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0 pointswatwut6y ago0 comments

Not really. Many people I know who studied stem for example have strong tendency to take texts literally and at face value - for example biographies and historical texts. They don't seem to pick on inconsistencies, obvious self-promotion and such. Or have trouble to understand differences in interpretations of history and how they affect texts.

Another tendency is to insist on "either this or that" binary where in reality is a lot of complex nuance and middle ground.

And lastly, practically, I work as programmer and I swear to got that good mouth and confidence and right look takes you really far away with other programmers. It wont save someone completely incapable, but many people in tech confuse arrogance and confidence with being super skilled.

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WalterBright6y ago

> many people in tech confuse arrogance and confidence with being super skilled.

They will initially, but they'll recognize the crap code after a while and won't trust them anymore. The converse is true, too. In my jobs, initially I was not trusted until I developed a track record of getting good results.

> have strong tendency to take texts literally and at face value

People "on the spectrum" tend to do that. Most STEM people are not on the spectrum.

However, a rhetorical device a lot of people use is to take what one writes excessively literally in order to refute it. They know perfectly well what they are doing, and I take it as a sign that they lost the point :-) I wouldn't confuse them with people on the spectrum.

watwutOP6y ago

> People "on the spectrum" tend to do that. Most STEM people are not on the spectrum.

Non spectrum STEM people do that too quite a lot. It is not just personality thing. The classes they teach in technical schools require exactly that. You don't learn to doubt math book or physics book nor encounter another physics book that says something contradictory. Nor you have to take into account writers bias or reconcile multiple contradictory trends. (That is not criticism of stem classes, they simply have different goal.)

Just because something is done by people on spectrum does not mean neurotypical cant do it.

> They will initially, but they'll recognize the crap code after a while and won't trust them anymore.

I did not said that the arrogance and confidence imply completely crap code. Again, there is false binary here.

It just mean that such person is seen as more capable then he is and that his takedowns of more calm people are taken at face value too. Meaning that arrogant and confident person wins discussion where he is wrong and does not know what is talked about and is capable to harm reputation of competitors. It manifests mostly in unclear situations with unpredictable outcome, complicated situations, strategic decisions etc. It systematically manifests when there are differences of opinions.

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