I’m not sure that being a rationalist gives you a significant advantage in interpersonal relationships. A lot of our brain seems to be specifically designed for social interactions; trying to use the rational part of your brain to do social interactions is like using a CPU chip to do graphics instead of a GPU; you can do it, but it’ll be slower and less efficient and effective then using the hardware that’s designed for that.
Perhaps the slow thinking could be used later at home to review the social interactions of the day. It will not directly help to fix the problems caused by quick wrong reactions, but it could help discover some strategical problems.
For example: You are failing to have a good relation with this specific person, but maybe it’s just the person randomly disliking you, or the person remembering your past errors which you have already fixed. Try spending some time with other people and notice whether their reactions are different.
More obvious, but less frequent example: This person seems to like you and invites your to their cult. Be careful!
Yeah, that’s very true; I’m not claiming that rational thought is useless for social interaction, it is good to sometimes stop and think about your social interactions on your own when you have some downtime.
That being said, there are downsides as well. If you’re using rational thought instead of the social parts of your brain to decide how to react to social situations, you will tend to react differently. Not that you’re wrong, or irrational, but you just won’t respond to social cues in the way people expect, and that itself might give you a disadvantage.
Thinking about this, it is actually reminding me of the behavior of a friend of mine who has a form of high-functioning autism; she’s very smart, but she reacts quite differently in social situations then most people would expect. Perhaps that is basically what she is doing.
I’m not sure that being a rationalist gives you a significant advantage in interpersonal relationships. A lot of our brain seems to be specifically designed for social interactions; trying to use the rational part of your brain to do social interactions is like using a CPU chip to do graphics instead of a GPU; you can do it, but it’ll be slower and less efficient and effective then using the hardware that’s designed for that.
Perhaps the slow thinking could be used later at home to review the social interactions of the day. It will not directly help to fix the problems caused by quick wrong reactions, but it could help discover some strategical problems.
For example: You are failing to have a good relation with this specific person, but maybe it’s just the person randomly disliking you, or the person remembering your past errors which you have already fixed. Try spending some time with other people and notice whether their reactions are different.
More obvious, but less frequent example: This person seems to like you and invites your to their cult. Be careful!
Yeah, that’s very true; I’m not claiming that rational thought is useless for social interaction, it is good to sometimes stop and think about your social interactions on your own when you have some downtime.
That being said, there are downsides as well. If you’re using rational thought instead of the social parts of your brain to decide how to react to social situations, you will tend to react differently. Not that you’re wrong, or irrational, but you just won’t respond to social cues in the way people expect, and that itself might give you a disadvantage.
Thinking about this, it is actually reminding me of the behavior of a friend of mine who has a form of high-functioning autism; she’s very smart, but she reacts quite differently in social situations then most people would expect. Perhaps that is basically what she is doing.