Christian Einfeldt wrote:
On Saturday 23 April 2005 20:19, Rod Engelsman wrote:Unfortunately, what passes for a local group is 90 miles away. I subscribed to the mailing list, but haven't seen a single message other than the confirmation, so they're not very active.
Culture question: Why are some people on the Linux user's lists
such assholes? I know you get a few everywhere, but they seem
particularly prevalent there. They're like children.
It is probably a matter of finding the right Linux user group (LUG) for you. I suppose that it's like any other club affiliation: you just have to find the right group for you.
The linux mafia group I have found is pretty accepting of a simple end user like me. You might want to try going here and lurking for a while:
http://linuxmafia.com/cabal
They have a odd sense of humor. As I say, I would recommend that you lurk for a while, and then introduce yourself, and let them know your skill level, and then go ahead and ask them a question, if it is answers that you are after.
I much prefer usenet newsgroups for that sort of thing. Are they on usenet?
Wow. That sounds exactly right. I remember reading something about certain kinds of sociopaths, that the reason they can be so amoral is that they don't see other people as being human. So killing somebody is akin to killing an animal at worst. I have the opposite problem, I tend to anthropomorphise animals. I eat meat, but I don't like to think about that aspect of it.
It is possible that many members of Linux users groups have what might be referred to as a "too male" brain. I recall reading a reasonably well researched magazine article recently which showed that 9 out of 10 autism patients are male. Dustin Hoffman's character in Rainman was autistic. Autistics are referred to as having a "too male" brain. Apparently, there are structures in the hardwiring of the human brain which can form the partial basis of social sophistication, or lack thereof. Autistics have a reduced inability to anticipate or process subtle cues in interpersonal behavior, and in extreme cases, have trouble recognizing other human beings as being other than mere automotons.
And yet autistics often have a remarkable ability to recall quantity associations, like Dustin Hoffman's ability to recall precisely dates and times on which hundreds of airplane crashes happened, the airliner, and the number of people who died in the crash. They can count cards in multiple card decks. They can remember the names of capitols of countries who many people can't correctly place on a continent.
Computer skills tend to play to these same type of requirements. I recently met a genius level hacker who was able to remember the kinds of memory cards in ancient, obscure computers. I was at an installfest, and this guy was able to go from computer to computer, answering questions off the top of his head that other seriously talented computer hackers had to research. This guy was literally easier to use than Google. And yet he was very very socially awkward, even though he was extremely highly regarded by the entire group.
Richard Stallman is a classic example of this. The man is an absolute genius, and probably will earn a place in history up there with some of the greatest thinkers of all time. And yet in person, he is cranky, demanding, ill-humored and often condescending. But he is also very generous with his time and a great teacher, if you are able to get past his personal foibles.
I bet that Windows user groups just have bigger numbers, and draw from a broader cross-section of society. Also, since Windows is designed for very very simple end users, it probably draws in people who don't need the kind of rigorous analytical skills which, until recently, was required of Linux users. That's just my guess.
Autism is not a threshold syndrome, where you either have it or you don't; it's a granular syndrome, which exists in varying degrees in many men. So it's possible that you might be dealing with low-grade autistics.
So when you encounter problems in LUGs, look for parallels between their behavior and Dustin Hoffman's Rainman character. So if people on computer lists are abrupt and socially awkward, mentally flag them as potential autistics. Be very clear with them; anticipate sudden course changes; and when they display socially awkward behavior, try to look past the socially awkward part to the merits of what they are saying.
Some of them are just mean... no other word for it.
The incident that precipitated the question was an exchange I recently had on a linux group where somebody said that the CLI (command line interface) was inherently superior to any GUI (graphical user interface). I couldn't resist... I should have, but I couldn't.
I just said that you can't make a blanket statement like that. You may prefer a cli, it may be better for some things, but you can't say that it's better for everything and for everybody.
Oh, God! I had people calling me everything but a legitimate son of a Christian family. I don't mind when somebody disagrees, I enjoy a vigorous debate -- you probably know that about me by now -- but there's no reason to call people names. That's just juvenile.
I won't go into all the lame tangents that some of them -- yeah, I was arguing with about 4 or 5 people at one point, sort of like when Chad would defend Microsoft -- would go into to avoid having to back down an inch from their extreme position. But this one guy was interesting, and I'm still pondering the last thing he said, "If it isn't in ASCII, I'm not interested."
I had put forward the point that a lot of flame wars on the Internet were the result of the lack of side-channel communication. You know, the subtle social cues that you pick up on from expressions, body-language, etc. You can't always tell when someone's serious, or poking at you in fun, or whatever. That bare, written word, unless in the hands of a true language artist like Maya Angelou or Ernest Hemingway, is a very limiting form of communication.
His response floored me, I had no clue how to respond. But you mentioning autism puts me in mind of Ausperger's Syndrome, a kind of high-functioning autism. Unless he was just being a lying asshole to make some sort of geek points, I bet that's what he is. That would explain it perfectly. He assigns no meaning to side-channel because he simply can't! As smart as he is, and he's some sort of electrical engineer dealing with digital filtering theory, the fact is that he's dumb as a rock when it comes to social cues. And that embarrasses him, and being embarrassed pisses him off, and so he responds by being arrogant and condescending. Hunh. Interesting.
Talk to you later,
Rod
