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Facebook guy is an ass and needs to go back to college

By omnibrain on March 28, 2007.

i-3aeb8bea3c038a5004d387394cc46bdb-bw_markzuckberg.jpgIt seems that college dropout of Facebook fame, Mark Zuckererg, may need to go back to college and take some psychology courses to learn something about aging and intelligence.

According to VentureBeat, Zuckerberg told attendees at the Y Combinator Startup School event at Stanford this weekend that old people (you know, over 30), are just well, a little slow.

"I want to stress the importance of being young and technical," he stated, adding that successful start-ups should only employ young people with technical expertise. (Zuckerberg also apparently missed the class on employment and discrimination law.)

"Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked. "I don't know...Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family."

Here's the cnet story.

I might log in to find my facebook account suspended now...

Tags
Culture Wars
Psychology
Stupid People

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Maybe it's intentional, but that business week cover picture is actually of Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com.

I don't know if I'd really disagree with that comment if it was intended as a sort of half-truth, half tongue-in-cheek. Technology moves fast enough to give younger people a pretty significant advantage in certain fields - such as getting filthy rich on a stupid web site. And it is true they're more likely to be free of certain obligations that sap their time and energy.

But then, in my field (physics), an upstart graduate student like me is pretty worthless, since it takes half a lifetime just to learn the basics of the field.

Decades of knowledge will beat a slightly greater working memory span any day. There's a reason young pilots fly commuter jets and older pilots fly the 777.

I'm pretty sure he's wrong about chess as well.

His statement is one that disproves itself. Is there a name for that?

I think this is a case of selective editing. What he actually said was:

"Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family. Or a girlfriend--or any friends at all, come to think of it.

We don't have to do laundry or cooking 'cause mom does that for me ... I mean us. Our only contact with humanity is via badly-designed, ugly webpages on "social networking" sites where everyone pretends to be more interesting than they really are.

So we've got a lot of time and love for our computers ... that's all I'm saying."

Yeah, Mark, there is a word for that. It's called "tragedy."

Grace Unto You And Peace,
Reader,

Some thoughts came to mind...

When you are young you have a great deal of unused brain connections to waste learning "stuff."

When you are young you make mistakes [binge drinking in college; crystal meth in the farmlands; smoking in both areas as well as the burbs in the middle.].

Yet...remember John Nash Junior of "A Beautiful Mind?" While in college, he looked for the "break through" idea.

So you have experimentation in youth and the accidental discovery of innovation as well as the planned discovery of innovation.

What happens in older people? Some ossify...turn into intellectual stone and do not "give." A minority continue to discover innovations.

What is the difference between these two blocks of people?

Hint? Their personality! A type of personality...the INFJ...is inordinately responsible for innovation whether that innovation occurs in business or in physics or in social life. Yes Yes, Mohandas Gandhi was an INFJ.

So instead of condemning this person for being this and that person for being that, why not take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or a reasonable twin and fun-fill as well as fulfill what your personality suggests for a field of endeavor.

Agape, kiitos, shalom, ja Xie Xie,

Don as "Tauno"