From Nerds to Icons

People are strange, prosaic, and chaotic, one might add. They are an ordered chaos of biological systems mixed with spirituality and hoovered over by traumas or vice versa. Yesterday, I mentioned the nerds, and although I have never been into the tech side, I have been a full-blown nerd since memory reaches.

What makes us prefer the company of books, comics, games and animals? At a neurological and emotional level, we find them more interesting, motivating, or comforting.

From my 7th birthday, until I turned 12, my mother would orchestrate elaborately themed parties without asking what I wanted. Children showed up out of perverse curiosity—to peek inside our mansion, to see how “these weirdos” (understand mother biked with gloves and a head) lived. I instructed each guest to bring me a “boekenbon” (book voucher). While they came for the spectacle, I collected my rectangular escapes, each voucher a ticket away from the chaos of childhood politics and into worlds where even villains made sense.

Figuring out the formula behind such preferences yields many possibilities. Yet, crazy enough, we are closer to mining asteroids than to being cohesive with our fellow humans.

The 0.2 Second Connection

The number 0.2 is a magic number in human cognition; it is the threshold at which we perceive a response as instantaneous. For nerds, this immediate feedback loop creates a comfort zone that human interaction, with all its unpredictability, rarely matches.

Two Kinds of Excellence

Consider two figures who seem worlds apart: Rod Brind’Amour and Peter Thiel.

Brind’Amour, one of ice hockey’s greatest leaders, built his legacy through relentless work ethic on and off the ice. His two-way game and coaching philosophy of discipline left an indelible mark on the sport.

Peter Thiel, worth billions and regarded as one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures, built his legacy through bold risk-taking, intellectual rigour, and challenging conventional norms.

Both mastered split-second decisions. For Brind’Amour, that 0.2-second window meant the difference between scoring and missing. For Thiel, it meant seeing investment opportunities moments before others.

Symbols of Admiration

Hockey fans honour Brind’Amour by choosing his number, 71, creating a physical community connected through a shared numerical tribute.

For Thiel, there’s no equivalent symbol. His admirers read “Zero to One,” adopt his investment philosophies, and attend his lectures. The fandom exists, but it’s expressed intellectually rather than symbolically.

This distinction speaks volumes about human connection. We need tangible symbols to rally around physical achievement, while ideas spread without concrete markers.

From Social Status to Social Credit

Both figures navigated the world of motivation differently. Brind’Amour channelled emotion into physical discipline, earning respect through visible effort. Thiel operated in the realm of intellectual motivation, betting against conventional wisdom and winning. His currency became actual currency—billions that validated his contrarian perspectives.

In our modern world, these different forms of social credit are increasingly blurring. Traditional respect earned through physical prowess now competes with digital social credit of likes, follows, and financial success.

The Random Channel

What connects these seemingly disparate figures is their ability to impose order on chaos and to find patterns where others see randomness. Like an online service called TV Garden, which somehow streams channels from all over the world on a single website — you pick a country, and off you go down your preferred rabbit hole.

My favourite might be the Random Channel feature, 

Some choose sports’ structured randomness, others the intellectual challenges of technology. This diversity isn’t a bug but a feature—it allows our species to explore multiple domains simultaneously.

Yet for all our advances, we still struggle with the fundamental challenge of human connection. We can predict the trajectory of an asteroid with greater accuracy than we can predict a conversation with our neighbour.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S. As we continue mining physical and intellectual asteroids, perhaps we should remember that the greatest unexplored frontier remains right beside us—the mysterious and magical inner workings of our fellow humans, strange and chaotic as they may be.

P.P.S.

When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name

When you’re strange
When you’re strange
When you’re strange