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Nerd Immunity

Debater Slayer

Vipassana
Staff member
Premium Member
If a sufficient number of people become geeks and nerds, do you think we'll achieve nerd immunity and become a superhuman species of brainiacs?
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
No, because I think ultimately they'd begin to congregate on forums and argue in circles while not being productive.

And fight nerd wars. Consider the title "ON HOLY WARS AND A PLEA FOR PEACE". You might think it was about our world today. But it was written in 1980 and concerned a geek war: https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien137.txt

This is an attempt to stop a war. I hope it is not too late and that
somehow, magically perhaps, peace will prevail again.

The latecomers into the arena believe that the issue is: "What is the
proper byte order in messages?".

The root of the conflict lies much deeper than that. It is the question
of which bit should travel first, the bit from the little end of the
word, or the bit from the big end of the word? The followers of the
former approach are called the Little-Endians, and the followers of the
latter are called the Big-Endians. The details of the holy war between
the Little-Endians and the Big-Endians are documented in [6] and
described, in brief, in the Appendix....
...
So, what about the infiltrators? Did they completely fail in carrying
out their mission? Since the integer arithmetic was closely guarded
they attacked the floating point and the double-floating which were
already known to be easy prey.

...
Each camp tries to convert the other. Like all the religious wars of
the past, logic is not the decisive tool. Power is. This holy war is
not the first one, and probably will not be the last one either.

The "Be reasonable, do it my way" approach does not work. Neither does
the Esperanto approach of "let's all switch to yet a new language".

Our communication world may split according to the language used. A
certain book (which is NOT mentioned in the references list) has an
interesting story about a similar phenomenon, the Tower of Babel.


(And of course, religion enters in as seen through the lens of Gulliver's Travels)
In political terms, Lilliput represents England and Blefuscu France.
The religious controversy over egg-breaking parallels the struggle
between the Protestant Church of England and the Catholic Church of
France, possibly referring to some differences about what the Sacraments
really mean. More specifically, the quarrel about egg-breaking may
allude to the different ways that the Anglican and Catholic Churches
distribute communion, bread and wine for the Anglican, but bread alone
for the Catholic. The French and English struggled over more mundane
questions as well, but in this part of Gulliver's Travels, Swift points
up the symbolic difference between the churches to ridicule any
religious war.
 

Vinayaka

devotee
Premium Member
If a sufficient number of people become geeks and nerds, do you think we'll achieve nerd immunity and become a superhuman species of brainiacs?
Please add 'turd' to the goal. Nobody should have to associate with a turd. (For those perhaps unfamiliar with this idiom, a turd is about 8/10 of a jerk, and nowhere near a total piece of ______. ) an unlikeable character of ill repute.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
Please add 'turd' to the goal. Nobody should have to associate with a turd. (For those perhaps unfamiliar with this idiom, a turd is about 8/10 of a jerk, and nowhere near a total piece of ______. ) an unlikeable character of ill repute.


There is a Brummy (Birmingham) saying "you can't polish a turd"
 

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
If a sufficient number of people become geeks and nerds, do you think we'll achieve nerd immunity and become a superhuman species of brainiacs?

I've heard that becoming a nerd can be dangerous! Who knows what the long term effects may be? Not worth it IMO.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member


Surely not real turds. Handling them like that must be unhealthy.

0_tvY1wBTkin-IF6IC.jpg
 

The Hammer

[REDACTED]
Premium Member
How many dictionaries have you got?

1. state or describe exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of.

2. mark out the boundary or limits of.

late Middle English (also in the sense ‘bring to an end’): from Old French definer, from a variant of Latin definire, from de- (expressing completion) + finire ‘finish’ (from finis ‘end’).
 
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