[hackerspaces] was: need a hacker should be: how not to make a fool of ourselves and ride us deeper into the hacker/cracker stigma

[Jean de Largentaye]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Chris Weiss <cweiss at gmail.com> wrote:
> I find it impossible that a person would be
> literate and smart enough to figure out how to join a mailing list and
> yet not know that posing such a statement would induce ridicule.
> Allowing myself to think this is possible would completely destroy
> what little faith I have left in humanity's future.

What little faith you have is more than mine :) You know the saying:
"Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by
stupidity".

For evidence, I'll direct you to fark.com, the Darwin Awards, and of
course, Fox News. You can be smart on some things and very very stupid
on others. For example, remember the scandal about the NASA astronaut
trying to kidnap a romantic rival? [1]


That said, little faith in humanity doesn't mean I have lost patience
with it. On the contrary, I try to have infinite patience. One of my
great pleasures is seeing someone understand something I explain to
them. I just try to avoid having any preconceptions about someone's
intelligence and culture. That means I usually start them at the
bottom of the scale. I'm sometimes told I appear arrogant and
condescendent... ;)

[1] first google hit:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/171164/nasa_fires_astronaut_in_love_triangle.html