It seems this post bundled together the CPU vs. GPU theory regarding the AS vs. NT mindset, with a set of techniques on how to improve social skills. The techniques however—and in a sense this is a credit to the poster—are useful to anyone who wants to improve their social skills, regardless of whether the cause of their lack of skill is:
1) High IQ 2) Introversion 3) Social Inexperience 4) AS 5)
A combination of several of these factors might be the cause of social awkwardness. It’s possible to place too much importance on looking for a root cause. The immediate cause is simply a lack of understanding of social interaction—the techniques will help anyone develop that understanding.
If you lack that powerful social coprocessor… [you will]...explicitly reason through the complex human social game that most people play without ever really understanding.
Some NTs are somewhat unconscious of the game, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand it. I’d argue the most useful definition of “understanding” is that one’s brain contains the knowledge—whether one is conscious of it or not—that enables one to successfully perform the relevant task. Any other definition, is quite literally, academic. Furthermore, I’d argue that those best at the game actually become conscious of what is unconscious for most people, such as the degree to which status plays a role in social interaction. This helps them gain an edge over others, such as better predicting the ramifications of gossip, or the ability to construct a joke. A joke that works well socially, often consists of the more socially aware person bringing to the surface an aspect of someone else’s self-serving behavior that was previously just under the social group’s conscious radar. It would be impossible to construct such jokes without a conscious understanding of the game.
(Most importantly) Find a community of others—who are trying to solve the same problem
If you want to learn social skills, hang out with people who have them. And it’s not enough to just hang out—you have to enjoy it and participate. And to be frank, often the easiest way to do that is with alcohol. And don’t assume you’re so different to other people—why do you think they’re drinking?
If you lack that powerful social coprocessor… [you will]...explicitly reason through the complex human social game that most people play without ever really understanding.
Some NTs are somewhat unconscious of the game, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand it. I’d argue the most useful definition of “understanding” is that one’s brain contains the knowledge—whether one is conscious of it or not—that enables one to successfully perform the relevant task.
I think the distinction can be helpfully represented in terms of my levels of understanding.
NTs understand social interaction at Level 1, the level at which one is capable of outputting the right (winning) results, even if that is due to an inscrutable black-box model contained inside oneself (which is the case here).
But there are higher levels to reach than that, and it is not an academic distinction. To advance to Level 2, you must not only produce the right results, but also be able to “plug in” your understanding of the social interaction domain to various other domains, and make inferences between them. And most NTs cannot do this: they get the results “for free”, even (and perhaps especially) if they cannot derive these results as implications of other domains (or vice versa).
Roko’s point, in turn, can be rephrased as saying that HFASes try to build up a Level 2 understanding directly, checking for cross-domain consistency before they adopt any rules; and that this is because their hardware doesn’t feed them the correct black-box output, as happens in NTs. Further, inferences that HFASes make come from applying a more general-purpose “reasoning engine” to social interaction; to NTs, the inferences just look dumb, even if they can’t explain why.
Someone with sufficiently advanced understanding will be able to connect the NT black-box model to useful models for everything else, explaining the basis for NT conventions. This can grow from an NT mind or a HFAS one, but they will take different paths.
In any case, there’s a higher level of understanding to reach, even if a specific threshold suffices for some purpose.
1) High IQ
2) Introversion
3) Social Inexperience
4) AS
Note that Introversion is a principal component of human personality, so it must correlate with AS and social inexperience. This is simply because “introversion”, by definition, is that component of human personality surrounding desire and ability to interact socially.
Principal components come out of the statistics without definitions having any say. Also, a cause can anti-correlate with its effect; I think the standard example is paying taxes causes you to have less money, but people with more money pay more taxes.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I can understand how introversion, at least if the introvert has been able to follow his or her own preferences, must correlate with social inexperience, at least relative to the average extrovert.
But why is it that introversion must correlate with AS?
Because of the way introversion is defined: it is a component from the technique of principal component analysis, so it necessarily bundles together all kinds of personalities that are less sociable.
My understanding is that introversion may be partly about ability to socialize, but primarily reflects lack of desire to socialize ( and especially lack of desire to socialize in larger versus smaller groups). It’s also my understanding that with AS, there is at least sometimes a component involving inability to socialize, for example, many of those with AS have a hard time reading facial expressions (and this inability comes not merely from lack of practice, but is more innate).
I have also met a number of people with AS who are extroverts, that is, they have a desire to socialize, although they may have some difficulties in execution. I don’t have any breakdown on the numbers, but it seems to me that if introversion is more about lack of desire to socialize and AS is more about inability to socialize, they don’t necessarily need to be correlated, although they may very well be.
I have in the past used precisely the latter to describe myself to others. Last Saturday I was at a student party: I spent the late afternoon and early evening chatting with both friends and new acquaintances pretty much non-stop, drank up to the point where my behaviour became just a bit more impulsive than usual, danced into the wee hours of the morning and exchanged some crude sexual rites with a stranger.
I unquestionably had fun. It will also take me at least a couple of weeks before I can talk to more than one people at a time without feeling exhausted. Until then, my free time will be spent with a pair of headphones, my reading queue, a 4X videogame, and no human interaction closer than Skype.
I don’t have any breakdown on the numbers, but it seems to me that if introversion is more about lack of desire to socialize and AS is more about inability to socialize, they don’t necessarily need to be correlated, although they may very well be.
Wikipedia quotes diagnostic criteria for AS that focus on ‘impairment’ and ‘repetitive, stereotyped behavior,’ which sounds like it’s just based on ability, not desire/introversion. That’s consistent with your hunch.
I also skimmed for studies correlating AQ (Autism-Spectrum Quotient) with introversion, and discovered the AQ is built from 5 question types, one of them testing social skills. But the social skill questions don’t just test for ability (#36, ‘I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face’), they test for desires too (#1, ‘I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own’). (Source is Simon Baron-Cohen’s paper about the AQ.) So I’d expect the social skill subtest to tap into introversion as well as social ability, which would make the AQ correlate with extroversion/introversion (and it does).
I expect the correlation of AS with introversion depends how you measure Asperger-ness. The binary criterion ‘diagnosed with Asperger’s’ probably has a weak correlation; the AQ scale would have a better one. It’s interesting that AS diagnosis criteria are based just on social ability, while the AQ scale tests far more than that—that suggests the AQ is measuring quite a lot more than Asperger-ness.
(I also found a forum called Typology Central, ‘a personality type indicator community.’ For some reason the idea of a forum for discussing personality types makes me giggle.)
It seems this post bundled together the CPU vs. GPU theory regarding the AS vs. NT mindset, with a set of techniques on how to improve social skills. The techniques however—and in a sense this is a credit to the poster—are useful to anyone who wants to improve their social skills, regardless of whether the cause of their lack of skill is:
1) High IQ
2) Introversion
3) Social Inexperience
4) AS
5)
A combination of several of these factors might be the cause of social awkwardness. It’s possible to place too much importance on looking for a root cause. The immediate cause is simply a lack of understanding of social interaction—the techniques will help anyone develop that understanding.
Some NTs are somewhat unconscious of the game, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand it. I’d argue the most useful definition of “understanding” is that one’s brain contains the knowledge—whether one is conscious of it or not—that enables one to successfully perform the relevant task. Any other definition, is quite literally, academic. Furthermore, I’d argue that those best at the game actually become conscious of what is unconscious for most people, such as the degree to which status plays a role in social interaction. This helps them gain an edge over others, such as better predicting the ramifications of gossip, or the ability to construct a joke. A joke that works well socially, often consists of the more socially aware person bringing to the surface an aspect of someone else’s self-serving behavior that was previously just under the social group’s conscious radar. It would be impossible to construct such jokes without a conscious understanding of the game.
If you want to learn social skills, hang out with people who have them. And it’s not enough to just hang out—you have to enjoy it and participate. And to be frank, often the easiest way to do that is with alcohol. And don’t assume you’re so different to other people—why do you think they’re drinking?
I think the distinction can be helpfully represented in terms of my levels of understanding.
NTs understand social interaction at Level 1, the level at which one is capable of outputting the right (winning) results, even if that is due to an inscrutable black-box model contained inside oneself (which is the case here).
But there are higher levels to reach than that, and it is not an academic distinction. To advance to Level 2, you must not only produce the right results, but also be able to “plug in” your understanding of the social interaction domain to various other domains, and make inferences between them. And most NTs cannot do this: they get the results “for free”, even (and perhaps especially) if they cannot derive these results as implications of other domains (or vice versa).
Roko’s point, in turn, can be rephrased as saying that HFASes try to build up a Level 2 understanding directly, checking for cross-domain consistency before they adopt any rules; and that this is because their hardware doesn’t feed them the correct black-box output, as happens in NTs. Further, inferences that HFASes make come from applying a more general-purpose “reasoning engine” to social interaction; to NTs, the inferences just look dumb, even if they can’t explain why.
Someone with sufficiently advanced understanding will be able to connect the NT black-box model to useful models for everything else, explaining the basis for NT conventions. This can grow from an NT mind or a HFAS one, but they will take different paths.
In any case, there’s a higher level of understanding to reach, even if a specific threshold suffices for some purpose.
Note that Introversion is a principal component of human personality, so it must correlate with AS and social inexperience. This is simply because “introversion”, by definition, is that component of human personality surrounding desire and ability to interact socially.
Principal components come out of the statistics without definitions having any say. Also, a cause can anti-correlate with its effect; I think the standard example is paying taxes causes you to have less money, but people with more money pay more taxes.
Introversion the principal component and “introversion by definition” could be two different things.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I can understand how introversion, at least if the introvert has been able to follow his or her own preferences, must correlate with social inexperience, at least relative to the average extrovert.
But why is it that introversion must correlate with AS?
Because of the way introversion is defined: it is a component from the technique of principal component analysis, so it necessarily bundles together all kinds of personalities that are less sociable.
My understanding is that introversion may be partly about ability to socialize, but primarily reflects lack of desire to socialize ( and especially lack of desire to socialize in larger versus smaller groups). It’s also my understanding that with AS, there is at least sometimes a component involving inability to socialize, for example, many of those with AS have a hard time reading facial expressions (and this inability comes not merely from lack of practice, but is more innate).
I have also met a number of people with AS who are extroverts, that is, they have a desire to socialize, although they may have some difficulties in execution. I don’t have any breakdown on the numbers, but it seems to me that if introversion is more about lack of desire to socialize and AS is more about inability to socialize, they don’t necessarily need to be correlated, although they may very well be.
One definition I’ve seen is that extroverts get energy from being with people, while introverts need to be alone to recharge.
I have in the past used precisely the latter to describe myself to others. Last Saturday I was at a student party: I spent the late afternoon and early evening chatting with both friends and new acquaintances pretty much non-stop, drank up to the point where my behaviour became just a bit more impulsive than usual, danced into the wee hours of the morning and exchanged some crude sexual rites with a stranger.
I unquestionably had fun. It will also take me at least a couple of weeks before I can talk to more than one people at a time without feeling exhausted. Until then, my free time will be spent with a pair of headphones, my reading queue, a 4X videogame, and no human interaction closer than Skype.
Wikipedia quotes diagnostic criteria for AS that focus on ‘impairment’ and ‘repetitive, stereotyped behavior,’ which sounds like it’s just based on ability, not desire/introversion. That’s consistent with your hunch.
I also skimmed for studies correlating AQ (Autism-Spectrum Quotient) with introversion, and discovered the AQ is built from 5 question types, one of them testing social skills. But the social skill questions don’t just test for ability (#36, ‘I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face’), they test for desires too (#1, ‘I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own’). (Source is Simon Baron-Cohen’s paper about the AQ.) So I’d expect the social skill subtest to tap into introversion as well as social ability, which would make the AQ correlate with extroversion/introversion (and it does).
I expect the correlation of AS with introversion depends how you measure Asperger-ness. The binary criterion ‘diagnosed with Asperger’s’ probably has a weak correlation; the AQ scale would have a better one. It’s interesting that AS diagnosis criteria are based just on social ability, while the AQ scale tests far more than that—that suggests the AQ is measuring quite a lot more than Asperger-ness.
(I also found a forum called Typology Central, ‘a personality type indicator community.’ For some reason the idea of a forum for discussing personality types makes me giggle.)
Sometimes a cause anti-correlates with its effect. I think the standard example is being taxed causes low wealth, but is correlated with high wealth.