Nerds: When Good Enough Isn't Enough
Part 5: The nerdy preference for completeness and precision
Friends, it means the world to me that you’re reading and engaged. This initial phase of the project is focused on laying the groundwork for interesting ideas to come. For now, I hope you’re seeing the vibes of people around you in a slightly different light.
A Personal Story…
My wife, Sachi, reads and provides feedback on every post in this project. She also has nerdy tendencies that I’ve observed for over twenty years but didn’t know how to discuss. That changed when I started writing. Today, her nerdiness, and how it differs from my experience, is a constant subject of discussion.
As we’ll see below, the nerdy preference for precision and completeness highlighted a big difference between us.
We’ve all heard the sage advice, “If you’re going to do something, do it well” It’s common sense, right? The problem is that we’re lazy, busy, and distracted. Doing something precisely, correctly, and completely is a great goal, but many people are fine with “good enough” and keep moving. I am one of those people.
People with nerdy tendencies often have a different perspective. They are motivated to be precise, correct, and complete. Of course, this is a rational perspective that can feel like a rule for living a productive life. It’s hard to argue with the logic; we’d all be better off with more of it.
I discussed this idea with Sachi, and she mentioned how we differ in terms of vacuuming the house. She said, “I can’t watch you vacuum. It’s just chaos. You’re moving all over the place, and it feels incomplete.” It’s true. She then explained her multi-step system for precise and complete vacuuming, which ensures the floor is fully clean.
Her system is better and more complete, while mine is less complete. I told her, “Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to vacuum.” It didn’t work.
This difference between us is more fundamental than simple awareness. My vacuuming style is emblematic of how I perform many boring tasks. I don’t tend to use systems to ensure precision and completeness. I just do the task and accept that it’s imprecise.
Sachi does not abide. She uses well-considered systems for most things and takes great pride in precision and completeness. You can think of her approach as having rules for what must occur for a task to be complete.
This relates to the nerdy qualities of rational thinking and rule-based systems. Some people see the world through a more rational lens, where a completely clean floor is the reward. Others are more tuned to the irrational, where completeness is balanced with time, effort, priority, etc.
The Teacher’s Pet
In multiple instances in my research, students describe nerds as teacher’s pets. This reputation may be an authentic expression of a desire for completeness and precision.
This paper by John Bishop at Cornell contains a description of a nerd from a middle schooler:
"Being very involved with school, asking a million questions in class, and not having much fun in their spare time.”
Child Psychologist David Anderegg, in his book NERDS, shares how middle schoolers think about nerds and nerdiness. This is Max:
A nerd, he says with conviction, is someone who always does what he is told. A nerd does well in school because that's what teachers and parents want.
A twelve-year-old named Peter says:
They're extremely studious, and they're suckups. Like, they always want the teacher to think they're smart. And they are smart.
Again, nerdiness stands apart because it differs from mainstream expectations. And, like in other examples, the “nerds” in these situations are not trying to be different or putting on a show. They are pursuing what works for them, which includes a motivation to be correct and complete. Sometimes, that means studying, asking a lot of questions, and being validated.
Sort of Right is Wrong
We’ve discussed the nerdy preference for rational thinking, rule-bound systems, and intellectual curiosity. We’ve shown that nerds are attracted to and succeed in fields that require these qualities, like programming, mathematics, and engineering.
Within all of these preferences is a kind of glue that holds everything together: precision. Anderegg writes:
It requires getting answers that are right, not just sort of right, because machines won't work if the instructions and parts are assembled in the sort of right fashion. It is just this passion for precision that gets many kids stuck with the nerd label.
Precise Communication
Nerds' preference for precision and correctness means they are more comfortable with direct and literal communication. Ben Nugent describes this nerdy preference:
Meaning what you say, and wanting other people to mean what they say, to stop alluding, implying, and teasing, and get down to the point.
Our everyday communication is often nuanced and symbolic. We rely on “saying it without saying it” or using body language, slang, emphasis, and facial expressions to imply meaning along with our words. While these strategies are common and productive, it’s important to understand that they do not work for everyone.
This preference for direct and formal communication can be translated as a lack of tact. Nerds sometimes provide honest assessments of people and situations that lack sensitivity or awareness of how a comment could land. Ty Tashiro in AWKWARD:
Awkward kids tend to be overly blunt. They are more likely to see social situations in concrete terms rather than as relational transactions that require letting some things pass or delicate phrasing of sensitive topics. That's why they tell their teenage babysitter that her face has really broken out […] for them, it's just reporting the facts.
Precision and Style of Speech
Mary Bucholtz is a professor of linguistics who studied the speech patterns of students in Bay Area high schools. She found remarkable differences between the speech patterns of “popular” students and those who identified as nerds. She termed the nerdy speech pattern “hyper whiteness.”
Bucholtz found that the way they spoke excluded pronunciations and slang terms that non-nerdy white classmates had appropriated from black slang. The nerds also used what linguists call "hypercorrect" pronunciations, saying words the way you would think they were pronounced if you read them without hearing them.
In other words, your average white popular kid at the Bay Area high school used a certain amount of African-American vernacular, but the nerds avoided black slang phrases and professed an active dislike for some of them, like "kick back" and "trippin'." ("It just makes no sense to me," one of them told Bucholtz, of the dropped g.)
This should not be a surprise. “Kick back” and “trippin’” are not meant to be precise, direct, or literal. They don’t reflect Standard American English. They have meaning outside of the words themselves. Think of someone who has nerdy tendencies. Can you imagine them using Black slang?
According to Bucholtz, nerdy kids tend to disdain speech they consider immature or childlike and prefer to communicate like an adult. They also enjoy “punning, parody, word coinage, and other devices that played with ‘language form.’"
In a 1995 interview for Wired, artist and musician Brian Eno said:
Do you know what a nerd is? A nerd is a human being without enough Africa in him or her. I know this sounds sort of inversely racist to say, but I think the African connection is so important. You know why music was the centre of our lives for such a long time? Because it was a way of allowing Africa in.
His point is worth considering. When we look at the “vibes” of this project, Africa plays a significant role. The Roots of Cool series was about the influence of Africans in what became “cool” culture in America. Does this observation capture a significant difference between people? Are some people more tuned to or interested in the symbolism, signifiers, and styles of Black culture than others?
In this series, I’ve outlined four qualities of nerdiness in terms of preferences:
Rational Thinking (Read: Why Nerds Don’t Smoke)
Rules and Systems (Read: How Nerds Get High)
Intellectual Curiosity (Read: Library Rats and the Rage to Master)
Precision and Completeness (This post)
Next, we’ll cover a quick summary of this series and what we’ve learned.
It sounds like this Sachi’s fam was like really cool kind, like learnen was like wow for the teach, like her bros must be like one mirror to her, like one of them that thinks all the time, boy like you must be trippen out with one like that, like heres to you!! Grads!