That's a remarkable generalization. In reference to the article, perhaps you should have thought longer about it.
This is different from the more linear directed thoughtpatterns promoted in institutions. I often find people in the HN crowd to be more in the latter crowd than the former, but nonetheless intelligent.
When I speak to artists or people in more creative fields, I find that, typically, the conversations are more improvisational in nature. The conversation just ebbs and flows naturally, with energy and a lot of spontaneous thought building. The strange book Impro is a good read for this.
Whereas, when I speak with engineers or scientists, it feels like the conversation has a much higher chance of lurching, especially when you start to veer off the beaten path.
I consider myself to be a bit more divergent than most, but being in a technical field is a bit of an impedance mismatch. I think a component of divergent thinking is sometimes extreme thinking, wondering about what if and ignoring, for the time being, how to get there.
The book impro, who is it’s writer? I see a couple of results coming up.
(Not all of them, of course, but in general they are at least as intellectually-curious and open as anyone else I know.)
I gather you may not know any of these types yourself but they’re certainly abundant here on HN, dismissing Dropbox as easily replicated with rsync and other such sentiments.
"Intellectual" is a fine word for an intelligent person who does the kind of thinking college professors do. Indeed, Wikipedia defines one as "a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection."
We similarly use the term "anti-intellectual" to refer to those in our society who choose not to engage in this kind of critical thinking.
I dislike turning it into an insult, so think we should use a different word to refer to such people.
I’m certain most of us know what the parent is talking about on an intuitive, vs verbal level (i.e. the idea was communicated, even if the words used to communicate it were not 100% on point)
Did the joke go over my head?
And they all seem to want to reply to HN comments.
Yes.
> dismissing Dropbox as easily replicated with rsync
This is a strawman of the actual post. Please don't use it as an example like this.
A good example of an "intelligent crowd" are the Windows wizards who will helpfully advise how something is done so the user can get on with their day.
That doesn't mean I won't take easy potshots when the occasion arises, though. If they (Linux neckbeards) don't like it, they can work on improving their act and reputation.
I'm 6 months into my current role and only just starting to feel the confidence and comfort to question the approaches to problems we've dealt with in that time, in order to, hopefully, modify the approaches we take in future in the hopes of improving the quality of the output.
It takes time to "find the water level" and also working through applying that knowledge to each problem, and if time is 'pressurised' it can lead to suboptimal resolutions. On the flipside, no one will wait forever - and it feels as if the world is currently oversensitive to waiting time.
Find the water level. But that also takes time.
Dialogue is a necessity for the correct development of knowledge. To engage in dialogue we have recourse to language and a vocabulary of discourse. As knowledge is gained, dialogues branch off and specialize. The system of thought inherent to the ~unique arrangement of the elements of these dialogues partition thought into acceptable (an opening) and unthinkable (a closing).
Throughout history you will find minds that navigated these intellectual currents by stepping away from their dominant belief system and gaining knowledge of the universality of meaning, and saw hidden (filtered) vistas previously unseen, and then step back into their home grounds to contribute to the development of the field, in a positive manner, adding new elements into vocabulary of the dialogue. They extend it, and create the possibility of synthesis in the future.
Equally, you will find that the further necessity of establishing schools, cults, churches, and institutions, which lend social prestige to its members and satellites, introduce incentives contrary to that of pure love of knowledge, and this attracts a certain type of people, beyond the already present danger of vanity and self regard.
What is to be done about it?
Helpfully suggest that tolerance of this necessary evil may be the remedy for your gripe.
There is almost nothing to be done but just wait patiently.
Data driven hiring practices require hard definitions. One of these hard definition of intelligence is IQ. IQ is very correlated with job success and also various other skill sets related to job success.
From the company perspective, successful hiring using a data driven scientific approach is the right call simply because its the best metric we have on intelligence.
Obviously their are aspects to intelligence that currently aren't quantified but is it wise for a company to bet their future on gut feelings that are subject to bias and aspects of intelligence not in the realm of science?
Unfortunately no.
I'm pretty sure the Google interview process is somewhat of a data driven process but I can't be sure. Are any googlers in the know? Are specific interview question and answer pairs measured and correlated with the success of the employee? Or is it all qualitative judgement?
IQ, I believe, is actually not legal to measure for an occupation. But we know that this is the metric that faangs are actually attempting to replicate.