built up the thesis with more solid (or solid-sounding) claims.

[chairface]

> Is it wrong to say that when they are?

No. But your essay reads like they _all_ are.

> But everybody does that.

That's no excuse.

> Martyr?

Yes. Here's another example: "I'm saying that I have a right to write what I think is right". Nobody ever tried to take that right away from you, least of all me. All I did was say that you were wrong, but you have decided to carry on like I am persecuting you by attempting to take away your rights. Martyr.

> But the criticism against me for writing this piece in the first place offends me, and I don't think I'm being an asshole martyr for saying that.

Again, I never called you an asshole or criticized you as a person, as opposed to something specific that you said. Now you're being a martyr in response to me saying that you are writing with a martyr mentality.

[jibiki]

> I'm saying that anyone, regardless of age or intelligence, should try to avoid generalizing from their almost certainly narrow experience.

The correct response to such a generalization is just to present counterexamples. Your comments seem to express the idea that it's wrong to present a generalization in public. That's just silly.

[chairface]

At the time I posted this, plenty of others had posted their counterexamples. Mine would have just added to the noise.

Further, I would submit that it _is_ wrong to let a generalization masquerade as a general truth in public.