"We work in a sort of strange field where intelligence and ability are highly prized, but some of these same qualities made some of us victims of aggression and abuse earlier in life."
You USA-nians really have to work on changing your high school culture. Statements like this are so frequent yet so foreign to me... why is aggression and abuse frequent? Why is it tolerated? Why is it aimed towards those with "intelligence and ability"? Why don't you work on changing your society once you grow up? women rights, end of racial segregation, etc. prove that you can change the society you live in in a relatively short period of time. Why you all complain but don't try to change it?
Excel is really, really bad at what it does. It won because of Microsoft's former monopolistic position. Lotus was much better. Most of the heaviest users of spreadsheets just build their own internal "corporate" spreadsheet program.
Better-read with good probability, better-educated with good probability. But no specific reason for them to be more intelligent, because there is no process to make that especially likely.
It is a job one gets by deciding to do it, sticking to it, paying one's dues over a long period, cultivating connections, building a personal brand. Like so many other jobs...
Professors should be respected in direct proportion to their actually demonstrated knowledge, and only in the fields where that knowledge has been demonstrated... other than this we should not respect them more than teachers of high school or elementary school, who usually have greater expertise and dedication in teaching.
This is exactly the reason I have been drawn to HN. Being around people that are smarter than you is great motivation to increase your own knowledge. I only wish I could've been exposed to groups of similarly well-read and knowledgable people at an earlier age.
This is also the reason why good universities seem so attractive to a special kind of people -- they gather people with similar traits to theirs, and makes them focus on their common goal, that is, advancing their knowledge.
Nowadays, there are some really excellent textbooks, so that with enough effort, everyone can learn CS or Math himself, and with some funds also Physics, Chemistry etc. Unfortunately you cannot talk and share ideas with books.
