So my model of most people is: “cute species, physiologically the same as me, but don’t get confused by the superficial similarities, at some level the analogy stops working.”
With most of the population, it is better (although far from perfect) to model them explicitly as—more or less—someone who wants to be smiled at and hates to be contradicted, and that’s all there is. When I follow this simplistic model, my social skills are okay-ish; I still lack scripts for many specific situations. But imagining other people as “me, in a different situation” is a recipe for frustration.
I might be closer to normal people in terms of mental models compared to other people here on LW. Or the people I’m around at school may also be more interesting than average. (Or many other possibilities...)
But the point seems to be that I find that neither of these models tend to match my interpersonal experiences.
To be clear, I think there exists models of abstraction where it might be more convenient to treat people as NPC’s and/or driven by simplified incentives.
For the most part, though, my face-to-face interactions with people has me modeling them as “people with preferences that might be very different from mine, perhaps missing some explicit levels of metacognition, but overall still thinking about the world”.
This doesn’t preclude my ability to have good discussions, I don’t think.
In conversations, I’ll try to focus on shared areas of interest, cultivate a curiosity towards their preferences, or use the whole interaction as an exercise to try and see how far I can bridge the inferential gap towards things I’m interested in. And this ends up working fairly well in practice.
(EX: rationality-type material about motivation seems to be generally of interest to people, and going at it from either the psychology or procrastination angle is a good way to get people hooked.)
I’ve found that people who are “on the clock” so to speak (that is, are at that moment talking with you solely because of a job they’re doing) are almost always easier to interact with when treated as NPCs with a limited script that is traversed mostly like a flowchart.
Police officers pulling you over, wait staff at a restaurant, and phone technical support representatives (to name some examples) are sometimes literally following a script. It can be helpful for both of you to know their script and to follow it yourself.
In conversations, I’ll try to focus on shared areas of interest, cultivate a curiosity towards their preferences, or use the whole interaction as an exercise to try and see how far I can bridge the inferential gap towards things I’m interested in. And this ends up working fairly well in practice.
Yeah, this is pretty much what I do, too. (Well, when I remember to do this.) But “how far I can bridge the inferential gap towards things I’m interested in” usually doesn’t get far before things get rounded to nearest cliche.
The problem is to keep remembering that I cannot say anything “weird”. Which includes almost everything I am interested at. Which includes even the way I look at things other people happen to be also interested about.
As an approximation, when I successfully suppress most of what makes me me, and channel my inner ELIZA, sometimes I even receive feedback on having good social skills. Doing this doesn’t feel emotionally satisfying to me, though.
I might be closer to normal people in terms of mental models compared to other people here on LW. Or the people I’m around at school may also be more interesting than average. (Or many other possibilities...)
But the point seems to be that I find that neither of these models tend to match my interpersonal experiences.
To be clear, I think there exists models of abstraction where it might be more convenient to treat people as NPC’s and/or driven by simplified incentives.
For the most part, though, my face-to-face interactions with people has me modeling them as “people with preferences that might be very different from mine, perhaps missing some explicit levels of metacognition, but overall still thinking about the world”.
This doesn’t preclude my ability to have good discussions, I don’t think.
In conversations, I’ll try to focus on shared areas of interest, cultivate a curiosity towards their preferences, or use the whole interaction as an exercise to try and see how far I can bridge the inferential gap towards things I’m interested in. And this ends up working fairly well in practice.
(EX: rationality-type material about motivation seems to be generally of interest to people, and going at it from either the psychology or procrastination angle is a good way to get people hooked.)
I’ve found that people who are “on the clock” so to speak (that is, are at that moment talking with you solely because of a job they’re doing) are almost always easier to interact with when treated as NPCs with a limited script that is traversed mostly like a flowchart.
Police officers pulling you over, wait staff at a restaurant, and phone technical support representatives (to name some examples) are sometimes literally following a script. It can be helpful for both of you to know their script and to follow it yourself.
Yeah, this is pretty much what I do, too. (Well, when I remember to do this.) But “how far I can bridge the inferential gap towards things I’m interested in” usually doesn’t get far before things get rounded to nearest cliche.
The problem is to keep remembering that I cannot say anything “weird”. Which includes almost everything I am interested at. Which includes even the way I look at things other people happen to be also interested about.
As an approximation, when I successfully suppress most of what makes me me, and channel my inner ELIZA, sometimes I even receive feedback on having good social skills. Doing this doesn’t feel emotionally satisfying to me, though.