A real expert on population genetics didn't even show up until twenty posts down, by which point all Alyrium could really add was some extra insults, because the amateurs were more than informed enough to point out the many retarded flaws in Chaotic Neutral's idea.
I will admit, I was very pleased that the lot of you were so very efficient.
Whelp, I'm socially autistic and failed to learn many, many things that most children should have learned
So am I, but I still learned these things by brute force and experience. You should have seen the crazy ass ideas I came up with when I was twelve (of course, part of that was being twelve)
You're not sure a self-defined subset of people do learn anything from saying something stupid on the internet and being made fun of for it, but that doesn't stop you from grossly overgeneralizing and making brash assumptions in your mockery of someone who made brash assumptions leading to stupid comments?
I will expand on Simon's post here a bit.
Ok, you have a population of Nerds. People with interests in science fiction, fantasy what have you. For our purpose we are defining Nerds in the most restrictive terms possible, from their literary preferences.
Within this population, you have two traits. Intelligence, we will represent it with IQ, and Social Skills. These, in reality, are independent of eachother. They are not actually correlated, but society in general perceives them to be and as a result, a person on the Low end of the social skills distribution might think they are smarter than they actually are--and on the same token a person on the high end of the intelligence scale may think that their social skills are worse than they are. Social skills can of course improve over time--even for those with Spectrum disorders. For example, I used to be nearly non-functional outside groups of nerds. Now I can associate with non-nerds, making up for any social awkwardness with sheer friendliness and obvious good intentions. It is amazing how many social missteps you can avoid by having obvious good intentions. That way, people correct the mistake and you learn from it rather than getting pissed at you and you never find out why. In any case, I digress.
So, I will look at the various combination we can have here, but focus only on the high and low ends for ease of comparison. There is middle ground here, but the contrast is more useful than the exhaustive combination list. I am also not restricting this to nerds, though you will easily see how it applies to them.
High Intelligence/High Social Skills: These guys are scary. Think Hannibal Lecter, but may have friendlier intentions. These guys are smart enough to think through technical holes in their ideas. They may have a five year old (Who may or may not be caged and forced to work using appropriately timed hits with a shock prod and candy, thus inducing stockholm syndrome) on stand by to let them know if there are any obvious flaws and if they do make a mistake, they learn from it and alter their plans accordingly. Their social skills are good enough that they can convince people to help them, and they can also recognize difficulties arising from human nature. Good real life examples are Julius Caesar, Henry V, Hannibal, and Alexander the Great, Einstein, T.H. Huxely etc.
High Intelligence/Low Social Skills: These guys are less scary. They can think their holes in their plans and accept criticism just like above. However, they cannot generally get people to follow them--which is often more a function of charisma than it is technical skill. They may not be able to readily identify flaws in an idea that arise from human nature, but if one is pointed out to them or they have intensely studied said human nature, they can treat it like any other data point. Probably better pictured as the Royal Vizier behind the person with more force of personality. A good example of this would be me. I have an IQ that breaks the standard tests, but am also on the Spectrum. My emotions operate differently than most people, so while I know what it is like to feel angry, I cannot necessarily generalize to other people, so my ability to empathize is highly inaccurate save in the most obvious of instances (like someone's mom dying). I also cannot easily deal with second or third order effects of interpersonal interactions very well--again, because my empathetic ability is so poor. I have had to learn how to manually ready body language and have to learn how to deal with people the hard way--being the whipping boy for everyone in middle school including the administration. However, I am smart enough to know that this is a problem were I to attempt to institute some sort of plan. I know to consult with others on how to mollify the populace, and am smart enough to know that compromises may need to be made, and that my attempts at micromanaging implementation--particularly the personnel end--should be limited. Other good examples would be Socrates (only because they killed him), Plato, Diogenes, Newton, and Tesla
Low Intelligence/High Social Skills: Do Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush ring any bells? These individuals are often unable to see past some sort of overriding ideology which they accept. The technical details are often overlooked entirely, or for the sake of ideological purity, and even worse, implementation is often micromanaged because stupid people often over-estimate their own competence. What is worse, they are very good at getting people to swallow their line. A good example here is of course the leadership of the Republican Party... and the Democrats for that matter.
Low Intelligence/Low Social Skills:This may be someone who either was never socialized properly or is on the Autism Spectrum, but who lacks the intelligence to compensate. Their ideas are poorly thought out, but they lack the social skills to implement them, and do not accept criticism well. May be dominated by some pre-set ideology, and definitely have over-inflated senses of their own adequacy. Lolbertarians (as opposed to more educated libertarians, or teenage geniuses who lack the experience to know better and are rebelling against sanity
), most basement nerds, rank and file members of the tea party, most pro-life activists, and Neelix fit this category.
That I don't like.
