Isn't it the reddit model that absorbed them?
Nerds were often seen as poorly social since "logic and reasoning" would go against socially accepted norms. This where the fedora tipping meme comes from: "everybody understands that religion is not literal, but we have to all accept the lie for social cohesion". But "nerds" would be the ones willing to take the ridicule and ostracism because truth would be more important than conformity.
Reddit was the place to be for nerds and spread like a pandemic. However, karma points turned this on its head since you have a mechanism to enforce conformity in non-conformity that was the basis for "nerd communities". Nerds hobbies that would be the gateway are gated behind such platforms that enforce a social credit system in a totalitarian way. The would have been nerds are thus mostly integrated into the redittor archetype that is so fundamentally opposed to the nerd archetype; a contorted version of itself trying to fit through distorting mirrors.
I'm not disagreeing with you; but why did the nerds not destroy the ideologues with logic and reasoning if not for the horizontal pressure of other "nerds" subverting the concept?
> I'm not disagreeing with you; but why did the nerds not destroy the ideologues with logic and reasoning if not for the horizontal pressure of other "nerds" subverting the concept?
Why should I spend my energy to discuss with someone who doesn't want to listen, and not rather build something I like or learn something I wonder about, or converse with the people I care about?
Life is too short to talk with walls disguised as humans. Talking with a wall, the ocean or oneself is more productive than doing unproductive self-torture.
>>Why should I spend my energy to discuss with someone who doesn't want to listen
One of the reasons why I stopped going on Facebook, even though a lot of communities I care about have moved there. I wrote a long comment about someone's suggestion about car maintenance, only to get a reply "I didn't come here to discuss this, if you don't like what I said then go somewhere else". Like, WHY EVEN BE IN A PUBLIC FORUM THEN. But I feel like that's just me and my early internet sensibilities. Nowadays people want to post something, get some likes, and not be challenged. Even a mild disagreement is met with immediate aggression a lot of the time, because people are just not used to talking on the internet at all(imho).
> Nerds were often seen as poorly social since "logic and reasoning" would go against socially accepted norms. This where the fedora tipping meme comes from: "everybody understands that religion is not literal, but we have to all accept the lie for social cohesion". But "nerds" would be the ones willing to take the ridicule and ostracism because truth would be more important than conformity.
I don't think nerds are/were seen as poorly social because logic and reasoning go against social norms. I'll bite on the religion focus. If everyone understands religion is not literal, being smirk about taking it literally is not logical or reasoning or making anyone look smarter. It just makes you look like a dork. Subtext and not being meant to read literally are a core part of social interaction.
I see the same in school, when some overly literal students argue about the interpretation of a book they are assigned to read. "the author can't possible mean that" or "show me where it says that on the page" is a common lazy criticism with little value. Some people are just like that, and (warning: personal observation) nerds tend to be a bit more like that. But the arguments I hear from that corner against religion are seldom great, they are just some minor gotchas.
I don't want to get into the whole religion debate, and I'll admit that there are also groups of Christians that take the bible very literally, as I'm sure there are for other religions as well. From what I can see, these don't make up the canon of religion, and I kind of believe they're mostly concentrated in North America, but that might be my skewed perspective.
It's quite sad that social mechanics in our society don't work well for some people, but that doesn't mean they don't exist and it doesn't make everyone except nerds "illogical".
If "everyone understands religion is not literal", why do so many people take it literally? You could just as sensibly flip the argument and argue that the garden-variety 'nerdy' atheist is talking literally about atheism but really doing negative theology ("your idea of God is totally wrong and does not exist, because the true God is necessarily inaccessible to human reason") but that would be silly and make you look like a dork too.
As for the why, I don't have an answer, but I thought I addressed it with this:
> I'll admit that there are also groups of Christians that take the bible very literally, as I'm sure there are for other religions as well. From what I can see, these don't make up the canon of religion, and I kind of believe they're mostly concentrated in North America, but that might be my skewed perspective.
There will always be people falling off on one side of the spectrum or the other. Personally, I haven't met anyone who takes the bible literally, and I know a _lot_ of Christians, including pastors and priests. Some people simply just believe that there is something more, others have a feeling that you can sense that, some just need this believe to feel safe, etc. I guess it depends on where you're from, I believe biblicism is more common in North America, or at least more visible.
Additionally, the "everyone understands religion is not literal" was citing my parent. Usually, "everyone" is kind of understood not to mean "exactly 100%". It's a device to communicate intent.
> You could just as sensibly flip the argument and argue that the garden-variety 'nerdy' atheist is talking literally about atheism but really doing negative theology ("your idea of God is totally wrong and does not exist, because the true God is necessarily inaccessible to human reason") but that would be silly and make you look like a dork too.
Yeah, it'd make you look like a dork because it'd be obviously incorrect. The intentions of your garden-variety nerd talking about atheism are pretty clear, and it's not to make some greater theological point. When you talk to people who talk down on religion and believers, it's usually really easy to tell whether it's because only they themselves understand the True Intention Of God or whether they just think Christians are stupid and if you're smart you have to be an atheist. Said garden-variety nerd is the latter.
> There will always be people falling off on one side of the spectrum or the other. Personally, I haven't met anyone who takes the bible literally, and I know a _lot_ of Christians, including pastors and priests.
I grew up, and still live, in a conservative state and a conservative family. That hasn't been my experience at all: I know a lot of people for whom the bible is a literal truth.
That's fair. Experiences have a great influence on opinions you form, and everyone's experience is different. You live in a different part of the world than I do and know different people. I even conceded that in North America, the amount of people that take the bible literally might be higher or at least more visible than other parts of the world, and I'm going to assume you are from the USA because you said "state".
According to one survey I found[0], around ~20% of Americans (25% of Christian adults) say the bible is the literal word of god. Not exactly a huge amount of people, but a very considerable number nonetheless. I didn't find any numbers for other regions, but maybe it would help to see number of followers by denomination and try to derive some data from that. The official stance of the Catholic Church e.g. is that the bible should not be taken literally. Most protestants in Europe also don't practice much fundamentalism, but there are an estimated 25 million Evangelicals in Europe, around 2.5% to 3% of the population. There's probably more people preaching biblicism than only fundamental evangelicals, but I just wanted to look up two examples real quick.
[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word...
> The intentions of your garden-variety nerd talking about atheism are pretty clear, and it's not to make some greater theological point.
I agree about the underlying intentions, but I was talking about the typical, literal arguments for garden-variety 'rational' atheism. The point that these arguments tend to map quite cleanly to negative theology would usually be considered a pretty strong one as a matter of philosophy. Of course, this can only be said to further highlight the difference in intentions.
Yeah, but only if you take the arguments fully out of context and only if you view a subset of the arguments.
First, the argument of your garden-variety nerd atheist don't always map so cleanly to negative theology. I've seen plenty of arguments in the realm of "The bible contradicts itself, so you're stupid if you believe in it. Checkmate", etc. You get the idea. Just some of the arguments map well to negative theology.
Secondly, the context is missing. In my original comment, I was talking about how being very literal is seen as poor social adaptation because subtext, inaccuracies etc are part of social communication. Pretending to not understand that, or not understanding that, does not make one a logical being, it just makes you look like a dork.
Your argument is applying a very literal take of the hypothetical garden variety atheist we've brewed up. This is the same as taking the bible very literal and then calling people stupid when they believe in it. It's not arguing the main point, but picking out something that's easy to criticize and building your argument around it. My point is that taking something very literal is exactly a sign of poor social adaptation when there is a relatively big agreement on not taking it literally by society.
Now, your garden-variety nerd's arguments hold up very well against people who actually do take the bible literally, but I'm getting to a point where I want to get off the religion debate, because that's not really what I wanted to point out originally.
Circling back to my original: Logic and reasoning is not against social norms. Being a dork who pretends to not understand or actually doesn't understand social norms just to make a point is. Being hurtful just to feel superior is against social norms. Pretending you're interested in "truth" and that's why you are not conforming to social norms is also a pretty stupid take, imo. Yeah, social norms aren't always great, and they certainly don't work for everyone and a lot of people are left out being the "weird" ones, it sucks. But the reason these people are the "weird" ones is not because they're on a noble crusade for truth and logic.
I'm pointing this out even though you're not the original commenter I was responding to because we kind of got derailed into the details of this thing that was more meant as an example than really the main argument.
> there is a relatively big agreement on not taking it literally by society.
I think you're seeing a relatively big agreement where there really isn't one. It's not just the U.S. or biblical literalism, it's also about most people not really being familiar with the notion that even the strangest religious doctrines might be "true in a non-literal (but still worthwhile!) sense". From that POV, the garden variety atheist's argument is raising that very point. You don't have to take the atheism literally to understand that it's hard to believe everything about religion in a literal sense.
> why did the nerds not destroy the ideologues with logic and reasoning
Because everyone has bias and ego and nobody has perfectly logical reasoning.
Why brag about how smart you are to people who’ll just think you’re arrogant and annoying? Why tell someone their religion isn’t real if they’ll just think you’re a heretic, or “best case” despair they’ve been living a lie? You don’t study (especially in lieu of fitness) unless you have motivation which is ultimately based on emotion. I believe it’s usually the same ego that makes alpha men, just that these nerds (usually men) are too weak to be jocks.
Nerds have always had their own social norms, with illogical conformity, groupthink, status signaling, gatekeeping, etc.
[dead]