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May 2021  
  
Most people think of nerds as quiet, diffident people. In ordinary social
situations they are — as quiet and diffident as the star quarterback would be
if he found himself in the middle of a physics symposium. And for the same
reason: they are fish out of water. But the apparent diffidence of nerds is an
illusion due to the fact that when non-nerds observe them, it's usually in
ordinary social situations. In fact some nerds are quite fierce.  
  
The fierce nerds are a small but interesting group. They are as a rule
extremely competitive — more competitive, I'd say, than highly competitive
non-nerds. Competition is more personal for them. Partly perhaps because
they're not emotionally mature enough to distance themselves from it, but also
because there's less randomness in the kinds of competition they engage in,
and they are thus more justified in taking the results personally.  
  
Fierce nerds also tend to be somewhat overconfident, especially when young. It
might seem like it would be a disadvantage to be mistaken about one's
abilities, but empirically it isn't. Up to a point, confidence is a self-
fullfilling prophecy.  
  
Another quality you find in most fierce nerds is intelligence. Not all nerds
are smart, but the fierce ones are always at least moderately so. If they
weren't, they wouldn't have the confidence to be fierce.   
  
There's also a natural connection between nerdiness and _independent-
mindedness_. It's hard to be independent-minded without being somewhat
socially awkward, because conventional beliefs are so often mistaken, or at
least arbitrary. No one who was both independent-minded and ambitious would
want to waste the effort it takes to fit in. And the independent-mindedness of
the fierce nerds will obviously be of the _aggressive_ rather than the passive
type: they'll be annoyed by rules, rather than dreamily unaware of them.  
  
I'm less sure why fierce nerds are impatient, but most seem to be. You notice
it first in conversation, where they tend to interrupt you. This is merely
annoying, but in the more promising fierce nerds it's connected to a deeper
impatience about solving problems. Perhaps the competitiveness and impatience
of fierce nerds are not separate qualities, but two manifestations of a single
underlying drivenness.  
  
When you combine all these qualities in sufficient quantities, the result is
quite formidable. The most vivid example of fierce nerds in action may be
James Watson's _The Double Helix_. The first sentence of the book is "I have
never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood," and the portrait he goes on to
paint of Crick is the quintessential fierce nerd: brilliant, socially awkward,
competitive, independent-minded, overconfident. But so is the implicit
portrait he paints of himself. Indeed, his lack of social awareness makes both
portraits that much more realistic, because he baldly states all sorts of
opinions and motivations that a smoother person would conceal. And moreover
it's clear from the story that Crick and Watson's fierce nerdiness was
integral to their success. Their independent-mindedness caused them to
consider approaches that most others ignored, their overconfidence allowed
them to work on problems they only half understood (they were literally
described as "clowns" by one eminent insider), and their impatience and
competitiveness got them to the answer ahead of two other groups that would
otherwise have found it within the next year, if not the next several months.
  
  
The idea that there could be fierce nerds is an unfamiliar one not just to
many normal people but even to some young nerds. Especially early on, nerds
spend so much of their time in ordinary social situations and so little doing
real work that they get a lot more evidence of their awkwardness than their
power. So there will be some who read this description of the fierce nerd and
realize "Hmm, that's me." And it is to you, young fierce nerd, that I now
turn.  
  
I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that your
fierceness will be a great help in solving difficult problems. And not just
the kind of scientific and technical problems that nerds have traditionally
solved. As the world progresses, the number of things you can win at by
getting the right answer increases. Recently _getting rich_ became one of
them: 7 of the 8 richest people in America are now fierce nerds.  
  
Indeed, being a fierce nerd is probably even more helpful in business than in
nerds' original territory of scholarship. Fierceness seems optional there.
Darwin for example doesn't seem to have been especially fierce. Whereas it's
impossible to be the CEO of a company over a certain size without being
fierce, so now that nerds can win at business, fierce nerds will increasingly
monopolize the really big successes.  
  
The bad news is that if it's not exercised, your fierceness will turn to
bitterness, and you will become an intellectual playground bully: the grumpy
sysadmin, the forum troll, the _hater_, the shooter down of _new ideas_.  
  
How do you avoid this fate? Work on ambitious projects. If you succeed, it
will bring you a kind of satisfaction that neutralizes bitterness. But you
don't need to have succeeded to feel this; merely working on hard projects
gives most fierce nerds some feeling of satisfaction. And those it doesn't, it
at least keeps busy.   
  
Another solution may be to somehow turn off your fierceness, by devoting
yourself to meditation or psychotherapy or something like that. Maybe that's
the right answer for some people. I have no idea. But it doesn't seem the
optimal solution to me. If you're given a sharp knife, it seems to me better
to use it than to blunt its edge to avoid cutting yourself.  
  
If you do choose the ambitious route, you'll have a tailwind behind you. There
has never been a better time to be a nerd. In the past century we've seen a
continuous transfer of power from dealmakers to technicians — from the
charismatic to the competent — and I don't see anything on the horizon that
will end it. At least not till the nerds end it themselves by bringing about
the singularity.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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