From cracked: 6 Ways To Be A Better Nerd In 2016
Nerd movies aren’t just No. 1 at the box office, they’re every movie at the box office. The biggest TV shows in the world are either fantasies or shows about being a nerd. We have a sitting president who got excited about watching Star Wars with us, and presidential candidates who compared their own candidacy to the Rebel Alliance. We are in charge. Everybody high-fi- nah, fuck it. Everybody Vulcan Salute; say, “May the Force be with you”; and then make a Pokemon joke or something, because it’s fine to come out of the Nerd-Closet and frolic through the meadows of relevance while bathing yourself in the warm light of cultural acceptance. For now.
This agrees with earlier posts about nerd ‘culture’ becoming mainstream, especially since 2008 or so, with examples in pop culture such as the wildly popular show The Big Bang Theory.
But it’s not something that is ‘for now’, but instead not only is nerd culture here to stay, it’s going to get bigger. In accordance with Ravi Batra’s social cycles, nerds now rule, and I don’t see this changing, especially if post-2008 economic trends persist, which I’m sure they will. Nerd culture is enduring because nerds are productive, and pop culture is finally catching up with the marketplace in rewarding and recognizing nerds for their economic and scientific contributions. It’s not that nerds are trying to impose their lifestyles on others, but rather everyone else is trying to emulate ‘nerd culture’, whether in pop culture or on social media. It’s like a repeat of the 50’s, when people turned to nerds to crack the Soviets, but now people are turning to nerds to crack the code of universe, and, on a less grandiose note, to explain connection between economics and biology, to explain why things are the way they are. Nerds toil among the ignorant without losing a grip on reality or sanity, a balancing act which in and of itself is worthy of admiration.
Liberals want to punish the successful and productive, and that includes nerds, which is why the left is fighting a losing war against #gamergate, in addition to their war against Reddit and social media, red pill, the manosphere, STEM, Trump, and the ‘alt right’.
If you want evidence of how the left is losing in the court of public online opinion, just read the most up-voted comments, which tear apart this leftist article by buzzfeed In 2015, The Dark Forces Of The Internet Became A Counterculture:
Black lives matter, but supporting white lives makes you racist, according to the left, even though white suspects of violent crime more likely to get killed by police than black suspects:
Adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown of the U.S. population, he said black men are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. But also adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown in violent crime, the data actually show that police are less likely to kill black suspects than white ones.
The left is not only losing the social media war, they are losing the economic one, too, which nerds are winning. The S&P 500 has risen 200% from the depths of the crisis, from a nadir of 660 in 2009 when the left was convinced capitalism was going to die, to 2000 today, 30% higher than pre-crisis levels. Profit margins still at record highs and growing, enriching productive capitalists for the economic value they create.
There are a few arguments I see floating around the nerd culture. One is, “If you don’t like something, just ignore it.” If a woman complains about sexist depictions of women in movies, they say, “Just don’t go to those movies.”
The author, in showing his SJW leanings, is overgeneralizing. The reality of how women are depicted in video games, according to gamers, fits the feminist mold. Outside of the SJW-sphere and liberal arts departments, few people actually care about the depiction of women in pop culture or know what the ‘Bechdel Test’ is. If these liberals think they know better than the consumer, they should make their own feminist-approved movies and see how successful they are, which I imagine they won’t be. Liberal-inspired arts are dependent on donations and grants – often at taxpayer expense – because their creations can’t succeed in the marketplace, and provide little value to humanity.
Purely theoretical research such as string theory, while not having any direct applications, may have future applications similar to how electromagnetism and general relativity are used for magnetic resonance imaging and GPS, respectively.
I actually thing we’re in a philosophy boom, with recent developments in quantum mechanics and the synthesis between the two subjects. There is a lot of research in this area, about quantum mechanics, thought experiments (Chinese room), turing tests, complexity/computational theory of mind (Bostrom simulation argument, singularity) and connection to free will and other philosophical concepts. Philosophy becoming more STEM-like.
Philosophy even is useful for the sciences because epistemology can help scientists learn, organize, and approach subjects more efficiently, as well as reconciling physical knowledge with the metaphysical. Quantum mechanics is as much philosophical as it is mathematical, in reconciling philosophical concepts such as ‘free will’ and ‘reality’ with mathematics such as wave functions and quantum states. Or the connection between teleology, Aristotelian logic, and Darwinism. Modern philosophy almost incorporates as much math as many STEM fields. Even economics can be considered STEM, specifically fields such as econometrics and macro models, both off which heavily involve methods of statistics and calculus. There is a speculative branch of macroeconomics that merges concepts of theoretical physics and algebraic geometry, where economic agents and supply and demand are treated as fermions and energy states, with noncommutative geometry too. Philosophy, theology, and theoretical physics, all of which deal with the abstract, have become interwoven in recent years, an example being Gödel’s ontological proof, which merges logic with theology. Same for study of computational complexity and artificial intelligence, in which the line between the hard sciences and philosophy/theology are blurred.
… what? What mark has The Era of the Nerd left on the world? What are we doing with our time? What will we be proud of when we’re old and there’s no one left to impress because no one cares about what we think, and the only respect we can ever hope for comes from inside ourselves?
Ever hear of Uber, which is revolutionizing transportation? How about Elon Musk, who holds the record for the most popular Reddit AMA ever, and his Tesla and Space-X launches are media events. So I think it’s safe to say nerds have and will continue to leave an indelible mark on the world, through their contributions to society, technology, and the economy.