Saturday, August 8, 2015

The Geek/Nerd Class

Historically there have only been a few main classes: the Scholar class, the Warrior Class, the Criminal Class, the Merchant class. Sometimes one person will belong to two, such as Sun Tzu (he of The Art of War and Col. John Boyd (he of the OODA loop) belonging to the Scholar/Warrior class.

When people tend to be good at more than one thing...sometimes they create amazing things.

Today, and for the past few decades, there has popped up another class, one that was apparently created by advanced technology: the Geek class.

I wonder what happened to Geeks hundreds and even thousands of years ago? They had to exist in some form. I suspect they wandered into the Scholar class (I have a hard time believing that Isaac Newton and Adam Smith weren't Geeks).

When I was in high school there weren't any Geeks to speak of (the culture was just getting started) but the ones who would have turned into Geeks were also part of the Party class (the one to which I belonged). This is why there is a modern class of highly-intelligent, partying Geeks.

Again, it was just getting started when I was in high school, and was definitely getting going in the Seattle area (think Microsoft). (Although, oddly, Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque, where I used to live.)

Bill Gates, for example, is part of the Merchant/Business class (and superb at what he does ) and also that partying Geek/Nerd/Programmer class.

Geeks also appear to belong to some degree to the Scholar class (Gates is obsessed with IQ).

Scholars and Partiers (which makes them part of the Criminal class). And for that matter, part of the Merchant/Business class, since they often start businesses and work for themselves.

The late Bob Wallace (whom I have been confused with more than once) and one of the founders of Microsoft, was very much into the drug culture as a means of expanding consciousness. That would put him into the (high-class) Criminal class (again, most Geeks partly fit into the Criminal class).

The Geek class traditionally doesn't fit in well into the rest of society. And certainly not public schools! Scholars, Criminals, Merchants?

Geeks do not fit at all into the ridiculous Manosphere hierarchy of Alpha/Beta (nobody does, really, which is why it'll soon be in the dust-heap of history). They're never PUAs, some can be fairly popular with women but it doesn't mean that much to them, and the men tend to stay with one woman (if they can find one) for life.

But because of all the classes they fit into, no wonder they've created so much. They're as close to polymaths as exists today.

22 comments:

Edward said...

I think PUA's can be categorized into the Criminal and Merchant classes. More accurately, I would call them glorified grifters.

Unknown said...

They're the true Omegas, bottom of the bottom, and I've known more than one and even their friends know what they are.

Anonymous said...

"I think PUA's can be categorized into the Criminal and Merchant classes."

Sounds about right. There's even an article out right now that reveals another Manosphere blogger to be a fraud.

http://30daystox.com/christian-mcqueen-is-a-fraud-eyewitness-reports-tell-all/

I'm not the least bit surprised given his over the top hitting rock bottom story.

Unknown said...

Rollo Tomassi is another one. I wonder when he will self-destruct?

Unknown said...

In due time with Rollo...while he's a tougher nut to crack once you get into his personal life a bit and that's when the cracks start to appear.

Mindstorm said...

I see Alpha-Beta as a scale. On the high SMV (sexual market value) end resides Alpha, on the high MMV (marriage market value) end resides Beta. Omega is low on both counts. MMV has a lot with SES, SMV is rather 'what appeals to women in the short term'. Well, that's my view and I don't intend to force it on anybody else. More elaborate schema serve rather as a basis for name-calling than an attempt at clarification.

Mindstorm said...

Classical 'leaders of men' were usually high on both counts, although some weren't (like Napoleon Bonaparte, for example).

DeNihilist said...

Nope. Me thinks Rollo is actually quite honest in his belief's. He really thinks that women and men are very different creatures, and that women have the upper hand. The stuff he talks about is ancient knowledge (men love romantically, women opportunistically, etc.) that has been covered by the mud of feminism. That is my main quarrel with most of these guys, they are presenting ancient knowledge like it is something they just dug up, and trying to fit this knowledge, masculinity, into their comic book "red pill". If they presented this knowledge truthfully and in proper context, they would be doing good, instead of harm.

GBFM, in his alt reality way, has been pointing to this fact for years. But unfortunately, most men look at the finger, instead of where it is pointing.

Unknown said...

I suppose SMV is desires of the flesh and MMV is more desires of the family. Ideally a man should have good traits for both...but certainly an 'omega' is not fit to run a family or is sexually attractive to women by who he is alone without some trick like altering her mind (alcohol or drugs) or paying for her services.

Anonymous said...


My impression of Rollo Tomassi is that he actually believes what he preaches, but I could be wrong. Successful charlatans typically get the confidence of their mark before the con.

Any man with a decent amount of experience with women and dating would be able to see that what he writes about women and relationships is not consistent with reality.

Most of his audience is probably inexperienced teen boys and young men, and older men that just need to get out more.

Rusty Shackleford said...

"I see Alpha-Beta as a scale. On the high SMV (sexual market value) end resides Alpha, on the high MMV (marriage market value) end resides Beta. Omega is low on both counts. MMV has a lot with SES, SMV is rather 'what appeals to women in the short term'. Well, that's my view and I don't intend to force it on anybody else. More elaborate schema serve rather as a basis for name-calling than an attempt at clarification."

So your minimum definition of an alpha is a charismatic girl getter, and the beta is at least a responsible family man? For the schema to still make sense, it seems like you'd have to reverse their positions in the hierarchy when you rank them in terms of MMV, so that the family man is the alpha and the party boy is beta. Also it seems like there'd be nothing to prevent someone from being an alpha in both categories or an alpha in one and an omega in the other or any other possible combination. Then besides that their is the fact that MMV and SMV are unrelated to the metrics by which men judge other men. The more I think about it the more the whole thing seems like complete bullshit, but if the greek hierarchy is going to stick around it should at least be defined down into something that makes sense. As it is, "alpha" has become a gibberish term thrown out by the deluded that basically means something equivalent to "good" or "cool guy."

Mindstorm said...

Well, Rusty. As I wrote, that's my personal interpretation. Similar to the Left-Right divide. You might be more or less politically engaged and at the same time more or less Left- or Right-wing. Does it make sense? Notice that not everybody fits nicely here either.

Rusty Shackleford said...

" Well, Rusty. As I wrote, that's my personal interpretation. Similar to the Left-Right divide. You might be more or less politically engaged and at the same time more or less Left- or Right-wing. Does it make sense? Notice that not everybody fits nicely here either."

Sure, breaking things into categories of value such as MMV and SMV is actually a reasonable first step. I just think that you could refine your definitions and clean things up a little, and that's where I was going with my last post. Let me expand a little on what I meant.

If you restrict the domain of discussion to picking up girls, it makes sense to call a PUA fun boy an alpha. That designation becomes meaningless when the scope creeps beyond scoring party girls in a nightclub. That's something the manosphere doesn't recognize, and the PUA value system is now being applied to other areas of life that it has no business being in. The Vox Day alphabet, for instance, is beyond moronic and bears no resemblance to life or human behavior as I know it.

When we need to discuss wider areas of experience or value in other categories such as MMV, it becomes ridiculous to call a VD ridden psychopath like Roosh an alpha. At that point we need to redefine value and reshuffle who is the alpha and who is the omega in a given category of value. There could be some people who would be entirely alpha or omega throughout however many categories that you'd care to come up with, but most people would likely have some difference in values between categories.

To call someone SMV alpha/MMV beta as you've defined the terms is a clear description of certain traits for that person. Alpha, beta, etc. as they currently are, are nothing but pejoratives that are useful to the PUA worldview. So does that make sense?


DeNihilist said...

Sales Rusty. By pushing the alpha is a male that scores a lot of tail (sex, which is the base energy of all life), then shaming beta's, the pua community is using the old advertising technique of creating need. By defining it so tightly, they now can claim that if you bang a lot of sluts, then you will automatically be the top dog in all other social situations. As you easily see with your mixed definition, their sales pitch is pure bullshit.

I argue quite a lot with TFH at Dalrock's about this. He thinks that guys like krauser pua give their info away for free. Just go to his site, he says, all the info is there. I cannot get through to him, that the info is only there to make men see him, krauser pua, as the guy who can teach you to get the bitches and become alpha. Of course if you really want to be like krauser pua, you gotta take his boot camps at thousands of dollars. And as I have pointed out many times, krauser pua, has proven that the only technique he has is a thick skin and to keep on approaching until by chance, one of these bimbo's spreads her legs for you.

Shit when I was single I approached maybe 100 girls and banged somewhere in the area of 30 of them.

Hmmm, maybe I should get into this business eh?

Mindstorm said...

It's good to notice that Alpha is not synonymous to 'good', 'noble' or 'pro-social'. In my understanding main characters of books written by Cizia Zykë were archetypal Alphas, but I would rather not trust them anywhere I would not be able to see them all the time :) Think Olympian goods. Willful, powerful and selfish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cizia_Zyk%C3%AB - even his sketched biography here bears the hints of "my way or highway" attitude that is supposed to be Alpha-like.

Mindstorm said...

And to be a PUA means to be good at posturing. Some develop the substance under the facade, but most won't.

Mindstorm said...

^^ Meh, it's Olympic. Foreign language problems again.

Zach said...

Bob, what about the Artisan as a class? Smith/Weaver/Tinker/Cooper/etc.

It seems to me (as part of the Geek class) that what we do is really a glorified trade.

Unknown said...

The Artisans are a class, too, but I forgot about them. And yes, they do appear to be part of Geeks, although, say the ones who rebuild old cars, don't seem to be Geeks.

Mindstorm said...

Geeks are hungry for knowledge, in general and especially in one or more than one its narrow category. To store a large amount of knowledge in your head, you have to use precise and accurate terminology. Think data compression. Vagueness leads to 'poor data compression', metaphorically. That automatically puts geeks at odds with the idea of political correctness, which they regard as ineffective toward its stated goals and moreover, as painfully slow and riddled with data noise mode of communication.

In the past the access to abstract knowledge was more restricted, generally. It often required assuming the mantle of some idiotic secret society like Pythagoreans, for example. That would put a damper on geekiness that doesn't exist any longer. You don't have to be a part of some esoteric cult to self-identify as a geek. Never in past history autodidacts/polymaths had it as easy as now.

Unknown said...

The Day of the Geek is upon us!

Mindstorm said...

I wonder if this model
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.01561v1.pdf
could be modified to reflect Alpha-Beta dynamic, with reproductive access to women as the resource to compete for. Too nerdy, eh?