EDIT: decided i had revealed a lot more abaut myself in this thread and since it’s no longer active I’m redacting a lot of stuff.
I should have more IRL social contact, especially in some larger group.
1) (this is the main one) There is none to have any social contact WITH. If not for the very low prior I might think there simply isn’t a single interesting person within a 100 mile radius from here. I don’t think I could say I live in the middle of nowhere, but it certainly feels like it. Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect the same quality as online in a much smaller search space, but being around people you can’t respect as somehting more than dull tools just isn’t socially satisfying, when I know I could be online and chat with actual PERSONS. An LW meetup or convention for somehting I’m a fan of is somehting I’d jump at, but nothing even close to that never happen around here and probably never will.
2) I have psychological issues that I do not wish to discus in detail, but the end result is #REDACTED#
3) For various reasons setting of a few hours to go somewhere is inconvenient, and #REDACTED#
It would help to know approximately where, geographically, you are. I hear people in west coast US say that all the time, because it’s just plain difficult to figure out how to find interesting people if you’re not a natural extrovert. I don’t really know any other portion of the world, but I’d assume that it’s very rarely true that there really aren’t any interesting people around.
I probably need some kind of person who already knows me well to pull me out
Speaking from my own personal experience, with my own personal issues, which are totally not your issues: There are really cool people out there who are safe to be yourself around. If you can find them, then (a) you have someone you don’t need to worry about being strange around and (b) they can then help you navigate larger groups.
If you live in the right city, you can probably find groups of 10-20 people that don’t mind you. I’ve found a few gatherings of 100+ where I can get away with being myself, but those are usually annual music festivals, geeky conventions, etc..
Depending on the issues, it may also be more likely than you think that you can learn to function socially despite it. I’ve developed high-functioning abilities despite three different psychological issues that can impair me. Part of it is just recognizing my good days and having people close enough to make impulsive plans with. Part of it has been finding weekly gatherings where I can flake out as needed and no one minds, because the group is large. Part of it is a lot of practice. And, unfortunately, part of it is just being privileged to have been dealt a higher-functioning hand in the first place, which not everyone gets. But if you can handle online social, I’d guess there’s good odds you can learn to handle face-to-face :)
I’m moving to Stockholm in a few months. How long does it take to go from Stockholm to where you live? (I don’t have a car, but I’m willing to take a ridiculously convoluted series of trains then walk for a couple hours (more if not snowy).)
Given your issues, I recommend associating with other neuroatypical people and various weirdos. We’re better at handling unusual problems, won’t despise you for ridiculous reasons (in particular, will handle murderous tendencies as a danger that needs routing around, not a reason to shun you), are used to questioning everything, and benefit from helping each other.
You’ve provided a lot of useful information towards coming to possible paths to the goal you’ve posed.
I’ve a few more questions mainly around the strictness of your constraints that I hope will clarify the space of reasonable solutions.
I’m also trying to point towards a profile for what you consider the boundaries of an interesting person as well as easy heuristics for filtering to find these people.
Regarding (1):
Can you provide some elaboration around what you mean by an “interesting person?”
What heuristics do you currently use to determine whether a person is interesting?
Generally how long does your evaluation period last?
Regarding (2):
In the past, what kind of traits unify people that know you well and whom you would feel comfortable pulling you out if you were acting strangely?
In the past, have any of these people not stand out in a crowd? If so, do these people share traits that are different from the larger group of people who’ve known you well above?
Regarding (3):
How strict is this constraint i.e. how far would you be willing and able to travel on a regular (say weekly?) basis for face-to-face social interaction? The answer could be 0...in which case all social counter-parts would have to travel to you.
Is it possible to get into town via public transit such as a bus or train? Do you know anyone (apart from your mom) nearby who might be willing to drive you into town? For those people who are on the margin in your belief of their willingness, have you tried asking them to test the proposition?
How strict a constraint is your psychological problem with breaking routine? Are we talking no behavior modification on your part, and so simplifying the question to finding people who’re willing to come to you / alter their behavior for you? Or are you open to exploring routine breaking as a means towards this end?
1) Heuristics: It correlates a LOT with reading LW, and also in general sharing interests and internet-cultural background with me, as well as being generally smart/nice/artistic/a formidable specialist at some specific field.
I don’t know what you mean by evaluation process. It’s more like a hidden property I collect evidence for or against, so I’ll hopefully eventually become fairly certain but new evidence can always change my mind. Also the interestingness of people can change as they learn more or I learn more etc.
It’s not rally a very high grade concept that probably doesn’t correspond well to any natural category or predict anything other than my attitude towards someone.
2) #REDACTED#
3) #REDACTED#
I’m getting unconformable with how much I’m revealing about myself.
If you’re uncomfortable, then you can stop here, right now...also, later. No one should feel they need to reveal more than they want. I will not be hurt if you decide you want to stop.
I’m trying to build a profile so that I can think of ways you can find interesting people nearby.
By evaluation process what I mean is...how long do you take to decide whether you want to continue or discontinue talking to someone. In other words, if you meet someone for the first time, when do you know whether they are interesting. By adjusting this process you might be able to increase the number of interesting people you find.
I don’t want to pry into your relationship with your family, and so if you don’t want to talk further about them that is fine. It seems that a lot of stress and a high cost to failure would be major factors to consider in any recommendation.
Questions you definitely don’t need to answer:
How openly can you talk with your family?
Are they in favor or opposed to you socializing with people face-to-face?
If they are in favor, do they have the time / means to help you socialize?
Enlist the help of your family to ferry you to population centers, friends, or wouldbe friends; eventually you’ll have non-family relationships that are strong enough that these new friends can come pick you up on the way elsewhere thus reducing the burden on your family.
Look into activities, hobbies, etc. that involve other people. People often gather around crafting something, music, political activism. You may also find some public debating societies interesting. There are also some public speaking clubs like Toastmasters which should draw people who have something to say and who are interested in meeting people and self-improvement.
Spend some serious time reflecting on and understanding what your criteria for an interesting person is. If you are more “luminous” about this, then you may be able to more efficiently find people nearby who you are interested in.
I will keep thinking on this and see if I can come up with other immediately actionable suggestions.
is already my default solution, but there are no friends or wolfbe friends to be shipped TO, and “population centre” is way to vague
Don’t find things like that interesting and don’t have the time for a hobby like that.
I don’t really think there is anything to know. The word was never made to stand up to any serious scrutiny and is just a kludged pointer in a general direction.
Yes. Asking them to drop you on a street-corner with a lot of people probably won’t go over too well.
How is your time currently distributed? Is there anything you’re currently using your time for that you would be willing to and have the ability to redistribute towards social activities?
Obviously, this is going to subject to cost-benefit considerations, but some sense of how much flexibility you have here will help point towards realizable social activities.
I’ve noticed that some varieties of interesting people (programmers, writers, painters, composers) like to get away from their regular routine to work on projects. They sometimes get invited to retreat centers, which are in remote areas, where they work on their projects, and get housing and regular meals.
Do you have the resources to invite interesting house guests for brief project visits?
Even if I did, inviting a stranger to live with me sounds questionable.
Invite people you know from online. Bayesian updating should give you a decent baseline for whether it’s plausible that this person is just scamming you. It’s a bit of a trust leap, but I’ve done it plenty and no one has taken advantage of me. It also helps to remind myself that traveling all that way just to rob me is a pretty big financial waste, and rapists probably aren’t going to spend weeks getting to know me online (nor are either group likely to be people I find fun to talk to online to begin with!)
I don’t see what kind of project could possibly happen here.
Programming can happen anyplace I can plug in my laptop, and a change of scenery often helps, as does having someone interesting around to fill the rest of my day. Writing can happen even without electricity. Drawing, world building, sketching out plans for other projects and soliciting feedback, bouncing ideas off of you. Most any craft skill (sewing, wood carving, knitting), and those also presumably are a lot more fun to do around someone else.
You could also just go on random wandering adventures if you live in a nice neighborhood or near some interesting wilderness. Requires a car or a proclivity for walking, of course. I get the impression you don’t have a car, but your visitors might.
Yea, that’d work obviously, but it limits the pool to people I know personally online. The probability of that AND them being close enough AND them wanting to do a visit/project like that is low enough that it seems unlikely to ever happen.
And what about any of those things can’t they do at home? Perhaps you’re operating under the assumption that I am interesting or useful in any way?
Perhaps you’re operating under the assumption that I am interesting or useful in any way?
Humans are social animals. They like being around other humans. Ook ook. That’s really all that’s necessary, aside from being socially compatible. Unless you have some condition that makes you significantly worse at face-to-face interactions, people who like you online will probably like you face-to-face.
This is highly counterintuitive to me, but it’s worth a shot and asking shouldn’t hurt. Thanks. Still have no idea how to find anyone who lives close enough and might be interested thou.
Extraverts are weird like that. It’s generally counter-intuitive to introverts, but observably true in many (possibly most, depending on how you account for selection bias) cases anyway.
I don’t see quite how introversion or extroversion is relevant to this. I don’t see why they’d expect the quality of social interaction to be higher quality than some random neighbour within walking distance.
The same reason you’d prefer to talk to them online, rather than some random person off AOL—you’re someone who shares interests and has the intelligence required to follow what they’re talking about.
Have a look around to see if there’s a social/support group for the particular psychological issue that you are dealing with. Then meet with them.
they will understand the issues you are facing and may even have new ways to help you deal with them… but most of all they will at least understand what you are going through.
Can’t guarantee that they won’t be tools, of course, but I’ve often found I have to get different needs fulfilled by different groups of people. For the “being interesting” need look into groups that have similar interests to you. Meetup.com is a good place to look for groups nearby to you—they have groups for just about anything you can imagine and you can find the closest one to you that way… and if there isn’t one… consider starting one up. If you register a group with meetup—other people near to you that are interested in the same thing will be notified—especially if you tag it appropriately (people watch, say, “meetups in my area that are to do with futurism” or whatever...)
I’ll check out the meetup site. I’ve always assumed that if there was a meetup for any of the things I’m involved in I’d find out about it through ordinary forums and blogs and such for it, but &&ing a lot of different more minor interests or organizing one on a site like that might work.
Edit: nope, checked every group in my entire COUNTRY, which was not all that many, and not a single one of them sound even remotely interesting. Maybe I really do live more in the middle of nowhere than I thought. I wont even bother registering and trying to start a group.
Correction: there’s nobody that’s said they want to come.
If you start up a meetup—some people may come out of the woodwork. I know of at least one very cool programmer-dude in Sweden (stockholm) - there must be other cool geek-types about too.
have you considered getting into programming (if you’re not already). AFAICT, there’s a high crossover rate with LW-types there… and certainly you’ll find people interesting to talk to.
I’m already into programming. I dabble in several languages, have top grades in it, and love the art form. Unfortunately I don’t have time to practice and get good enough to do anything useful in a reasonable amount of time.
EDIT: decided i had revealed a lot more abaut myself in this thread and since it’s no longer active I’m redacting a lot of stuff.
I should have more IRL social contact, especially in some larger group.
1) (this is the main one) There is none to have any social contact WITH. If not for the very low prior I might think there simply isn’t a single interesting person within a 100 mile radius from here. I don’t think I could say I live in the middle of nowhere, but it certainly feels like it. Maybe it’s unreasonable to expect the same quality as online in a much smaller search space, but being around people you can’t respect as somehting more than dull tools just isn’t socially satisfying, when I know I could be online and chat with actual PERSONS. An LW meetup or convention for somehting I’m a fan of is somehting I’d jump at, but nothing even close to that never happen around here and probably never will.
2) I have psychological issues that I do not wish to discus in detail, but the end result is #REDACTED#
3) For various reasons setting of a few hours to go somewhere is inconvenient, and #REDACTED#
It would help to know approximately where, geographically, you are. I hear people in west coast US say that all the time, because it’s just plain difficult to figure out how to find interesting people if you’re not a natural extrovert. I don’t really know any other portion of the world, but I’d assume that it’s very rarely true that there really aren’t any interesting people around.
Speaking from my own personal experience, with my own personal issues, which are totally not your issues: There are really cool people out there who are safe to be yourself around. If you can find them, then (a) you have someone you don’t need to worry about being strange around and (b) they can then help you navigate larger groups.
If you live in the right city, you can probably find groups of 10-20 people that don’t mind you. I’ve found a few gatherings of 100+ where I can get away with being myself, but those are usually annual music festivals, geeky conventions, etc..
Depending on the issues, it may also be more likely than you think that you can learn to function socially despite it. I’ve developed high-functioning abilities despite three different psychological issues that can impair me. Part of it is just recognizing my good days and having people close enough to make impulsive plans with. Part of it has been finding weekly gatherings where I can flake out as needed and no one minds, because the group is large. Part of it is a lot of practice. And, unfortunately, part of it is just being privileged to have been dealt a higher-functioning hand in the first place, which not everyone gets. But if you can handle online social, I’d guess there’s good odds you can learn to handle face-to-face :)
Sweden. Anyone who live anywhere in the US have it EASY. I’m not sure what my extroversion stat is, I think it might be context sensitive.
#REDACTED#
I don’t live in any city. And I don’t live even remotely near the right city.
#REDACTED#
Herre gud, du bor hundra mil från civilisationen!
I’m moving to Stockholm in a few months. How long does it take to go from Stockholm to where you live? (I don’t have a car, but I’m willing to take a ridiculously convoluted series of trains then walk for a couple hours (more if not snowy).)
Given your issues, I recommend associating with other neuroatypical people and various weirdos. We’re better at handling unusual problems, won’t despise you for ridiculous reasons (in particular, will handle murderous tendencies as a danger that needs routing around, not a reason to shun you), are used to questioning everything, and benefit from helping each other.
Sent you my address. Please don’t come at night and stab me. Or share it anywhere public.
Also, the murderous part was a joke guess I should have made that a bit clearer...
You’ve provided a lot of useful information towards coming to possible paths to the goal you’ve posed.
I’ve a few more questions mainly around the strictness of your constraints that I hope will clarify the space of reasonable solutions.
I’m also trying to point towards a profile for what you consider the boundaries of an interesting person as well as easy heuristics for filtering to find these people.
Regarding (1):
Can you provide some elaboration around what you mean by an “interesting person?”
What heuristics do you currently use to determine whether a person is interesting?
Generally how long does your evaluation period last?
Regarding (2):
In the past, what kind of traits unify people that know you well and whom you would feel comfortable pulling you out if you were acting strangely?
In the past, have any of these people not stand out in a crowd? If so, do these people share traits that are different from the larger group of people who’ve known you well above?
Regarding (3):
How strict is this constraint i.e. how far would you be willing and able to travel on a regular (say weekly?) basis for face-to-face social interaction? The answer could be 0...in which case all social counter-parts would have to travel to you.
Is it possible to get into town via public transit such as a bus or train? Do you know anyone (apart from your mom) nearby who might be willing to drive you into town? For those people who are on the margin in your belief of their willingness, have you tried asking them to test the proposition?
How strict a constraint is your psychological problem with breaking routine? Are we talking no behavior modification on your part, and so simplifying the question to finding people who’re willing to come to you / alter their behavior for you? Or are you open to exploring routine breaking as a means towards this end?
1) Heuristics: It correlates a LOT with reading LW, and also in general sharing interests and internet-cultural background with me, as well as being generally smart/nice/artistic/a formidable specialist at some specific field.
I don’t know what you mean by evaluation process. It’s more like a hidden property I collect evidence for or against, so I’ll hopefully eventually become fairly certain but new evidence can always change my mind. Also the interestingness of people can change as they learn more or I learn more etc.
It’s not rally a very high grade concept that probably doesn’t correspond well to any natural category or predict anything other than my attitude towards someone.
2) #REDACTED#
3) #REDACTED#
I’m getting unconformable with how much I’m revealing about myself.
If you’re uncomfortable, then you can stop here, right now...also, later. No one should feel they need to reveal more than they want. I will not be hurt if you decide you want to stop.
I’m trying to build a profile so that I can think of ways you can find interesting people nearby.
By evaluation process what I mean is...how long do you take to decide whether you want to continue or discontinue talking to someone. In other words, if you meet someone for the first time, when do you know whether they are interesting. By adjusting this process you might be able to increase the number of interesting people you find.
I don’t want to pry into your relationship with your family, and so if you don’t want to talk further about them that is fine. It seems that a lot of stress and a high cost to failure would be major factors to consider in any recommendation.
Questions you definitely don’t need to answer:
How openly can you talk with your family?
Are they in favor or opposed to you socializing with people face-to-face?
If they are in favor, do they have the time / means to help you socialize?
about most stuff verily so, although I can’t count on them to be rational. Think sort of like rationalist!Harry’s situation from MoR.
very much in favor
yes.
I don’t have any standardised “evaluation process”, it depends on the opportunity cost and probabilities of various outcomes for the particular case.
Three suggestions then:
Enlist the help of your family to ferry you to population centers, friends, or wouldbe friends; eventually you’ll have non-family relationships that are strong enough that these new friends can come pick you up on the way elsewhere thus reducing the burden on your family.
Look into activities, hobbies, etc. that involve other people. People often gather around crafting something, music, political activism. You may also find some public debating societies interesting. There are also some public speaking clubs like Toastmasters which should draw people who have something to say and who are interested in meeting people and self-improvement.
Spend some serious time reflecting on and understanding what your criteria for an interesting person is. If you are more “luminous” about this, then you may be able to more efficiently find people nearby who you are interested in.
I will keep thinking on this and see if I can come up with other immediately actionable suggestions.
is already my default solution, but there are no friends or wolfbe friends to be shipped TO, and “population centre” is way to vague
Don’t find things like that interesting and don’t have the time for a hobby like that.
I don’t really think there is anything to know. The word was never made to stand up to any serious scrutiny and is just a kludged pointer in a general direction.
Yes. Asking them to drop you on a street-corner with a lot of people probably won’t go over too well.
How is your time currently distributed? Is there anything you’re currently using your time for that you would be willing to and have the ability to redistribute towards social activities?
Obviously, this is going to subject to cost-benefit considerations, but some sense of how much flexibility you have here will help point towards realizable social activities.
it’s complicated, but the end result is equivalent to “yes, but not much”
I’ve noticed that some varieties of interesting people (programmers, writers, painters, composers) like to get away from their regular routine to work on projects. They sometimes get invited to retreat centers, which are in remote areas, where they work on their projects, and get housing and regular meals.
Do you have the resources to invite interesting house guests for brief project visits?
Nope.
Even if I did, inviting a stranger to live with me sounds questionable. And also I don’t see what kind of project could possibly happen here.
Invite people you know from online. Bayesian updating should give you a decent baseline for whether it’s plausible that this person is just scamming you. It’s a bit of a trust leap, but I’ve done it plenty and no one has taken advantage of me. It also helps to remind myself that traveling all that way just to rob me is a pretty big financial waste, and rapists probably aren’t going to spend weeks getting to know me online (nor are either group likely to be people I find fun to talk to online to begin with!)
Programming can happen anyplace I can plug in my laptop, and a change of scenery often helps, as does having someone interesting around to fill the rest of my day. Writing can happen even without electricity. Drawing, world building, sketching out plans for other projects and soliciting feedback, bouncing ideas off of you. Most any craft skill (sewing, wood carving, knitting), and those also presumably are a lot more fun to do around someone else.
You could also just go on random wandering adventures if you live in a nice neighborhood or near some interesting wilderness. Requires a car or a proclivity for walking, of course. I get the impression you don’t have a car, but your visitors might.
Yea, that’d work obviously, but it limits the pool to people I know personally online. The probability of that AND them being close enough AND them wanting to do a visit/project like that is low enough that it seems unlikely to ever happen.
And what about any of those things can’t they do at home? Perhaps you’re operating under the assumption that I am interesting or useful in any way?
Humans are social animals. They like being around other humans. Ook ook. That’s really all that’s necessary, aside from being socially compatible. Unless you have some condition that makes you significantly worse at face-to-face interactions, people who like you online will probably like you face-to-face.
This is highly counterintuitive to me, but it’s worth a shot and asking shouldn’t hurt. Thanks. Still have no idea how to find anyone who lives close enough and might be interested thou.
Extraverts are weird like that. It’s generally counter-intuitive to introverts, but observably true in many (possibly most, depending on how you account for selection bias) cases anyway.
I don’t see quite how introversion or extroversion is relevant to this. I don’t see why they’d expect the quality of social interaction to be higher quality than some random neighbour within walking distance.
The same reason you’d prefer to talk to them online, rather than some random person off AOL—you’re someone who shares interests and has the intelligence required to follow what they’re talking about.
… Ooooooooh, NOW I get it. And feel like an idiot.
Have a look around to see if there’s a social/support group for the particular psychological issue that you are dealing with. Then meet with them.
they will understand the issues you are facing and may even have new ways to help you deal with them… but most of all they will at least understand what you are going through.
Can’t guarantee that they won’t be tools, of course, but I’ve often found I have to get different needs fulfilled by different groups of people. For the “being interesting” need look into groups that have similar interests to you. Meetup.com is a good place to look for groups nearby to you—they have groups for just about anything you can imagine and you can find the closest one to you that way… and if there isn’t one… consider starting one up. If you register a group with meetup—other people near to you that are interested in the same thing will be notified—especially if you tag it appropriately (people watch, say, “meetups in my area that are to do with futurism” or whatever...)
No, just… no. #REDACTED#
I’ll check out the meetup site. I’ve always assumed that if there was a meetup for any of the things I’m involved in I’d find out about it through ordinary forums and blogs and such for it, but &&ing a lot of different more minor interests or organizing one on a site like that might work.
Edit: nope, checked every group in my entire COUNTRY, which was not all that many, and not a single one of them sound even remotely interesting. Maybe I really do live more in the middle of nowhere than I thought. I wont even bother registering and trying to start a group.
where do you live?
...and have you made it to (or started) any of the LessWrong meetups?
Southern Sweden. And yea I’ve checked the possibility of starting an LW meetup, there’s nobody to come.
Correction: there’s nobody that’s said they want to come.
If you start up a meetup—some people may come out of the woodwork. I know of at least one very cool programmer-dude in Sweden (stockholm) - there must be other cool geek-types about too.
have you considered getting into programming (if you’re not already). AFAICT, there’s a high crossover rate with LW-types there… and certainly you’ll find people interesting to talk to.
I’m already into programming. I dabble in several languages, have top grades in it, and love the art form. Unfortunately I don’t have time to practice and get good enough to do anything useful in a reasonable amount of time.
You don’t have to be “good” to go to meetups or hackdays.
Just go.
If you need to learn anything—you can use the meetup/hackday to actually learn what it is you don’t know… or just to have fun.
You can always move :( but as handoflixue said knowing your approximate location would be useful.
Nope, I can’t actually. Again the mental helth stuff and related red tape.