The thing is, some people are really adept at perceiving (and manipulating) “social reality”, as you put it. (Think politicians and salesmen, to name but a few.) Furthermore, this perception of “social reality” appears to occur in large part through “intuition”; things like body language, tone of voice, etc. all play a role, and these things are more or less evaluated unconsciously. It’s not just the really adept people that do this, either; all neurotypical people perform this sort of unconscious evaluation to some extent. In that respect, at least, the way we perceive “social reality” is remarkably similar to the way we perceive “physical reality”. That makes sense, too; the important tasks (from an evolutionary perspective) need to be automated in your brain, but the less important ones (like doing math, for example) require conscious control. So in my opinion, reading social cues would be an example of (in So8res’ terminology) “leaving the world-model-generator hooked up to (social) reality”.
However, we do in fact have a control group (or would that be experimental group?) for what happens when you attach the “world-model generator” to conscious thought: people with Asperger’s Syndrome, for instance, are far less capable of picking up social cues and reading the general flow of the situation. (Writing this as someone who has Asperger’s Syndrome, I should note that I’m speaking largely from personal experience here.) For them, the art of reading social situations needs to be learned pretty much from scratch, all at the level of conscious introspection. They don’t have the benefit of automated, unconscious social evaluation software that just activates; instead, every decision has to be “calculated”, so to speak. You’ll note that the results are quite telling: people with Asperger’s do significantly worse in day-to-day social interactions than neurotypical people, even after they’ve been “learning” how to navigate social interactions for quite some time.
In short, manual control is hard to wield, and we should be wary of letting our models be influenced by it. (There’s also all the biases that humans suffer from that make it even more difficult to build accurate world-models.) Unfortunately, there’s no real way to switch everything to “unconscious mode”, so instead, we should strive to be rational so we can build the best models we can with our available information. That, I think, is So8res’ point in this post. (If I’m mistaken, he should feel free to correct me.)
In that respect, at least, the way we perceive “social reality” is remarkably similar to the way we perceive “physical reality”.
I agree that a neurotypical sees social cues on the perceptual level in much the same way as they recognize some photons as coming from “the sky” on the perceptual level. I think my complaint is that the question of “is my coworker complimenting or insulting me?” is operating on a higher level of abstraction, and has a strategic and tactical component. Even if your coworker has cued their statement as a compliment, that may in fact be evidence for it being an insult—and in order to determine that, you need a detailed model of your coworker and possibly conscious deliberation. Even if your coworker has genuinely intended a compliment, you may be better served by perceiving it as an insult.
To give a somewhat benign example, if the coworker cued something ambiguously positive and you infer that they wanted to compliment you, you might want to communicate to them that they would be better off cuing something unambiguously positive if they want to be perceived as complimenting others. (Less benign examples of deliberate misinterpretation probably suggest themselves.)
The thing is, some people are really adept at perceiving (and manipulating) “social reality”, as you put it. (Think politicians and salesmen, to name but a few.) Furthermore, this perception of “social reality” appears to occur in large part through “intuition”; things like body language, tone of voice, etc. all play a role, and these things are more or less evaluated unconsciously. It’s not just the really adept people that do this, either; all neurotypical people perform this sort of unconscious evaluation to some extent. In that respect, at least, the way we perceive “social reality” is remarkably similar to the way we perceive “physical reality”. That makes sense, too; the important tasks (from an evolutionary perspective) need to be automated in your brain, but the less important ones (like doing math, for example) require conscious control. So in my opinion, reading social cues would be an example of (in So8res’ terminology) “leaving the world-model-generator hooked up to (social) reality”.
However, we do in fact have a control group (or would that be experimental group?) for what happens when you attach the “world-model generator” to conscious thought: people with Asperger’s Syndrome, for instance, are far less capable of picking up social cues and reading the general flow of the situation. (Writing this as someone who has Asperger’s Syndrome, I should note that I’m speaking largely from personal experience here.) For them, the art of reading social situations needs to be learned pretty much from scratch, all at the level of conscious introspection. They don’t have the benefit of automated, unconscious social evaluation software that just activates; instead, every decision has to be “calculated”, so to speak. You’ll note that the results are quite telling: people with Asperger’s do significantly worse in day-to-day social interactions than neurotypical people, even after they’ve been “learning” how to navigate social interactions for quite some time.
In short, manual control is hard to wield, and we should be wary of letting our models be influenced by it. (There’s also all the biases that humans suffer from that make it even more difficult to build accurate world-models.) Unfortunately, there’s no real way to switch everything to “unconscious mode”, so instead, we should strive to be rational so we can build the best models we can with our available information. That, I think, is So8res’ point in this post. (If I’m mistaken, he should feel free to correct me.)
I agree that a neurotypical sees social cues on the perceptual level in much the same way as they recognize some photons as coming from “the sky” on the perceptual level. I think my complaint is that the question of “is my coworker complimenting or insulting me?” is operating on a higher level of abstraction, and has a strategic and tactical component. Even if your coworker has cued their statement as a compliment, that may in fact be evidence for it being an insult—and in order to determine that, you need a detailed model of your coworker and possibly conscious deliberation. Even if your coworker has genuinely intended a compliment, you may be better served by perceiving it as an insult.
To give a somewhat benign example, if the coworker cued something ambiguously positive and you infer that they wanted to compliment you, you might want to communicate to them that they would be better off cuing something unambiguously positive if they want to be perceived as complimenting others. (Less benign examples of deliberate misinterpretation probably suggest themselves.)