One of the unstated, or subliminal purposes of these kinds of ideas is to act as an emotional "vent." Its social purpose in the programmer community is to present a target for the release of "justified" emotional aggression.
Other fields and other kinds of social groups have them in their own contexts.
One of the things that such sets of ideas produce, in sufficiently large populations and sufficiently complicated contexts, are false positives. That is to say, you will tend to hastily pattern match your object of justified scorn. You will tend to detect more of them than actually exist. (This is how human beings are wired up.) What's more, you will conflate highly salient attributes with actual symptoms of such. Being female, or a member of a certain ethnic group, or being "too old" then becomes a sign of the insidious danger.
The thing to remember, is that extraordinary situations require extraordinary causation. Such individuals do exist, but there must be something or someone very powerful propping them up. They could be very good at manipulating people. They could have been granted a sinecure by someone very powerful. Most often, they are the unwitting beneficiaries of pathological organizational policies.
So how is a diligent rationalist supposed to approach this? Remember that you are wired up to produce false positives. Be self aware of your social animal instincts that will tend to have you use the subject of your suspicions as an object of scorn. Look diligently for "extraordinary" causation.
Yep, agreed. There's an abundance of this kind of scornful thinking in the tech world. I figure it's mostly a subliminal attempt by programmers to convince themselves that they're smarter than other people.
That being said, the article seems to be pretty well-written and does have some good info about anti-patterns once you get past its title. Also, it proposes remedies to these anti-patterns and bad habits which are useful.
I figure it's mostly a subliminal attempt by programmers to convince themselves that they're smarter than other people.
That's when you've let your social animal instincts get the better of you as a sentient lover of knowledge. What will truly distinguish one as an exceptional programmer is an ability to shed prejudices, analyze, and listen well, not being on top in the geeky version of the primate dominance game.
I upvoted you because I suspect that your first two sentences are true.
You completely lost me with the extraordinary causation/situation tangent, though I'm not sure if it is because I disagree with you or because I am misunderstanding you.
Other fields and other kinds of social groups have them in their own contexts.
One of the things that such sets of ideas produce, in sufficiently large populations and sufficiently complicated contexts, are false positives. That is to say, you will tend to hastily pattern match your object of justified scorn. You will tend to detect more of them than actually exist. (This is how human beings are wired up.) What's more, you will conflate highly salient attributes with actual symptoms of such. Being female, or a member of a certain ethnic group, or being "too old" then becomes a sign of the insidious danger.
The thing to remember, is that extraordinary situations require extraordinary causation. Such individuals do exist, but there must be something or someone very powerful propping them up. They could be very good at manipulating people. They could have been granted a sinecure by someone very powerful. Most often, they are the unwitting beneficiaries of pathological organizational policies.
So how is a diligent rationalist supposed to approach this? Remember that you are wired up to produce false positives. Be self aware of your social animal instincts that will tend to have you use the subject of your suspicions as an object of scorn. Look diligently for "extraordinary" causation.
Most of all, don't judge prematurely.