Books reviews, current events, and other musings

 
Paul Graham, a brilliant computer programmer, posted an interesting essay about Why Nerds are Unpopular:

I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story. There is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.
...
And that, I think, is the root of the problem. Nerds serve two masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in your spare time, not in the fiercely competitive environment of an American secondary school.

posted by Julian at 12:45 AM