An 'expert' and an 'intellectual' are different things. As a gathering of experts on startup and tech-related topics, HN is unmatched; people are very nice and volunteer lots of information. This is perhaps the upside of "nerdy" that Matt did not mention in his article. But I agree with him that HN is not intellectual. When the topic of discussion is beyond the expertise of almost anyone, the only way to make progress is to apply a certain amount of intellectualism -- to be tentative, questioning, critical, contemplative, nuanced. For a definition of intellect, I have always relied on Richard Hofstadter's formula, in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life:
Intellect [...] is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines. Intelligence will seize the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it. Intellect evaluates evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole. Intelligence can be praised as a quality in animals; intellect, being a unique manifestation of human dignity, is both praised and assailed as a quality in men. (Chapter 2, Section 1)
>> As a gathering of experts on startup and tech-related topics, HN is unmatched
Agreed. When people say co-founding is like a marriage, I think it's not much of a stretch to say that start-ups and hacking in general are a way of life. That's why I worded it as "lifestyle discussions".
One could say that intellectuals are similar to hackers in that both take interest in nuances of complex things, but imo, hacker culture is more individualistic ("let me do my thing") whereas intellectualism is more of conversational ("hey, here's another thing to ponder").
Point taken. Hackers are nuanced when it comes to their expertise, so nuance is not really the difference between hackers and intellectuals. If pressed I'd say that the hacking trait is biased toward exploiting knowledge, whereas the intellectual trait is biased toward understanding (or integrating knowledge, if you will). The ideal hacker is also an intellectual generalist, but really all you need to be a hacker is some expertise. Outside of that expertise, the typical hacker either avoids having opinions, or has prefabbed ones -- they aren't very different than the general population.
Intellect [...] is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines. Intelligence will seize the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it. Intellect evaluates evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole. Intelligence can be praised as a quality in animals; intellect, being a unique manifestation of human dignity, is both praised and assailed as a quality in men. (Chapter 2, Section 1)