just plain bored with having nothing to say but the same small talk everyone else is making.
this is indicative that you are paying attention to the topic/words of the conversation, rather than the sub-communication, which is often the interesting bit for these kinds of conversations. People who can’t read social cues and sub-communication typically don’t get why others find small talk so “interesting”, but this is rather like a radio that sends the carrier wave rather than the signal to the loudspeaker. The topics are just there as a “carrier wave” which is then modulated to encode social signals.
Sub-communication includes agreement/disagreement (someone agrees with you to signal alliance, disagrees to signal enmity), tone of voice (tone that rises towards the end of the sentence indicates submission, tone that falls towards the end conflict/assertiveness/dominance), body language, who gets to talk most/who listens most. Once you tune your radio in, you may find such occasions more exciting.
Tuning in to the carrier wave in social situations is a common failure mode for smart people, because we feel comfortable assessing factual statements.
Once you tune your radio in, you may find such occasions more exciting.
For me, understanding “what’s really going on” in typical social interactions made them even less interesting than when I didn’t. At least back then it was a big mystery to be solved. Now I just think, what a big waste of brain cells.
Roko, do you personally find these status and alliance games interesting? Why? I mean, if you play them really well, you’ll end up with lots of allies and high status among your friends and acquaintances, but what does that matter in the larger scheme of things? And what do you think of the idea that allies and status were much more important in our EEA (i.e., tribal societies) than today, and as a result we are biased to overestimate their importance?
but what does that matter in the larger scheme of things?
Well, that depends upon your axiology.
If you are concerned with existential risk, then it is worth noting that the movement has an undersupply of “people people”, a big gender imbalance and an undersupply of money. (I think that ability to make money is determined, to some extent, by your ability at these social games)
You may feel that status within a social group is an end in itself.
If you are concerned with academic learning, discovering new mathematics/philosophy, then getting better at these social games is probably not so important.
I mean, if you play them really well, you’ll end up with lots of allies and high status among your friends and acquaintances, but what does that matter in the larger scheme of things? And what do you think of the idea that allies and status were much more important in our EEA (i.e., tribal societies) than today, and as a result we are biased to overestimate their importance?
Their importance is a function of our values, which came from the EEA and are not so easily changed. Those values, like wanting friendship, community, relationships, and respect, are a part of what make us human.
I actually don’t interpret social interactions as “status and alliance games,” which is kind of cynical and seems to miss the point. Instead, I try to recognize that people have certain emotional requirements that need to be met in order to gain their trust, friendship, and attraction, and that typical social interactions are about building that type of trust and connection.
Most of what we call values seem to respond to arguments, so they’re not really the kind of fixed values that a utility maximizer would have. I would be wary about calling some cognitive feature “values that came from the EEA and are not easily changed”. Given the right argument or insight, they probably can be changed.
So, granted that it’s human to want friendship, community, etc., I’m still curious whether it’s also human to care less about these things after realizing that they boil down to status and alliance games, and that the outcomes of these games don’t count for much in the larger scheme of things.
So, granted that it’s human to want friendship, community, etc., I’m still curious whether it’s also human to care less about these things after realizing that they boil down to status and alliance games, and that the outcomes of these games don’t count for much in the larger scheme of things.
Well, is it also human to stop desiring tasty food once you realize that it boils down to super-stimulation of hardware that evolved as a device for impromptu chemical analysis to sort out nutritionally adequate stuff from the rest?
As for the “larger scheme of things,” that’s one of those emotionally-appealing sweeping arguments that can be applied to literally anything to make it seem pointless and unworthy of effort. Selectively applying it is a common human bias. (In fact, I’d say it’s a powerful general technique for producing biased argumentation.)
Well, is it also human to stop desiring tasty food once you realize that it boils down to super-stimulation of hardware that evolved as a device for impromptu chemical analysis to sort out nutritionally adequate stuff from the rest?
Not to stop desiring it entirely, but to care less about it than if I didn’t realize, yes. (I only have a sample size of one here, namely myself, so I’m curious if others have the same experience.)
As for the “larger scheme of things,” that’s one of those emotionally-appealing sweeping arguments that can be applied to literally anything to make it seem pointless and unworthy of effort. Selectively applying it is a common human bias. (In fact, I’d say it’s a powerful general technique for producing biased argumentation.)
I don’t think I’m applying it selectively… we’re human and we can only talk about one thing at a time, but other than that I think I do realize that this is a general argument that can be applied to all of our values. It doesn’t seem to affect all of them equally though. Some values, such as wanting to be immortal, and wanting to understand the nature of reality, consciousness, etc., seem to survive the argument much better than others. :)
I think I do realize that this is a general argument that can be applied to all of our values. It doesn’t seem to affect all of them equally though. Some values, such as wanting to be immortal, and wanting to understand the nature of reality, consciousness, etc., seem to survive the argument much better than others. :)
Honestly, I don’t see what you’re basing that conclusion on. What, according to you, determines which human values survive that argument and which not?
Honestly, I don’t see what you’re basing that conclusion on.
I’m surprised that you find the conclusion surprising or controversial. (The conclusion being that some some values survive the “larger scheme of things” argument much better than others.) I know that you wrote earlier:
As for the “larger scheme of things,” that’s one of those emotionally-appealing sweeping arguments that can be applied to literally anything to make it seem pointless and unworthy of effort.
but I didn’t think those words reflected your actual beliefs (I thought you just weren’t paying enough attention to what you were writing). Do you really think that people like me, who do not think that literally everything is pointless and unworthy of effort, have just avoided applying the argument to some of our values?
What, according to you, determines which human values survive that argument and which not?
It seems obvious to me that some values (e.g., avoiding great pain) survive the argument by being hardwired to not respond to any arguments, while others (saving humanity so we can develop an intergalactic civilization, or being the first person in an eventually intergalactic civilization to really understand how decisions are supposed to be made) are grand enough that “larger scheme of things” just don’t apply. (I’m not totally sure I’m interpreting your question correctly, so let me know if that doesn’t answer it.)
Do you really think that people like me, who do not think that literally everything is pointless and unworthy of effort, have just avoided applying the argument to some of our values?
As the only logical possibilities, it’s either that, or you have thought about it and concluded that the argument is not applicable to some values. I don’t find the reasons for this conclusion obvious, and I do see many selective applications of this argument as a common bias in practice, which is why I asked.
It seems obvious to me that some values (e.g., avoiding great pain) survive the argument by being hardwired to not respond to any arguments, while others (saving humanity so we can develop an intergalactic civilization, or being the first person in an eventually intergalactic civilization to really understand how decisions are supposed to be made) are grand enough that “larger scheme of things” just don’t apply. (I’m not totally sure I’m interpreting your question correctly, so let me know if that doesn’t answer it.)
Yes, that answers my question, thanks. I do have disagreements with your conclusion, but I grant that you are not committing the above mentioned fallacy outright.
In particular, my objections are that: (1) for many people, social isolation and lack of status is in fact a hardwired source of great pain (though this may not apply to you, so there is no disagreement here if you’re not making claims about other people), (2) I find the future large-scale developments you speculate about highly unlikely, even assuming technology won’t be the limiting factor, and finally (3) even an intergalactic civilization will matter nothing in the “larger scheme of things” assuming the eventual heat death of the universe. But each of these, except perhaps (1), would be a complex topic for a whole another discussion, so I think we can leave our disagreements rest at this point now that we’ve clarified them.
Agreed: this is an instance of the Godshatter concept
Instead, I try to recognize that people have certain emotional requirements that need to be met in order to gain their trust, friendship, and attraction, and that typical social interactions are about building that type of trust and connection.
What makes the desire to obtain high status within some small group a legitimate piece of Godshatter (good), as opposed to a kind of scope insensitivity (bad)? Or to put it another way, why isn’t scope insensitivity (the non-linear way that a typical human being values other people’s suffering) also considered Godshatter?
Voted up as this is an important and general question about converting human intuitions into a formal utility function.
What makes the desire to obtain high status within some small group a legitimate piece of Godshatter (good), as opposed to a kind of scope insensitivity (bad)?
Do we have a general criterion for deciding these things? Or is it still unresolved in general?
In this specific case, it seems to me that there are many aspects of social interaction that are zero-sum or even negative sum. For the purpose of Coherent Extrapolated Volition, zero sum or negative sum elements are like scope insensitivity, i.e. bad.
There are clearly some social status games that are positive sum.
Do we have a general criterion for deciding these things? Or is it still unresolved in general?
I think it’s unresolved in general. I brought up scope insensitivity as a counter-example to the “Godshatter” argument, or at least a strong form of it which says we should keep all of the values that evolution has handed down to us. It seems likely that we shouldn’t, but exactly where to draw the line is unclear to me. Still, to me, desire for high status in some small group seems to be the same kind of “crazy” value as scope insensitivity.
In this specific case, it seems to me that there are many aspects of social interaction that are zero-sum or even negative sum. For the purpose of Coherent Extrapolated Volition, zero sum or negative sum elements are like scope insensitivity, i.e. bad.
I wasn’t talking about CEV, I was mainly talking about what you or I should value, now, as individuals. I’m not sure that positive-sum/zero-sum has much to do with that.
Deciding which psychological drives to keep, and which to abandon, is the same as figuring out full formal preference (assuming you have more expressive power than just keeping/abandoning), so there is no heuristic for doing that simpler than full formal preference. This problem isn’t just unresolved, it’s almost FAI-complete (preference theory, as opposed to efficient implementation).
Status should be about gaining allies and mates, correct? Just as charity is about helping people.
Gaining more allies and mates (especially for a male) should be better than gaining fewer agreed? If so, why do maths professors spend so much time and effort trying to gain status in the small world of maths? They would be better off appealing to the lowest common denominator and using their intellect to wow people in something more accessible.
Now I just think, what a big waste of brain cells.
However, that’s not how human brains work. It’s not like someone who on an average day spends, say, eight hours doing intellectual work and four hours socializing could do 50% more useful intellectual work by spending 12 hours working instead of socializing. For the overwhelming majority of people, it’s impossible to employ their brains productively for more than a few hours a day. You get tired and lose focus to the point where you’re just making a mess instead of progress.
Similarly, if you develop skills independent of your main intellectual pursuits, it’s not like they will automatically steal resources and make you less productive. Human brain just doesn’t work that way. On the contrary, a suitable schedule of entertaining diversions can increase your productivity in your main pursuit.
Of course, there are exceptions. Some people really can spend nearly all their waking hours intensely focused and fully productive, without the need or want for anything more in their lives. However, this is a very small minority, even among people working in math, hard science, and technical professions.
And what do you think of the idea that allies and status were much more important in our EEA (i.e., tribal societies) than today, and as a result we are biased to overestimate their importance?
That argument can be used to deny the importance of absolutely everything you do. Unless you believe that some part of you came into existence supernaturally, or you’re carrying some highly consequential recent mutation, absolutely everything in your thoughts and deeds is a result of some impulse that evolved in the EEA (although of course it might be manifesting itself in a way very different from the original in today’s environment).
absolutely everything in your thoughts and deeds is a result of some impulse that evolved in the EEA
-- unless you’re using “impulse” in a very broad sense. Plenty of thoughts and deeds (even in the System 1) are the result of your brain’s inputs in your life so far.
For me, understanding “what’s really going on” in typical social interactions made them even less interesting than when I didn’t.
Merely “tuning in” to a social interaction isn’t enough. Subtextual conversations are often tedious if they’re not about you. You have to inject your ego into the conversation for things to get interesting.
do you personally find these status and alliance games interesting? Why?
They’re way more interesting than video games, for example. Or watching television. Or numerous other activities people find fun and engaging. Of course, if you’re bad at them you aren’t going to enjoy them; the same goes for people who can’t get past the first stage of Pac-Man.
Video games have a lot of diversity to them and different genres engage very different skills. Small talk all seems to encompass the same stuff, namely social ranking.
Some of us know how to do it but just don’t -care-, and that doesn’t mean we’re in fact bad at it. I think that is the point this comment thread is going for.
Be careful when you notice more diversity in subject matter you’re a fan of than in subject matter that you’re not. I’m not sure if there’s a name for this bias, but there should be.
When you do that sort of thing to people, it’s called stereotyping of the group you don’t like. I don’t know of a word for noticing distinctions in the thing or people you do like.
There’s also the fact that video games … have a freaking rule book, which tells you things that aren’t complete fabrications designed to make you fail the game if you’re stupid enough to follow them.
I thought for a bit that it would be interesting to have, say, a WWI game where the tutorial teaches you nineteenth-century tactics and then lets you start the game by throwing massed troops against barbed wire, machineguns, and twentieth-century artillery. The slaughter would be epic.
This is something that’s been discussed a few times on LW, but I don’t think it’s accurate. I don’t think there are two sets of rules, a “real” one and a “fake” one. Rather, I think that the rules for social interaction are very complicated and have a lot of exceptions, and any attempt to discuss it will inevitably be oversimplified. Temple Grandin’s book discusses this idea: all social rules have exceptions that can’t be spelled out in full.
The status test (actually a social skills test) isn’t to see if you fail by being stupid enough to follow the “fake” rules rather than the “real ones”. It’s to see if you’re savvy enough to understand all the nuances and exceptions to the rules.
...with video games, the printed, widely available strategy guides often tend to be lacking. For adventure games or Final Fantasy-type games, you can often get decent walkthroughs. But for many games, like say, Diablo II (thinking of the last strategy guide I read), the strategy guide sold in mainstream bookstores can’t get you much farther than a n00b level of play.
To actually get good, the best thing to do is to go to online forums and listen to what people who are actually experienced at the game are saying.
In the case of both social skills and video games, the best way to learn is to practice, and to get advice from the source: people who already broke down the task and are experienced and successful at it, not the watered-down crap in mainstream bookstores.
Right, but at least with video games, the rule book tells you what the game is, and what it is you’re judged on. That gives you enough to make sense of all the other advice people throw at you and in-game experience you get, which is a lot more than you can say of social life.
You effectively answered your own comment, but to clarify -
Strategy guides on dead tree have been obsolete for more than a decade. GameFAQs is over a decade old, and it’s the best place to go for strategies, walkthroughs, and message boards full of analysis by armies of deticated fans. People are still finding new and inventive strategies to optimize their first-generation Pokemon games, after all. Games have long passed the point on the complexity axis where the developper’s summary of the point of the game is enough to convey an optimal strategy.
It’s a bad analogy because there are different kinds of games, but only one kind of small talk? If you don’t think pub talk is a different game than a black tie dinner, well, you’ve obviously never played. Why do people do it? Well, when you beat a video game, you’ve beat a video game. When you win at social interaction, you’re winning at life—social dominance improves your chances of reproducing.
As for rule books: the fact that the ‘real’ rules are unwritten is part of the fun. Of course, that’s true for most video games. Pretty much any modern game’s real tactics come from players, not developers. You think you can win a single StarCraft match by reading the manual? Please.
No, pub talk is not exactly the same as a black tie dinner. The -small talk- aspect, though, very much is. It all comes down to social ranking of the participants. In the former, it skews to word assortative mating and in the latter presumably toward power and resources in the buisness world.
If you have a need or desire to win at social interaction, good for you. Please consider that for other people, it -really- isn’t that important. There is more to life than attracting mates and business partners. Those things are often a means to an end, and it is preferable to some of us to pursue the ends directly when possible.
Once you tune your radio in, you may find such occasions more exciting.
What I usually dislike about the small talk game is that it’s often played by people who don’t know each other well and/or by people who are so conformist as to be intrinsically boring. It’s one thing to measure alliances among fascinating, dynamic people who are out in the world doing and being things. I would be more than happy to listen to say, Dan Savage, Janet Napolitano, and Max Tegmark make small talk. Ditto people in their 20s who were correspondingly less accomplished but who look likely to get to that kind of exciting impact level later in life.
But when the people sitting around a table are pushing papers in (say) the finance industry by day, watching cable TV in the evening, having vanilla sex at night, and going to see a national rock band and a national sports team over the weekend, what’s the attraction? Or when the people have all just met each other, and are making their strategic decisions about dominance and alliances based on nothing subtler than who they find attractive and who shares their opinion about a piece of pop-culture or current-events trivia? Why should I care how the alliances ultimately break down among a group of people who, as individuals, hold no dramatic interest for me in the first place?
I get that small talk can be practically useful, so I have successfully made an effort to acquire a moderate level of skill at it. But I don’t see why I’m supposed to enjoy it, whether I’m at a pub or a black-tie gala award ceremony.
Because people can tell when you don’t, even if they’re too polite to mention it.
That’s why, btw, “How To Win Friends And Influence People” advises cultivating a genuine interest in people, and PUAs advise more or less the same thing. By becoming a connoisseur of the finer (in the sense of more finely-graded) distinctions between people, and cultivating your curiosity about “what people are like”, you gain more enjoyment.
And genuinely enjoying a person’s company is the hardest, most expensive signal to fake… which might be why people evolved to value it so much.
I know a couple who embody this principle, btw—Garin and Vanessa Bader. I met them at a series of marketing workshops, actually. By their second time there, practically everybody would line up to talk to them during breaks. Not because they were presenters or anything, but just because they radiated such enjoyment to everyone they spoke with, that people could hardly help but want to spend more time with them.
The way Vanessa explained it to me, when I interviewed her for one of my own CD products, was that people are so constantly worried about what other people are going to think of them, that they no longer even notice. But the moment they encounter someone who genuinely accepts them as they are, without any judgment, they suddenly feel so much better that they can’t help but want to be around you. So, she said, she and Garin just always acknowledge and accept everyone.
And that is the difference between these very charismatic (and fairly successful) people, and people who go around judging whether other people are living up to their standards. ;-)
(Fair disclaimer: I don’t claim to have personally reached anything remotely near G&V’s level of nonjudgmental acceptance, but I can definitely see why it’d be a good thing for me to aspire to. And I’ve occasionally attempted to practice it in specific situations, with some small success.)
But the moment they encounter someone who genuinely accepts them as they are, without any judgment, they suddenly feel so much better that they can’t help but want to be around you.
Yes yes yes, a million times yes. This is so true for me. My (successful) attempts to modify myself to be more social were sparked off by meeting just such a person. It was a girl I met on the street three years ago. We started talking, then went to her place and spent the night talking. There was no sexual tension at all (though we did have sex much later), I just sat there thinking “holy crap, I’ve been sitting in a box my whole life, I have to learn this.” It was absolutely glorious to feel not judged in the least. I have since learned to project a similar vibe when I try really hard.
So, she said, she and Garin just always acknowledge and accept everyone.
Allow me to express polite but strong skepticism on this point.
I would be very much surprised to find that they accept literally EVERYONE. Do they acknowledge panhandlers the same way as attendees to marketing conferences? How about leading politicians from the opposite party as theirs? Religious leaders from a different religion?
It’s easy to say “just genuinely accept everyone” when you don’t even see most of the people around you.
In fact, really acknowledging and accepting -everyone- would probably ruin them in short order as they would find all their time and resources wasted on people that they are quite right to filter. No one has the time and resources to -actually- do what they are advocating.
It’s empty advice.
EDIT: fixed some typos after having a nice, stimulating cup of coffee.
Do they acknowledge panhandlers the same way as attendees to marketing conferences? How about leading politicians from the opposite party as theirs? Religious leaders from a different religion?
[shrug] I observed them at least treating wait staff, valets, hotel personnel, etc. with the same warm glow they did everyone else. Also, it’s not like there weren’t some obnoxious people at these conferences—but even when they maintained their personal boundaries, I didn’t see them get judgmental or even show any disapproval. They smiled just as warmly, and bid their farewells.
In fact, really acknowledging and acepting -everyone- would probably ruin them in short order as they would find all their time and resources wasted on people that they are quite right to filter. No one has the time and resources to -actually- do what they are advocating.
I didn’t say they didn’t filter people. They just didn’t judge people.
In other words, they didn’t confuse a conflict of goals with meaning that somebody else was bad, wrong, or unworthy for having those different goals, nor did they confuse accepting people with having to agree with them or give anything that was asked of them. They simply said “no” as warmly as they said “yes”, and often with a sense of reluctance that made you feel as though they genuinely wished the no could have been a yes, but that alas, it was simply not to be.
How does one acknowledge and accept everybody without filtering people?
What I have seen of people who hold non-judgmentalism as a aspiration has led me to believe that it is a deeply anti-rational ideal. The net result is repeating the same mistakes over and over, such as associating with people who will will take advantage of the non-judger, or not correcting a critical failure because it’s judgemental to consider it a failure. By critical failure I mean things like dropping out of the workforce out of sheer laziness; it would be judgemental to say that this is wrong so therefore it’s wrong to stop anyone, including yourself, from doing so.
They simply said “no” as warmly as they said “yes”,
So they judged people and their needs or wants, then proceeded to claim they were non-judgemental. Either somebody isn’t thinking through the meaning of “judgement”, or doesn’t care about the actual implications of that advice if it is really followed 100%.
How does one acknowledge and accept everybody without filtering people?
Er, pjeby said that they did filter people.
They simply said “no” as warmly as they said “yes”,
So they judged people and their needs or wants, then proceeded to claim they were non-judgemental. Either somebody isn’t thinking through the meaning of “judgment”, or doesn’t care about the actual implications of that advice if it is really followed 100%.
Taboojudge. They decided whether to say “yes” or “no” to a request, and they (allegedly) didn’t enter into some class of cognitive states associated with negative affect or disapproval.
Taboo judge. They decided whether to say “yes” or “no” to a request, and they (allegedly) didn’t enter into some class of cognitive states associated with negative affect or disapproval.
Right—where the specific states involved are the ones that we use to signal lowered status or withdrawal of friendly interaction on the basis of a personal inadequacy or moral failing. In the vernacular, they didn’t “look down their noses” on anybody, but instead treated them as if they were worthy of appreciation.
I just went back to listen to parts of the interview again to refresh my memory (it’s been three years), and some of the key points Vanessa made were:
It feels good to experience being approved of, and paid attention to
It also feels good when you make other people feel good, by approving of and listening to them (which is a big part of why she and Garin do it)
Both only happen if you’re sincere, rather than faking it
She says she tries to remember that she can learn something from everyone, as a way of evoking a state of genuine interest in herself
When you proactively project approval towards people before they even do or say anything, they start the conversation relaxed and feeling better—and attribute this to you.
People often confuse arrogance and confidence—they think they have to put on a big show in order to impress people, but really this is just another form of approval seeking.
She described the more useful attitude as “humble, but not apologetic”, i.e., her openness to learn something from anyone, while at the same time not apologizing for her own choices, opinions, or personal boundaries.
These are just quick summaries from a ten-minute excerpt of the full interview, but I think this was the only section where we really talked about approval seeking or the process by which she and Garin “proactively approved of” people before meeting them.
I have a problem here. Filtering implies that some judgement has been made, and the person has been found wanting. It is harmful to advise against filtering, and therefore also harmful to advise against judging.
They decided whether to say “yes” or “no” to a request, and they (allegedly) didn’t enter into some class of cognitive states associated with negative affect or disapproval.
Advising people not to judge others is not the same as what you said. My point is only that this constitues bad advice.
By critical failure I mean things like dropping out of the workforce out of sheer laziness; it would be judgemental to say that this is wrong so therefore it’s wrong to stop anyone, including yourself, from doing so.
Wow. You really are adding a lot of baggage to this… and it has nothing to do with what Vanessa said about how to treat people, or how I saw her and Garin treating people.
I never saw them let anybody walk all over them—they just didn’t get upset by people trying.
There’s a difference between accepting a person, and accepting their behavior.
So they judged people and their needs or wants, then proceeded to claim they were non-judgemental.
Clearly, you are using a different definition of “judge” than I am.
For example, if I were to “judge” you in this interaction, I would say you’re being rude, nasty, and massively projecting your experiences onto something that has nothing to do with them… and I would attribute this as a personal characteristic of you… e.g. you are irrational, you are projecting, etc.
If I were, on the other hand, following Garin and Vanessa’s example, I would probably say something like, “wow, you really had a painful experience with that, didn’t you?” and then either change the subject or drop the conversation if I didn’t want to pursue it any further.
IOW, not judging you, but rather paying attention to your experience and communication, and accepting you as a person worthy of compassion, rather than someone who should be written off as a matter of moral assessment. (vs. simply personally not wanting to continue the interaction).
I hope that that’s enough information for you to be able to separate whatever definition of “judgment” you’re using, from the one I’m talking about here.
(Attempting to make another link with LW references, you might say that Vanessa’s advice was to avoid indulging our human tendency towards fundamental attribution error.)
Let me sum it up more simply:
Telling people not to judge is not an accurate reflection of what they actually do.
I tried to explain why non-judgmentalism is a bad value to uphold. I have nothing to say about Garin and Vanessa, only about the value of the advice proffered.
Allow me to express polite but strong skepticism on this point. I would be very much surprised to find that they accpet literally EVERYONE.
I doubt they meant literally EVERYONE. I’m guessing Garin and Vanessa just meant that they’re in the top percent of non-judgmentally accepting people. Just as if someone says to me ‘I get along with everyone,’ I don’t interpret it as meaning they get along with literally every single person on the planet, I interpret it as something weaker like ‘Of the people I know, I get along with almost all of them, and have a good chance of clicking with random people I meet.’
You make a valid point that the comfort zone of even the most tolerant people is unlikely to extend to random panhandlers, and if Garin and Vanessa spend 99% of their time with self help gurus and marketing conference attendees, they’re probably overestimating their acceptance-ness.
I don’t think this is fatal to pjeby’s main point, though; it sounds likely to me that a lot of people who dislike small talk could probably improve their social hit rate by turning up their acceptance-ness knob.
(Edited to fix Garin’s (not Gavin’s!) name. Note to self: read what’s on the screen, not what I think is on the screen.)
if Gavin [sic] and Vanessa spend 99% of their time with self help gurus and marketing conference attendees, they’re probably overestimating their acceptance-ness.
At the time of those conferences, they spent 99% of their time on cruise ships, working as entertainers. So I they spent a lot more time with tourists and ship staff than with their internet marketing colleagues.
I doubt they meant literally EVERYONE.
And I find it difficult to imagine that they didn’t mean it. I had the impression that for Vanessa at least (I haven’t interviewed Garin for anything, at least not yet), it was a matter of principle.
I don’t mean that they’re saints or that I don’t think they’d ever have a bad day and lose their temper or anything, but I do believe they sincerely look for the (potential) good in literally everyone they encounter, even if there’s some distinct possibility that they might miss it or that it might not be there to be found.
Think of it like being a rationalist aspiration to always tell the truth and never self-decieve: setting that as your aspiration does not mean you always can or will accomplish it, but at the same time, it doesn’t mean your aspiration should be downgraded to “being in the top percentage” of truth-telling and non self-deception!
At the time of those conferences, they spent 99% of their time on cruise ships, working as entertainers. So I they spent a lot more time with tourists and ship staff than with their internet marketing colleagues.
Ah, fair enough.
And I find it difficult to imagine that they didn’t mean it.
Think of it like being a rationalist aspiration to always tell the truth and never self-decieve: setting that as your aspiration does not mean you always can or will accomplish it, but at the same time, it doesn’t mean your aspiration should be downgraded to “being in the top percentage” of truth-telling and non self-deception!
It also doesn’t mean you get to claim that you always tell the truth and never self decieve.
Having known some people who made “accepting everyone” and “being non-judgemental” a point of honour and seen the results, I find it very hard to believe that is possible to be successful and really live up to those ideals. I also don’t think they’re very good ideals.
fascinating, dynamic people who are out in the world doing and being things
How do you think most of these people ended up in the position where people like you are aware of them as representing these traits? Very often it will have been in large part through greater mastery of social dynamics. Generally the best known/most successful people in any given field won’t have got there purely through ability in their field but through a combination of ability in their field and mastery of the social dynamics of that field.
So if I’m with a bunch of people from my class, and I already know who’s considered “high status”, and none of us have any major conflict of interest that would make us want to assess whether or not the others are allies or not, wouldn’t we all just be broadcasting generic “I like you well enough and consider you pretty much an equal, except in the context of this and this and this fact which we already both know quite well” signals? Go to a party with thirty people, and unless someone’s committed the faux pas of inviting my arch-enemy, I do this thirty times. If anything, this seems even less interesting than literally talking about the weather.
If you can recommend a good free source of information that explains this (or a book that’s worth the money), even better.
If you’re in a social situation that is without drama, then the social subcommunications will be relatively uninteresting.
However, there are many interactions where this will not be the case, e.g. dating/romance, probably business events that involve alliance and conflicting interest.
this is indicative that you are paying attention to the topic/words of the conversation, rather than the sub-communication, which is often the interesting bit for these kinds of conversations. People who can’t read social cues and sub-communication typically don’t get why others find small talk so “interesting”, but this is rather like a radio that sends the carrier wave rather than the signal to the loudspeaker. The topics are just there as a “carrier wave” which is then modulated to encode social signals.
Sub-communication includes agreement/disagreement (someone agrees with you to signal alliance, disagrees to signal enmity), tone of voice (tone that rises towards the end of the sentence indicates submission, tone that falls towards the end conflict/assertiveness/dominance), body language, who gets to talk most/who listens most. Once you tune your radio in, you may find such occasions more exciting.
Tuning in to the carrier wave in social situations is a common failure mode for smart people, because we feel comfortable assessing factual statements.
For me, understanding “what’s really going on” in typical social interactions made them even less interesting than when I didn’t. At least back then it was a big mystery to be solved. Now I just think, what a big waste of brain cells.
Roko, do you personally find these status and alliance games interesting? Why? I mean, if you play them really well, you’ll end up with lots of allies and high status among your friends and acquaintances, but what does that matter in the larger scheme of things? And what do you think of the idea that allies and status were much more important in our EEA (i.e., tribal societies) than today, and as a result we are biased to overestimate their importance?
Well, that depends upon your axiology.
If you are concerned with existential risk, then it is worth noting that the movement has an undersupply of “people people”, a big gender imbalance and an undersupply of money. (I think that ability to make money is determined, to some extent, by your ability at these social games)
You may feel that status within a social group is an end in itself.
If you are concerned with academic learning, discovering new mathematics/philosophy, then getting better at these social games is probably not so important.
Their importance is a function of our values, which came from the EEA and are not so easily changed. Those values, like wanting friendship, community, relationships, and respect, are a part of what make us human.
I actually don’t interpret social interactions as “status and alliance games,” which is kind of cynical and seems to miss the point. Instead, I try to recognize that people have certain emotional requirements that need to be met in order to gain their trust, friendship, and attraction, and that typical social interactions are about building that type of trust and connection.
Most of what we call values seem to respond to arguments, so they’re not really the kind of fixed values that a utility maximizer would have. I would be wary about calling some cognitive feature “values that came from the EEA and are not easily changed”. Given the right argument or insight, they probably can be changed.
So, granted that it’s human to want friendship, community, etc., I’m still curious whether it’s also human to care less about these things after realizing that they boil down to status and alliance games, and that the outcomes of these games don’t count for much in the larger scheme of things.
Well, is it also human to stop desiring tasty food once you realize that it boils down to super-stimulation of hardware that evolved as a device for impromptu chemical analysis to sort out nutritionally adequate stuff from the rest?
As for the “larger scheme of things,” that’s one of those emotionally-appealing sweeping arguments that can be applied to literally anything to make it seem pointless and unworthy of effort. Selectively applying it is a common human bias. (In fact, I’d say it’s a powerful general technique for producing biased argumentation.)
Not to stop desiring it entirely, but to care less about it than if I didn’t realize, yes. (I only have a sample size of one here, namely myself, so I’m curious if others have the same experience.)
I don’t think I’m applying it selectively… we’re human and we can only talk about one thing at a time, but other than that I think I do realize that this is a general argument that can be applied to all of our values. It doesn’t seem to affect all of them equally though. Some values, such as wanting to be immortal, and wanting to understand the nature of reality, consciousness, etc., seem to survive the argument much better than others. :)
Honestly, I don’t see what you’re basing that conclusion on. What, according to you, determines which human values survive that argument and which not?
I’m surprised that you find the conclusion surprising or controversial. (The conclusion being that some some values survive the “larger scheme of things” argument much better than others.) I know that you wrote earlier:
but I didn’t think those words reflected your actual beliefs (I thought you just weren’t paying enough attention to what you were writing). Do you really think that people like me, who do not think that literally everything is pointless and unworthy of effort, have just avoided applying the argument to some of our values?
It seems obvious to me that some values (e.g., avoiding great pain) survive the argument by being hardwired to not respond to any arguments, while others (saving humanity so we can develop an intergalactic civilization, or being the first person in an eventually intergalactic civilization to really understand how decisions are supposed to be made) are grand enough that “larger scheme of things” just don’t apply. (I’m not totally sure I’m interpreting your question correctly, so let me know if that doesn’t answer it.)
Wei_Dai:
As the only logical possibilities, it’s either that, or you have thought about it and concluded that the argument is not applicable to some values. I don’t find the reasons for this conclusion obvious, and I do see many selective applications of this argument as a common bias in practice, which is why I asked.
Yes, that answers my question, thanks. I do have disagreements with your conclusion, but I grant that you are not committing the above mentioned fallacy outright.
In particular, my objections are that: (1) for many people, social isolation and lack of status is in fact a hardwired source of great pain (though this may not apply to you, so there is no disagreement here if you’re not making claims about other people), (2) I find the future large-scale developments you speculate about highly unlikely, even assuming technology won’t be the limiting factor, and finally (3) even an intergalactic civilization will matter nothing in the “larger scheme of things” assuming the eventual heat death of the universe. But each of these, except perhaps (1), would be a complex topic for a whole another discussion, so I think we can leave our disagreements rest at this point now that we’ve clarified them.
Agreed: this is an instance of the Godshatter concept
What makes the desire to obtain high status within some small group a legitimate piece of Godshatter (good), as opposed to a kind of scope insensitivity (bad)? Or to put it another way, why isn’t scope insensitivity (the non-linear way that a typical human being values other people’s suffering) also considered Godshatter?
Voted up as this is an important and general question about converting human intuitions into a formal utility function.
Do we have a general criterion for deciding these things? Or is it still unresolved in general?
In this specific case, it seems to me that there are many aspects of social interaction that are zero-sum or even negative sum. For the purpose of Coherent Extrapolated Volition, zero sum or negative sum elements are like scope insensitivity, i.e. bad.
There are clearly some social status games that are positive sum.
I think it’s unresolved in general. I brought up scope insensitivity as a counter-example to the “Godshatter” argument, or at least a strong form of it which says we should keep all of the values that evolution has handed down to us. It seems likely that we shouldn’t, but exactly where to draw the line is unclear to me. Still, to me, desire for high status in some small group seems to be the same kind of “crazy” value as scope insensitivity.
I wasn’t talking about CEV, I was mainly talking about what you or I should value, now, as individuals. I’m not sure that positive-sum/zero-sum has much to do with that.
Deciding which psychological drives to keep, and which to abandon, is the same as figuring out full formal preference (assuming you have more expressive power than just keeping/abandoning), so there is no heuristic for doing that simpler than full formal preference. This problem isn’t just unresolved, it’s almost FAI-complete (preference theory, as opposed to efficient implementation).
Can you expand on this? It isn’t logically inconsistent to want to have status…
My guess:
Status should be about gaining allies and mates, correct? Just as charity is about helping people.
Gaining more allies and mates (especially for a male) should be better than gaining fewer agreed? If so, why do maths professors spend so much time and effort trying to gain status in the small world of maths? They would be better off appealing to the lowest common denominator and using their intellect to wow people in something more accessible.
The quality of the allies also matters. Having allies that can’t help you in your chosen goals is a drain on resources.
Wei_Dai:
However, that’s not how human brains work. It’s not like someone who on an average day spends, say, eight hours doing intellectual work and four hours socializing could do 50% more useful intellectual work by spending 12 hours working instead of socializing. For the overwhelming majority of people, it’s impossible to employ their brains productively for more than a few hours a day. You get tired and lose focus to the point where you’re just making a mess instead of progress.
Similarly, if you develop skills independent of your main intellectual pursuits, it’s not like they will automatically steal resources and make you less productive. Human brain just doesn’t work that way. On the contrary, a suitable schedule of entertaining diversions can increase your productivity in your main pursuit.
Of course, there are exceptions. Some people really can spend nearly all their waking hours intensely focused and fully productive, without the need or want for anything more in their lives. However, this is a very small minority, even among people working in math, hard science, and technical professions.
That argument can be used to deny the importance of absolutely everything you do. Unless you believe that some part of you came into existence supernaturally, or you’re carrying some highly consequential recent mutation, absolutely everything in your thoughts and deeds is a result of some impulse that evolved in the EEA (although of course it might be manifesting itself in a way very different from the original in today’s environment).
I agree with everything, except:
-- unless you’re using “impulse” in a very broad sense. Plenty of thoughts and deeds (even in the System 1) are the result of your brain’s inputs in your life so far.
Merely “tuning in” to a social interaction isn’t enough. Subtextual conversations are often tedious if they’re not about you. You have to inject your ego into the conversation for things to get interesting.
They’re way more interesting than video games, for example. Or watching television. Or numerous other activities people find fun and engaging. Of course, if you’re bad at them you aren’t going to enjoy them; the same goes for people who can’t get past the first stage of Pac-Man.
Terrible analogy.
Video games have a lot of diversity to them and different genres engage very different skills. Small talk all seems to encompass the same stuff, namely social ranking.
Some of us know how to do it but just don’t -care-, and that doesn’t mean we’re in fact bad at it. I think that is the point this comment thread is going for.
Be careful when you notice more diversity in subject matter you’re a fan of than in subject matter that you’re not. I’m not sure if there’s a name for this bias, but there should be.
I would expect this people are just more familiar with what they’re a fan of, but it could also be related to outgroup homogeneity bias.
That’s definitely it. I suspect it’s too much like work for most people to pay attention to the details of things they aren’t fond of.
Your link is broken.
Oops, fixed.
My father disparages all video games as being “little men running around on a screen”.
When you do that sort of thing to people, it’s called stereotyping of the group you don’t like. I don’t know of a word for noticing distinctions in the thing or people you do like.
Could it just be characterized as a specific example of the halo effect?
There’s also the fact that video games … have a freaking rule book, which tells you things that aren’t complete fabrications designed to make you fail the game if you’re stupid enough to follow them.
I really like the idea of creating a video game with a deceptive rulebook.
I thought for a bit that it would be interesting to have, say, a WWI game where the tutorial teaches you nineteenth-century tactics and then lets you start the game by throwing massed troops against barbed wire, machineguns, and twentieth-century artillery. The slaughter would be epic.
I really like this idea too. Portal does this to some extent, but the idea could be taken much farther.
This is something that’s been discussed a few times on LW, but I don’t think it’s accurate. I don’t think there are two sets of rules, a “real” one and a “fake” one. Rather, I think that the rules for social interaction are very complicated and have a lot of exceptions, and any attempt to discuss it will inevitably be oversimplified. Temple Grandin’s book discusses this idea: all social rules have exceptions that can’t be spelled out in full.
The status test (actually a social skills test) isn’t to see if you fail by being stupid enough to follow the “fake” rules rather than the “real ones”. It’s to see if you’re savvy enough to understand all the nuances and exceptions to the rules.
Not disagreeing with your general point, but...
...with video games, the printed, widely available strategy guides often tend to be lacking. For adventure games or Final Fantasy-type games, you can often get decent walkthroughs. But for many games, like say, Diablo II (thinking of the last strategy guide I read), the strategy guide sold in mainstream bookstores can’t get you much farther than a n00b level of play.
To actually get good, the best thing to do is to go to online forums and listen to what people who are actually experienced at the game are saying.
In the case of both social skills and video games, the best way to learn is to practice, and to get advice from the source: people who already broke down the task and are experienced and successful at it, not the watered-down crap in mainstream bookstores.
Right, but at least with video games, the rule book tells you what the game is, and what it is you’re judged on. That gives you enough to make sense of all the other advice people throw at you and in-game experience you get, which is a lot more than you can say of social life.
You effectively answered your own comment, but to clarify -
Strategy guides on dead tree have been obsolete for more than a decade. GameFAQs is over a decade old, and it’s the best place to go for strategies, walkthroughs, and message boards full of analysis by armies of deticated fans. People are still finding new and inventive strategies to optimize their first-generation Pokemon games, after all. Games have long passed the point on the complexity axis where the developper’s summary of the point of the game is enough to convey an optimal strategy.
Your last paragraph is gold.
It’s a bad analogy because there are different kinds of games, but only one kind of small talk? If you don’t think pub talk is a different game than a black tie dinner, well, you’ve obviously never played. Why do people do it? Well, when you beat a video game, you’ve beat a video game. When you win at social interaction, you’re winning at life—social dominance improves your chances of reproducing.
As for rule books: the fact that the ‘real’ rules are unwritten is part of the fun. Of course, that’s true for most video games. Pretty much any modern game’s real tactics come from players, not developers. You think you can win a single StarCraft match by reading the manual? Please.
No, pub talk is not exactly the same as a black tie dinner. The -small talk- aspect, though, very much is. It all comes down to social ranking of the participants. In the former, it skews to word assortative mating and in the latter presumably toward power and resources in the buisness world.
If you have a need or desire to win at social interaction, good for you. Please consider that for other people, it -really- isn’t that important. There is more to life than attracting mates and business partners. Those things are often a means to an end, and it is preferable to some of us to pursue the ends directly when possible.
The video game analogy is just plain bad.
What I usually dislike about the small talk game is that it’s often played by people who don’t know each other well and/or by people who are so conformist as to be intrinsically boring. It’s one thing to measure alliances among fascinating, dynamic people who are out in the world doing and being things. I would be more than happy to listen to say, Dan Savage, Janet Napolitano, and Max Tegmark make small talk. Ditto people in their 20s who were correspondingly less accomplished but who look likely to get to that kind of exciting impact level later in life.
But when the people sitting around a table are pushing papers in (say) the finance industry by day, watching cable TV in the evening, having vanilla sex at night, and going to see a national rock band and a national sports team over the weekend, what’s the attraction? Or when the people have all just met each other, and are making their strategic decisions about dominance and alliances based on nothing subtler than who they find attractive and who shares their opinion about a piece of pop-culture or current-events trivia? Why should I care how the alliances ultimately break down among a group of people who, as individuals, hold no dramatic interest for me in the first place?
I get that small talk can be practically useful, so I have successfully made an effort to acquire a moderate level of skill at it. But I don’t see why I’m supposed to enjoy it, whether I’m at a pub or a black-tie gala award ceremony.
Because people can tell when you don’t, even if they’re too polite to mention it.
That’s why, btw, “How To Win Friends And Influence People” advises cultivating a genuine interest in people, and PUAs advise more or less the same thing. By becoming a connoisseur of the finer (in the sense of more finely-graded) distinctions between people, and cultivating your curiosity about “what people are like”, you gain more enjoyment.
And genuinely enjoying a person’s company is the hardest, most expensive signal to fake… which might be why people evolved to value it so much.
I know a couple who embody this principle, btw—Garin and Vanessa Bader. I met them at a series of marketing workshops, actually. By their second time there, practically everybody would line up to talk to them during breaks. Not because they were presenters or anything, but just because they radiated such enjoyment to everyone they spoke with, that people could hardly help but want to spend more time with them.
The way Vanessa explained it to me, when I interviewed her for one of my own CD products, was that people are so constantly worried about what other people are going to think of them, that they no longer even notice. But the moment they encounter someone who genuinely accepts them as they are, without any judgment, they suddenly feel so much better that they can’t help but want to be around you. So, she said, she and Garin just always acknowledge and accept everyone.
And that is the difference between these very charismatic (and fairly successful) people, and people who go around judging whether other people are living up to their standards. ;-)
(Fair disclaimer: I don’t claim to have personally reached anything remotely near G&V’s level of nonjudgmental acceptance, but I can definitely see why it’d be a good thing for me to aspire to. And I’ve occasionally attempted to practice it in specific situations, with some small success.)
Yes yes yes, a million times yes. This is so true for me. My (successful) attempts to modify myself to be more social were sparked off by meeting just such a person. It was a girl I met on the street three years ago. We started talking, then went to her place and spent the night talking. There was no sexual tension at all (though we did have sex much later), I just sat there thinking “holy crap, I’ve been sitting in a box my whole life, I have to learn this.” It was absolutely glorious to feel not judged in the least. I have since learned to project a similar vibe when I try really hard.
Allow me to express polite but strong skepticism on this point. I would be very much surprised to find that they accept literally EVERYONE. Do they acknowledge panhandlers the same way as attendees to marketing conferences? How about leading politicians from the opposite party as theirs? Religious leaders from a different religion?
It’s easy to say “just genuinely accept everyone” when you don’t even see most of the people around you.
In fact, really acknowledging and accepting -everyone- would probably ruin them in short order as they would find all their time and resources wasted on people that they are quite right to filter. No one has the time and resources to -actually- do what they are advocating.
It’s empty advice.
EDIT: fixed some typos after having a nice, stimulating cup of coffee.
[shrug] I observed them at least treating wait staff, valets, hotel personnel, etc. with the same warm glow they did everyone else. Also, it’s not like there weren’t some obnoxious people at these conferences—but even when they maintained their personal boundaries, I didn’t see them get judgmental or even show any disapproval. They smiled just as warmly, and bid their farewells.
I didn’t say they didn’t filter people. They just didn’t judge people.
In other words, they didn’t confuse a conflict of goals with meaning that somebody else was bad, wrong, or unworthy for having those different goals, nor did they confuse accepting people with having to agree with them or give anything that was asked of them. They simply said “no” as warmly as they said “yes”, and often with a sense of reluctance that made you feel as though they genuinely wished the no could have been a yes, but that alas, it was simply not to be.
How does one acknowledge and accept everybody without filtering people?
What I have seen of people who hold non-judgmentalism as a aspiration has led me to believe that it is a deeply anti-rational ideal. The net result is repeating the same mistakes over and over, such as associating with people who will will take advantage of the non-judger, or not correcting a critical failure because it’s judgemental to consider it a failure. By critical failure I mean things like dropping out of the workforce out of sheer laziness; it would be judgemental to say that this is wrong so therefore it’s wrong to stop anyone, including yourself, from doing so.
So they judged people and their needs or wants, then proceeded to claim they were non-judgemental. Either somebody isn’t thinking through the meaning of “judgement”, or doesn’t care about the actual implications of that advice if it is really followed 100%.
Er, pjeby said that they did filter people.
Taboo judge. They decided whether to say “yes” or “no” to a request, and they (allegedly) didn’t enter into some class of cognitive states associated with negative affect or disapproval.
Right—where the specific states involved are the ones that we use to signal lowered status or withdrawal of friendly interaction on the basis of a personal inadequacy or moral failing. In the vernacular, they didn’t “look down their noses” on anybody, but instead treated them as if they were worthy of appreciation.
I just went back to listen to parts of the interview again to refresh my memory (it’s been three years), and some of the key points Vanessa made were:
It feels good to experience being approved of, and paid attention to
It also feels good when you make other people feel good, by approving of and listening to them (which is a big part of why she and Garin do it)
Both only happen if you’re sincere, rather than faking it
She says she tries to remember that she can learn something from everyone, as a way of evoking a state of genuine interest in herself
When you proactively project approval towards people before they even do or say anything, they start the conversation relaxed and feeling better—and attribute this to you.
People often confuse arrogance and confidence—they think they have to put on a big show in order to impress people, but really this is just another form of approval seeking.
She described the more useful attitude as “humble, but not apologetic”, i.e., her openness to learn something from anyone, while at the same time not apologizing for her own choices, opinions, or personal boundaries.
These are just quick summaries from a ten-minute excerpt of the full interview, but I think this was the only section where we really talked about approval seeking or the process by which she and Garin “proactively approved of” people before meeting them.
I have a problem here. Filtering implies that some judgement has been made, and the person has been found wanting. It is harmful to advise against filtering, and therefore also harmful to advise against judging.
Advising people not to judge others is not the same as what you said. My point is only that this constitues bad advice.
Wow. You really are adding a lot of baggage to this… and it has nothing to do with what Vanessa said about how to treat people, or how I saw her and Garin treating people.
I never saw them let anybody walk all over them—they just didn’t get upset by people trying.
There’s a difference between accepting a person, and accepting their behavior.
Clearly, you are using a different definition of “judge” than I am.
For example, if I were to “judge” you in this interaction, I would say you’re being rude, nasty, and massively projecting your experiences onto something that has nothing to do with them… and I would attribute this as a personal characteristic of you… e.g. you are irrational, you are projecting, etc.
If I were, on the other hand, following Garin and Vanessa’s example, I would probably say something like, “wow, you really had a painful experience with that, didn’t you?” and then either change the subject or drop the conversation if I didn’t want to pursue it any further.
IOW, not judging you, but rather paying attention to your experience and communication, and accepting you as a person worthy of compassion, rather than someone who should be written off as a matter of moral assessment. (vs. simply personally not wanting to continue the interaction).
I hope that that’s enough information for you to be able to separate whatever definition of “judgment” you’re using, from the one I’m talking about here.
(Attempting to make another link with LW references, you might say that Vanessa’s advice was to avoid indulging our human tendency towards fundamental attribution error.)
Let me sum it up more simply: Telling people not to judge is not an accurate reflection of what they actually do.
I tried to explain why non-judgmentalism is a bad value to uphold. I have nothing to say about Garin and Vanessa, only about the value of the advice proffered.
As I said, you can judge behavior without judging a person. i.e., I can say, “I don’t like what you’re doing”, without it meaning “I don’t like you”.
The advice was about judging people, not about refraining from judgment in the abstract.
I doubt they meant literally EVERYONE. I’m guessing Garin and Vanessa just meant that they’re in the top percent of non-judgmentally accepting people. Just as if someone says to me ‘I get along with everyone,’ I don’t interpret it as meaning they get along with literally every single person on the planet, I interpret it as something weaker like ‘Of the people I know, I get along with almost all of them, and have a good chance of clicking with random people I meet.’
You make a valid point that the comfort zone of even the most tolerant people is unlikely to extend to random panhandlers, and if Garin and Vanessa spend 99% of their time with self help gurus and marketing conference attendees, they’re probably overestimating their acceptance-ness.
I don’t think this is fatal to pjeby’s main point, though; it sounds likely to me that a lot of people who dislike small talk could probably improve their social hit rate by turning up their acceptance-ness knob.
(Edited to fix Garin’s (not Gavin’s!) name. Note to self: read what’s on the screen, not what I think is on the screen.)
At the time of those conferences, they spent 99% of their time on cruise ships, working as entertainers. So I they spent a lot more time with tourists and ship staff than with their internet marketing colleagues.
And I find it difficult to imagine that they didn’t mean it. I had the impression that for Vanessa at least (I haven’t interviewed Garin for anything, at least not yet), it was a matter of principle.
I don’t mean that they’re saints or that I don’t think they’d ever have a bad day and lose their temper or anything, but I do believe they sincerely look for the (potential) good in literally everyone they encounter, even if there’s some distinct possibility that they might miss it or that it might not be there to be found.
Think of it like being a rationalist aspiration to always tell the truth and never self-decieve: setting that as your aspiration does not mean you always can or will accomplish it, but at the same time, it doesn’t mean your aspiration should be downgraded to “being in the top percentage” of truth-telling and non self-deception!
Ah, fair enough.
!
It also doesn’t mean you get to claim that you always tell the truth and never self decieve.
Having known some people who made “accepting everyone” and “being non-judgemental” a point of honour and seen the results, I find it very hard to believe that is possible to be successful and really live up to those ideals. I also don’t think they’re very good ideals.
How do you think most of these people ended up in the position where people like you are aware of them as representing these traits? Very often it will have been in large part through greater mastery of social dynamics. Generally the best known/most successful people in any given field won’t have got there purely through ability in their field but through a combination of ability in their field and mastery of the social dynamics of that field.
So if I’m with a bunch of people from my class, and I already know who’s considered “high status”, and none of us have any major conflict of interest that would make us want to assess whether or not the others are allies or not, wouldn’t we all just be broadcasting generic “I like you well enough and consider you pretty much an equal, except in the context of this and this and this fact which we already both know quite well” signals? Go to a party with thirty people, and unless someone’s committed the faux pas of inviting my arch-enemy, I do this thirty times. If anything, this seems even less interesting than literally talking about the weather.
If you can recommend a good free source of information that explains this (or a book that’s worth the money), even better.
EDIT: Yeah, what Wei Dai said.
If you were a character in a sitcom I was writing, I’d have your dream girl walk in just as you were saying that.
BenAlbahari, that is mean—but funny!
If you’re in a social situation that is without drama, then the social subcommunications will be relatively uninteresting.
However, there are many interactions where this will not be the case, e.g. dating/romance, probably business events that involve alliance and conflicting interest.
This mirrors my experience, but then how come other people, whose lives are generally just as boring as mine, seem to like parties?
Innate need to socialize, probably?