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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="appendixb.html" title="Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker"/><link rel="previous" href="personality.html" title="Personality Characteristics"/><link rel="next" href="miscellaneous.html" title="Miscellaneous"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="personality.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="miscellaneous.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><div class="sect1" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="weaknesses"/>Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality</h2></div></div><div/></div><p>Hackers have relatively little ability to identify emotionally with
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other people. This may be because hackers generally aren't much like
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‘other people’. Unsurprisingly, hackers also tend towards
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self-absorption, intellectual arrogance, and impatience with people and tasks
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perceived to be wasting their time.</p><p>As cynical as hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the
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world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational,
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‘cool’, and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias
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often contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be
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especially poor at confrontation and negotiation. </p><p>Another weakness of the hacker personality is a perverse tendancy to
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attack all problems from the most technically complicated angle, just because
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it may mean more interesting problems to solve, or cooler toys to play with.
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Hackers sometimes have trouble grokking that the bubble gum and paperclip
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hardware fix is actually the way to go, and that they really don't need to
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convince the client to buy that shiny new tool they've had your eye on for two
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months.</p><p>Because of their passionate embrace of (what they consider to be) the
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<a href="R/Right-Thing.html"><i class="glossterm">Right Thing</i></a>, hackers can be unfortunately intolerant
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and bigoted on technical issues, in marked contrast to their general spirit of
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camaraderie and tolerance of alternative viewpoints otherwise. Old-time
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<a href="I/ITS.html"><i class="glossterm">ITS</i></a> partisans look down on the ever-growing hordes of
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<a href="U/Unix.html"><i class="glossterm">Unix</i></a> and <a href="L/Linux.html"><i class="glossterm">Linux</i></a> hackers; Unix
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aficionados despise <a href="V/VMS.html"><i class="glossterm">VMS</i></a> and Windows; and hackers who
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are used to conventional command-line user interfaces loudly loathe
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mouse-and-menu based systems such as the Macintosh. Hackers who don't indulge
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in <a href="U/Usenet.html"><i class="glossterm">Usenet</i></a> consider it a huge waste of time and
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<a href="B/bandwidth.html"><i class="glossterm">bandwidth</i></a>; fans of old adventure games such as
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<a href="A/ADVENT.html"><i class="glossterm">ADVENT</i></a> and <a href="Z/Zork.html"><i class="glossterm">Zork</i></a> consider
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<a href="M/MUD.html"><i class="glossterm">MUD</i></a>s to be glorified chat systems devoid of atmosphere
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or interesting puzzles; hackers who are willing to devote endless hours to
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Usenet or MUDs consider <a href="I/IRC.html"><i class="glossterm">IRC</i></a> to be a
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<span class="emphasis"><em>real</em></span> waste of time; IRCies think MUDs might be okay if
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there weren't all those silly puzzles in the way. And, of course, there are
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the perennial <a href="H/holy-wars.html"><i class="glossterm">holy wars</i></a> —
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<a href="E/EMACS.html"><i class="glossterm">EMACS</i></a> vs. <a href="V/vi.html"><i class="glossterm">vi</i></a>,
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<a href="B/big-endian.html"><i class="glossterm">big-endian</i></a> vs. <a href="L/little-endian.html"><i class="glossterm">little-endian</i></a>,
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RISC vs. CISC, etc., etc., etc. As in society at large, the intensity and
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duration of these debates is usually inversely proportional to the number of
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objective, factual arguments available to buttress any position.</p><p>As a result of all the above traits, many hackers have difficulty
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maintaining stable relationships. At worst, they can produce the classic
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<a href="G/geek.html"><i class="glossterm">geek</i></a>: withdrawn, relationally incompetent, sexually
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frustrated, and desperately unhappy when not submerged in his or her craft.
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Fortunately, this extreme is far less common than mainstream folklore paints
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it — but almost all hackers will recognize something of themselves in
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the unflattering paragraphs above.</p><p>Hackers are often monumentally disorganized and sloppy about dealing
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with the physical world. Bills don't get paid on time, clutter piles up to
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incredible heights in homes and offices, and minor maintenance tasks get
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deferred indefinitely.</p><p>1994-95's fad behavioral disease was a syndrome called Attention Deficit
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Disorder (ADD), supposedly characterized by (among other things) a combination
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of short attention span with an ability to ‘hyperfocus’
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imaginatively on interesting tasks. In 1998-1999 another syndrome that is
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said to overlap with many hacker traits entered popular awareness: Asperger's
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syndrome (AS). This disorder is also sometimes called ‘high-function
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autism’, though researchers are divided on whether AS is in fact a mild
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form of autism or a distinct syndrome with a different etiology. AS patients
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exhibit mild to severe deficits in interpreting facial and body-language cues
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and in modeling or empathizing with others' emotions. Though some AS patients
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exhibit mild retardation, others compensate for their deficits with high
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intelligence and analytical ability, and frequently seek out technical fields
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where problem-solving abilities are at a premium and people skills are
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relatively unimportant. Both syndromes are thought to relate to abnormalities
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in neurotransmitter chemistry, especially the brain's processing of
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serotonin.</p><p>Many hackers have noticed that mainstream culture has shown a tendency
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to pathologize and medicalize normal variations in personality, especially
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those variations that make life more complicated for authority figures and
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conformists. Thus, hackers aware of the issue tend to be among those
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questioning whether ADD and AS actually exist; and if so whether they are
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really ‘diseases’ rather than extremes of a normal genetic
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variation like having freckles or being able to taste DPT. In either case,
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they have a sneaking tendency to wonder if these syndromes are over-diagnosed
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and over-treated. After all, people in authority will always be
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inconvenienced by schoolchildren or workers or citizens who are prickly,
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intelligent individualists — thus, any social system that depends on
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authority relationships will tend to helpfully ostracize and therapize and
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drug such ‘abnormal’ people until they are properly docile and
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stupid and ‘well-socialized’.</p><p>So hackers tend to believe they have good reason for skepticism about
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clinical explanations of the hacker personality. That being said, most would
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also concede that some hacker traits coincide with indicators for
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non-hyperactive ADD and AS — the status of caffeine as a hacker beverage of
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choice may be connected to the fact that it bonds to the same neural receptors
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as Ritalin, the drug most commonly prescribed for ADD. It is probably true
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that boosters of both would find a rather higher rate of clinical ADD among
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hackers than the supposedly mainstream-normal 3-5% (AS is rarer at
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0.4-0.5%).</p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="personality.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="appendixb.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="miscellaneous.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Personality Characteristics </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Miscellaneous</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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