When your utility function assigns little weight to them. Social games matter quite a bit to a lot of people, and less to others. I know that sounds almost tautological, but the point is that people differ here.
Even if you don’t like or care about social games, other things you may care about can depend on them, such as:
Not getting bullied or pushed around by other people
Finding mates outside a narrow nerdy minority of people
Networking
Business and job negotiation
For social games to truly not matter, you need to have a very narrow preference set where you not only don’t care for social games, but you don’t need or want anything that can be achieved by them. It would be like not caring about money, and also not caring about anything money can buy you. It’s possible to have that preference set; it’s just a tall order.
A large amount of doors in neurotypical society are closed to you if you can’t play social games at some level. I would speculate that for many people who think they don’t care about silly things like social games, those very social games actually do impact other things they care about, and they are either unaware of that impact or in denial about it.
I think social games do matter, just not nearly to the degree that most people seem to think, judging from how they spend their time. I think the explanation for this is that social games mattered much more in the past than they do now, but most people don’t realize this yet. And on the other side, there are a lot more opportunities for technical problem solving, which weren’t available in the past.
Not getting bullied or pushed around by other people
I was bullied in school, but eventually graduated, and I don’t think anyone tried to push me around after starting work. If they did, I would have complained to my boss or changed jobs. In a less mobile society, if you didn’t know how to “handle yourself”, you were probably stuck with low status for life.
Finding mates outside a narrow nerdy minority of people
Being single isn’t that bad. I imagine it was a lot worse in the past, where there was much less you could do to entertain yourself.
Networking
I spent most of my spare time in college writing an open source C++ library, which led to plenty of business and job opportunities. I really doubt that I would have gotten more opportunities if I had spent most of my time socializing instead. I also didn’t put any effort into networking after starting work, and I don’t think that it’s hurt me much.
Business and job negotiation
Looking back at my past job interviews, I now realize that when the interviewer asked me what salary range I was expecting, that was supposed to be the start of the negotiation. At the time, I just told them honestly that I don’t know, and that I care more about how interesting the job is than the salary.
That was probably not optimal, but I don’t think I was hurt too badly by my lack of negotiation skill. And the reason for this is that salaries and other prices are constrained by market competition, and markets are more efficient today than in the past, leaving less room for negotiation.
When your utility function assigns little weight to them. Social games matter quite a bit to a lot of people, and less to others. I know that sounds almost tautological, but the point is that people differ here.
Even if you don’t like or care about social games, other things you may care about can depend on them, such as:
Not getting bullied or pushed around by other people
Finding mates outside a narrow nerdy minority of people
Networking
Business and job negotiation
For social games to truly not matter, you need to have a very narrow preference set where you not only don’t care for social games, but you don’t need or want anything that can be achieved by them. It would be like not caring about money, and also not caring about anything money can buy you. It’s possible to have that preference set; it’s just a tall order.
A large amount of doors in neurotypical society are closed to you if you can’t play social games at some level. I would speculate that for many people who think they don’t care about silly things like social games, those very social games actually do impact other things they care about, and they are either unaware of that impact or in denial about it.
I think social games do matter, just not nearly to the degree that most people seem to think, judging from how they spend their time. I think the explanation for this is that social games mattered much more in the past than they do now, but most people don’t realize this yet. And on the other side, there are a lot more opportunities for technical problem solving, which weren’t available in the past.
I was bullied in school, but eventually graduated, and I don’t think anyone tried to push me around after starting work. If they did, I would have complained to my boss or changed jobs. In a less mobile society, if you didn’t know how to “handle yourself”, you were probably stuck with low status for life.
Being single isn’t that bad. I imagine it was a lot worse in the past, where there was much less you could do to entertain yourself.
I spent most of my spare time in college writing an open source C++ library, which led to plenty of business and job opportunities. I really doubt that I would have gotten more opportunities if I had spent most of my time socializing instead. I also didn’t put any effort into networking after starting work, and I don’t think that it’s hurt me much.
Looking back at my past job interviews, I now realize that when the interviewer asked me what salary range I was expecting, that was supposed to be the start of the negotiation. At the time, I just told them honestly that I don’t know, and that I care more about how interesting the job is than the salary.
That was probably not optimal, but I don’t think I was hurt too badly by my lack of negotiation skill. And the reason for this is that salaries and other prices are constrained by market competition, and markets are more efficient today than in the past, leaving less room for negotiation.
Even if they don’t matter as terminal values, it doesn’t mean they don’t matter as instrumental values either.