Comments on: Nerd Girls

By: sciencegeekgirl » Flirt harder. I’m a physicist

sciencegeekgirl » Flirt harder. I’m a physicist — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:14:37 +0000

[...] states of smart & sexy? This was in response to the 81 (and counting!!) varied comments on Phil Plait’s posting about Nerd Girls. Jennifer says: Phil Plait is taking some heat from commenters over at Bad Astronomy after posting [...]

By: Zygar

Zygar — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:55:01 +0000

“And if it gets men to think of women as other than just sexual objects, then that’s a good thing.”

From the way you made that “point” it seems like you’re having trouble doing that yourself, Phil.

By: Oded

Oded — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:33:23 +0000

I’d like to discuss a bit these proclaimed “nerd girls”, specifically the “nerd” part…
I might just be arguing terminology, but to me, “nerd” means “socially inept”, or in that general direction. More specifically, inept in “real life” social activities, the kind that involve body language, etc.
Being a nerd is not the same as being smart, though they are usually correlated…

Above comment here said:
“I agree with you that intelligence and physical attractiveness are not mutually exclusive. They also aren’t related, however.”

Absolutely agree. However, I think: being a nerd is positively correlated with being smart, and negatively correlated with being attractive. The reason for this is that attractiveness causes social skills, because of rare outcasting, and frequent social approaches. This is why, I take it for very low chance that any of the attractive girls in this website are truly nerds.

The post talked about the stereotype of “pretty women aren’t smart” – this is of course a false stereotype, BUT, there is a lot of truth to “pretty women aren’t nerds”.

Of course, you can consider all this just a terminology issue and include “nerds” as anyone inclined to technical and scientific worlds.

BTW, this might be a cultural/country thing, this blog post seemed to be very concerned with hot women being objectified as dumb and not taken seriously – I must say, this is the case NOT the case where I live (Israel). I don’t think there is any significant stereotype here correlating sex/beauty and intelligence…

Another note regarding sex and intelligence – I hold the belief that on average women are as smart as men, but that women have a much narrower intelligence bell curve than men do – meaning, there are a lot more men idiots and men geniuses, where as most women just fall average. I don’t have any firm evidence to back this beside my own personal experience, so I am certainly open to refute…

By: Alexziller

Alexziller — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:30:13 +0000

Pieter,
thank you for your answer.
I probably expressed my thoughts in a bad way. With “people here” I was referring to the mainstream “average” people and not to specific persons who leave comments here. I apologize for unintentional “lack of fairness”. Nevertheless I think it is right to question about the meaning of “being smart” and nobody did it so far.
Of course everything depends also on the meaning we give to the words, and this is also influenced by the mainstream way of thinking. For me “beautiful mind” has a positive meaning, because I put more worth on Prof. Nash being genious than beeing sick.
I don’t like to reduce intelligence to functional intelligence which act within schemes, I prefer the broadest possible version of the smart attribute, including cross-thinking and creativity. For example, take the difference (which for sure you know better than me) between building a new theory and just solving equations, or between “engineering” circuits or discovering the transistor. One can impress people by quickly solving equations and “they” think he/she is “smart” because “fast” is “smart”. But just solving within schemes or predefined frameworks, no matter how fast, for me is less worth than being able to disrupte such schemes and create something really innovative: intelligence should have more to do with creativity and indipendent way of thinking. Take Einstein, he was known for being a slow thinker. (http://www.time.com/time/2007/einstein/1.html)
But don’t get me wrong, I am not saying everybody should be a genious which is quite ridiculous of course. I am just saying, let´s take as models big thinkers and real innovators instead of “nerds”.
best, AZ

By: Pieter Kok

Pieter Kok — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:07:43 +0000

Alex, I do not think you are being fair in your appraisal of how other commenters here interpret “smart”. I think most of us consider the broad version of smart; what you call a “beautiful mind” (although I always think that is a eufemism for the mentally insane…).

By: Alexziller

Alexziller — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 08:45:14 +0000

people here are focused on “being smart” as a very valuable thing in life. Fine.
I prefer other attributes like “intellectual”, “brilliant”, “beautiful mind”, which for me means something more than math and keyboard skills. It means making use of intelligence at different levels and cross-thinking capabilities among the several dimensions of life. It also implies willingness and courage in life. It doesn’t necessarily implies a PhD.

Nowadays “Beautiful minds” are more rare than “smart people” but very probably they are equally distributed among women and men. In the past they appeared in different sectors (and in science almost only men) mainly due to historical and sociological reason. Nowadays there are female BMs in science, business and politics.
I also think, BMs (both women and men) are very attractive by definition. It simply has to do with beauty, real beauty.

justmy2cents,
Alex

By: curious

curious — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:11:07 +0000

another nod to Andy’s comment.

for the most part, i really enjoy this blog. and then every once in awhile, i have to wince when the BA introduces some skeptic gal with a helpful aside about her physical attractiveness. because obviously we can’t judge a woman’s thinking unless we know whether she’s hot or not, right guys?

PLEASE reconsider this habit.