How about the old fashioned freezing with a face contorted in fear like your being held at knife point unable to think of anything to say and just waiting to be able to leave? When you get asked a question, fumble over your words and say something stupid. Later on, you can reflexively watch the memory played over and over again so you're even worse the next time. If you see anyone you met during the encounter afterwards, you can just panic and try to hide your face and escape.
That's a lot easier and comes off more natural IMO.
You reminded me of one of the first interviews I ever had in tech. I took 2 phone screens, and a take home assignment. Last step: Zoom interview with some of the IT team (3 people). It started well, but I slowly started panicking. All three of them were shooting questions at me, which I answered them all correctly, as far as I know, but I was so... cold. Started stammering my words and speaking like a terrified child at the principals office.
I could observe myself and knew what I looked like, but couldn't break it. The CTO stopped me as I was speaking and said "this isn't going to work". As soon as he said that, I ended the call. I had some major imposter syndrome during that time, I think that played a huge role in my fumble. Still massively cringe when I think about that, though.
Honestly, it sounds to me like the CTO, not you, is the one who should be embarrassed by memories of that experience. Unless being a polished speaker under high pressure situations was a requirement for the job, the CTO, as leader, should have had the skill to make you more comfortable expressing your knowledge and skills.
I have memories of experiences freezing up and losing the physical control required to speak as well, so I have empathy.
(Having such experiences as a child are what led to me joining the high school speech team doing extemporaneous and impromptu events to get over them. I eventually went on to be a regional champion and a state competitor, but I still sometimes have to fight the physical tension when speaking in certain situations).
One of my worst experiences as a junior member of our interview team was when a candidate was "walked out" when the hiring manager decided that the person was not going to work out. I still feel embarrassed about it myself. What a terrible experience for the interviewee.
Some of my worst interview memories are from a company where the VP leading hiring had ideas that candidates needed to be made to feel as comfortable and positive as possible and treated equally, including giving them the same interview length after they got past the screener.
The screener mostly filtered out unqualified candidates, but when someone slipped through and then was obviously not going to make it through the interview we all had to pretend that they were doing a great job and keep pushing through anyway. There was lots of fake encouragement that most candidates could see right through. Really painful for everyone to have to sit through interview sessions when everyone in the room, including the candidate, knows it's not going to work out.
That shit makes me so mad. Bringing people to your office in a truly vulnerable state - they're inviting you to judge them. Anyone who doesn't treat them with compassion and kindness lacks what it takes to be a good leader.
I've had the pleasure of interviewing someone, for a coding job in C, where it became clear within 10 minutes that they just didn't know C beyond "hello world". Through body language etc they indicated they weren't chagrined by their lack of knowledge and we should just move on with the interview. At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?" I stopped that interview early and recommended we let the candidate go without completing the loop. No sense in wasting everyone's time and creating some kind of false hope.
This is one of those cases where "nice" != "compassionate". They applied for a job they were not qualified for. We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run.
Yeah, I agree with you. There is a right way to do that, and I assumed the comment I was replying to was describing the wrong way to do it given their reaction.
I've ended plenty of interviews early when it's clear the candidate isn't going to work out. I agree there's no point in wasting everyone's time, and hiring is time consuming enough. But there's a way to do it with kindness, and I think everyone in the interviewer's chair should have some sense of how. (That said, there are some candidates that are going to take rejection poorly no matter what - you can control how you treat a candidate but now how they react).
> We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run
You're right, however
> At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?"
This is absolutely not the right way to go about it.
It's completely fair to say "hey, thanks for your time but we really need someone with C experience and we don't think you're a good fit for what we're looking for", but that's not even close to what it sounds like you did
You can cut an interview short and make it clear they won't be considered without being a huge asshole about it
Welp, this was 20 years ago and I was 25, and literally no one ever gave me any instruction on how to conduct interviews (over my entire career). If I was a "huge asshole" to this person, then I'm sorry, that wasn't my intent, and I hope they're doing well and weren't too negatively impacted by my attitude.
To be honest though, the whole corporate world is institutionalized assholery, from giving candidates take-home coding assignments and then ghosting them, to laying people off without even giving them a chance to say goodbye to their coworkers. The entire leadership of that particular startup was assholes through and through. It's difficult to maintain one's humanity in the face of that (esp at a young age) and I'm glad to be out of that game.
I wouldn't judge based on the limited context we've provided.
I've interviewed candidates for jobs requiring highly specific skills who claimed to have those skills, but in the interview they kept trying to divert the topic to something else. An analogy would be bringing someone in for a C interview and they keep trying to write all the answers in Python and pretend that C and Python are interchangeable.
So some times, asking the candidate if they know what they're interviewing for is really called for. You want to be sure the person understood the interview, not that they were confused by the questions.
That's just a tech version of the age-old hostile (panel) interview.
I don't think it's a useful interview practice, at least in tech, below director level, but you just have to keep your composure and gently assert control.
If that CTO favored it maybe their company culture was unusually aggressive.
tbf it sounds like you might have dodged a bullet there, so try to not beat yourself up too much for thinking you weren’t good enough.
we all have imposter syndrome when we start out. as long as you didn’t outright obviously lie or something then you probably didn’t do anything particularly wrong that’s worthy of the cringe.
(i’ve done the exact same thing in interviews, most of us probably have some story like that).
If any one single interaction makes you have such a response, that might be a reason to see someone. I wish for everyone to be able to move through the social world with grace and ease.
Put less kindly: there’s nothing so special about you that being yourself around a new person should cause such a panic. Even if they take an instant dislike to you, that should be something you can take in stride
Perhaps,' said Darcy, 'I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers.'
'Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?' said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. 'Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?'
'I can answer your question,' said Fitzwilliam, 'without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.'
'I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,' said Darcy, 'of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.'
'My fingers,' said Elizabeth, 'do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault -- because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.'
As a self identified autistic person, I regularly think of spooky situations as “socialization”. I went to a wedding where I only knew five people. Goddamn did I have some bad conversation. But I also made one new friend, and that’s cool! When I fuck up it’s just a chance for me to learn why I fucked up and how to be better in the future. And not everyone has to like me. I only really enjoy about 10% of others, why should I expect a greater return?
It seems like most people in this thread are more like Mr. Darcy, just assuming that they are destined to be bad at something that they’ve never practiced
Your response assumes a lot about the homogeneity of subjective human experience that the data don’t seem to support.
There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity that makes your comment sound extremely out of touch to some people.
I can do what you describe because I am fortunate that many of my social interactions are positive. For people I work with this is not the case and they are extremely socially isolated, and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this. They are more sensitive interpersonally than I am and more socially aware in the moment, while less equipped to deal with social conventions and unattractive, becoming dramatically moreso in social situations due to their intrinsic reactions.
> and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this
This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out. The vast majority of social experiences in my life have been negative and it gets worse every time I have another, making it less likely the next will be positive.
Rather than continue to get hurt I have nearly 100% socially isolated myself, save for the internet. I work remote in a rural area and I only leave the house for essentials. There's no place for me socially and I've accepted that.
> This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out.
My friend, things can always improve. Having mental health problems is hard, because you're ultimately using your own 'impaired' brain to analyze your own situation. Talking to a therapist is effective in breaking this, because it forces you to organize your thoughts into something coherent to explain it to your therapist. Only at this point will flaws in this reasoning become apparent.
If you cannot talk to a therapist (or otherwise a neutral person who doesn't judge you for what you say), you can try writing it down. Try to write down why you feel what you feel, what you feel when you talk to another person, what you think that others think and feel about you, how those feelings developed, how other people have been influential in your feelings, everything. Read it as if someone else wrote it down. What would you do in their situation? Do you agree with what you wrote down. If you come across holes in what you've written, try to revise that part, rewrite it to incoorporate for the criticisms.
> making it less likely the next will be positive.
Why do you think that's the case? If you throw a dice and it comes up on 1 three times in a row, that doesn't make it more likely that the next time it will be a 1 again. There's so many different people, it's as good as random what kind of interaction you will have.
Some people are just happiest being alone. I usually feel I am in this camp. I can have reasonably good social interactions but it's often awkward and even when it's not it is a lot of work and it doesn't seem commensurate with the reward, which is very little.
I like staying at home, reading, tinkering, doing my hobbies. I do not crave the company of others, and walking into a room and having to be "on" even with people I know and am friendly with is so draining.
I’m also in this camp. There’s nothing better than to be lost in your own flow. However, I find these moments to be richer when someone is silently tinkering besides you, in sort of a passive interaction. Typical people tend to behave awkwardly when there’s no point or reason in talking while in the company of others. This has to be as much as a deficit as the normative definition of social awkwardness. I could never connect with these kind of people, that are always ruining silence for no reason other than trying to escape their own discomfort.
The point is that a fully grown person (i.e. adult) should be able to regulate their emotions to the point of being able to have a conversation with 3 strangers.
You might not like it, it might stress you out a bunch, you can cry afterwards, or have a stiff drink after, but you should be able to set those emotions aside for 30 minutes, especially for something important like a job interview.
If someone cannot do that, they should definitely go into therapy for that. No matter if it was 'done to them', it's still a problem that person carries around, and the only way around that is fixing it.
lol, go be yourself on your own time. On my time, you better be normal and happy about it.
None of the many many reasons someone may act this way mean they are broken, and therapy is not about 'fixing' someone to be the member of society you deem appropriate.
Therapy is (or at least can be!) about trying to achieve goals that you have. I’m the GP commenter above. I went to therapy twice a week for two years to get over social anxiety and my entire life has completely opened up in a new way that would never have been possible without that work.
If relating to people is not a goal of yours then I would agree that you should not go to therapy for it. On the other hand, it is difficult for me to believe that anyone with anxiety is truly comfortable, considering that discomfort is the main feature of anxiety.
It is far more helpful to others for you to share the depths of your experience than to go around telling people they need to go to therapy because it works for you.
I see the enthusiasm and that you want better things for others, but the way you are approaching this communication is not doing it justice.
Awesome of you to put words in my mouth. I don't think people are 'broken' for having mental issues, and even I certainly would never imply that someone is somehow 'less' because of mental issues.
Just as someone with a broken leg is not a 'broken' person, their leg still needs fixing.
just fyi: 2 people could have the same mental health issues, but one could get a diagnosis and the other one doesn't. The reason for that is because a 'diagnosis' is basically just a ticket to get treatment, and thus is solely based on the question: "Will this person be able to deal with the disruptions caused by the issue, without professional intervention?".
If someone has a panic attack every time they talk to 3 strangers, it's is very plausible that this can lead to difficulty making and maintaining friendships and relations, which can likely lead to loneliness, depression, even further excerbated social anxiety, etc. All these afflictions make it even harder to deal with these issues which is why some people cannot break this cycle by themselves.
Some of the people I work with have gone into therapy. The more intelligent and in touch with their emotions they already were, the less therapy did for them. For a lot of dudes it is a revelation. For a lot of others it is not, just a way to continue to surface intractable problems in conversation.
Therapy doesn’t always help, many people need more compassion from those around them. And society would be better equipped to provide that if instead to referring their contacts to specialists they might not be able to afford, more well-off people developed some minor therapeutic ability and concern for their fellow humans.
There's plenty of research that shows treatment along with talk therapy yields better outcomes than treatment or therapy alone. If you have any evidence or anecdotes that are to the contrary I would love to hear it.
Love the quote marks. Next time try a Marx quote. I mean the brothers.
To fellow humans reading: the point is that the ones who did this to you are extremely unlikely to repent. Or even to comprehend that what they did to you is wrong.
Even if you were to explicitly hurt yourself - or place yourself in a position where you get hurt very badly - with the intent to communicate "do you still not see what you did to me?"... it's just no sweat off their, you know? "Yeah that person was all wrong, had it coming anyway".
The social contract protects them better than it protects you, so an "eye for an eye" solution is also unlikely to work - or even be possible: we don't hit, do we?
Therapy is... some person's job. That they trained for, you know? To put some food on the table, you know?
That means you can "go to therapy" in good faith (assuming you can access it in the first place) and not heal at all. The therapist might be a talented and intrinsically motivated person - or might just go "mmhmm" as you try to get through to them that they are doing exactly nothing to help you heal from some very particular, and perhaps not even unclearly defined at all, mental wound (that PP has had the gall to put in 'scare quotes'.)
Point is, the therapist will get paid either way. There is no shortage of people being told to get therapy by their fellows (who are too fucked up themselves to exhibit basic human fellowship). The systemic incentive to heal people's minds is next to nonexistent in comparison with the systemic incentive to drive hurt people mad, and then destroy them for being mad.
My suggestion: read some fucking books, and I don't mean books about fucking, I mean fucking books. Then, you might begin to get a clue how to get in touch with your spite, and how to become the undoing of all that ever wronged you without turning into that thing in the process.
TL;DR: You can start with those people who taught you that "feeling sorry for yourself" is a thing, and that it's what you need to do to make those who wronged you to regret their actions. You take those people and unlearn everything that they ever taught you. If there was anything true at all in what they wanted you to understand, you'll relearn it on your own, unencumbered by association with their other insidious lies. Then you can go tell two priestly kings that the balamatom sez hi ;-)
Sadly the human need for being heard and understood is innate, and it has been my experience that books can't substitute for that need. On the other hand, there are swathes of incompetent therapists that can only aggravate one's mental state.
The only solution I see is to find the right therapist. Some people might not when their future depends on them finding one, and they give up too early. I can't see how that would be fixed except maybe having a mediator that pairs you up with therapists they recommend and asks if you feel an improvement each week. You'd be surprised, but I had nobody to do this for me. So I ended up losing years worth of time sticking with incompetent therapists because "going to therapy" like everybody told me to seemed more important than "fixing my life."
As cruel as it sounds, I was in no position to think critically about my own treatment because my mental state only allowed me to see checking off the box of self-care to get people off my back as the ultimate goal. It's the nature of the problem of mental healthcare. If I had been given a simple questionnaire to rate my treatment providers on a scale of 1-10 in various dimensions, I would have been put in front of someone else within a month or two.
>Sadly the human need for being heard and understood is innate
And humans are hell-bent on denying this to each other. Just like sustenance or shelter. Hmm. Wonder what's that all about?
>You'd be surprised
The hypothetical everyman that is addressee in this turn of phrase? Yeah, probably would. Me though? I wouldn't even feign it.
>but I had nobody to do this for me.
Root of the problem right there. Not your fault. (At least if we reason causally, and not scapegoatingly.)
>So I ended up losing years worth of time sticking with incompetent therapists because "going to therapy" like everybody told me to seemed more important than "fixing my life."
Exactly.
Sending someone to therapy is a socially acceptable accountability sink. And a "good vibes"-coded method of gaslighting.
The sender-to-therapy still wants to maintain your acquaintance. They might not even be getting something out of it, or even expecting to gain something; they just want to do the normal thing like they're taught to; which amounts to "do not be seen looking like you're snubbing somebody because dats rood".
And, simultaneously, they don't actually want the cognitive load of acknowledging you as a real person in a real pickle, so they can't "be there for you" (another treacherous wording). After all, reality is a contagious thing; what's next - they become aware of their own shit? Unthinkable - what if that makes them incapable of traumatizing their kids one day? Better just do the normal thing and let you rot. It's all upside!
It's narcissism all the way down, through the bottom, and up by the bootstraps.
(See also cousin post:
>LLMS are more like friends, providing a listening ear, but otherwise just nodding along.
If that's the standard of friendship, it's more useful to make enemies!)
> If I had been given a simple questionnaire to rate my treatment providers on a scale of 1-10 in various dimensions, I would have been put in front of someone else within a month or two.
And then those poor psych grads would've been denied their lucrative and inconsequential careers! The horror, the enormity!
>It's the nature of the problem of mental healthcare
Mental healthcare is impossible without actual concepts of "mind", "health", and "care". The society we inhabit only has some poor statistical approximations of those, Seeing like a State-style. Best "we" can do, therapy-wise, is figure out how to make you scream less loudly.
>As cruel as it sounds, I was in no position to think critically about my own treatment
It does not sound cruel. You are not hurting anybody. You are being critical of your past self. This is, generally speaking, a correct thing to do.
>because my mental state only allowed me to see checking off the box of self-care to get people off my back as the ultimate goal.
Your mental state does not exist in a vacuum; it is primarily a product of your environment. If they teach you box ticking, you're gonna do box ticking. If they misteach you that box ticking appeases, you're gonna keep ticking boxes until it appeases - except it won't and while you're busy waiting for it to appease them, they will do whatever the fuck they want with you. It's their way of life. Who are we to deny them that? How?
Of course, if you've found a therapist that works for you, all of this is probably moot; as to other readers, my suggestion continues to be as follows:
- Begin with rejecting any premise they're trying to force/shame/blackmail you into accepting, no matter how socially acceptable this premise might seem on the surface.
- Then, proceed to deconstruct the premise and its implications from a maximally cynical perspective. This will simplify things to a level where one is able to reason about them even with most higher faculties disabled.
- Once you've used this to regain higher ground (a process which, in itself, is already a source of valuable first-hand experiences), you can commence the actual "debugging" of your higher faculties (and, through that, figure out those things only you can figure out).
You know who's infinitely patient, has read every psychology text book and is available immediately at 2am and not in a week that you have to schedule an appointment for? ChatGPT. (or Claude or any of them.)
A therapist does more than just listen. A therapist is more like a driving instructor sitting in the second seat that points out things that you should pay attention to, and can take the wheel if you head into dangerous territory.
If you say something like "I hate that people don't see the real me", LLMs would say "yes it's understandable that that would make you upset" basically confirming your reasoning as valid, while a therapist would ask "why do you want to people to see the real you?" or "What is in your words the difference between how people see you now, and how they would see you if they saw the 'real you'?". These kinds of questions force you to explain and identify your assumptions and reasoning.
LLMS are more like friends, providing a listening ear, but otherwise just nodding along.
edit: To be clear, this is why llms are NOT a good replacement for therapy. Using llms will likely only exacerbate instead of mitigate.
Honestly friend, I think you have some very cynical views about relationships, that aren't very healthy.
All this talk about retribution, what would you think you will get out of this? What do you think would happen if all your bullies would call you and tell you they're sorry for what they did to you? Would that erase any of the memories you have? Will that suddenly make you approach each social interaction without worry and with confidence? Will that help improve how you feel about your self?
I think the answer is a resounding 'no'... The required changes between you and your 'best self' are not within them, but they are within you.
> that it's what you need to do to make those who wronged you to regret their actions
Why does your goal even include these people? Why do you keep letting these people play a part in your life? Your goal should be to live however you want to live, and to disregard these people
> There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity
I say this with respect: the kind of attitude you're describing does more to isolate people than anything mentioned in the original post.
Bitterness or even just muted disappointment will drive people away more than any of the factors you mentioned, by a factor of 10. Have any of you gone on a date with someone who looked great on paper, but seemed unhappy to be there or resentful towards you? That's the ultimate connection killer.
You can have all sorts of setbacks, but if you're chill and have a good attitude people will want you around (barring a few assholes, but it's important not to worry about them). OTOH even if you're very good looking, no one will want to approach you if your vibes are bad or inward facing.
Respect for developmental diversity does more to isolate people?
Because it seems like you and several other people are projecting a lot of “trauma
is my identity” ideas on me that aren’t in what I wrote.
What I wrote is that telling people “get good, I did” is really unhelpful. Put more work and thought into how you try to connect with people whose experience is very different from yours.
Why do you assume my experience is so different? There are tons of people on forums like these who've dealt with extreme shyness and severe problems, yet managed to persevere. Your struggles might not be nearly as unique as you think.
I am assuming this because you are projecting all over me and not distinguishing between me and the people I was making the point about. I was pretty clear in my comment that I do not struggle with shyness. Some people experience debilitating levels of shyness, and some people have done the work necessary to understand the perspective of those people, but in my experience they do not communicate like you do.
>> Why do you assume my experience is so different? There are tons of people on forums like these who've dealt with extreme shyness and severe problems, yet managed to persevere.
> I am assuming this because you are projecting all over me
Projecting means you are making assumptions rooted in your own experience about what I think and how I feel which are not accurate.
>> Your struggles might not be nearly as unique as you think.
> and not distinguishing between me and the people I was making the point about. I was pretty clear in my comment that I do not struggle with shyness.
This means you are conflating me with the people I work with who struggle with this — ie you did not take the time to understand my comment chain before replying.
> Some people experience debilitating levels of shyness, and some people have done the work necessary to understand the perspective of those people, but in my experience they do not communicate like you do.
This means you appear to be functionally illiterate in the language of subjective experience and are just insisting that other people experience the world the way you do. This is understandable as a default because for many it is a familiar, easier, model of reality to work with. People exist who have the same fluency in this area that you have in your primary area of expertise. Think about the gap in understanding between someone who knows nothing about your area of expertise and you. Think about how they sound trying to explain to you how to solve a problem in your work.
The kind of reaction described by the GP is probably trained by a lifetime of bad experiences. One can end up going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down in order to have some semblance of a normal conversation, and inevitably that over-thinking just makes it worse. Ask leading questions, smile, listen careful, don't interrupt - you know, all that sort of thing that comes more naturally to some than to others.
> going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down
what if (a) I hate leading questions, (b) by default only smile when bad/tragic things happen (eg "train crash leaves 100 dead and maimed"), (c) I'm quite bad at listening bc if you don't say interesting things often/densely enough my mind adhd-s away, and (d) interrupting is second-nature to me?
...advice may be good, but for some of us it's like 99% of ourselves that we need to dial down in order to carry on a successful interaction - it works, but takes a hell lot of energy
You seem to have a lot of limiting thoughts about yourself. Other people do those kinds of things but just don’t mind and don’t think that they are a bother to others.
You’re allowed to be weird. Weird people make the best conversation because you don’t know where they’re gonna go
Yes, you and I are making the same point :-) There's lots of useful advice out there about how to be a better conversationalist but it's exhausting for those of us who have to constantly think about it, and disheartening when we get it wrong despite all the effort.
Well that would be silly. I would hope the diabetic would go to a nutritionist for their physical and medical problem. But a social problem is something that should probably be fixed with a social solution
There’s a lot of energy in this thread mixing up introversion and autism for an inability to relate to others. That’s not true you just have a different perspective and will relate in a different way. Autism might be a proximal cause for anxiety but anxiety is not a feature of autism and it can be overcome.
No one can stop the replay, so there's no use in seeing anyone about it. We eventually just learn to cope, and try not to lie in bed at night replaying all the day's awkward social situations.
Going to therapy can help you create a more positive and staple self image.The more you like yourself the more you would want to share that with other people and the easier it becomes. To put a finer point on it, it kind of seems like the person I was responding to has an extreme anxiety problem. I feel bad because I’ve gone through that and I feel like I wasted a large portion of my life because I was so scared that I couldn’t live it. Nobody has to live in fear all the time
Your comments feel like projection, which lead you to make an extreme (and, in my opinion, unfounded) assumption about GP. GP says nothing about self-confidence nor 'liking' onself. One can have a social interaction like GP comically describes—and still be mostly socially 'at ease and graceful', possess a positive and stable self-image, be otherwise antisocial, and not need therapy.
What does "being yourself" even mean? Obviously not "acting the exact same way you act when alone", since this would be impossible/weird/rude/illegal but also not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
You know the meme that goes: "Be yourself. No, not like that."
It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections.
"Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.
That phrase is simply inaccurate. Your "self" needs to care less about opinions of others, and it should not be scared of making mistakes. "Be yourself" is typically parsed as "do not try to be someone other, do not try to be like movie actor".
> not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.
"being yourself" means choosing to believe that the you that is true is competent and capable of growth while the awkwardness is a temporary barrier between that is not reflective of your true nature.
I don’t mean like being “authentic” or whatever that means. In this conversation “being yourself” means literally you existing in that moment in your body.
I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario
For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too
I don’t think most people can do this 100% of the time. I actually think if you can do this 100% of the time you’re probably a zen master.
I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)
This is baffling to hear dude, I literally canvas with 1000s of people before. All these people have no issues interacting with complete strangers in hostile areas withe ease. The amount of people doing this is in the tens of millions, from all walks of life too.
Definitely check out a therapist because this type of thinking isn't only toxic to yourself but it's not how the world really works.
You can blame million years of evolution for your bad life or you can change it right now living in the present moment. It’s fine if you don’t do it right now because later at a future present moment you can still make the choice to be happy. It might take some work but it will never be because of something that happened in the past. It will be something that you do right now. There are no exceptions or escape hatches
These cliches are just annoying to read at this point, everyone has heard this stuff a million times and yet...millions still suffer. If I'm being honest it just comes across as yet another form of bullying when socially well adjusted people say stuff like this to people worse off than them.
I can agree with you while still agreeing with parent poster that it's basically "git gud"-tier bullying.
Very very few orators can successfully pull off "just fix your problems bro" as anything beyond a generic kick in the pants for the people presently predispositioned to be motivated by one.
I regularly bully my close friends into being better people. It just so happens that I fell down the staircase of life much earlier than a lot of people do. I had to do most of my “midlife crisis” thinking in my early 20s because most of my family died and I had to come out as gay without any support.
Now that I’m in my 30s I have the joy of helping my friends along on this journey called life. Sometimes people just need a gentle nudge up the staircase. Sometimes they need to be carried against their will
I agree it can feel frustrating and inactionable but it's not bullying, it's a thoughtful well-meaning response. Actually if it makes you feel bad it's a signal it may be worth contemplating more.
That approach doesn't work for everyone. Everything you say could be correct, but if the person thinks their feelings are not being listened to, there is a chance they still won't take your advice.
One of my therapists said it was normal in her circle for people not to get onto someone's case if they're mentally unwell and have chores piling up, because it makes sense they don't have as much effort to give to all aspects of life. At the time I didn't understand this statement, because up until then my only contacts were people who, although they didn't go as far as "bullying" me into compliance, had told me in effect that how I felt about my life was irrelevant to whether or not I was fulfilling every single one of my adult responsibilities. What ultimately worked for me wasn't those contacts who said there were no excuses, but my therapist who decided not to frame my decisions in terms of "excuses".
For me this kind of thing hurts because:
1. There's not any room for compassion or slack. I'm not talking about people who take advantage of others' goodwill. Even if you try to help with this "no excuses" mentality, the other person could start to worry if the next inadvertent slip-up or setback counts as an "excuse" they'll be looked down upon for. This kind of thought will linger and reduce the effectiveness of the intervention.
2. Your feelings aren't listened to, or if they are it's only at a level superficial enough to obtain compliance. This is bad enough on its own. What might not be obvious is if the person has had a life marked by repeated instances of their feelings being shut down or not listened to, especially in childhood, this approach only backfires that much harder. These are emotional patterns that have been established in critical periods/over a long period of time that are being relieved at a much higher intensity than the average population. And most importantly, you can't know for sure if something like this applies until you get to know the person better, which is why a lot of one-off prescriptive advice towards strangers is ineffective.
3. The advice-giver is often successful/came out of hardship themselves, so by being looked down upon as irresponsible it gives the impression that you're being excluded from the in-group of mentally well/recovered people. Avoiding exclusion from a group is one of the biggest sources of strife today, as modern politics and social media indicate. And being mentally stable is often one of the most important groups to be included in for people who know they're depressed, so it hurts even more.
That’s all excuses. I’m not saying it’s right to bully someone who’s in the depths of depression. But the depression isn’t gonna fix itself and it certainly won’t fix itself because of something that happened in the past
i don't know what it takes to get out of depression, but "it isn't going to fix itself" doesn't contradict that the depressed person can't get out of it on their own. it's like telling someone stuck in a hole to stop whining because they are not going to get out of the hole as long as they do nothing. that's true, but they are also not in a position to see a way out, or may simply not be able to get out without help.
as i said, i don't know what it takes, but i do think that compassion, patience, and recognition of efforts and absence of any hint of blame by others are part of it.
Know thyself. The first step in being your better self. This pithy piece of advice has been repeatedly given throughout history no doubt predating its being chiseled onto the Temple of Apollo around 2500 years ago. Humanity probably has no better advice. Although "Never trust a fart" is a close second.
one interaction? some of us spent half our lives having 99% of interactions be like that - we've grown out it one way or another, but for many ppl "doing people" is HAAAAAARD ...just as for some differential equations are. we're just build veeeery differently. for many "the social world" is a hostile jungle, and we ca face it all right, but with a strong suit of mechanized armour and fully loaded weapons strapped to it.
I get that. I spent my entire childhood and the majority of my 20s as a closeted gay man. Every interaction was high stakes because if one person figured out you’re gay, then the cat is out of the bag.
I had to do a hell of a lot of accepting myself before I could actually hang with people in the moment. Realistically it took six years to be “normal “in my own eyes
I mean, obviously all the behaviors in the article are undesirable. The joke is in proposing other ones. Surely people are being amusingly self deprecating not precisely honest.
Scary that I can relate to this and then am reminded by the star trek episode they make you relive a memory every few minutes forever. Never put these two together, oof.
It's as if you know me, I can feel myself panic whenever anyone asks me anything, and I end up saying completely the wrong thing as if I wasn't fully in control of my thoughts.
>When you get asked a question, fumble over your words and say something stupid. Later on, you can reflexively watch the memory played over and over again
I can relate to this so much, my mind seems to bring up those cringe memories randomly and I hate it. If there was a way to just erase those memories I would be all for it lol.
I am guessing the author is either criticizing people who are anti-social (in the pop culture definition) or believes he was before and after some thinking arrived at the conclusion that antisociety was not the way. But I don't feel it describes my internal motivations, so I've translated them to my behaviors:
- if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault
- interpret others' actions in the context of your fears (this one is spot on)
- assume your assumptions are wrong and that you shouldn't even bother
- pivot conversations when someone asks you about something you actually know or are good at, it might be a trick, tell them you're dumb instead
- if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead
- dig in your heels at no point in time whatsoever and just tell people the minimum they need to hear so they leave
- do not develop narratives or it means you will have an immediate network
- do not research the acumen or credentials of anyone
- do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, they might actually be wrong and you're not a judge
- when all hope is lost in conversation, pretend to take their side to end the conversation
> - if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead
God, this one hurts. In the first couple months at my new role (which I intentionally chose to be one that would stretch and challenge me as I'm looking for some professional growth), a senior member of my team expressed the view that he'd rather someone spend three days researching than ask him a thirty-second question. When I was already insecure about my position in the team and not wanting to appear incompetent, this has ironically sent me into a spiral of being _less_ capable and productive because I'm fearfully avoiding asking for any context or guidance. I'm struggling to break that cycle, but it's hard.
3 days? Wow. Can't say I think much of this senior member of your team, who seems to be the anti-social one here. I'm sure it breaks flow for them, but a big part of being senior is amplifying the best in those less so, and helping them improve.
3 minutes, 30 minutes, sure, I've discovered a lot of junior folks would figure things out on their own when I couldn't get back to them immediately, and tended to add some delay just to encourage trying a little harder before contacting me. I would say even 3 hours has value. Buy yourself a rubber duck and have a heart-to-heart about your problem.
3 days is going to result in lots of folks getting stuck in local minima, likely confusing themselves in the process. To be clear, sometimes a problem requires a deep dive, or there is no one who can provide useful help. Even then, some guidance just to get outside perspective is helpful.
I would argue it depends on the context. Of course, gaining enough experience on which contexts are worth persevering for which duration is it's own thing.
The rubric I give to juniors is a bit more simple: if you get stuck, consider alternatives that you haven't tried out. Alternatives are of a few types including: relevant evidence/facts you can gather that you haven't yet gathered, and attempts you haven't tried yet. As long as you have alternatives keep trying them (gather evidence, make attempts). Once you run out of alternatives then seek help (avoid spinning wheels).
This way when a junior comes to me I can ask them to list the alternatives they have already tried. If they haven't tried obvious alternatives (gathered facts and reasonable attempts) I send them back. If they've tried all the alternatives I can think of then I get involved.
I'll note that this tends to work when contact between team members is relatively frequent (e.g. once a day) so I can get a sense of how long the junior has been working on a task to avoid rabbit-holing.
I think with regards to new hires, go for the quick question up front every time. Onboarding people fast is an investment with high-ROI.
It's a really bad sign if someone keeps asking thirty second questions three or six months into the job and hasn't figured out how to answer those themselves yet.
It's a really bad sign if they keep asking you the same questions.
But when someone's new? It's your job to help them get up to speed. A thirty second question is probably something like "is there a reason we use Azure instead of AWS" or "do you want me to use library A or B, I see both in the codebase," not something that they'll benefit from diving into for three days.
Pre-internet/stackoverflow, pre-AI... I'd easily spend 3 days working out how to solve a problem that I hadn't seen before. Asking others generally didn't help anyway because they hadn't seen it either. So, if that was the formative experience of the senior person, I could understand where that attiude was coming from.
Today, yeah 3 days is a long time to spend researching and spinning your wheels. But it's still the best way to learn.
more importantly there should be a time once a day where asking is not a disruption. you are not in the flow for 3 days in a row. we used the daily standup for this. or any break time.
My threshold is typically an hour. And this is after all the onboarding and pairing with them for a few features. I throw a month of just interrupt me whenever you need to at any new hire as a lead on a five or so team size on line of business apps. Three days sounds ridiculous for someone to spin and be stuck. That's a huge waste of money and a sign of deep problems imo.
In fact, I'd prefer to discuss sooner than let a new dev on their own for more than a day of work. Discussion brings alignment and saves me time with micro adjustments rather than massive corrections or debates and push back when someone goes off on their own for a long time.
> a senior member of my team expressed the view that he'd rather someone spend three days researching than ask him a thirty-second question
I have never met a senior that would dare to take such a stance; he may be willing to learn, but we will not both cover his knowledge gap and improve his own cv at the company expense. I have no idea if you are competent or not, but it doesnt really matter if you are the one deciding. Its not a democracy, and sure as hell its not amateur day. He will do as he is told, or he will find a more suitable team elsewhere. Have no tolerance for divas, they bring zero value.
As others have noted, this is avoidant behavior, not anti-social.
Worth taking a look at the Wikipedia for Attachment styles [1]. The two types are Dismissive-Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant. Either can be superficially mistaken for anti-social, although Dismissive-avoidant tends to present a bit closer to anti-social.
> I am guessing the author is either criticizing people who are anti-social (in the pop culture definition) or believes he was before and after some thinking arrived at the conclusion that antisociety was not the way. But I don't feel it describes my internal motivations, so I've translated them to my behaviors:
I think there's quite a diversity in anti-social behaviors. He may not be describing you, but he's definitely describing others: difficult, self-centered people, probably with anger problems, isolated (because they're unpleasant to deal with) but not self-isolating.
Strangely I would bucket about half of these in Good or at least Often Useful behaviors.
Good:
- if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault (personal accountability)
- interpret others' actions in the context of your fears (at least having awareness of your fears is step one, step two is reacting healthily)
- assume your assumptions are wrong and that you shouldn't even bother (just delete the "shouldn't even bother" part)
- pivot conversations when someone asks you about something you actually know or are good at, it might be a trick, tell them you're dumb instead (playing dumb CAN be a smart thing, or at least not one-upping someone else nor making them feel small for no good reason)
- if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead (diving into something can prevent procrastination, you can start and ask questions later)
- when all hope is lost in conversation, pretend to take their side to end the conversation ("smile and nod" can be great advice- the pro-social doctrine is "you can't win an argument and keep a relationship at the same time")
Bad:
- dig in your heels at no point in time whatsoever and just tell people the minimum they need to hear so they leave
- do not develop narratives or it means you will have an immediate network
- do not research the acumen or credentials of anyone
- do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, they might actually be wrong and you're not a judge
The motivation behind what you've classified 'good' is bad, you've just twisted the symptoms to appear good, while the underlying motivation and root cause is bad.
Unfortunately the parent is suffering from a complete lack of self confidence, and even telling them to go to a therapist won't help as they never will.
Seen it IRL, even if they book an appointment, they'll convince themselves there's some good reason not to go. The two people I've met with it both somehow convinced themselves that therapy didn't work without ever trying it. To the point of lecturing me, who has been to therapy and found it helped immensely, at how useless it is.
It really seems to be a nefarious affliction.
Reading that list above is like watching a car crash in slow motion. You desperately want to help them, they could have so much of a better life if they just believed in themselves even a little bit, but they won't listen to you.
One of my friends I once asked 'Do you want me to push you any morez or is it better if we just talk about other things?'. They dejectedly admitted that they found being pushed depressing and preferred if we didn't talk about it any more.
One of the funniest, insightful people I know, with a great talent, is working a warehouse job and we meet and talk and have a great time but we now talk about anything but his failure to launch.
Ditto for a CERN physicist that now is a part-time tutor for high schoolers living at home with his parents.
I think you are mixing up asocial and anti-social. Anti-social basically means you don't care how others feel, their rights and social norms. Asocial means you don't want to engage socially.
And I'm pretty sure you are describing yourself as someone with an inferiority complex and social anxiety.
I developed from a very early age a sort of "always assume the worst about yourself" mentality.
I think part of it was influenced by social media (I was a tween debatelord). Part of it was self improvement (only focus on yourself! get ahead! never blame the enviornment!). Part of it was genuinely depressing things in my life.
As an example, I was obsessed with "finding my passion" at some point. Looking back, I was looking for a way to say, "This thing I'm committed to is way more important than all the other things in my life, so I don't need to go do them". As another example, frequently I would go into epistemic spirals - I was aware of psychoanalysis, so clearly there's capability for deep self delusion. But how do I know the navel gazing isn't self delusion? How do I know framing it as "navel gazing" is not an attempt to cope? And infinite recursion ensues. Another example is constantly feeling like I needed to steelman opponents, and so I would do the utmost research and understand the "best" arguments for the opponent's side before responding.
Incidentally, I think this is why I loved computer science so much - because you often proved worst case guarantees. I had a deep disdain for heuristic solutions.
But this mentality is still bad. Let's take the steelman example. How could steelmanning your opponent possibly be a bad thing? Well, are you actually steelmanning them, or are you trying to find some sort of greater upper bound to their argument, then attacking that... for what? Efficiency? Feeling secure in yourself? Why not actually listen to them? Oh, but surely if they accept premises A, B, C, then D, E, F must follow! Do they, though? Is it possible they could not go down that route, and for valid reasons?
It's still a deep contradiction I work through, since to me personally, all of these things invoke a deep "you are not being remotely rational or moral" gut feeling when I do go down those routes. But I know that I need to sit more in grey zones and just.... live in the grey.
(I still love formal computer science and dislike heuristics. But it's much more balanced now.)
Oh and I should mention, the desire to hear everybody out too. Incidentally, on the first few times I had these types of revalations, of course I would go and completely go extreme in the opposite way.
Curious, which app/ forum/ subreddit/ group were you a tween debatelord on, and in what years? (got a link, so we can see?) To what extent did your formation depend on that crowd and its cultural values?
This is a list about how to have a flame war.
If you really want incoherent and isolating social experiences here is what you do:
- spend most of your time online
- overthink any form of social outreach and don't do it
- open reddit/HN/youtube/content_platform when you feel anything negative
- look at porn when you feel lonely
- constantly analyze other people's perception of you
You will then stifle your social skills and connections with people. You will feel extremely uncomfortable around other people most of the time. You will make niche references to things you have seen online and nobody will get you. Interacting with real people will be terrifying. Mission accomplished.
Try purposely having a bad perception sometimes. I had the same problem. I couldn’t go out in public with anything less than perfect hair, or perfect clothes, or whatever. A few days of dressing in basketball shorts, shirts with holes, and unkempt hair, I noticed nobody gave a shit. Life is much more freeing when you do things the way you want (within reason) and curate a personal style.
The part you're missing is that the people who hit those bullet points probably weren't always that way. In my experience they usually had very bad social experiences that drove them to isolate.
That isn't necessarily an excuse. I strongly believe that after a certain point it's really on you to get over your hangups, especially if you're an adult. It may not be easy but it's necessary
Anyways, I've never found that just telling lonely people "it is your fault you're alone" has ever been helpful
I honestly think that most people suck and are not worth talking to. Sure, spending time with those who don't is extremely rewarding, but the rest is just a waste of oxygen.
Even if this were true, you still have to talk to a lot of people even if only to sift through the sucky ones to find the gems
So if you have any interest in finding the good people who you think are worthwhile, you still have a pretty good incentive to talk to people. And if the good, worthwhile people are that rare then you need to talk to and get to know as many people as you can
I think the most valuable thing here is to not jump to a negative assumption about people, something I wish it followed more closely in its other points. Virtually anyone who has a very different perspective than the group will face friction, and handling that friction gracefully isn't something that comes naturally to most people. People can get stuck in a pattern of handling the friction poorly, but the group as a whole also has the opportunity for grace and understanding that can diffuse the problem, if that is something that is valuable to them.
I'm someone who is good at those situations, and what I've learned is that no matter how much you disagree, there's always something that you can agree on. If you're stuck in disagreement, zoom out, and try to move back to a position that you both can agree on.
It's also important to not compromise on values you find personally fundamental for the sake of "finding common ground". It depends on the matters being discussed. Assume good faith, attempt to find common understanding by zooming out, but stand firm when you have zoomed out as far as you feel comfortable. If you push past that, you run the risk of validating insane or dangerous behavior or opinions.
When I say find common ground I mean things that you (both) already agree with, i.e. it's bad to kill people, it's good to help people in need.
It wasn't my intention to advocate for 'compromising on values' rather, I think the best way to do any discussion is being honest, and that starts with being honest about your values.
I think the whole point of my method is to identify who is the person that's compromising their values, i.e. someone who agrees with "it's good to help people" but then disagree with social healthcare shows that somewhere on the imaginary line between helping people and social healthcare that person flips their opinion, which is incredibly helpful information in debating.
yes, this. zooming out doesn't mean moving away from my values, but moving away from the disagreement, to facets that we agree on. then build rapport on that, and figure out what causes the difference in opinion.
the author wrote this in the Leaflet comments sections:
"""
through some upsetting turn of events, someone put this on hackernews and started a piranha feeding frenzy of speculation about what / who im referring to here. so just to be clear:
i wrote this bulleted list in a couple minutes as a way to rant about the lack of charity i was noticing in 2 places
- my family, where 2 members aren't speaking to each other for petty reasons, looking for the other to capitulate and admit they're the aggressor
- on bluesky, where users are blaming every outage on "vibe coding"
if you took extra meaning from it, i'm sorry or congrats!
Having lived through intractable family conflict before, I believe it is a good analogy as to why the continual reinvention of social media will be a fruitless endeavour.
Yeah that pretty much lines up with my expectations - I've seen the type of behavior described both in real life and in various online spaces. Luckily never ticking all of the boxes at once, but they don't need to to cause a lot of needless suffering to themselves and collateral damage to the people around them.
The worst situations usually were if someone with this kind of self-sabotaging coping mechanism for some kind of trauma (because that's what it usually seems to be in my experience) ended up in some kind of moderator position in some on-line community, which they tended to seek out to get more control to cope with their fears.
That Bluesky comment snuck up on me and got a good laugh from me!
You mean the fine folks over at Bluesky, the social media network built around isolation, intolerance, and refusing to listen to other’s POV, exhibit these same character flaws?!
> do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, especially those that you have never met or otherwise spoken to
> do not seek to understand those you do not already understand
Are these not reflected in your comment?
For unrelated reasons (looking up the author of a quote in the bsd fortune file) I was looking at François de La Rochefoucauld's wikipedia page and learned that he wrote this in the intro for his book of maxims on human behavior:
"... the best approach for the reader to take would be to put in his mind right from the start that none of these maxims apply to himself in particular, and that he is the sole exception, even though they appear to be generalities. After that I guarantee that he will be the first to endorse them and he will believe that they do credit to the human spirit."
The basis for its existence is to supply a platform for people who want to isolate from ideas and narratives they find uncomfortable, so they self-select into echo chambers that cater to their preexisting ideologies. That's their whole business model!
> platform for people who want to isolate from ideas and narratives they find uncomfortable
Ahh, like how if you say the word "cis" on Twitter, you get banned because the idea that gender is not binary is an idea that the owner of Twitter finds uncomfortable wants to isolate the audience from. So he promotes his own tweets, shoehorns it into peoples feeds and notifications, in order to create an ideological echo chamber. Like that?
I just searched Twitter for “cis” and found endless results, including a forgotten tweet of my own from 2+ years ago that’s never been taken down and I haven’t been banned for! :)
Nobody is getting banned for that, that’s just another Bluesky-ism!
The policy was enacted less than 2 years ago, which is why your previous tweets didn't get affected, and it seems new Twitter owner might have since walked it back. Seems it also only affected mobile app users.
> In November, X ran a “timeline takeover” ad promoting an anti-trans film from PragerU, a conservative media nonprofit that has also been criticized for doubting climate change and downplaying the realities of slavery.
Climate change and the history of slavery... More ideas and narratives that the owner and his allies find threatening and uncomfortable.
Your only reference is a reversed policy from 2+ years ago that displayed a message but never stopped you from posting at all, and it only ever affected mobile users??
Also, promoting a specific documentary from a production company doesn’t mean they agree with all the other things PragerU says. Even if they did, it literally doesn’t matter, because X isn’t actively restricting alternate opinions the way Bluesky does. I know, because I see awful takes on X nearly everyday! ;)
As a anti-social person and a misanthrope, these are all tips for amateurs that assume you must be in a relationship with other people. This is not true. One can be a hermit and enjoy the solitude. My comment here is not designed for replies and social interaction. I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong. I'm seeking information, not society. This is grating to me even as I write it. Who do I think I am? That doesn't make it any less true.
You are forced to see the world through your own biases (including things like having two arms and seeing the visible light spectrum, not just who you vote for).
Many of these biases are common in humans, and humans can exchange ideas.
It can be enlightening to test your biases against real human being to see which ones are valid and which ones are things you've picked up along the way and might not be fruitful to you now.
Because you only see life through your own eyes, you definitionally can't examine yourself in isolation, and you can't know how you are affected by yourself.
I've found exchanging with others fruitful, even when I don't want to and find it repellant.
John Donne said "No man is an island" but other poets and philosophers have said we are essentially alone in this world. I understand the first point, but experience the second, but not fully because I do have a few valued connections with others. There are always exceptions to the general condition. You have a good one too.
> I've found exchanging with others fruitful, even when I don't want to and find it repellant.
Agreed. It's almost like taking bitter medicine for me- I loathe the idea of going to outings and meeting new people, but however tired I am afterwards from masking, some part of me comes away better off for it (assuming I'm not being forced to do it all the time).
Then why are you posting here? You must require some kind of social interaction. Is arguing with people on HN meeting your needs, or are the alternatives all too scary and alienating to consider?
In general, I am skeptical when anybody says, "I am a ______." We vastly overstate what aspects of our condition are innate and which are merely habitual. I have seen many people with misanthropic tendencies find balance, and many others sink into the mire.
> I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong.
Which is the same reason everyone else seeks relationships with other people. That is the value social interaction brings. Now that you've cracked the code, so to speak, do you find this behaviour grating because you don't normally like to have your thoughts and ideas challenged/enlightened?
By all means, continue learning how to enjoy yourself alone, and stop feeling like you "should" be more like everyone else. That's actually healthy.
At the same time, though, consider the possibility that there may be more for you outside your house, and you just haven't found it yet. You don't have to force yourself to be social, but try different things that sound like they might be appealing to you.
It doesn't have to be either/or. Keep enjoying your solitude, but budget a small amount of your energy to exploring in case it unexpectedly pays off.
Is it not contradictory to value isolation but also to peek outward from it to access information? Surely reading books is some admission that there is value in experiencing the perspectives of others, albeit a one-sided experience.
I don't think reclusiveness is a moral failing. I don't think we owe society participation. But I do think that hermithood forgoes unbounded unforeseen possibilities for a known, bounded experience. I'd call this "the safe bet is not necessarily the best bet" argument against isolationism and towards social/collaborative open-mindedness.
If you are an "anthrope" (human), then the position of hating humans (misanthropia) is inherently contradictory, hence not valid. Disliking/not wanting to be part of what groups of people do is valid, and striving to keep yourself separate yourself from those groups is also valid. It doesn't make you a misanthrope, though.
What you really want to hate is time, because that's the true limiting factor. Given enough time, anything is possible, but you {insert any modal here} run out of it. Hence, why projecting things onto descendants is a thing. Writing and other methods of symbolic information reproduction have been great inventions to facilitate this.
I'm bad at this, not that I want to be. Well I'm bad at it with women. I go to these workplace happy hours and I just sit there in silence. Hard to relate to people talking about the house they own or kids since I don't have either. I know to be a good conversationalist you just gotta ask them questions.
It's not good to be alone, I was in a car crash one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride home.
hey not to give unsolicited advice but to share my experience - it took me a long time to realize that I'm not anti-social, but just anti-party and anti-work social. I flourish in most other spaces - especially hobby spaces.
yeah the thing is I'm good talking to dudes, like cars this guy shows me his Porsche/I sit in it, has laser jammers built in, crazy. Like yeah when you're both into something you just connect
my problem with women is I only interact with them when I'm physically interested in them otherwise I leave them alone so yeah I'm on edge like "I gotta land her" kind of thing, which I'm not saying is good, as proof of this I haven't been in a relationship with a girl for 12 years, not that I haven't had the opportunity but I'm also picky which, I need to be impressive myself to match it but yeah
Talking to random people about anything, and talking to girls, and talking to girls romantically are all separate skills from talking to someone about an interest. I am going to assume you're a smart, educated guy with niche interests. So even if someone comes up and talks about something you don't know much about, maybe Biology for example (no clue if this is true), you are probably able to fill in the blanks, find a common interest, connect it with something you've re ad before or whatever. The real difficulty is when you then are talking to people without technical interests or such, do you fake talking about sports? Or whatever.
With girls, be up front, direct, don't shy away. Honestly a lot of the old PUA strategies work really well if you look at it like a skill you're building.
> Talking to random people about anything, and talking to girls, and talking to girls romantically are all separate skills from talking to someone about an interest
This is entirely contradicted by my experiences. Broad generalizations and generalizations about broads are usually wrong.
haha I'm not into sports so I definitely don't fake that, just tell people, which is not great because if you look at a lot of online dating profiles a lot of women are into the local sports eg. Broncos or whatever. Same with religion but it's alright, the girl thing isn't a huge problem to me, it only hits me sometimes the FOMO when I'm in public settings. Used to club/bar hop a lot problem is I had a drinking problem (wouldn't stop) so yeah, would be that belligerent person not a great look. I quit drinking so now I rarely see women except at work, I do photography though so I do see some women at the park but that's one of those places not sure if you should engage or let them be like a gym, there to workout kind of thing. I have other problems to deal with though like getting out of being poor for personal peace of mind.
Sounds like you understand the problem. My read is that you have a likeable frenetic personality; it won't be for everyone but some people will be really attracted to it, best not to question it and just be yourself.
ok, so please don't take this wrong, but that last sentence was such a non-sequitur that I think I know what at least some of your problem is talking to other people.
EDIT: wait, I am going to go out on a limb and say that you meant
"I was in a car crash of a conversation one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride home."
The other day someone described themselves to me as an 'empath' which was odd, because in the context of the discussion it was invalidating to hear. And ironic considering they hadn't forseen how I would take it.
Some people have ultimate confidence in their social judgements and the true sign of empathy is a kind of meta-empathy that allows you to consider truly alternative understandings of the world i.e. empathy for empathy.
That's not empathy, though. The word "empathy" has been co-opted to mean "understanding someone else's point of view," but that's not what empathy is. Empathy is feeling others' feelings. I'm actually empathetic in that I sometimes experience an emotional response (limbic) similar to an intense emotional response I witness others having, especially if they're a person close to me. This is very different than making a conscious attempt (prefrontal cortex) at intellectual understanding of someone's emotions.
I don't think it's been co-opted? Mirroring the emotions of another person you're actively observing doesn't give you insight into why they're feeling that way. It's just mirroring, but its an excellent starting point for learning. To have empathy, for people you're not actively observing, or for future states of people you are observing, you have to be able to model them first, and then mirror the emotions that the model predicts, which can then update the model. This loop is empathy, its both "experiencing other's emotions" and "the ability to understand and predict".
I'm not so sure I agree - well maybe I do, I meant literally feeling in my statement not merely understanding. e.g. I eat meat - but I can literally feel the cringing sadness and disgust of a vegan if I imagine their perspective, even if I disagree.
Ultimately, there are no absolute personality traits. Someone might align to specific attributes, but they are not without fault and can still easily put their foot in their mouth on occasion.
An introspective, empathetic, thoughtful person might still accidentally say something that an external observer might perceive as having been said without thought or consideration to the feelings of others.
The above is not meant to be contradictory to your point, just a consideration to the general faults all humans hold.
Almost every every person I've met that describes themselves as empath tends to rank rather low on empathy, under my own judgement at least.
One explanation I have for this is that precisely because empathy is a more rare experience for them, it becomes a more remarkable one, perhaps even overwhelming at times. This leads them to believe that they experience it more than or more intensely than others, when on the contrary the rest of the world is simply more habituated to it and integrate it more gracefully in their ordinary experience.
The other interpretation is that it requires certain level of narcissism or egotism to describe oneself in such flattering terms.
Or ultimately, as the Spanish proverb says: dime de que presumes y te diré de que careces.
Probably some degree of all of this is true in most cases.
Yeah, it's just narcissism. Spiritual bypassing. The people who have really figured it out feel no need to tell others, and simply live quiet, decent lives.
Classic. How is it the case that every self-styled "empath" never is? I just don't know. Probably never will. I just don't have enough empathy to puzzle this one out.
"dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent"
Sorry, sticking to this one.
Call me anti-social if you want, but facing overwhelming dissent may indicate you're the lone free-thinker in an echo chamber. Being that one guy who's always prodding the hivemind with a pokey stick has value in my opinion (though you will end up getting stung on occasion).
Was recently at a demoscene presentation, where, after one particular demo where the author was recently deceased, one person just didn't stop applauding, even long after the rest of the audience had done. Someone sitting next to him was trying to reason with him, but he just responded that he had been a friend of the author (so I guess this was his way of honoring them?)
Eventually the other person got somewhat aggressive and told him to shut it, to which he just responded "no, why?".
Finally he was led out of the room.
I'm not sure how the thinking process of that guy went, but I was honestly strongly siding with the second person. Keeping on clapping as a sign of honor may be a heartfelt gesture, but here it came over just as plain obnoxious, as it held up the entire presentation.
That being said, if it's about political or other differences of opinion or debates on courses of action to take, I'd be with you - there can be herd mentalities (or active manipulation) and if you have good support/evidence to back up your opinions, it's worth sticking to them.
But if I see that my immediate behavior is causing discomfort, I'd always stop and try to reflect.
The more important question isn't "are you correct," it's "does it matter to be correct right now?"
Maybe you do actually know better than everyone else, but why do you have to prove it to others? You can just quietly make your argument and shut up. It's their loss, and people may remember that you were right.
Maybe it's about an important decision at work, but if your correctness pisses everyone off, no one is going to listen to you again. You've won the battle but lost the war.
I like this answer. For me it's not about showing others that you're correct. Instead, it's about feeling like you're being heard/acknowledged.
I'm not trying to be the "lone free thinker". But if I see a hivemind, I occasionally insert my opinion with the intention of having a different perspective be recognized.
It's important to feel heard, but an issue in an argument is that no one is being heard and you're yelling past each other. You don't feel heard by more strenuously arguing your point; you make a calm, genuine effort to hear them, and then hopefully they'll reciprocate the favor. At the very least, you break out of the doom loop and walk away.
> You can just quietly make your argument and shut up.
This is generally the right approach, unless you're on the hook for the consequences of whatever the group decides. Continuing to argue a point that you've already made isn't likely to change any minds that weren't open to it the first time you said it. I think that's even in the HN guidelines.
If you're the one responsible for a decision, listen to what others have to say but if you still feel strongly that your contrary view is correct then go with that and live with the responsibility.
Sometimes it's not about being the "free-thinker," but just fitting in. If you're in a setting where there can be 'overwhelming dissent,' I would say it's prudent to pause and consider what your goal is with pushing a certain idea. It's almost certainly not going to get the consideration it deserves to be accepted if a mass of people have a negative knee-jerk reaction to hearing it.
> Call me anti-social if you want, but facing overwhelming dissent may indicate you're the lone free-thinker in an echo chamber.
Key word is : may. If you're facing overwhelming dissent, you should probably retreat and re-evaluate your position. Maybe you're right, but maybe you're just missing something the other's see.
> Being that one guy who's always prodding the hivemind with a pokey stick has value in my opinion (though you will end up getting stung on occasion).
When done deliberately, it's called the "tenth man rule": when 9 people agree, the 10th man is obligated to figure out a way to disagree. I learned about it from this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777175 (pretty great comment, IMHO).
This seems to be a very peculiar and adversarial interpretation of anti-social. I am relatively anti-social and consider this a bit of a character flaw, but would generally say that I do not assume the worst in others and am relatively introspective. It just doesn't come naturally to me, but that does not mean that I think less of others.
Psychopaths are calculated, charming, and organized, often blending seamlessly into society. Whereas sociopaths tend to be erratic, impulsive, and prone to outbursts and aggressive and reckless behavior.
Psychopaths, I would say, are "quite good" at attracting people, by knowing exactly what to say. Sociopaths may sometimes attract people unintentionally, just by virtue of their impulsive personalities sometimes causing them to be "fun" to be around.
In both cases though, people who know them well tend to be repelled by their lack of regard for the needs and feelings of others.
> when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self
This speaks to me quite a bit, particularly around unfalsifiable topics I'll have with friends/family, such as theology. If we define hope as the idea they'll change their mind and agree with me, seems not much one can do but retreat into themself, right? I suppose I can sympathize with their sentiment before I retreat into myself, but taking this bullet point at face value I'm unsure how to make this a pro-social experience :/
It’s possible to be social with people who hold opinions you disagree with. Being social and recognizing or even celebrating our shared humanity does not require having the same opinions and ideas as the other person.
yes, but that means that hope is not lost yet. for me, all hope is lost when people stop listening if i said something they disagree with, even if i follow up with something they do agree with (which is usually my tactic in this case, find common ground, and then expand from there). to be social with people who disagree requires both sides to want to continue the conversation. both sides need to believe that having the same opinions is not required. if they don't want to continue then i can try as i might, but at that point hope is lost.
You can also simply chose not to talk about controversial topics where you suspect such deep disagreements might lie.
In my experience the only way to really connect across those divides is to first have a long history, months or years, of productive and positive social interaction. But you don’t get control how others think and feel, even if by some theoretical measure, your position is “right”. So even under the best of circumstances you just have to accept and resist that others think differently.
(If you're an atheist) You shouldn't debate theology with religious people. The whole idea of religion is that they 'believe' despite their experiences, facts, reasoning and logic. There's literally nothing to gain from using logic and reasoning to debate religious people.
edit: also the article is sarcastic. You shouldn't retreat into yourself just because you cannot agree on something. Talk about something else.
I'm not personally sure that's a supernatural event, but if I'd had my eyes deteriorating for years, undergone multiple failed surgeries to stave off blindness, become fully blind, had doctors tell me I was irrepairably blind, and lived without eyesight for years, then had it come back within two days of praying to a Catholic saint for healing...
To me that doesn't follow logically. What if instead of praying to some saint, they found their lucky underwear that they lost when they were a child, and wore that for the first time again? Would that proof that the lucky underwear was somehow instrumental in fixing their eyes?
Apparently the body was able to heal her own eyes, and it would have happened if she prayed to the saint or not.
How can there be nothing to gain, when discussions around the subject helped convince me about atheism? I was born catholic and my family is catholic. If no one talked about it, I'd probably still be going to mass every sunday.
You need to question whether you really need to have the conversation in those terms. A conversation about religion/theology is not like a conversation about physics or math. If you insist on applying scientific rigor to matters of faith, you are and will remain fully confused.
I bet if you observe your own mind for long enough, you'll find some part of your life which requires you to have faith too. Use that to understand your friends and family better. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with them about religion, ask them about their faith (not their religion). You will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how they navigate the world.
If you can have that conversation, go ahead and ask them about their religious beliefs, withholding judgement unless/until they say something morally objectionable. You can think of their religion like any other mythology, and you get to play sociologist for a while. There's a fascinating variety of responses people give to even fundamental questions - e.g. "what is god?".
This open approach is not only much easier for everyone, it's also more useful in the long term. My neighbor has an interesting mashup of beliefs that includes a decent chunk of Christianity. She sometimes has bad anxiety, and unfortunately she can't afford treatment for it. I've helped her out of panic attacks using two methods: 1 - I've given her a clonazepam tablet and 2 - I've quoted scripture to her (e.g. "behold the lilies of the field"). Both methods work, and the latter tends to work faster.
It's different if the person is using their religion as a cover for engaging in or supporting something morally evil. That's a trickier conversation and often one not really worth having, depending on your relationship and how comfortable/willing you are to attempt to correct them.
Theology is quite predictable rigid scientific field, something like law. You just have to define which set of rules you are using (catholic orthodox, shia islam...) There are thousands of books with notes, precedents... going back thousands years. Thousands branches...
Calling theology "unfalsiable" is ignorant. Like saying math is unfalsiable, because there are multiple geometries and nobody understands it anyway.
online sociability protip: writing in all lowercase outside of instant messaging comes across (to me) as weirdly manipulative, status seeking behavior. you want people to read your stuff and to come to some form of conclusion—you wouldn't be writing, editing and posting text otherwise—but you feel you have to put your ideas and your vulnerability behind a moat of detached, nonchalant aesthetics
To me, all-lowercase text comes across one of two ways:
(a) I felt speed was far more important than readability (reasonable for rapid-fire short messages or constrained typing ability such as a flip phone, also a common way to imply "fuck you, my time is more important than yours" in longer forms such as email), or
hmm, i have been writing all lowercase almost anywhere since a few decades. but it most people have complained about readability. this is the first time that someone suggests that it is manipulative, status seeking.
if i want people to read my stuff, then what kind of manipulation would writing all lower case accomplish? seems counterproductive. and if it is counterproductive then it can't really be manipulative in my favor. so why do it then? this is even more significant in german where all nouns are capitalized. there writing nouns in lowercase is not only an aesthetic difference, but a grammar violation. (and yet i do it anyways)
which status would i be seeking? (i am actually asking myself this question. depending on the answer i find, it might even get me to change my behavior).
writing all lower case has become a habit for me, that i stopped thinking about it. it's time to revisit that. interestingly at some point i decided to use capitals in blog posts. technically everything else is actually messaging, including email and HN.
lastly, the article is a list. it is not clear to me that lists have to start with capitals, since list items are not always complete sentences. they don't end with a period either. so even when capitalizing properly, i am unsure whether they should be capitalized.
funny you should say that, i frequently feel uncomfortable greeting people, because i don't know what greeting is appropriate. (this is exacerbated by the fact that i travel a lot and different cultures have very different ways to greet each other)
so if you feel that my lowercase writing is like i am not greeting you then that's the feeling i probably induce in others frequently. welcome to my world :-)
(multiple sentences appear only twice, btw, it's proof that the writer intended to write all lower case, but not strongly noticeable (to me at least))
> (and yet i do it anyways)
> which status would I be seeking
You just answered your own question there. Being perceived as different, as beyond social conventions, as too cool for silly language rules. Or as they put in your parent comment - nonchalant
ok, that's helpful, thank you. but i think some background matters here: i was always (yes, since i can remember, at least starting from first grade) treated like an outsider. i was always treated like i was different despite growing up in a white homogeneous community simply because i was not a local and had difficulty making friends. my only defense was to run with it. it went as far as me wearing a different clothing style just to separate myself from everyone else. i toned that down when i realized that i would change my style if other started copying me. i decided to not let my behavior and actions be influenced by anyone else ever.
that has been the mantra for my whole life. (that doesn't mean i don't learn or wouldn't listen to reason, but it means that the changing something had to have a good reason. (and in the context of writing, for example, readability is a good reason, being perceived as different is not))
social conventions is something i have always struggled with. they often make no sense to me. why do i have to shake hands, for example? yes, there is a social and historical explanation, but the rituals are often so detailed, and so variable that i never know what is the right form in which situation.
so yeah, i am cool, even if i don't want to, and nonchalant describes to to a T.
i don't really want to change my behavior (i don't mean writing specifically) for the sake of becoming more accepted, because it also works as a filter. someone who can accept me despite my quirkiness is likely to be more open minded. it's a form of protection.
this thread is funny, i picked up lower case writing around the outset of puberty from someone who seemed a little more awake than average and i thought that was cool
hacker news is not such a loftier place that I treat it much differently than instant messaging. but even still, there are plenty of reasons why someone might write how they do. i promise you that i am not trying to be manipulative or status seeking, i just have auto capitalization turned off and I don’t give two shits if weirdos like you don’t like it.
People say this a lot, but I bet you’re like most of them and don’t hold your tongue whenever people misuse words related to whatever you’re passionate about.
No, I used to be a huge word nerd. Being really good at language was my identity for most of my adolescence. Now I realize "who cares" and "none of that matters."
I am autistic and asocial fits more than anti-social because I am not actually doing any "anti" behavior, just trying to avoid the beurocratic small talk and general conformist interactions
I.e. the things that make people become friends and feel safe around each other.
As a fellow autistic person we should not be avoiding small talk, we should be learning how to better connect with those around us since we need more time and work to do so.
It’s easy to use a diagnosis as an excuse not to connect. But it’s a lame excuse. It is much more interesting to understand what tools we need to gain to connect with the world. Sometimes I need to be an anthropologist. Sometimes I need to be a crime scene investigator. Usually I just need to listen better.
When I was in a wheelchair I had to use ramps instead of the stairs. But that didn’t stop me from going to the movies
i am not autistic, but i hate smalltalk too. i can't bear it. it takes all the fun out of talking to people and i feel like it's a waste of time. not sure where i am going with this argument other than maybe saying that it's ok not to like smalltalk.
maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels meaningless.
i "solved" the problem by moving to a country with a different native language and culture. this raises the barrier to communicate and it seems to have an effect of curbing smalltalk.
while in a wheelchair, how comfortable were you asking for help? that would be the biggest challenge for me.
As someone who used to feel like they were bad at small talk, maybe this resonates with you.
I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports.
Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plane ride last weekend with an absolute stranger. We talked about the differences in our family dynamics, what cities we find it easier and harder to make friends in, the current state of our relationships and what we wanted out of them. All of that was “small talk” because we were just passing the time with someone we will never meet again. But the subjects were not small.
A side effect of feeling comfortable talking about things that matter to you is that it gives you a lot more motivation to be curious and interested in things that matter to other people as well. Even better, if you share with people more deeply about how you are feeling, they will be able to help you in ways that you didn’t even realize were possible
my experience was different. yes, i get that sharing my thoughts sometimes doesn't feel safe, and when i was younger i did have that experience too. but i had and have no interest in popular sports, so that topic is poison for me. i have absolutely nothing to contribute. if someone wants to talk about sports i am thinking, why are they wasting their life? any other topic would be better than that. and talking about weather? well, got a window? open it!
but those topics you shared on the plane, well that's not small talk to me. i totally would have enjoyed being part of that conversation. as i get older, i can speak from experience. i can talk about my feelings that i have and had, because now i understand them. and, as a bonus effect, as you get older people treat you with more respect, which makes talking about any topic easier.
so i am bad at talking about banal, to me meaningless topics, and while it is getting easier, i don't actually have any interest in engaging in those topics because they not only feel like a waste of time, they are a waste of my time that i want to spend more meaningfully, like reading a book.
This is what I suggest too, what a good way of putting it!
Some people have very funny ways at looking at the most mundane context in my mind. It would be a shame if I didnt spend time sharing my funny head in ways that can't be captured in a record!
This reminds me of an old Andy Warhol quote that I can't find now, to the effect that if you find yourself in a truly lousy situation, just pretend that you are in a movie.
It's an interesting list, and yeah, I'd say most are common sense and well put. But I'm still a bit very of those "negative lists".
(I actually just found a webcomic which tries a similar approach - gives their characters intentionally the worst possible ways of interaction, with the "quest" of the story essentially being if they manage to grow and learn the right ones.)
But in both, its easy to employ "persuasive game" strategies and have the reader "discover truths" that are really colored by the author's perception.
Essentially, I'd like to know the context in which this was developed, so the whole list isn't just an instance of item #7 of it. Basically it reads as if someone could have written it in rage after some particularly bad conversation that didn't go their way.
For what it's worth, though, the people I know to need emotional literacy the most, would probably find the art style extremely off-putting. I don't agree with them, but it's an interesting correlation to ponder.
Could it be that people who react strongly aversively to such warm fuzziness identify it precisely with the things that have been done to their minds during development so that they would become incapable of certain fundamental cognitions?
I feel like this was a) written by someone on the spectrum, who b) worked really hard to learn to communicate effectively (great job!), and then c) dumped their original internal state in a blog assuming everyone else has their same challenges.
Just take their strongest point:
> dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent
A few months ago I watched a college-age people-pleaser assertively turn down three peers pressuring her to hang out after work somewhere she didn't want to go. Three! She stuck to her guns, then looked up and nodded to me. I subtly nodded back. Real cowboy shit.
People are different and follow different paths of growth.
- when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self
I get a bunch of the others, but this one kind of confuses me. What's the opposite (better?) move? Logorrhea? Forcing a confrontation? Reciting bad poetry?
I suppose there's debate to be had about whether leaving a dead conversation is a retreat, but leaving the situation and pulling back a bit to think about the circumstances, one's mood, the people involved, etc seems like a good thing on balance.
As someone who identifies as autistic, after particularly notable social encounters, I describe them, best I can, to ChatGPT, and damned if the thing doesn't explain why people reacted the way they did so I can do better next time.
As someone who identifies as autistic, I learned to smile and just listen. I’ll ask questions and try and put my little anecdotes in but for the most part I just let other people talk. Works reasonably well. I usually run afoul when the situation is serious and I show up with my smile.
As someone who is not autistic, just tends towards very socially awkward, this is what I do as well. Active listening is a skill I developed by accident out of not having much to contribute to most conversations. As time went on, I saw that most people appreciate just being heard and worked on it more deliberately.
It's not all puppies and rainbows of course, because some people can't hold a conversation without being led through it by the hand, which is exhausting. And others think everyone else is always so fascinated with what they have to say that they never stop for you to get a word in edgewise.
But, active listening accounts for the majority of my social skills, for better or worse.
Instructions unclear. I don't usually smile at puppies, I point them out to my wife. She does the smiling for us. What if she isn't there? Who will do the smiling?
I don't know about you, but things that make me happy and things that automatically make me bare my teeth at them are not the same things. Deal with it.
Yeah. In the past I assumed that some people just sometimes randomly behave aggressively towards me for no good reason. But usually the reason is probably that I was unintentionally rude or strange with some sort of nonverbal communication or similar.
I think that’s how everyone learns. Making mistakes and figuring out why that turned out poorly. Some are more innately good at it than others. I’m not particularly but I can learn from mistakes
A lot of people assume everyone else has it worked out.
But people mostly don't have it all worked out.
There are specific demographics who do.
Some are naturally gifted at social interactions and/or grew up in environments which taught them how to socialise effectively.
Others are charming narcissists - likeable, high status, attractive on the outside, monsters on the inside. They can appear effortless because they don't care about anything except presenting an image, so they get get very skilled at it.
Most everyone else has some social anxiety or frustration and makes more or less obvious social mistakes at least occasionally.
(Cognitive behavioral therapy enjoyer l just cut off in traffic) Think positively. He is probably in a rush for a reason. Maybe he's late for a job interview. Maybe his wife is giving birth
right, the reason does not matter. only my reaction matters. coming to a negative conclusion only induces rage. think positively but be cautious. it's simply self protection.
I think that a willingness to interpret this as (good) satire can be used to indicate one's own level of socialization especially in adversarial contexts.
This list is actually just narcissism combined with low self-esteem.
For younger introverts, none of this behavior is necessarily anti-social if the group all shares these same traits. The moment a member of that group has any higher self-esteem than the rest, they will either see that individual as "cool" or as a threat (or both).
To be truly anti-social is to either completely isolate yourself, or be unrelentingly and unreasonably hostile in all interactions. This list is neither. It's just passive aggressive and a lot of ego.
I think the most important part of being antisocial is the ulterior motive for their hostility and refusal to situate themselves in an equitable or respectful social framework, which is invariably benefit to oneself. The type of benefit that an anti-social person seeks out is probably not like the usual suspects, though.
The formatting here made it pretty hard to parse at first. For a good 10 seconds I genuinely thought I was looking at some bizarre run-on, non-sequitur sentences. Giving the main line items a bit more spacing would make it much easier to read.
I think this rather describes someone with a cognitive bias which can be cured rather than someone truly anti social (I know someone who I believe is anti social but they tick off a lot more boxes than this. There is an overlap for sure in what you described BUT its a lot more complex than this)
Yeah that is triggering reading the list. I know it is satire or whatever. But people with one of those traits you need to evict from your circle or minimize contact with.
All over this thread people are saying things like, "this doesn't describe somebody who is anti-social, it describes a narcissist" or "I'm not anti-social, I am asocial." And it makes me think about internet discourse around neurodivergence and human diversity (not the racist dog whistle) more closely.
It seems that the models that dominate are ones which sort people into categories that emphasize positive traits and explain away negative ones as, "Society demands X but I just need Y." This is an important corrective to the medicalized model, but sometimes I feel it obscures the degree to which people are malleable. A lot of our behavior is habitual, and if you change your habits, you can change your "personality" without rewriting your own temperaments.
The other problem is one of causation. A group of people could all describe themselves as asocial, but what drives them to that label is entirely different. One legitimately needs less social interaction, one is riddled with social anxiety and has developed a deeply avoidant response, and one just hates people. They may be unified in feeling out of place in some social interactions, but what they need (or even don't need) is entirely different.
I don't know. I couldn't sleep last night and this is all I could think about. What does that make me?
yea haha it was meant almost entirely satirically, and yea in part about online behavior. i also wrote it off hand in a couple minutes and didn't think a lot about it. the breadth of different interpretations has been very surprising to witness
That's not being anti-social. That's just being hard headed. Anti-social isn't always a bad thing, while being hard headed generally isn't in one's best interest.
This isn't a personality issue at all—it's pure disrespect. If someone treated me like that, I wouldn't befriend them or open up to them either. Sincerity is a two-way street.
I got easier tip: bring large dog, that barks at everything and attack everyone 2 meters away. Bonus point if it has explosive diarrhoea in middle of grocery store or cafe!
Long story short: where I come from, alcohol is a main social driver. Once I stopped drinking, people started asking why I stopped, and some even suggested that people who do not drink are somehow less trustworthy.
Then after a sports incident, I got a concussion. For a while I could not handle light, screens, noise, people, work, or normal social pressure. So I deliberately isolated myself until I could figure out how to get better.
Here's my checklist:
- Know why you're doing this and share with a close person; Someone else grounding you in your asocial trip can make a difference;
- Read books, Jung helped me stay sane while in isolation;
- Learn a new skill. I picked math and system programming as I realized it's easier for me to solve math problems and debug computers, rather than humans;
- Assume your state of mind is temporary and you're doing it with a purpose;
You're on your own, ignore the environment, find happiness inside your mind, don't seek too much external validation. Then your body will tell you if it's time to socialize or keep on deliberately introverting. Happy meditation.
I never understood why “anti social” is seen as a negative trait, full of prejudice too (I mean, read that garbage article, passive aggressive BS too). Most people who built or achieved great or innovative things were anti social or at least didn’t waste their time bar hopping.. when people want to detox and disconnect, they go anti social, monks gurus you name it, also live in solitude, being alone will make you wiser and more creative if you are smart, and crazier if you are an average person, and covid lockdowns were a good example. From my observation, the more social a person is the more average they are, mediocre, wasting time in mostly useless interactions and sometimes even negative with all the peer pressure it brings, in fact, I would even argue the more social you are the more you become an outlier, a walking NPC who’s constantly under peer pressure, anxiety, and depression when not meeting impossible expectations. It’s a large scale gaslighting making a spectrum where an extrovert is good, introvert is bad, meanwhile the ones who are lifting the society and keeping it running are the introvert nerds.
This is one of my pet peeves. Not the "anti-social" character described in the post, but rather the poster's attitude. I've tried a few times to formulate to myself what it is that irks me, let's see if I manage to do it today:
1. Not every social interaction can (or should) be an objective weighing of ideas. It's not the other person's responsibility to enter into a formal debate with you at your local dive bar or whatever.
2. For their opinions to be valid, the other person doesn't need to conform to your idea of an acceptable conversation style (see 1). Also, in my experience, "anti-social" responses are detected more readily in the other person than in yourself, you're not as cool and collected as you think you are.
3. Feelings aren't forbidden. You may be a bit repressed yourself, meaning you feel shame or disgust when confronted with other people's feelings. Guess what... that's also a feeling!
4. If you repeatedly encounter these "anti-social" people in your life (which I guess OP does since he wrote a post about it) there's one common denominator: you. Can you honestly measure up to your own rules, OP? It takes two to tango.
5. There's a good chance you're sandbagging your conversation, meaning you're talking about some topic that you've thought about a lot, to a completely unprepared party. In my experience with people making complaints like OP, this is often combined with a controversial opinion about said topic. Instead of truly testing your idea against someone, you provoke an emotional reaction and celebrate your superiority because you staid calm and the other person exploded. Charlie Kirk was good at this unless he encountered actual experts.
6. Related to the above: come on, it's perfectly normal to get defensive and upset when you find you're losing an argument, don't act like you don't do it.
This is soley a list of how to be explicitly negative internally and externally, the people in this thread equating it to disorders need to re-think the text. Its a list of what not to do as a human.
With respect to all; there is an incredible amount of subtle communications that go into standard conversations
IDK if I agree with that. If you could dissuade a nazi by biting your tongue and keeping the conversation going, wouldn't that be the morally right thing to do?
> Most immoral actors cloak deliberately cloak themselves in ambiguity.
Yes, but that still doesn't mean you should assume everybody to be one of those 'immoral' actors. Assume that somebody is normal, if they do something that proofs they're an 'immoral actor', only then assume that they're being dishonest.
i wrote this bulleted list in a couple minutes as a way to rant about the lack of charity i was noticing in 2 places
- my family, where 2 members aren't speaking to each other for petty reasons, looking for the other to capitulate and admit they're the aggressor
- on bluesky, where users are blaming every outage on ai
if you took extra meaning from it, i'm sorry or congrats!
The anti-social behaviors I'm seeing are a lot more primitive (engagement and reaction bait, and other "simulated conduct" as I like to call it), and the people engaging in them don't really need a guide. Sarcastic rants like this always strike me as somewhere between tonedeaf and insulting as a result. You know it perfectly well that it's those who should be minding these the most are the ones that never will (and won't even be reading this).
That said, if I may be so hypocritical to add to the list, the heavy reliance on pointing out fallacies is a pretty big one. A lot of the times it simply degenerates conversations into logical golf, with no semblance of trying to actually understand the other person remaining. Though in those cases, that intent was usually never really present to begin with.
> when ambiguous, assume intent is malicious, ignorant, or amoral.
If you're in a toxic environment, this is what it's like. It's a culture problem, not an individual problem.
Here are some examples, going to get anecdotal here:
- People stealing credit for my work
- Needing to kick them off of projects I'm on to protect myself
- Getting into political standoffs with people trying to pressure and threaten me into arrangements that fuck me over
- Had people I work with turn on me all of a sudden and try to throw me under the bus
- A manager forcing someone to work with shitty consultants (who were, of course, a personal connection), then using it to throw them under the bus
- People trying to gatekeep higher ROI work for favorites
- Management lying to people and misrepresenting opportunities to get them to join, then rug pulling once they've signed on the dotted line
The "antisocial" behaviors in the post are just the sort of rational emotional detachment which happens when you figure out that you're dealing with shitty people.
Maybe I'll get genuinely antisocial here: a lot of people in general are shitty people. Or at least, if you've attracted shitty people into your life in the past, it'll keep happening in the future and you're better off growing the emotional scar tissue (i.e. "avoidant attachment") instead of this victim blaming. There's something about you that makes them target you and you're better off having the artillery ready
> if you must ask questions, imply the correctness of your originally held position by wording your question suggestively
So, is the question legit? If so, why can it not be answered?
This reminds me a bit of StackOverflow. "Question already solved" elsewhere. Well, before StackOverflow, people often asked a question, and were told "read the manual". So, were these people pro-social? Does the ORIGINAL position hold any merit when it comes to a question? HOW is it even inferred that a question was asked "suggestively"?
These bulletin points are no good. They make too many assumptions. What does "anti-social" mean? When reddit moderators ban people and censor statements, is this pro-social behaviour?
> when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self
What horrible recommendations. Hopefully AI wrote those, because I can not believe a human wrote that, not even as sarcasm. I don't even see any sarcasm there. How do you detect sarcasm in written text accurately? Is my text sarcasm? Everyone agree or disagree with that? People are different. All that attempt to group into social or anti-social, is rubbish nonsense from A to Z.
I've seen a lot posts like this recently. This comment is coming from the perspective of someone who the author would consider "anti-social": I once reported my boss to HR for a racist remark, and then resigned in protest. By 2026 I have embraced being a somewhat Diogenesian outcast and progressive hall monitor. I lost friends over it.
So I find this post incredibly condescending, and it seems clearly directed at a few specific people this author had some sort of moral or political disagreement with. Which means the author is committing the exact sins he's inveighing against!
I will be a little more specific:
assume they have no sane reason for doing or saying what they are doing or saying
Who exactly is assuming bad faith here? When I have a moral disagreement with someone it's rarely because they are ignorant or insane, it's because we have a fundamental difference in values. As a progressive, usually the person I disagree with is quite cynical and deeply rational. They might in good faith assume I am a bleeding heart who is also somewhat rational. Sometimes hearts are irreconcilable: a rich person I went to college with decided to become a for-profit landlord, so we aren't friends anymore. I simply think they're evil and won't associate with them. Stuff like that is always confusing and upsetting, often for both people involved; I am sure my landlord apostate friend didn't see what the big deal was. The author's "view from nowhere" posture is quite childish.
assume intent is malicious, ignorant, or amoral.
This is followed immediately by the author assuming malicious ignorance! "do not challenge or acknowledge the existence or influence of your assumptions, wholly trust your intuition and feelings"
interpret others' actions in the context of your fears
This is just pure sneering judgment. It doesn't mean anything, it's just name-calling. "People disagree with me because they're cowards!"
exploit your immediate network; when the obvious merits of your narrative are exhausted, present like-minded people with tastefully curated details of your interactions with detractors, to provide a more appropriate account that your supporters can rally around to crush any lingering threats to your narrative
Again there seems to be some very specific baggage here! Did he get in a fight on Twitter or something? Anyway, "your supporters can rally around" contradicts these people being "anti-social" and "isolating." Perhaps there are a large number of people who disagree with the author's values, and that's what he's really upset about. But rather than say "people disagree with me and I can't convince them otherwise" he is content to say "people disagree with me because they're antisocial cowards." This is itself antisocial and cowardly, isn't it? I think the author should be concluding "getting in fights on Twitter is bad for human souls."
do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, especially those that you have never met or otherwise spoken to
It does not seem like he is granting any of these anti-social people any grace, just a wall of unforgiving judgment. If they admit they are irrational weaklings then maybe the author will allow them a tiny helping of grace, as a treat.
do not seek to understand those you do not already understand
Indeed I get the impression the author doesn't understand me at all, and has no interest in doing so. It's a lot easier to just conclude I am a stupid coward.
One heuristic for spotting when you might be wrong is that you hold a very uncommon belief.
It COULD be that you are correct and the world is crazy, but its far more likely that you are the one who is missing something. It's always worth stopping to double check when this happens.
Perhaps more importantly, if you do happen to be right when everyone else is wrong its important to determine your goals.
Is it more important to be right, or to be happy? If the answer is the latter then its sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social. Nobody likes to be told they're wrong, so is "correctness" worth more than that person's feelings? Very oten it is not.
I believe you, but in my own experience I've met more people who say this than who mean this.
Usually it's situational. People might genuinely like to be wrong when the novelty is fun or useful, for example in lab work or in low stakes classwork. However, they despise it with politics, their job, or anything else that might have actual consequences in their lives.
> sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social
There's almost no time when it's better to try to convince somebody they're wrong. It won't help you, and it won't work anyway, so it won't help them either.
Sure if you're somebody's doctor, and even then you have to pick your battles.
Ever heard of tribalism and echo chambers? Wrongness being a function of number of dissidents is a terrible heuristic, in contrast to determining the lies and falsehood based on the soundness of the argument or logic.
Also, when a population group is large enough (e.g. entire world), it's quite likely a crazily-held belief is shared by other people, or people who would at least nod in agreement.
the thing with uncommon beliefs is not that they are likely wrong. but that digging in your heels is surely going to fail, regardless of who is actually right.
so your suggested response is the right approach, but it doesn't end there. you can try find a common belief and build up your argument from there. peoples opinions can be changed if you take the time to learn how their opinions are formed and present them with the opportunity to consider alternative ideas. ideally in such a way that they discover the truth on their own.
a key component is that unity enables change. it is better to be wrong but united, than right and divided. if we are united (and thus stay friends) then we can learn from being wrong and change direction. if we are divided then changing direction is difficult.
I think there are also different definitions of "digging in your heels".
What most people do is just whine and repeat themselves because they don't understand all the ways they're being misunderstood. They lack self-awareness because they lack sufficient experience hearing and digesting the arguments from the other sides. This is a missed opportunity.
What people should do instead is leverage their self-awareness once they have the spotlight and "magically know" which concerns to address when they are given that brief window of rebuttal. It's hard to get attention, so they must strike when the iron is hot. It takes a lot of experience, and most never get to that level. Repetition signals to everyone else they don't really know what they're talking about.
The majority of the audience may actually be on your side agreeing with you, but they won't stick their neck out for the truth if they know they're less informed and less experienced than you, yet even you still failed. They have no chance to do any better, so they just shut the fuck up. Everyone languishes. Your point is noted, but not winning. All you did was paint a target on your back for the next time you say anything. People would rather be winning than right. Agreeing with you once doesn't mean they side with you.
I think I can speak for most people with niche subjects of interest when I say that the commonly held beliefs on said niche subject tend to be pretty bad.
> Is it more important to be right, or to be happy?
Im going out on a limb here, but I'd say intelligent people will tell you - without a doubt - being right. Because being happy is a perception and always a transitive state. There's nothing holding you from being both right and happy.
> Nobody likes to be told they're wrong
Thats actually a southern european way of looking at things; Its a cultural trace that varies a lot by region. Pointing flaws in plans is actually something I saw as worthy of an appraisal in Germany.
Also, I always tell people when I think they are wrong. I no longer insist or argue, just point out what lead me to the conclusion; you don't want to be in the blast radius of a deaf manager, an incompetent colleague or a delusional partner. Win-win.
I’m going to ignore the whole socially-agreeable aspect.
Take a thousand subjects. I’m going to be wrong about 990 of them. Because I know just enough about it to think I might have a clue.
You could probably read up on something for five hours and have a better opinion on it than most people that you meet.
How many things are just passively received opinion? And what kind of signal is that? Oh no, all the Jacks and Jones disagree with me.
On the other hand there are some cases where you can go down some dark rabbit hole and gain false knowledge and education. Maybe studying political science or something.
>One heuristic for spotting when you might be wrong is that you hold a very uncommon belief.
this is only the case in a 'wisdom of the crowd' world where people hold uncorrelated, authentic, self-formed opinions. If you're in a world of mass opinion and mania where ideas spread virally it ceases to be an indicator. In that environment its not truth that determined popularity of a belief, but how transmittable they are. In a world where gigantic companies produce sociality being anti-social in the most literal sense is a very real survival and truth-finding strategy.
And of course it's more important to be right than happy. Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism. If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
As Cormac McCarthy said in his last book: “You would give up your dreams in order to escape your nightmares and I would not. I think it's a bad bargain.”
> If you're in a world of mass opinion and mania where ideas spread virally it ceases to be an indicator.
Not really. It continues to be an indicator, just a less reliable one. As I said, it's one heuristic. It increases your probability of being right more than it decreases it, but it isn't an absolute rule.
Fundamentally, science itself relies on this heuristic to some extent. The idea that an experiment be reproducible is essentially the idea that the majority of testers should agree on observed reality. You just have to be careful not to conflate opinion with observed fact, or to treat it as more than a heuristic evaluator.
> Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism.
Not at all.
You do not need to be correct to be happy, and there is no correlation at all between your ability to correctly understand the world and your capacity (or worthiness) to experience joy or to help others experience it. You are allowed to be wrong and happy, or apathetic and happy, or ignorant and happy, or even nihilistic and happy.
> If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
There's more than one type of happiness. The kind you describe is hedonic. The other type is referred to as Eudamonic, and it comes from connection, service, and a sense of purpose.
You'll never get to experience the second type if other people don't want to be around you because you've decided that your own narrow perspective is the One True Perspective (TM).
Don't get me wrong, I reject post-modernity and the horrifying idea that there is no objective truth. I just also reject the idea that any of us are valid arbiters of that truth, or that we must know the truth before being allowed to experience happiness.
Nobody said you can't. They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society.
Your position seems to imply support for society-level submission to religious dogma. There's no point ignoring actual examples of all these ideas.
Hold an "uncommon belief"? According to you, it's a sign you're wrong. "the world isn't crazy, it's you who's missing something"... and you even say "let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social."
I don't think you meant to express support for strict religious rule and population submission, but that's how I'm reading it.
Your argument supports those who seek submission from the population. You don't require objective truth to play a role in happiness. You have found value in submission that serves to neutralise dissent. Dissent when coming from the few, isn't worth your time. Peg those few dissenters as "probably wrong" and call it a day.
A lot of folks seem to be interpreting my heuristic is if it were a hard and fast rule here. Thats not what a heuristic is.
A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows for quick decisions based on "most likely" outcomes. Its a statistical tool.
In my case I said it should be enough of an indicator for you to double check your work, not that you were automatically wrong. I stand by that.
That said, you're getting into epistemology now, and its important to differentiate between the observed facts and the biased interpetation of them.
I mentioned before that reproducibility in this way is important to science, and the reason it works with science is that we decouple the observation from the interpetation.
When most people observe that 2+2=4 and you get 5 it is likely that you're wrong. You should invest the time to double check your work.
If 50% of the world then tortures that observation through convoluted and error filled reasoning until they can interpret it to mean magic sky daddy wants you to let the priest touch your special no-no place you should ignore them.
Observed reality being in agreement is a much more reliable heuristic than agreement of interpretation, which is often filled with bias.
> They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society...
Happiness is an emotion. Imagine if I'd claimed society should only be allowed to feel lust on Tuesdays. This is no different. You are allowed to feel however you'd like to feel whenever you'd like to feel it.
Making up arbitrary rules about when you're "allowed " or "deserve" to feel good will make you miserable, and you don't have the right to tell the rest of us we have to abide by your misery making emotion rules.
You might consider asking yourself where this idea that you must meet specific prerequisites before being allowed to feel specific feelings came from, and then seriously considering whether it has merit, or if it even actually works.
Are you also restricting when you're "allowed" to feel negative emotions? How does that work? Are you really able to just... not be sad if you dont deserve it? Do you always feel happy when you DO deserve it?
I think the Protestant ethos is soo deeply embedded in you that you might not even know its there.
How about the old fashioned freezing with a face contorted in fear like your being held at knife point unable to think of anything to say and just waiting to be able to leave? When you get asked a question, fumble over your words and say something stupid. Later on, you can reflexively watch the memory played over and over again so you're even worse the next time. If you see anyone you met during the encounter afterwards, you can just panic and try to hide your face and escape.
That's a lot easier and comes off more natural IMO.
You reminded me of one of the first interviews I ever had in tech. I took 2 phone screens, and a take home assignment. Last step: Zoom interview with some of the IT team (3 people). It started well, but I slowly started panicking. All three of them were shooting questions at me, which I answered them all correctly, as far as I know, but I was so... cold. Started stammering my words and speaking like a terrified child at the principals office.
I could observe myself and knew what I looked like, but couldn't break it. The CTO stopped me as I was speaking and said "this isn't going to work". As soon as he said that, I ended the call. I had some major imposter syndrome during that time, I think that played a huge role in my fumble. Still massively cringe when I think about that, though.
Honestly, it sounds to me like the CTO, not you, is the one who should be embarrassed by memories of that experience. Unless being a polished speaker under high pressure situations was a requirement for the job, the CTO, as leader, should have had the skill to make you more comfortable expressing your knowledge and skills.
I have memories of experiences freezing up and losing the physical control required to speak as well, so I have empathy.
(Having such experiences as a child are what led to me joining the high school speech team doing extemporaneous and impromptu events to get over them. I eventually went on to be a regional champion and a state competitor, but I still sometimes have to fight the physical tension when speaking in certain situations).
One of my worst experiences as a junior member of our interview team was when a candidate was "walked out" when the hiring manager decided that the person was not going to work out. I still feel embarrassed about it myself. What a terrible experience for the interviewee.
There's a right and wrong to do this.
Some of my worst interview memories are from a company where the VP leading hiring had ideas that candidates needed to be made to feel as comfortable and positive as possible and treated equally, including giving them the same interview length after they got past the screener.
The screener mostly filtered out unqualified candidates, but when someone slipped through and then was obviously not going to make it through the interview we all had to pretend that they were doing a great job and keep pushing through anyway. There was lots of fake encouragement that most candidates could see right through. Really painful for everyone to have to sit through interview sessions when everyone in the room, including the candidate, knows it's not going to work out.
That shit makes me so mad. Bringing people to your office in a truly vulnerable state - they're inviting you to judge them. Anyone who doesn't treat them with compassion and kindness lacks what it takes to be a good leader.
I've had the pleasure of interviewing someone, for a coding job in C, where it became clear within 10 minutes that they just didn't know C beyond "hello world". Through body language etc they indicated they weren't chagrined by their lack of knowledge and we should just move on with the interview. At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?" I stopped that interview early and recommended we let the candidate go without completing the loop. No sense in wasting everyone's time and creating some kind of false hope.
This is one of those cases where "nice" != "compassionate". They applied for a job they were not qualified for. We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run.
Yeah, I agree with you. There is a right way to do that, and I assumed the comment I was replying to was describing the wrong way to do it given their reaction.
I've ended plenty of interviews early when it's clear the candidate isn't going to work out. I agree there's no point in wasting everyone's time, and hiring is time consuming enough. But there's a way to do it with kindness, and I think everyone in the interviewer's chair should have some sense of how. (That said, there are some candidates that are going to take rejection poorly no matter what - you can control how you treat a candidate but now how they react).
> We could have been "nice" and held up the delusion that we were still considering them, and let them down later with some vacuous corporate platitude like "you were great but we ultimately gave the role to a stronger candidate". Providing instant feedback that their skills were just not up to snuff is not 'nice' but it's more compassionate in the long run
You're right, however
> At one point I said literally, "You know this interview is for a C coding position, right?"
This is absolutely not the right way to go about it.
It's completely fair to say "hey, thanks for your time but we really need someone with C experience and we don't think you're a good fit for what we're looking for", but that's not even close to what it sounds like you did
You can cut an interview short and make it clear they won't be considered without being a huge asshole about it
Welp, this was 20 years ago and I was 25, and literally no one ever gave me any instruction on how to conduct interviews (over my entire career). If I was a "huge asshole" to this person, then I'm sorry, that wasn't my intent, and I hope they're doing well and weren't too negatively impacted by my attitude.
To be honest though, the whole corporate world is institutionalized assholery, from giving candidates take-home coding assignments and then ghosting them, to laying people off without even giving them a chance to say goodbye to their coworkers. The entire leadership of that particular startup was assholes through and through. It's difficult to maintain one's humanity in the face of that (esp at a young age) and I'm glad to be out of that game.
I wouldn't judge based on the limited context we've provided.
I've interviewed candidates for jobs requiring highly specific skills who claimed to have those skills, but in the interview they kept trying to divert the topic to something else. An analogy would be bringing someone in for a C interview and they keep trying to write all the answers in Python and pretend that C and Python are interchangeable.
So some times, asking the candidate if they know what they're interviewing for is really called for. You want to be sure the person understood the interview, not that they were confused by the questions.
That's just a tech version of the age-old hostile (panel) interview.
I don't think it's a useful interview practice, at least in tech, below director level, but you just have to keep your composure and gently assert control. If that CTO favored it maybe their company culture was unusually aggressive.
tbf it sounds like you might have dodged a bullet there, so try to not beat yourself up too much for thinking you weren’t good enough.
we all have imposter syndrome when we start out. as long as you didn’t outright obviously lie or something then you probably didn’t do anything particularly wrong that’s worthy of the cringe.
(i’ve done the exact same thing in interviews, most of us probably have some story like that).
[dead]
If any one single interaction makes you have such a response, that might be a reason to see someone. I wish for everyone to be able to move through the social world with grace and ease.
Put less kindly: there’s nothing so special about you that being yourself around a new person should cause such a panic. Even if they take an instant dislike to you, that should be something you can take in stride
My favorite Jane Austen quote on this subject:
Perhaps,' said Darcy, 'I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers.'
'Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?' said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. 'Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?'
'I can answer your question,' said Fitzwilliam, 'without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.'
'I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,' said Darcy, 'of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.'
'My fingers,' said Elizabeth, 'do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault -- because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.'
As a self identified autistic person, I regularly think of spooky situations as “socialization”. I went to a wedding where I only knew five people. Goddamn did I have some bad conversation. But I also made one new friend, and that’s cool! When I fuck up it’s just a chance for me to learn why I fucked up and how to be better in the future. And not everyone has to like me. I only really enjoy about 10% of others, why should I expect a greater return?
It seems like most people in this thread are more like Mr. Darcy, just assuming that they are destined to be bad at something that they’ve never practiced
That's a poor analogy because practicing an instrument is a single-player game.
Unless you mean you can practice socialisation at the mirror, or that you're willing to practice scales or solfege in public.
Your response assumes a lot about the homogeneity of subjective human experience that the data don’t seem to support.
There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity that makes your comment sound extremely out of touch to some people.
I can do what you describe because I am fortunate that many of my social interactions are positive. For people I work with this is not the case and they are extremely socially isolated, and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this. They are more sensitive interpersonally than I am and more socially aware in the moment, while less equipped to deal with social conventions and unattractive, becoming dramatically moreso in social situations due to their intrinsic reactions.
The points in the article can help all of us.
> and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this
This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out. The vast majority of social experiences in my life have been negative and it gets worse every time I have another, making it less likely the next will be positive.
Rather than continue to get hurt I have nearly 100% socially isolated myself, save for the internet. I work remote in a rural area and I only leave the house for essentials. There's no place for me socially and I've accepted that.
> This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out.
My friend, things can always improve. Having mental health problems is hard, because you're ultimately using your own 'impaired' brain to analyze your own situation. Talking to a therapist is effective in breaking this, because it forces you to organize your thoughts into something coherent to explain it to your therapist. Only at this point will flaws in this reasoning become apparent.
If you cannot talk to a therapist (or otherwise a neutral person who doesn't judge you for what you say), you can try writing it down. Try to write down why you feel what you feel, what you feel when you talk to another person, what you think that others think and feel about you, how those feelings developed, how other people have been influential in your feelings, everything. Read it as if someone else wrote it down. What would you do in their situation? Do you agree with what you wrote down. If you come across holes in what you've written, try to revise that part, rewrite it to incoorporate for the criticisms.
> making it less likely the next will be positive.
Why do you think that's the case? If you throw a dice and it comes up on 1 three times in a row, that doesn't make it more likely that the next time it will be a 1 again. There's so many different people, it's as good as random what kind of interaction you will have.
Some people are just happiest being alone. I usually feel I am in this camp. I can have reasonably good social interactions but it's often awkward and even when it's not it is a lot of work and it doesn't seem commensurate with the reward, which is very little.
I like staying at home, reading, tinkering, doing my hobbies. I do not crave the company of others, and walking into a room and having to be "on" even with people I know and am friendly with is so draining.
I’m also in this camp. There’s nothing better than to be lost in your own flow. However, I find these moments to be richer when someone is silently tinkering besides you, in sort of a passive interaction. Typical people tend to behave awkwardly when there’s no point or reason in talking while in the company of others. This has to be as much as a deficit as the normative definition of social awkwardness. I could never connect with these kind of people, that are always ruining silence for no reason other than trying to escape their own discomfort.
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The point is that a fully grown person (i.e. adult) should be able to regulate their emotions to the point of being able to have a conversation with 3 strangers.
You might not like it, it might stress you out a bunch, you can cry afterwards, or have a stiff drink after, but you should be able to set those emotions aside for 30 minutes, especially for something important like a job interview.
If someone cannot do that, they should definitely go into therapy for that. No matter if it was 'done to them', it's still a problem that person carries around, and the only way around that is fixing it.
lol, go be yourself on your own time. On my time, you better be normal and happy about it.
None of the many many reasons someone may act this way mean they are broken, and therapy is not about 'fixing' someone to be the member of society you deem appropriate.
Therapy is (or at least can be!) about trying to achieve goals that you have. I’m the GP commenter above. I went to therapy twice a week for two years to get over social anxiety and my entire life has completely opened up in a new way that would never have been possible without that work.
If relating to people is not a goal of yours then I would agree that you should not go to therapy for it. On the other hand, it is difficult for me to believe that anyone with anxiety is truly comfortable, considering that discomfort is the main feature of anxiety.
It is far more helpful to others for you to share the depths of your experience than to go around telling people they need to go to therapy because it works for you.
I see the enthusiasm and that you want better things for others, but the way you are approaching this communication is not doing it justice.
Nobody knows who anybody is in these comments. It's impossible to tailor our comments to people who might read it.
Awesome of you to put words in my mouth. I don't think people are 'broken' for having mental issues, and even I certainly would never imply that someone is somehow 'less' because of mental issues.
Just as someone with a broken leg is not a 'broken' person, their leg still needs fixing.
just fyi: 2 people could have the same mental health issues, but one could get a diagnosis and the other one doesn't. The reason for that is because a 'diagnosis' is basically just a ticket to get treatment, and thus is solely based on the question: "Will this person be able to deal with the disruptions caused by the issue, without professional intervention?".
If someone has a panic attack every time they talk to 3 strangers, it's is very plausible that this can lead to difficulty making and maintaining friendships and relations, which can likely lead to loneliness, depression, even further excerbated social anxiety, etc. All these afflictions make it even harder to deal with these issues which is why some people cannot break this cycle by themselves.
Some of the people I work with have gone into therapy. The more intelligent and in touch with their emotions they already were, the less therapy did for them. For a lot of dudes it is a revelation. For a lot of others it is not, just a way to continue to surface intractable problems in conversation.
Therapy doesn’t always help, many people need more compassion from those around them. And society would be better equipped to provide that if instead to referring their contacts to specialists they might not be able to afford, more well-off people developed some minor therapeutic ability and concern for their fellow humans.
What is this obsession with therapy? There is no solid evidence it works yet it is relentlessly recommended.
Yes there is
No there isn’t.
There's plenty of research that shows treatment along with talk therapy yields better outcomes than treatment or therapy alone. If you have any evidence or anecdotes that are to the contrary I would love to hear it.
> No matter if it was 'done to them',
Love the quote marks. Next time try a Marx quote. I mean the brothers.
To fellow humans reading: the point is that the ones who did this to you are extremely unlikely to repent. Or even to comprehend that what they did to you is wrong.
Even if you were to explicitly hurt yourself - or place yourself in a position where you get hurt very badly - with the intent to communicate "do you still not see what you did to me?"... it's just no sweat off their, you know? "Yeah that person was all wrong, had it coming anyway".
The social contract protects them better than it protects you, so an "eye for an eye" solution is also unlikely to work - or even be possible: we don't hit, do we?
Therapy is... some person's job. That they trained for, you know? To put some food on the table, you know?
That means you can "go to therapy" in good faith (assuming you can access it in the first place) and not heal at all. The therapist might be a talented and intrinsically motivated person - or might just go "mmhmm" as you try to get through to them that they are doing exactly nothing to help you heal from some very particular, and perhaps not even unclearly defined at all, mental wound (that PP has had the gall to put in 'scare quotes'.)
Point is, the therapist will get paid either way. There is no shortage of people being told to get therapy by their fellows (who are too fucked up themselves to exhibit basic human fellowship). The systemic incentive to heal people's minds is next to nonexistent in comparison with the systemic incentive to drive hurt people mad, and then destroy them for being mad.
My suggestion: read some fucking books, and I don't mean books about fucking, I mean fucking books. Then, you might begin to get a clue how to get in touch with your spite, and how to become the undoing of all that ever wronged you without turning into that thing in the process.
TL;DR: You can start with those people who taught you that "feeling sorry for yourself" is a thing, and that it's what you need to do to make those who wronged you to regret their actions. You take those people and unlearn everything that they ever taught you. If there was anything true at all in what they wanted you to understand, you'll relearn it on your own, unencumbered by association with their other insidious lies. Then you can go tell two priestly kings that the balamatom sez hi ;-)
Sadly the human need for being heard and understood is innate, and it has been my experience that books can't substitute for that need. On the other hand, there are swathes of incompetent therapists that can only aggravate one's mental state.
The only solution I see is to find the right therapist. Some people might not when their future depends on them finding one, and they give up too early. I can't see how that would be fixed except maybe having a mediator that pairs you up with therapists they recommend and asks if you feel an improvement each week. You'd be surprised, but I had nobody to do this for me. So I ended up losing years worth of time sticking with incompetent therapists because "going to therapy" like everybody told me to seemed more important than "fixing my life."
As cruel as it sounds, I was in no position to think critically about my own treatment because my mental state only allowed me to see checking off the box of self-care to get people off my back as the ultimate goal. It's the nature of the problem of mental healthcare. If I had been given a simple questionnaire to rate my treatment providers on a scale of 1-10 in various dimensions, I would have been put in front of someone else within a month or two.
>Sadly the human need for being heard and understood is innate
And humans are hell-bent on denying this to each other. Just like sustenance or shelter. Hmm. Wonder what's that all about?
>You'd be surprised
The hypothetical everyman that is addressee in this turn of phrase? Yeah, probably would. Me though? I wouldn't even feign it.
>but I had nobody to do this for me.
Root of the problem right there. Not your fault. (At least if we reason causally, and not scapegoatingly.)
>So I ended up losing years worth of time sticking with incompetent therapists because "going to therapy" like everybody told me to seemed more important than "fixing my life."
Exactly.
Sending someone to therapy is a socially acceptable accountability sink. And a "good vibes"-coded method of gaslighting.
The sender-to-therapy still wants to maintain your acquaintance. They might not even be getting something out of it, or even expecting to gain something; they just want to do the normal thing like they're taught to; which amounts to "do not be seen looking like you're snubbing somebody because dats rood".
And, simultaneously, they don't actually want the cognitive load of acknowledging you as a real person in a real pickle, so they can't "be there for you" (another treacherous wording). After all, reality is a contagious thing; what's next - they become aware of their own shit? Unthinkable - what if that makes them incapable of traumatizing their kids one day? Better just do the normal thing and let you rot. It's all upside!
It's narcissism all the way down, through the bottom, and up by the bootstraps.
(See also cousin post:
>LLMS are more like friends, providing a listening ear, but otherwise just nodding along.
If that's the standard of friendship, it's more useful to make enemies!)
> If I had been given a simple questionnaire to rate my treatment providers on a scale of 1-10 in various dimensions, I would have been put in front of someone else within a month or two.
And then those poor psych grads would've been denied their lucrative and inconsequential careers! The horror, the enormity!
>It's the nature of the problem of mental healthcare
Mental healthcare is impossible without actual concepts of "mind", "health", and "care". The society we inhabit only has some poor statistical approximations of those, Seeing like a State-style. Best "we" can do, therapy-wise, is figure out how to make you scream less loudly.
>As cruel as it sounds, I was in no position to think critically about my own treatment
It does not sound cruel. You are not hurting anybody. You are being critical of your past self. This is, generally speaking, a correct thing to do.
>because my mental state only allowed me to see checking off the box of self-care to get people off my back as the ultimate goal.
Your mental state does not exist in a vacuum; it is primarily a product of your environment. If they teach you box ticking, you're gonna do box ticking. If they misteach you that box ticking appeases, you're gonna keep ticking boxes until it appeases - except it won't and while you're busy waiting for it to appease them, they will do whatever the fuck they want with you. It's their way of life. Who are we to deny them that? How?
Of course, if you've found a therapist that works for you, all of this is probably moot; as to other readers, my suggestion continues to be as follows:
- Begin with rejecting any premise they're trying to force/shame/blackmail you into accepting, no matter how socially acceptable this premise might seem on the surface.
- Then, proceed to deconstruct the premise and its implications from a maximally cynical perspective. This will simplify things to a level where one is able to reason about them even with most higher faculties disabled.
- Once you've used this to regain higher ground (a process which, in itself, is already a source of valuable first-hand experiences), you can commence the actual "debugging" of your higher faculties (and, through that, figure out those things only you can figure out).
You know who's infinitely patient, has read every psychology text book and is available immediately at 2am and not in a week that you have to schedule an appointment for? ChatGPT. (or Claude or any of them.)
I was gonna bet on "the police" but "having read books" kinda disqualified that
Despite popular opinion having a sycophantic therapist trained Above all else to be liked by you is actually not good
A therapist does more than just listen. A therapist is more like a driving instructor sitting in the second seat that points out things that you should pay attention to, and can take the wheel if you head into dangerous territory.
If you say something like "I hate that people don't see the real me", LLMs would say "yes it's understandable that that would make you upset" basically confirming your reasoning as valid, while a therapist would ask "why do you want to people to see the real you?" or "What is in your words the difference between how people see you now, and how they would see you if they saw the 'real you'?". These kinds of questions force you to explain and identify your assumptions and reasoning.
LLMS are more like friends, providing a listening ear, but otherwise just nodding along.
edit: To be clear, this is why llms are NOT a good replacement for therapy. Using llms will likely only exacerbate instead of mitigate.
Honestly friend, I think you have some very cynical views about relationships, that aren't very healthy.
All this talk about retribution, what would you think you will get out of this? What do you think would happen if all your bullies would call you and tell you they're sorry for what they did to you? Would that erase any of the memories you have? Will that suddenly make you approach each social interaction without worry and with confidence? Will that help improve how you feel about your self?
I think the answer is a resounding 'no'... The required changes between you and your 'best self' are not within them, but they are within you.
> that it's what you need to do to make those who wronged you to regret their actions
Why does your goal even include these people? Why do you keep letting these people play a part in your life? Your goal should be to live however you want to live, and to disregard these people
Because, "friend", I do not only care about myself.
> There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity
I say this with respect: the kind of attitude you're describing does more to isolate people than anything mentioned in the original post.
Bitterness or even just muted disappointment will drive people away more than any of the factors you mentioned, by a factor of 10. Have any of you gone on a date with someone who looked great on paper, but seemed unhappy to be there or resentful towards you? That's the ultimate connection killer.
You can have all sorts of setbacks, but if you're chill and have a good attitude people will want you around (barring a few assholes, but it's important not to worry about them). OTOH even if you're very good looking, no one will want to approach you if your vibes are bad or inward facing.
Respect for developmental diversity does more to isolate people?
Because it seems like you and several other people are projecting a lot of “trauma is my identity” ideas on me that aren’t in what I wrote.
What I wrote is that telling people “get good, I did” is really unhelpful. Put more work and thought into how you try to connect with people whose experience is very different from yours.
Why do you assume my experience is so different? There are tons of people on forums like these who've dealt with extreme shyness and severe problems, yet managed to persevere. Your struggles might not be nearly as unique as you think.
I am assuming this because you are projecting all over me and not distinguishing between me and the people I was making the point about. I was pretty clear in my comment that I do not struggle with shyness. Some people experience debilitating levels of shyness, and some people have done the work necessary to understand the perspective of those people, but in my experience they do not communicate like you do.
I have no idea what you're trying to say.
>> Why do you assume my experience is so different? There are tons of people on forums like these who've dealt with extreme shyness and severe problems, yet managed to persevere.
> I am assuming this because you are projecting all over me
Projecting means you are making assumptions rooted in your own experience about what I think and how I feel which are not accurate.
>> Your struggles might not be nearly as unique as you think.
> and not distinguishing between me and the people I was making the point about. I was pretty clear in my comment that I do not struggle with shyness.
This means you are conflating me with the people I work with who struggle with this — ie you did not take the time to understand my comment chain before replying.
> Some people experience debilitating levels of shyness, and some people have done the work necessary to understand the perspective of those people, but in my experience they do not communicate like you do.
This means you appear to be functionally illiterate in the language of subjective experience and are just insisting that other people experience the world the way you do. This is understandable as a default because for many it is a familiar, easier, model of reality to work with. People exist who have the same fluency in this area that you have in your primary area of expertise. Think about the gap in understanding between someone who knows nothing about your area of expertise and you. Think about how they sound trying to explain to you how to solve a problem in your work.
No, I know what all that means. I don't know what your perspective is, beyond your defenses.
The kind of reaction described by the GP is probably trained by a lifetime of bad experiences. One can end up going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down in order to have some semblance of a normal conversation, and inevitably that over-thinking just makes it worse. Ask leading questions, smile, listen careful, don't interrupt - you know, all that sort of thing that comes more naturally to some than to others.
> going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down
what if (a) I hate leading questions, (b) by default only smile when bad/tragic things happen (eg "train crash leaves 100 dead and maimed"), (c) I'm quite bad at listening bc if you don't say interesting things often/densely enough my mind adhd-s away, and (d) interrupting is second-nature to me?
...advice may be good, but for some of us it's like 99% of ourselves that we need to dial down in order to carry on a successful interaction - it works, but takes a hell lot of energy
You seem to have a lot of limiting thoughts about yourself. Other people do those kinds of things but just don’t mind and don’t think that they are a bother to others.
You’re allowed to be weird. Weird people make the best conversation because you don’t know where they’re gonna go
Yes, you and I are making the same point :-) There's lots of useful advice out there about how to be a better conversationalist but it's exhausting for those of us who have to constantly think about it, and disheartening when we get it wrong despite all the effort.
Have you considered that your advice might be akin to telling a diabetic to do talk therapy so they can start producing insulin again?
There are lots of things people can’t just talk themselves out of.
Well that would be silly. I would hope the diabetic would go to a nutritionist for their physical and medical problem. But a social problem is something that should probably be fixed with a social solution
There’s a lot of energy in this thread mixing up introversion and autism for an inability to relate to others. That’s not true you just have a different perspective and will relate in a different way. Autism might be a proximal cause for anxiety but anxiety is not a feature of autism and it can be overcome.
Single interaction? Buddy that’s my entire life.
No one can stop the replay, so there's no use in seeing anyone about it. We eventually just learn to cope, and try not to lie in bed at night replaying all the day's awkward social situations.
Matching your latter register: and what, in your mind, will 'seeing someone' do to change somebody's lack of social 'grace and ease'?
Going to therapy can help you create a more positive and staple self image.The more you like yourself the more you would want to share that with other people and the easier it becomes. To put a finer point on it, it kind of seems like the person I was responding to has an extreme anxiety problem. I feel bad because I’ve gone through that and I feel like I wasted a large portion of my life because I was so scared that I couldn’t live it. Nobody has to live in fear all the time
Your comments feel like projection, which lead you to make an extreme (and, in my opinion, unfounded) assumption about GP. GP says nothing about self-confidence nor 'liking' onself. One can have a social interaction like GP comically describes—and still be mostly socially 'at ease and graceful', possess a positive and stable self-image, be otherwise antisocial, and not need therapy.
It depends on the type of help you seek, but generally you are given tools and techniques to deploy in those situations that can help.
What does "being yourself" even mean? Obviously not "acting the exact same way you act when alone", since this would be impossible/weird/rude/illegal but also not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
You know the meme that goes: "Be yourself. No, not like that."
It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections.
"Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.
That phrase is simply inaccurate. Your "self" needs to care less about opinions of others, and it should not be scared of making mistakes. "Be yourself" is typically parsed as "do not try to be someone other, do not try to be like movie actor".
> not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.
"being yourself" means choosing to believe that the you that is true is competent and capable of growth while the awkwardness is a temporary barrier between that is not reflective of your true nature.
I don’t mean like being “authentic” or whatever that means. In this conversation “being yourself” means literally you existing in that moment in your body.
I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario
For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too
I don’t think most people can do this 100% of the time. I actually think if you can do this 100% of the time you’re probably a zen master.
I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)
This is baffling to hear dude, I literally canvas with 1000s of people before. All these people have no issues interacting with complete strangers in hostile areas withe ease. The amount of people doing this is in the tens of millions, from all walks of life too.
Definitely check out a therapist because this type of thinking isn't only toxic to yourself but it's not how the world really works.
Panic -> response distribution shrinks -> freeze/be angry/make social mistake, but hey it’s fast
You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this?
Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No
You can blame million years of evolution for your bad life or you can change it right now living in the present moment. It’s fine if you don’t do it right now because later at a future present moment you can still make the choice to be happy. It might take some work but it will never be because of something that happened in the past. It will be something that you do right now. There are no exceptions or escape hatches
These cliches are just annoying to read at this point, everyone has heard this stuff a million times and yet...millions still suffer. If I'm being honest it just comes across as yet another form of bullying when socially well adjusted people say stuff like this to people worse off than them.
What they are saying is true. It just might take a lot of work to get the ball moving.
I can agree with you while still agreeing with parent poster that it's basically "git gud"-tier bullying.
Very very few orators can successfully pull off "just fix your problems bro" as anything beyond a generic kick in the pants for the people presently predispositioned to be motivated by one.
I regularly bully my close friends into being better people. It just so happens that I fell down the staircase of life much earlier than a lot of people do. I had to do most of my “midlife crisis” thinking in my early 20s because most of my family died and I had to come out as gay without any support.
Now that I’m in my 30s I have the joy of helping my friends along on this journey called life. Sometimes people just need a gentle nudge up the staircase. Sometimes they need to be carried against their will
I'm trying to figure out how to manage a similar situation.
It's like your friends wanna party raid but they keep going in with incomplete builds
I only got so much patience before I find a new guild
I agree it can feel frustrating and inactionable but it's not bullying, it's a thoughtful well-meaning response. Actually if it makes you feel bad it's a signal it may be worth contemplating more.
It may be well-meaning, but it is clearly not thoughtful.
They aren't saying this tho, they are saying to go to therapy to help solve it.
That approach doesn't work for everyone. Everything you say could be correct, but if the person thinks their feelings are not being listened to, there is a chance they still won't take your advice.
One of my therapists said it was normal in her circle for people not to get onto someone's case if they're mentally unwell and have chores piling up, because it makes sense they don't have as much effort to give to all aspects of life. At the time I didn't understand this statement, because up until then my only contacts were people who, although they didn't go as far as "bullying" me into compliance, had told me in effect that how I felt about my life was irrelevant to whether or not I was fulfilling every single one of my adult responsibilities. What ultimately worked for me wasn't those contacts who said there were no excuses, but my therapist who decided not to frame my decisions in terms of "excuses".
For me this kind of thing hurts because:
1. There's not any room for compassion or slack. I'm not talking about people who take advantage of others' goodwill. Even if you try to help with this "no excuses" mentality, the other person could start to worry if the next inadvertent slip-up or setback counts as an "excuse" they'll be looked down upon for. This kind of thought will linger and reduce the effectiveness of the intervention.
2. Your feelings aren't listened to, or if they are it's only at a level superficial enough to obtain compliance. This is bad enough on its own. What might not be obvious is if the person has had a life marked by repeated instances of their feelings being shut down or not listened to, especially in childhood, this approach only backfires that much harder. These are emotional patterns that have been established in critical periods/over a long period of time that are being relieved at a much higher intensity than the average population. And most importantly, you can't know for sure if something like this applies until you get to know the person better, which is why a lot of one-off prescriptive advice towards strangers is ineffective.
3. The advice-giver is often successful/came out of hardship themselves, so by being looked down upon as irresponsible it gives the impression that you're being excluded from the in-group of mentally well/recovered people. Avoiding exclusion from a group is one of the biggest sources of strife today, as modern politics and social media indicate. And being mentally stable is often one of the most important groups to be included in for people who know they're depressed, so it hurts even more.
That’s all excuses. I’m not saying it’s right to bully someone who’s in the depths of depression. But the depression isn’t gonna fix itself and it certainly won’t fix itself because of something that happened in the past
i don't know what it takes to get out of depression, but "it isn't going to fix itself" doesn't contradict that the depressed person can't get out of it on their own. it's like telling someone stuck in a hole to stop whining because they are not going to get out of the hole as long as they do nothing. that's true, but they are also not in a position to see a way out, or may simply not be able to get out without help.
as i said, i don't know what it takes, but i do think that compassion, patience, and recognition of efforts and absence of any hint of blame by others are part of it.
I don't know what to say then, except I'm going to keep working with clinicians who say otherwise.
All of this is integral to me working with my current therapist, so I don't see what it has to do with depression not fixing itself.
Yeah I don’t disagree, but your approach comes off as uncaring and arrogant.
It’s not my job to care about yourself. It’s your job you care about yourself
I see, so you are saying you commenting on the person who was struggling was only about your superiority all along?
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>Be yourself (well, as long as you aren't like that, IYKYK)
Know thyself. The first step in being your better self. This pithy piece of advice has been repeatedly given throughout history no doubt predating its being chiseled onto the Temple of Apollo around 2500 years ago. Humanity probably has no better advice. Although "Never trust a fart" is a close second.
one interaction? some of us spent half our lives having 99% of interactions be like that - we've grown out it one way or another, but for many ppl "doing people" is HAAAAAARD ...just as for some differential equations are. we're just build veeeery differently. for many "the social world" is a hostile jungle, and we ca face it all right, but with a strong suit of mechanized armour and fully loaded weapons strapped to it.
I get that. I spent my entire childhood and the majority of my 20s as a closeted gay man. Every interaction was high stakes because if one person figured out you’re gay, then the cat is out of the bag.
I had to do a hell of a lot of accepting myself before I could actually hang with people in the moment. Realistically it took six years to be “normal “in my own eyes
I mean, obviously all the behaviors in the article are undesirable. The joke is in proposing other ones. Surely people are being amusingly self deprecating not precisely honest.
Scary that I can relate to this and then am reminded by the star trek episode they make you relive a memory every few minutes forever. Never put these two together, oof.
It's as if you know me, I can feel myself panic whenever anyone asks me anything, and I end up saying completely the wrong thing as if I wasn't fully in control of my thoughts.
>When you get asked a question, fumble over your words and say something stupid. Later on, you can reflexively watch the memory played over and over again
I can relate to this so much, my mind seems to bring up those cringe memories randomly and I hate it. If there was a way to just erase those memories I would be all for it lol.
Memory of where I put important item 4 hours ago: gone.
Memory of embarrassing thing I did 40 years ago: Loaded in SRAM cache for instant replay at any moment
I am guessing the author is either criticizing people who are anti-social (in the pop culture definition) or believes he was before and after some thinking arrived at the conclusion that antisociety was not the way. But I don't feel it describes my internal motivations, so I've translated them to my behaviors:
- if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault
- interpret others' actions in the context of your fears (this one is spot on)
- assume your assumptions are wrong and that you shouldn't even bother
- pivot conversations when someone asks you about something you actually know or are good at, it might be a trick, tell them you're dumb instead
- if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead
- dig in your heels at no point in time whatsoever and just tell people the minimum they need to hear so they leave
- do not develop narratives or it means you will have an immediate network
- do not research the acumen or credentials of anyone
- do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, they might actually be wrong and you're not a judge
- when all hope is lost in conversation, pretend to take their side to end the conversation
- do not seek to understand anyone at all
> - if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead
God, this one hurts. In the first couple months at my new role (which I intentionally chose to be one that would stretch and challenge me as I'm looking for some professional growth), a senior member of my team expressed the view that he'd rather someone spend three days researching than ask him a thirty-second question. When I was already insecure about my position in the team and not wanting to appear incompetent, this has ironically sent me into a spiral of being _less_ capable and productive because I'm fearfully avoiding asking for any context or guidance. I'm struggling to break that cycle, but it's hard.
3 days? Wow. Can't say I think much of this senior member of your team, who seems to be the anti-social one here. I'm sure it breaks flow for them, but a big part of being senior is amplifying the best in those less so, and helping them improve.
3 minutes, 30 minutes, sure, I've discovered a lot of junior folks would figure things out on their own when I couldn't get back to them immediately, and tended to add some delay just to encourage trying a little harder before contacting me. I would say even 3 hours has value. Buy yourself a rubber duck and have a heart-to-heart about your problem.
3 days is going to result in lots of folks getting stuck in local minima, likely confusing themselves in the process. To be clear, sometimes a problem requires a deep dive, or there is no one who can provide useful help. Even then, some guidance just to get outside perspective is helpful.
I would argue it depends on the context. Of course, gaining enough experience on which contexts are worth persevering for which duration is it's own thing.
The rubric I give to juniors is a bit more simple: if you get stuck, consider alternatives that you haven't tried out. Alternatives are of a few types including: relevant evidence/facts you can gather that you haven't yet gathered, and attempts you haven't tried yet. As long as you have alternatives keep trying them (gather evidence, make attempts). Once you run out of alternatives then seek help (avoid spinning wheels).
This way when a junior comes to me I can ask them to list the alternatives they have already tried. If they haven't tried obvious alternatives (gathered facts and reasonable attempts) I send them back. If they've tried all the alternatives I can think of then I get involved.
I'll note that this tends to work when contact between team members is relatively frequent (e.g. once a day) so I can get a sense of how long the junior has been working on a task to avoid rabbit-holing.
I think with regards to new hires, go for the quick question up front every time. Onboarding people fast is an investment with high-ROI.
It's a really bad sign if someone keeps asking thirty second questions three or six months into the job and hasn't figured out how to answer those themselves yet.
It's a really bad sign if they keep asking you the same questions.
But when someone's new? It's your job to help them get up to speed. A thirty second question is probably something like "is there a reason we use Azure instead of AWS" or "do you want me to use library A or B, I see both in the codebase," not something that they'll benefit from diving into for three days.
Pre-internet/stackoverflow, pre-AI... I'd easily spend 3 days working out how to solve a problem that I hadn't seen before. Asking others generally didn't help anyway because they hadn't seen it either. So, if that was the formative experience of the senior person, I could understand where that attiude was coming from.
Today, yeah 3 days is a long time to spend researching and spinning your wheels. But it's still the best way to learn.
more importantly there should be a time once a day where asking is not a disruption. you are not in the flow for 3 days in a row. we used the daily standup for this. or any break time.
My threshold is typically an hour. And this is after all the onboarding and pairing with them for a few features. I throw a month of just interrupt me whenever you need to at any new hire as a lead on a five or so team size on line of business apps. Three days sounds ridiculous for someone to spin and be stuck. That's a huge waste of money and a sign of deep problems imo.
In fact, I'd prefer to discuss sooner than let a new dev on their own for more than a day of work. Discussion brings alignment and saves me time with micro adjustments rather than massive corrections or debates and push back when someone goes off on their own for a long time.
I’m pretty confident the narrative in his mind is as follows:
1. All the learning that has stuck with me was painful
2. All my most painful learning was done without help
3. Therefore, painless assistance won’t drive learning
And tbh that isn’t exactly wrong.
> a senior member of my team expressed the view that he'd rather someone spend three days researching than ask him a thirty-second question
I have never met a senior that would dare to take such a stance; he may be willing to learn, but we will not both cover his knowledge gap and improve his own cv at the company expense. I have no idea if you are competent or not, but it doesnt really matter if you are the one deciding. Its not a democracy, and sure as hell its not amateur day. He will do as he is told, or he will find a more suitable team elsewhere. Have no tolerance for divas, they bring zero value.
Yeah I was just thinking I’d PIP someone who repeatedly expressed that attitude.
Financial services?
This is closer to my internal thoughts as well, though I would say these thoughts fall more into "avoidant" than "antisocial".
As others have noted, this is avoidant behavior, not anti-social.
Worth taking a look at the Wikipedia for Attachment styles [1]. The two types are Dismissive-Avoidant and Fearful-Avoidant. Either can be superficially mistaken for anti-social, although Dismissive-avoidant tends to present a bit closer to anti-social.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_in_adults
I thought attachment theory was debunked
> I am guessing the author is either criticizing people who are anti-social (in the pop culture definition) or believes he was before and after some thinking arrived at the conclusion that antisociety was not the way. But I don't feel it describes my internal motivations, so I've translated them to my behaviors:
I think there's quite a diversity in anti-social behaviors. He may not be describing you, but he's definitely describing others: difficult, self-centered people, probably with anger problems, isolated (because they're unpleasant to deal with) but not self-isolating.
Strangely I would bucket about half of these in Good or at least Often Useful behaviors.
Good:
- if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault (personal accountability)
- interpret others' actions in the context of your fears (at least having awareness of your fears is step one, step two is reacting healthily)
- assume your assumptions are wrong and that you shouldn't even bother (just delete the "shouldn't even bother" part)
- pivot conversations when someone asks you about something you actually know or are good at, it might be a trick, tell them you're dumb instead (playing dumb CAN be a smart thing, or at least not one-upping someone else nor making them feel small for no good reason)
- if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead (diving into something can prevent procrastination, you can start and ask questions later)
- when all hope is lost in conversation, pretend to take their side to end the conversation ("smile and nod" can be great advice- the pro-social doctrine is "you can't win an argument and keep a relationship at the same time")
Bad:
- dig in your heels at no point in time whatsoever and just tell people the minimum they need to hear so they leave
- do not develop narratives or it means you will have an immediate network
- do not research the acumen or credentials of anyone
- do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, they might actually be wrong and you're not a judge
- do not seek to understand anyone at all
The motivation behind what you've classified 'good' is bad, you've just twisted the symptoms to appear good, while the underlying motivation and root cause is bad.
Unfortunately the parent is suffering from a complete lack of self confidence, and even telling them to go to a therapist won't help as they never will.
Seen it IRL, even if they book an appointment, they'll convince themselves there's some good reason not to go. The two people I've met with it both somehow convinced themselves that therapy didn't work without ever trying it. To the point of lecturing me, who has been to therapy and found it helped immensely, at how useless it is.
It really seems to be a nefarious affliction.
Reading that list above is like watching a car crash in slow motion. You desperately want to help them, they could have so much of a better life if they just believed in themselves even a little bit, but they won't listen to you.
One of my friends I once asked 'Do you want me to push you any morez or is it better if we just talk about other things?'. They dejectedly admitted that they found being pushed depressing and preferred if we didn't talk about it any more.
One of the funniest, insightful people I know, with a great talent, is working a warehouse job and we meet and talk and have a great time but we now talk about anything but his failure to launch.
Ditto for a CERN physicist that now is a part-time tutor for high schoolers living at home with his parents.
I think you are mixing up asocial and anti-social. Anti-social basically means you don't care how others feel, their rights and social norms. Asocial means you don't want to engage socially.
And I'm pretty sure you are describing yourself as someone with an inferiority complex and social anxiety.
I developed from a very early age a sort of "always assume the worst about yourself" mentality.
I think part of it was influenced by social media (I was a tween debatelord). Part of it was self improvement (only focus on yourself! get ahead! never blame the enviornment!). Part of it was genuinely depressing things in my life.
As an example, I was obsessed with "finding my passion" at some point. Looking back, I was looking for a way to say, "This thing I'm committed to is way more important than all the other things in my life, so I don't need to go do them". As another example, frequently I would go into epistemic spirals - I was aware of psychoanalysis, so clearly there's capability for deep self delusion. But how do I know the navel gazing isn't self delusion? How do I know framing it as "navel gazing" is not an attempt to cope? And infinite recursion ensues. Another example is constantly feeling like I needed to steelman opponents, and so I would do the utmost research and understand the "best" arguments for the opponent's side before responding.
Incidentally, I think this is why I loved computer science so much - because you often proved worst case guarantees. I had a deep disdain for heuristic solutions.
But this mentality is still bad. Let's take the steelman example. How could steelmanning your opponent possibly be a bad thing? Well, are you actually steelmanning them, or are you trying to find some sort of greater upper bound to their argument, then attacking that... for what? Efficiency? Feeling secure in yourself? Why not actually listen to them? Oh, but surely if they accept premises A, B, C, then D, E, F must follow! Do they, though? Is it possible they could not go down that route, and for valid reasons?
It's still a deep contradiction I work through, since to me personally, all of these things invoke a deep "you are not being remotely rational or moral" gut feeling when I do go down those routes. But I know that I need to sit more in grey zones and just.... live in the grey.
(I still love formal computer science and dislike heuristics. But it's much more balanced now.)
Oh and I should mention, the desire to hear everybody out too. Incidentally, on the first few times I had these types of revalations, of course I would go and completely go extreme in the opposite way.
Ah, life is complicated.
Curious, which app/ forum/ subreddit/ group were you a tween debatelord on, and in what years? (got a link, so we can see?) To what extent did your formation depend on that crowd and its cultural values?
Apropos of nothing, “I was a tween debatelord” sounds like a b-movie title
> pivot conversations when someone asks you about something you actually know or are good at, it might be a trick, tell them you're dumb instead
Spot on, can relate to that :)
Detachment and Flourishing - https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-181/lecture-8
I mean, some of these are legitimate stragety to surviving corp America.
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This is a list about how to have a flame war. If you really want incoherent and isolating social experiences here is what you do:
- spend most of your time online
- overthink any form of social outreach and don't do it
- open reddit/HN/youtube/content_platform when you feel anything negative
- look at porn when you feel lonely
- constantly analyze other people's perception of you
You will then stifle your social skills and connections with people. You will feel extremely uncomfortable around other people most of the time. You will make niche references to things you have seen online and nobody will get you. Interacting with real people will be terrifying. Mission accomplished.
`constantly analyze other people's perception of you` I find this a really hard trap to escape...
Try purposely having a bad perception sometimes. I had the same problem. I couldn’t go out in public with anything less than perfect hair, or perfect clothes, or whatever. A few days of dressing in basketball shorts, shirts with holes, and unkempt hair, I noticed nobody gave a shit. Life is much more freeing when you do things the way you want (within reason) and curate a personal style.
Right. Almost no one is that kind of asshole in person. Even in nerd meetups <5% are like this.
even when they are, it's not like that's their entire person, like people do have redeeming qualities even when I think they've been a jerk
The part you're missing is that the people who hit those bullet points probably weren't always that way. In my experience they usually had very bad social experiences that drove them to isolate.
That isn't necessarily an excuse. I strongly believe that after a certain point it's really on you to get over your hangups, especially if you're an adult. It may not be easy but it's necessary
Anyways, I've never found that just telling lonely people "it is your fault you're alone" has ever been helpful
I honestly think that most people suck and are not worth talking to. Sure, spending time with those who don't is extremely rewarding, but the rest is just a waste of oxygen.
Even if this were true, you still have to talk to a lot of people even if only to sift through the sucky ones to find the gems
So if you have any interest in finding the good people who you think are worthwhile, you still have a pretty good incentive to talk to people. And if the good, worthwhile people are that rare then you need to talk to and get to know as many people as you can
Surprisingly on point; far better than the OP's silly list.
However, a study of Philosophy may convince one that "it is better to be sane alone than be mad with the crowd".
What does Albert Camus mean by "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined" in Myth of Sisyphus? - https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/c1ohej/what_...
I think the most valuable thing here is to not jump to a negative assumption about people, something I wish it followed more closely in its other points. Virtually anyone who has a very different perspective than the group will face friction, and handling that friction gracefully isn't something that comes naturally to most people. People can get stuck in a pattern of handling the friction poorly, but the group as a whole also has the opportunity for grace and understanding that can diffuse the problem, if that is something that is valuable to them.
I'm someone who is good at those situations, and what I've learned is that no matter how much you disagree, there's always something that you can agree on. If you're stuck in disagreement, zoom out, and try to move back to a position that you both can agree on.
It's also important to not compromise on values you find personally fundamental for the sake of "finding common ground". It depends on the matters being discussed. Assume good faith, attempt to find common understanding by zooming out, but stand firm when you have zoomed out as far as you feel comfortable. If you push past that, you run the risk of validating insane or dangerous behavior or opinions.
When I say find common ground I mean things that you (both) already agree with, i.e. it's bad to kill people, it's good to help people in need.
It wasn't my intention to advocate for 'compromising on values' rather, I think the best way to do any discussion is being honest, and that starts with being honest about your values.
I think the whole point of my method is to identify who is the person that's compromising their values, i.e. someone who agrees with "it's good to help people" but then disagree with social healthcare shows that somewhere on the imaginary line between helping people and social healthcare that person flips their opinion, which is incredibly helpful information in debating.
yes, this. zooming out doesn't mean moving away from my values, but moving away from the disagreement, to facets that we agree on. then build rapport on that, and figure out what causes the difference in opinion.
Unless your primary concern is "winning".
Then step one is to cast the other fellow as the enemy, and then you create a case against him, leading the conversation in the appropriate direction.
It's a popular way to do it. See all of social media for examples.
> Unless your primary concern is "winning".
That's something the OP could add to his guide: approach every interaction as a contest you must win.
the author wrote this in the Leaflet comments sections:
"""
through some upsetting turn of events, someone put this on hackernews and started a piranha feeding frenzy of speculation about what / who im referring to here. so just to be clear:
i wrote this bulleted list in a couple minutes as a way to rant about the lack of charity i was noticing in 2 places
- my family, where 2 members aren't speaking to each other for petty reasons, looking for the other to capitulate and admit they're the aggressor
- on bluesky, where users are blaming every outage on "vibe coding"
if you took extra meaning from it, i'm sorry or congrats!
"""
Having lived through intractable family conflict before, I believe it is a good analogy as to why the continual reinvention of social media will be a fruitless endeavour.
Your options when dealing with truly obstinate family memebers in real life? Stop. Give yourself permission to disengage. There isn't another option. (https://issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing...)
Yeah that pretty much lines up with my expectations - I've seen the type of behavior described both in real life and in various online spaces. Luckily never ticking all of the boxes at once, but they don't need to to cause a lot of needless suffering to themselves and collateral damage to the people around them.
The worst situations usually were if someone with this kind of self-sabotaging coping mechanism for some kind of trauma (because that's what it usually seems to be in my experience) ended up in some kind of moderator position in some on-line community, which they tended to seek out to get more control to cope with their fears.
That Bluesky comment snuck up on me and got a good laugh from me!
You mean the fine folks over at Bluesky, the social media network built around isolation, intolerance, and refusing to listen to other’s POV, exhibit these same character flaws?!
Who’d’ve thunk? :)
> assume intent is malicious, ignorant, or amoral
> do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, especially those that you have never met or otherwise spoken to
> do not seek to understand those you do not already understand
Are these not reflected in your comment?
For unrelated reasons (looking up the author of a quote in the bsd fortune file) I was looking at François de La Rochefoucauld's wikipedia page and learned that he wrote this in the intro for his book of maxims on human behavior:
"... the best approach for the reader to take would be to put in his mind right from the start that none of these maxims apply to himself in particular, and that he is the sole exception, even though they appear to be generalities. After that I guarantee that he will be the first to endorse them and he will believe that they do credit to the human spirit."
Your comment amounts to "so much for the tolerant left", and you seem to be projecting qualities of Twitter (under current management) onto Bluesky.
Yeah the social media built on an open protocol where data is interoperable across apps isn't quite isolated
Ideologically isolated, obviously.
The basis for its existence is to supply a platform for people who want to isolate from ideas and narratives they find uncomfortable, so they self-select into echo chambers that cater to their preexisting ideologies. That's their whole business model!
> platform for people who want to isolate from ideas and narratives they find uncomfortable
Ahh, like how if you say the word "cis" on Twitter, you get banned because the idea that gender is not binary is an idea that the owner of Twitter finds uncomfortable wants to isolate the audience from. So he promotes his own tweets, shoehorns it into peoples feeds and notifications, in order to create an ideological echo chamber. Like that?
I just searched Twitter for “cis” and found endless results, including a forgotten tweet of my own from 2+ years ago that’s never been taken down and I haven’t been banned for! :)
Nobody is getting banned for that, that’s just another Bluesky-ism!
So this never happened?
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/14/on-elons-whim-x-now-treats...
The policy was enacted less than 2 years ago, which is why your previous tweets didn't get affected, and it seems new Twitter owner might have since walked it back. Seems it also only affected mobile app users.
> In November, X ran a “timeline takeover” ad promoting an anti-trans film from PragerU, a conservative media nonprofit that has also been criticized for doubting climate change and downplaying the realities of slavery.
Climate change and the history of slavery... More ideas and narratives that the owner and his allies find threatening and uncomfortable.
Your only reference is a reversed policy from 2+ years ago that displayed a message but never stopped you from posting at all, and it only ever affected mobile users??
Also, promoting a specific documentary from a production company doesn’t mean they agree with all the other things PragerU says. Even if they did, it literally doesn’t matter, because X isn’t actively restricting alternate opinions the way Bluesky does. I know, because I see awful takes on X nearly everyday! ;)
As a anti-social person and a misanthrope, these are all tips for amateurs that assume you must be in a relationship with other people. This is not true. One can be a hermit and enjoy the solitude. My comment here is not designed for replies and social interaction. I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong. I'm seeking information, not society. This is grating to me even as I write it. Who do I think I am? That doesn't make it any less true.
You are forced to see the world through your own biases (including things like having two arms and seeing the visible light spectrum, not just who you vote for).
Many of these biases are common in humans, and humans can exchange ideas.
It can be enlightening to test your biases against real human being to see which ones are valid and which ones are things you've picked up along the way and might not be fruitful to you now.
Because you only see life through your own eyes, you definitionally can't examine yourself in isolation, and you can't know how you are affected by yourself.
I've found exchanging with others fruitful, even when I don't want to and find it repellant.
Have a good one
John Donne said "No man is an island" but other poets and philosophers have said we are essentially alone in this world. I understand the first point, but experience the second, but not fully because I do have a few valued connections with others. There are always exceptions to the general condition. You have a good one too.
> I've found exchanging with others fruitful, even when I don't want to and find it repellant.
Agreed. It's almost like taking bitter medicine for me- I loathe the idea of going to outings and meeting new people, but however tired I am afterwards from masking, some part of me comes away better off for it (assuming I'm not being forced to do it all the time).
Asocial seems more accurate than antisocial.
Yes I agree. That's a better word and what I was hoping for. Thanks.
not to be offensive, but the idea of an asocial labrador is hilarious
Then why are you posting here? You must require some kind of social interaction. Is arguing with people on HN meeting your needs, or are the alternatives all too scary and alienating to consider?
In general, I am skeptical when anybody says, "I am a ______." We vastly overstate what aspects of our condition are innate and which are merely habitual. I have seen many people with misanthropic tendencies find balance, and many others sink into the mire.
> I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong.
Which is the same reason everyone else seeks relationships with other people. That is the value social interaction brings. Now that you've cracked the code, so to speak, do you find this behaviour grating because you don't normally like to have your thoughts and ideas challenged/enlightened?
I think you should try a bimodal approach.
By all means, continue learning how to enjoy yourself alone, and stop feeling like you "should" be more like everyone else. That's actually healthy.
At the same time, though, consider the possibility that there may be more for you outside your house, and you just haven't found it yet. You don't have to force yourself to be social, but try different things that sound like they might be appealing to you.
It doesn't have to be either/or. Keep enjoying your solitude, but budget a small amount of your energy to exploring in case it unexpectedly pays off.
Is it not contradictory to value isolation but also to peek outward from it to access information? Surely reading books is some admission that there is value in experiencing the perspectives of others, albeit a one-sided experience.
I don't think reclusiveness is a moral failing. I don't think we owe society participation. But I do think that hermithood forgoes unbounded unforeseen possibilities for a known, bounded experience. I'd call this "the safe bet is not necessarily the best bet" argument against isolationism and towards social/collaborative open-mindedness.
If you are an "anthrope" (human), then the position of hating humans (misanthropia) is inherently contradictory, hence not valid. Disliking/not wanting to be part of what groups of people do is valid, and striving to keep yourself separate yourself from those groups is also valid. It doesn't make you a misanthrope, though.
What you really want to hate is time, because that's the true limiting factor. Given enough time, anything is possible, but you {insert any modal here} run out of it. Hence, why projecting things onto descendants is a thing. Writing and other methods of symbolic information reproduction have been great inventions to facilitate this.
I'm bad at this, not that I want to be. Well I'm bad at it with women. I go to these workplace happy hours and I just sit there in silence. Hard to relate to people talking about the house they own or kids since I don't have either. I know to be a good conversationalist you just gotta ask them questions.
It's not good to be alone, I was in a car crash one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride home.
hey not to give unsolicited advice but to share my experience - it took me a long time to realize that I'm not anti-social, but just anti-party and anti-work social. I flourish in most other spaces - especially hobby spaces.
I've been scraping my way through life the last few years and I recently started doing improv again.
God, it's such a breath of fresh air. I can be silly and goofy and have fun again.
I know it's not for everyone but the point is it may help to find your scene. If you actually enjoy being there, people will enjoy being with you.
yeah the thing is I'm good talking to dudes, like cars this guy shows me his Porsche/I sit in it, has laser jammers built in, crazy. Like yeah when you're both into something you just connect
my problem with women is I only interact with them when I'm physically interested in them otherwise I leave them alone so yeah I'm on edge like "I gotta land her" kind of thing, which I'm not saying is good, as proof of this I haven't been in a relationship with a girl for 12 years, not that I haven't had the opportunity but I'm also picky which, I need to be impressive myself to match it but yeah
Talking to random people about anything, and talking to girls, and talking to girls romantically are all separate skills from talking to someone about an interest. I am going to assume you're a smart, educated guy with niche interests. So even if someone comes up and talks about something you don't know much about, maybe Biology for example (no clue if this is true), you are probably able to fill in the blanks, find a common interest, connect it with something you've re ad before or whatever. The real difficulty is when you then are talking to people without technical interests or such, do you fake talking about sports? Or whatever.
With girls, be up front, direct, don't shy away. Honestly a lot of the old PUA strategies work really well if you look at it like a skill you're building.
> Talking to random people about anything, and talking to girls, and talking to girls romantically are all separate skills from talking to someone about an interest
This is entirely contradicted by my experiences. Broad generalizations and generalizations about broads are usually wrong.
Very Groucho Marx.
haha I'm not into sports so I definitely don't fake that, just tell people, which is not great because if you look at a lot of online dating profiles a lot of women are into the local sports eg. Broncos or whatever. Same with religion but it's alright, the girl thing isn't a huge problem to me, it only hits me sometimes the FOMO when I'm in public settings. Used to club/bar hop a lot problem is I had a drinking problem (wouldn't stop) so yeah, would be that belligerent person not a great look. I quit drinking so now I rarely see women except at work, I do photography though so I do see some women at the park but that's one of those places not sure if you should engage or let them be like a gym, there to workout kind of thing. I have other problems to deal with though like getting out of being poor for personal peace of mind.
Sounds like you understand the problem. My read is that you have a likeable frenetic personality; it won't be for everyone but some people will be really attracted to it, best not to question it and just be yourself.
ok, so please don't take this wrong, but that last sentence was such a non-sequitur that I think I know what at least some of your problem is talking to other people.
EDIT: wait, I am going to go out on a limb and say that you meant "I was in a car crash of a conversation one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride home."
Their meaning is very clear to me ("It's not good to be alone, for example one time I was in a lot of danger and a friend helped me").
I was literally in a car crash and friends (not in the crash) helped me get home is what I'm saying eg. good to not be alone/make friends
The other day someone described themselves to me as an 'empath' which was odd, because in the context of the discussion it was invalidating to hear. And ironic considering they hadn't forseen how I would take it.
Some people have ultimate confidence in their social judgements and the true sign of empathy is a kind of meta-empathy that allows you to consider truly alternative understandings of the world i.e. empathy for empathy.
That's not empathy, though. The word "empathy" has been co-opted to mean "understanding someone else's point of view," but that's not what empathy is. Empathy is feeling others' feelings. I'm actually empathetic in that I sometimes experience an emotional response (limbic) similar to an intense emotional response I witness others having, especially if they're a person close to me. This is very different than making a conscious attempt (prefrontal cortex) at intellectual understanding of someone's emotions.
I don't think it's been co-opted? Mirroring the emotions of another person you're actively observing doesn't give you insight into why they're feeling that way. It's just mirroring, but its an excellent starting point for learning. To have empathy, for people you're not actively observing, or for future states of people you are observing, you have to be able to model them first, and then mirror the emotions that the model predicts, which can then update the model. This loop is empathy, its both "experiencing other's emotions" and "the ability to understand and predict".
Sounds like cognitive empathy vs affective empathy.
I'm not so sure I agree - well maybe I do, I meant literally feeling in my statement not merely understanding. e.g. I eat meat - but I can literally feel the cringing sadness and disgust of a vegan if I imagine their perspective, even if I disagree.
Ultimately, there are no absolute personality traits. Someone might align to specific attributes, but they are not without fault and can still easily put their foot in their mouth on occasion.
An introspective, empathetic, thoughtful person might still accidentally say something that an external observer might perceive as having been said without thought or consideration to the feelings of others.
The above is not meant to be contradictory to your point, just a consideration to the general faults all humans hold.
Almost every every person I've met that describes themselves as empath tends to rank rather low on empathy, under my own judgement at least.
One explanation I have for this is that precisely because empathy is a more rare experience for them, it becomes a more remarkable one, perhaps even overwhelming at times. This leads them to believe that they experience it more than or more intensely than others, when on the contrary the rest of the world is simply more habituated to it and integrate it more gracefully in their ordinary experience.
The other interpretation is that it requires certain level of narcissism or egotism to describe oneself in such flattering terms.
Or ultimately, as the Spanish proverb says: dime de que presumes y te diré de que careces.
Probably some degree of all of this is true in most cases.
Yeah, it's just narcissism. Spiritual bypassing. The people who have really figured it out feel no need to tell others, and simply live quiet, decent lives.
Classic. How is it the case that every self-styled "empath" never is? I just don't know. Probably never will. I just don't have enough empathy to puzzle this one out.
"dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent"
Sorry, sticking to this one.
Call me anti-social if you want, but facing overwhelming dissent may indicate you're the lone free-thinker in an echo chamber. Being that one guy who's always prodding the hivemind with a pokey stick has value in my opinion (though you will end up getting stung on occasion).
Was recently at a demoscene presentation, where, after one particular demo where the author was recently deceased, one person just didn't stop applauding, even long after the rest of the audience had done. Someone sitting next to him was trying to reason with him, but he just responded that he had been a friend of the author (so I guess this was his way of honoring them?)
Eventually the other person got somewhat aggressive and told him to shut it, to which he just responded "no, why?".
Finally he was led out of the room.
I'm not sure how the thinking process of that guy went, but I was honestly strongly siding with the second person. Keeping on clapping as a sign of honor may be a heartfelt gesture, but here it came over just as plain obnoxious, as it held up the entire presentation.
That being said, if it's about political or other differences of opinion or debates on courses of action to take, I'd be with you - there can be herd mentalities (or active manipulation) and if you have good support/evidence to back up your opinions, it's worth sticking to them.
But if I see that my immediate behavior is causing discomfort, I'd always stop and try to reflect.
The more important question isn't "are you correct," it's "does it matter to be correct right now?"
Maybe you do actually know better than everyone else, but why do you have to prove it to others? You can just quietly make your argument and shut up. It's their loss, and people may remember that you were right.
Maybe it's about an important decision at work, but if your correctness pisses everyone off, no one is going to listen to you again. You've won the battle but lost the war.
People shouldn't be that way, but they are.
I like this answer. For me it's not about showing others that you're correct. Instead, it's about feeling like you're being heard/acknowledged.
I'm not trying to be the "lone free thinker". But if I see a hivemind, I occasionally insert my opinion with the intention of having a different perspective be recognized.
Thank you.
It's important to feel heard, but an issue in an argument is that no one is being heard and you're yelling past each other. You don't feel heard by more strenuously arguing your point; you make a calm, genuine effort to hear them, and then hopefully they'll reciprocate the favor. At the very least, you break out of the doom loop and walk away.
> You can just quietly make your argument and shut up.
This is generally the right approach, unless you're on the hook for the consequences of whatever the group decides. Continuing to argue a point that you've already made isn't likely to change any minds that weren't open to it the first time you said it. I think that's even in the HN guidelines.
If you're the one responsible for a decision, listen to what others have to say but if you still feel strongly that your contrary view is correct then go with that and live with the responsibility.
Sometimes it's not about being the "free-thinker," but just fitting in. If you're in a setting where there can be 'overwhelming dissent,' I would say it's prudent to pause and consider what your goal is with pushing a certain idea. It's almost certainly not going to get the consideration it deserves to be accepted if a mass of people have a negative knee-jerk reaction to hearing it.
> facing overwhelming dissent may indicate you're the lone free-thinker
You just better be right. If you're wrong then no one will ask for your input ever again.
Isn't this basically exactly the behavior described?
> Call me anti-social if you want, but facing overwhelming dissent may indicate you're the lone free-thinker in an echo chamber. Key word is : may. If you're facing overwhelming dissent, you should probably retreat and re-evaluate your position. Maybe you're right, but maybe you're just missing something the other's see.
> Being that one guy who's always prodding the hivemind with a pokey stick has value in my opinion (though you will end up getting stung on occasion).
When done deliberately, it's called the "tenth man rule": when 9 people agree, the 10th man is obligated to figure out a way to disagree. I learned about it from this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777175 (pretty great comment, IMHO).
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This seems to be a very peculiar and adversarial interpretation of anti-social. I am relatively anti-social and consider this a bit of a character flaw, but would generally say that I do not assume the worst in others and am relatively introspective. It just doesn't come naturally to me, but that does not mean that I think less of others.
You’re probably “asocial”
Asocial = avoids people, quiet, misses social cues. i.e. doesn’t attract people
Antisocial = cruel, obnoxious, remorseless. i.e. actively repels people
Sociopaths don't actively repel people. In fact, they're quite good at attracting them.
Psychopaths are calculated, charming, and organized, often blending seamlessly into society. Whereas sociopaths tend to be erratic, impulsive, and prone to outbursts and aggressive and reckless behavior.
Psychopaths, I would say, are "quite good" at attracting people, by knowing exactly what to say. Sociopaths may sometimes attract people unintentionally, just by virtue of their impulsive personalities sometimes causing them to be "fun" to be around.
In both cases though, people who know them well tend to be repelled by their lack of regard for the needs and feelings of others.
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I read this article as a joke; IE, how to NOT behave.
> when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self
This speaks to me quite a bit, particularly around unfalsifiable topics I'll have with friends/family, such as theology. If we define hope as the idea they'll change their mind and agree with me, seems not much one can do but retreat into themself, right? I suppose I can sympathize with their sentiment before I retreat into myself, but taking this bullet point at face value I'm unsure how to make this a pro-social experience :/
It’s possible to be social with people who hold opinions you disagree with. Being social and recognizing or even celebrating our shared humanity does not require having the same opinions and ideas as the other person.
100% agree. Unfortunately tribalism is very trendy right now, especially on social media and online communities.
yes, but that means that hope is not lost yet. for me, all hope is lost when people stop listening if i said something they disagree with, even if i follow up with something they do agree with (which is usually my tactic in this case, find common ground, and then expand from there). to be social with people who disagree requires both sides to want to continue the conversation. both sides need to believe that having the same opinions is not required. if they don't want to continue then i can try as i might, but at that point hope is lost.
You can also simply chose not to talk about controversial topics where you suspect such deep disagreements might lie.
In my experience the only way to really connect across those divides is to first have a long history, months or years, of productive and positive social interaction. But you don’t get control how others think and feel, even if by some theoretical measure, your position is “right”. So even under the best of circumstances you just have to accept and resist that others think differently.
lol I meant 'accept and respect that others think differently' 'resist' is not gonna work
Maybe the trying to get people to change their mind part is where you're going wrong
(If you're an atheist) You shouldn't debate theology with religious people. The whole idea of religion is that they 'believe' despite their experiences, facts, reasoning and logic. There's literally nothing to gain from using logic and reasoning to debate religious people.
edit: also the article is sarcastic. You shouldn't retreat into yourself just because you cannot agree on something. Talk about something else.
Some religious people believe because of their experiences.
See the (very rare, statistically) experiencers of spontaneous remissions the Catholic Church declares miraculous healings, such as Dafne Gutierrez:
https://catholic-miracles.com/miracle/charbel-makhlouf-dafne...
I'm not personally sure that's a supernatural event, but if I'd had my eyes deteriorating for years, undergone multiple failed surgeries to stave off blindness, become fully blind, had doctors tell me I was irrepairably blind, and lived without eyesight for years, then had it come back within two days of praying to a Catholic saint for healing...
Well, I doubt I'd still be agnostic after that.
> Well, I doubt I'd still be agnostic after that.
To me that doesn't follow logically. What if instead of praying to some saint, they found their lucky underwear that they lost when they were a child, and wore that for the first time again? Would that proof that the lucky underwear was somehow instrumental in fixing their eyes?
Apparently the body was able to heal her own eyes, and it would have happened if she prayed to the saint or not.
How can there be nothing to gain, when discussions around the subject helped convince me about atheism? I was born catholic and my family is catholic. If no one talked about it, I'd probably still be going to mass every sunday.
You need to question whether you really need to have the conversation in those terms. A conversation about religion/theology is not like a conversation about physics or math. If you insist on applying scientific rigor to matters of faith, you are and will remain fully confused.
I bet if you observe your own mind for long enough, you'll find some part of your life which requires you to have faith too. Use that to understand your friends and family better. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with them about religion, ask them about their faith (not their religion). You will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how they navigate the world.
If you can have that conversation, go ahead and ask them about their religious beliefs, withholding judgement unless/until they say something morally objectionable. You can think of their religion like any other mythology, and you get to play sociologist for a while. There's a fascinating variety of responses people give to even fundamental questions - e.g. "what is god?".
This open approach is not only much easier for everyone, it's also more useful in the long term. My neighbor has an interesting mashup of beliefs that includes a decent chunk of Christianity. She sometimes has bad anxiety, and unfortunately she can't afford treatment for it. I've helped her out of panic attacks using two methods: 1 - I've given her a clonazepam tablet and 2 - I've quoted scripture to her (e.g. "behold the lilies of the field"). Both methods work, and the latter tends to work faster.
It's different if the person is using their religion as a cover for engaging in or supporting something morally evil. That's a trickier conversation and often one not really worth having, depending on your relationship and how comfortable/willing you are to attempt to correct them.
You might have better luck with your hope to be mutual understanding. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
Theology is quite predictable rigid scientific field, something like law. You just have to define which set of rules you are using (catholic orthodox, shia islam...) There are thousands of books with notes, precedents... going back thousands years. Thousands branches...
Calling theology "unfalsiable" is ignorant. Like saying math is unfalsiable, because there are multiple geometries and nobody understands it anyway.
online sociability protip: writing in all lowercase outside of instant messaging comes across (to me) as weirdly manipulative, status seeking behavior. you want people to read your stuff and to come to some form of conclusion—you wouldn't be writing, editing and posting text otherwise—but you feel you have to put your ideas and your vulnerability behind a moat of detached, nonchalant aesthetics
nothing personnel, kid
To me, all-lowercase text comes across one of two ways:
(a) I felt speed was far more important than readability (reasonable for rapid-fire short messages or constrained typing ability such as a flip phone, also a common way to imply "fuck you, my time is more important than yours" in longer forms such as email), or
(b) i'm 14 and e e cummings is so deep (blogs)
(c) i may be jeffery epstien
hmm, i have been writing all lowercase almost anywhere since a few decades. but it most people have complained about readability. this is the first time that someone suggests that it is manipulative, status seeking.
if i want people to read my stuff, then what kind of manipulation would writing all lower case accomplish? seems counterproductive. and if it is counterproductive then it can't really be manipulative in my favor. so why do it then? this is even more significant in german where all nouns are capitalized. there writing nouns in lowercase is not only an aesthetic difference, but a grammar violation. (and yet i do it anyways)
which status would i be seeking? (i am actually asking myself this question. depending on the answer i find, it might even get me to change my behavior).
writing all lower case has become a habit for me, that i stopped thinking about it. it's time to revisit that. interestingly at some point i decided to use capitals in blog posts. technically everything else is actually messaging, including email and HN.
lastly, the article is a list. it is not clear to me that lists have to start with capitals, since list items are not always complete sentences. they don't end with a period either. so even when capitalizing properly, i am unsure whether they should be capitalized.
I personally dislike all lowercase, to me it feels like not greeting someone but I don't get GP's argument either.
The article is a bullet point, yes, but some items have multiple sentences with no caps
funny you should say that, i frequently feel uncomfortable greeting people, because i don't know what greeting is appropriate. (this is exacerbated by the fact that i travel a lot and different cultures have very different ways to greet each other)
so if you feel that my lowercase writing is like i am not greeting you then that's the feeling i probably induce in others frequently. welcome to my world :-)
(multiple sentences appear only twice, btw, it's proof that the writer intended to write all lower case, but not strongly noticeable (to me at least))
> (and yet i do it anyways) > which status would I be seeking
You just answered your own question there. Being perceived as different, as beyond social conventions, as too cool for silly language rules. Or as they put in your parent comment - nonchalant
ok, that's helpful, thank you. but i think some background matters here: i was always (yes, since i can remember, at least starting from first grade) treated like an outsider. i was always treated like i was different despite growing up in a white homogeneous community simply because i was not a local and had difficulty making friends. my only defense was to run with it. it went as far as me wearing a different clothing style just to separate myself from everyone else. i toned that down when i realized that i would change my style if other started copying me. i decided to not let my behavior and actions be influenced by anyone else ever.
that has been the mantra for my whole life. (that doesn't mean i don't learn or wouldn't listen to reason, but it means that the changing something had to have a good reason. (and in the context of writing, for example, readability is a good reason, being perceived as different is not))
social conventions is something i have always struggled with. they often make no sense to me. why do i have to shake hands, for example? yes, there is a social and historical explanation, but the rituals are often so detailed, and so variable that i never know what is the right form in which situation.
so yeah, i am cool, even if i don't want to, and nonchalant describes to to a T.
i don't really want to change my behavior (i don't mean writing specifically) for the sake of becoming more accepted, because it also works as a filter. someone who can accept me despite my quirkiness is likely to be more open minded. it's a form of protection.
this thread is funny, i picked up lower case writing around the outset of puberty from someone who seemed a little more awake than average and i thought that was cool
hahaha
1. your comment is in lowercase 2. see bullet 2 of my post
I must admit I automatically downvote when I see that.
hacker news is not such a loftier place that I treat it much differently than instant messaging. but even still, there are plenty of reasons why someone might write how they do. i promise you that i am not trying to be manipulative or status seeking, i just have auto capitalization turned off and I don’t give two shits if weirdos like you don’t like it.
nothing personal kid
You wrote all that to some weirdo you don't give 2 shits? Even copied their closing quote? Hmm
Since most of these comments seem to be misunderstanding:
antisocial /ăn″tē-sō′shəl, ăn″tī-/
adjective
1. Shunning the society of others; not sociable.
2. Hostile to or disruptive of the established social order; marked by or engaging in behavior that violates accepted mores.
3. Antagonistic toward or disrespectful of others; rude.
Source: https://www.wordnik.com/words/antisocial
Linguist: language evolves based on how people use it
Nerds hate him!
People say this a lot, but I bet you’re like most of them and don’t hold your tongue whenever people misuse words related to whatever you’re passionate about.
No, I used to be a huge word nerd. Being really good at language was my identity for most of my adolescence. Now I realize "who cares" and "none of that matters."
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I am autistic and asocial fits more than anti-social because I am not actually doing any "anti" behavior, just trying to avoid the beurocratic small talk and general conformist interactions
I.e. the things that make people become friends and feel safe around each other. As a fellow autistic person we should not be avoiding small talk, we should be learning how to better connect with those around us since we need more time and work to do so.
It’s easy to use a diagnosis as an excuse not to connect. But it’s a lame excuse. It is much more interesting to understand what tools we need to gain to connect with the world. Sometimes I need to be an anthropologist. Sometimes I need to be a crime scene investigator. Usually I just need to listen better.
When I was in a wheelchair I had to use ramps instead of the stairs. But that didn’t stop me from going to the movies
I am semi-verbal.
I can't talk most of the time, that does stop me from having a conversation yes.
Processing Sensory information takes priority over social circuits in my brain, physically.
So I am unapologetically autistic and no I don't have to break my brain to try to fit in.
If people find my disabilities upsetting thats stereotype ableism and yes it happens often
I never said you had to be good at talking. But you can be bad at talking and also not anxious, which it sounds like you are.
Humans associate "bad at talking" with low intelligence so getting called a "retard" when my IQ is high average does cause anxiety, yup.
i am not autistic, but i hate smalltalk too. i can't bear it. it takes all the fun out of talking to people and i feel like it's a waste of time. not sure where i am going with this argument other than maybe saying that it's ok not to like smalltalk.
maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels meaningless.
i "solved" the problem by moving to a country with a different native language and culture. this raises the barrier to communicate and it seems to have an effect of curbing smalltalk.
while in a wheelchair, how comfortable were you asking for help? that would be the biggest challenge for me.
As someone who used to feel like they were bad at small talk, maybe this resonates with you.
I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports.
Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plane ride last weekend with an absolute stranger. We talked about the differences in our family dynamics, what cities we find it easier and harder to make friends in, the current state of our relationships and what we wanted out of them. All of that was “small talk” because we were just passing the time with someone we will never meet again. But the subjects were not small.
A side effect of feeling comfortable talking about things that matter to you is that it gives you a lot more motivation to be curious and interested in things that matter to other people as well. Even better, if you share with people more deeply about how you are feeling, they will be able to help you in ways that you didn’t even realize were possible
my experience was different. yes, i get that sharing my thoughts sometimes doesn't feel safe, and when i was younger i did have that experience too. but i had and have no interest in popular sports, so that topic is poison for me. i have absolutely nothing to contribute. if someone wants to talk about sports i am thinking, why are they wasting their life? any other topic would be better than that. and talking about weather? well, got a window? open it!
but those topics you shared on the plane, well that's not small talk to me. i totally would have enjoyed being part of that conversation. as i get older, i can speak from experience. i can talk about my feelings that i have and had, because now i understand them. and, as a bonus effect, as you get older people treat you with more respect, which makes talking about any topic easier.
so i am bad at talking about banal, to me meaningless topics, and while it is getting easier, i don't actually have any interest in engaging in those topics because they not only feel like a waste of time, they are a waste of my time that i want to spend more meaningfully, like reading a book.
This is what I suggest too, what a good way of putting it!
Some people have very funny ways at looking at the most mundane context in my mind. It would be a shame if I didnt spend time sharing my funny head in ways that can't be captured in a record!
Yeah, the behaviors in this post are more anti-social than asocial. I don't think it's meant to be about people who are shy, introverted, asocial.
This reminds me of an old Andy Warhol quote that I can't find now, to the effect that if you find yourself in a truly lousy situation, just pretend that you are in a movie.
Is the modern version of that to think of the people around you as NPCs?
Drama!
It's an interesting list, and yeah, I'd say most are common sense and well put. But I'm still a bit very of those "negative lists".
(I actually just found a webcomic which tries a similar approach - gives their characters intentionally the worst possible ways of interaction, with the "quest" of the story essentially being if they manage to grow and learn the right ones.)
But in both, its easy to employ "persuasive game" strategies and have the reader "discover truths" that are really colored by the author's perception.
Essentially, I'd like to know the context in which this was developed, so the whole list isn't just an instance of item #7 of it. Basically it reads as if someone could have written it in rage after some particularly bad conversation that didn't go their way.
its very interesting to see the meaning folks have projected onto this haha
i wrote this bulleted list in a couple minutes as a way to rant about the lack of charity i was noticing in 2 places
- my family, where 2 members aren't speaking to each other for petty reasons, looking for the other to capitulate and admit they're the aggressor
- on bluesky, where users are blaming every outage on "vibe coding"
Lol, well at least I was right about it being written in anger then.
But yeah, that makes more sense - and in that context, those are some good observations.
yea, you were! and thanks :)
QC?
Children of the Light, though haven't read QC yet. But from what I've heard, it sounded like it could qualify as well, yeah.
Cute! I like this.
For what it's worth, though, the people I know to need emotional literacy the most, would probably find the art style extremely off-putting. I don't agree with them, but it's an interesting correlation to ponder.
Could it be that people who react strongly aversively to such warm fuzziness identify it precisely with the things that have been done to their minds during development so that they would become incapable of certain fundamental cognitions?
I feel like this was a) written by someone on the spectrum, who b) worked really hard to learn to communicate effectively (great job!), and then c) dumped their original internal state in a blog assuming everyone else has their same challenges.
Just take their strongest point:
> dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent
A few months ago I watched a college-age people-pleaser assertively turn down three peers pressuring her to hang out after work somewhere she didn't want to go. Three! She stuck to her guns, then looked up and nodded to me. I subtly nodded back. Real cowboy shit.
People are different and follow different paths of growth.
- when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self
I get a bunch of the others, but this one kind of confuses me. What's the opposite (better?) move? Logorrhea? Forcing a confrontation? Reciting bad poetry?
I suppose there's debate to be had about whether leaving a dead conversation is a retreat, but leaving the situation and pulling back a bit to think about the circumstances, one's mood, the people involved, etc seems like a good thing on balance.
As someone who identifies as autistic, after particularly notable social encounters, I describe them, best I can, to ChatGPT, and damned if the thing doesn't explain why people reacted the way they did so I can do better next time.
As someone who identifies as autistic, I learned to smile and just listen. I’ll ask questions and try and put my little anecdotes in but for the most part I just let other people talk. Works reasonably well. I usually run afoul when the situation is serious and I show up with my smile.
What about when people start making fun of you for being silent?
Given the context of the discussion is about lacking social cues, its not possible to know the social setting to give you specific advice.
However, I would suggest considering if the ‘making fun’ is in casual conversation or truly adversary.
In casual conversation of someone making jest about your lack of speaking, just smile and say you are having a good time listening and hanging out.
If they are actually making fun of you, never associate with those people again, they suck
Emphasis on that last part. Hurt people hurt people, don’t let them hurt you too.
As someone who is not autistic, just tends towards very socially awkward, this is what I do as well. Active listening is a skill I developed by accident out of not having much to contribute to most conversations. As time went on, I saw that most people appreciate just being heard and worked on it more deliberately.
It's not all puppies and rainbows of course, because some people can't hold a conversation without being led through it by the hand, which is exhausting. And others think everyone else is always so fascinated with what they have to say that they never stop for you to get a word in edgewise.
But, active listening accounts for the majority of my social skills, for better or worse.
But smile in the /correct/ way, else you'll be judged for smiling weirdly.
Sigh
Smile like you just saw a puppy, you’ll be fine.
Instructions unclear. I don't usually smile at puppies, I point them out to my wife. She does the smiling for us. What if she isn't there? Who will do the smiling?
What makes you happy when you see it? Imagine that.
I don't know about you, but things that make me happy and things that automatically make me bare my teeth at them are not the same things. Deal with it.
I've tried this and I'm not sure its explanation is useful. It wasn't there and it only knows what I tell it, so it's missing a lot of context clues.
And I'm probably less autistic than the average HNer.
Self-help, therapy, etc. wouldn't be as big of a business if it was just autistic people doing that.
Maybe people are social animals just because they have to.
Yeah. In the past I assumed that some people just sometimes randomly behave aggressively towards me for no good reason. But usually the reason is probably that I was unintentionally rude or strange with some sort of nonverbal communication or similar.
I think that’s how everyone learns. Making mistakes and figuring out why that turned out poorly. Some are more innately good at it than others. I’m not particularly but I can learn from mistakes
A lot of people assume everyone else has it worked out.
But people mostly don't have it all worked out.
There are specific demographics who do.
Some are naturally gifted at social interactions and/or grew up in environments which taught them how to socialise effectively.
Others are charming narcissists - likeable, high status, attractive on the outside, monsters on the inside. They can appear effortless because they don't care about anything except presenting an image, so they get get very skilled at it.
Most everyone else has some social anxiety or frustration and makes more or less obvious social mistakes at least occasionally.
This seems like a good way to learn and grow.
Does kinda read like an engineer just had their 1st encounter with management.
(Cognitive behavioral therapy enjoyer l just cut off in traffic) Think positively. He is probably in a rush for a reason. Maybe he's late for a job interview. Maybe his wife is giving birth
Me: I'm da king of da highway
What you should be thinking: Oh an unpredictable driver I should probably increase the distance between us.
right, the reason does not matter. only my reaction matters. coming to a negative conclusion only induces rage. think positively but be cautious. it's simply self protection.
I think that a willingness to interpret this as (good) satire can be used to indicate one's own level of socialization especially in adversarial contexts.
"when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self" I think this is a really valuable insight.
Conversation sucks sometimes, solitude is beautiful.
This list is actually just narcissism combined with low self-esteem.
For younger introverts, none of this behavior is necessarily anti-social if the group all shares these same traits. The moment a member of that group has any higher self-esteem than the rest, they will either see that individual as "cool" or as a threat (or both).
To be truly anti-social is to either completely isolate yourself, or be unrelentingly and unreasonably hostile in all interactions. This list is neither. It's just passive aggressive and a lot of ego.
I think the most important part of being antisocial is the ulterior motive for their hostility and refusal to situate themselves in an equitable or respectful social framework, which is invariably benefit to oneself. The type of benefit that an anti-social person seeks out is probably not like the usual suspects, though.
The formatting here made it pretty hard to parse at first. For a good 10 seconds I genuinely thought I was looking at some bizarre run-on, non-sequitur sentences. Giving the main line items a bit more spacing would make it much easier to read.
I like most people as long as they leave me alone.
I think this rather describes someone with a cognitive bias which can be cured rather than someone truly anti social (I know someone who I believe is anti social but they tick off a lot more boxes than this. There is an overlap for sure in what you described BUT its a lot more complex than this)
Yeah, but many of those self-identify as anti-social rather than biased.
> exploit your immediate network;
Sorry, networks, in this context, are too social for me, as they involve other people.
> if you must ask questions, imply the correctness of your originally held position by wording your question suggestively
I don’t really understand this, what would an example look like?
If my position is that we need to pass the regional transit funding measure in the Bay area then I might say:
What do you think of the regional transit funding measure? Seems like it'd be a real disaster if BART stops running at 9PM.
In that way you're signaling your support and they'll probably just continue the conversation in the same direction.
Yeah that is triggering reading the list. I know it is satire or whatever. But people with one of those traits you need to evict from your circle or minimize contact with.
I'm not trying to be rude, but I think you might need to re-read this list
Reread. Opinion is the same. Is this a meta comment?
All over this thread people are saying things like, "this doesn't describe somebody who is anti-social, it describes a narcissist" or "I'm not anti-social, I am asocial." And it makes me think about internet discourse around neurodivergence and human diversity (not the racist dog whistle) more closely.
It seems that the models that dominate are ones which sort people into categories that emphasize positive traits and explain away negative ones as, "Society demands X but I just need Y." This is an important corrective to the medicalized model, but sometimes I feel it obscures the degree to which people are malleable. A lot of our behavior is habitual, and if you change your habits, you can change your "personality" without rewriting your own temperaments.
The other problem is one of causation. A group of people could all describe themselves as asocial, but what drives them to that label is entirely different. One legitimately needs less social interaction, one is riddled with social anxiety and has developed a deeply avoidant response, and one just hates people. They may be unified in feeling out of place in some social interactions, but what they need (or even don't need) is entirely different.
I don't know. I couldn't sleep last night and this is all I could think about. What does that make me?
This is satire. He is describing the attitude generally demonstrated on social media.
yea haha it was meant almost entirely satirically, and yea in part about online behavior. i also wrote it off hand in a couple minutes and didn't think a lot about it. the breadth of different interpretations has been very surprising to witness
It's got pop
> pivot conversations when someone challenges your assumptions or cites reasoning outside your wheelhouse
It’s curious how many people do this. Especially if you try to address their deeply-held beliefs, they’ll just start talking about something else.
That's not being anti-social. That's just being hard headed. Anti-social isn't always a bad thing, while being hard headed generally isn't in one's best interest.
It’s so beautiful that this blew up the author can’t believe it
This isn't a personality issue at all—it's pure disrespect. If someone treated me like that, I wouldn't befriend them or open up to them either. Sincerity is a two-way street.
I got easier tip: bring large dog, that barks at everything and attack everyone 2 meters away. Bonus point if it has explosive diarrhoea in middle of grocery store or cafe!
I'm so asocial I enter every group encounter with a mental timer to see how long the conversation just pivots to talking about TV shows.
Assuming that everyone you meet is conspiring against you seems to be a pre-requisite to these. The feasibility of that is questionable.
The first 3 points are solid advice, but the rest read more like a guide on how to be successful in the work place in my experience.
Ha! I have been taking similar personal notes for writing a book.
I am picking up what this author is putting down.
a lot of these actually sound like good strategy for (upper) management, or those with executive aspirations (sadly).
This must be the Opus 4.7 constitution
The real HN discussion guidelines.
Dont you tell me how to discuss anything on here!
I spend 60 hours in solitude each weekend in silence, yet do none of these things?
I thought this was going to be about moving to a car-centric suburb
Long story short: where I come from, alcohol is a main social driver. Once I stopped drinking, people started asking why I stopped, and some even suggested that people who do not drink are somehow less trustworthy.
Then after a sports incident, I got a concussion. For a while I could not handle light, screens, noise, people, work, or normal social pressure. So I deliberately isolated myself until I could figure out how to get better.
Here's my checklist:
- Know why you're doing this and share with a close person; Someone else grounding you in your asocial trip can make a difference;
- Read books, Jung helped me stay sane while in isolation;
- Learn a new skill. I picked math and system programming as I realized it's easier for me to solve math problems and debug computers, rather than humans;
- Assume your state of mind is temporary and you're doing it with a purpose;
You're on your own, ignore the environment, find happiness inside your mind, don't seek too much external validation. Then your body will tell you if it's time to socialize or keep on deliberately introverting. Happy meditation.
I have a coworker who's clearly following this guide. So exhausting.
I never understood why “anti social” is seen as a negative trait, full of prejudice too (I mean, read that garbage article, passive aggressive BS too). Most people who built or achieved great or innovative things were anti social or at least didn’t waste their time bar hopping.. when people want to detox and disconnect, they go anti social, monks gurus you name it, also live in solitude, being alone will make you wiser and more creative if you are smart, and crazier if you are an average person, and covid lockdowns were a good example. From my observation, the more social a person is the more average they are, mediocre, wasting time in mostly useless interactions and sometimes even negative with all the peer pressure it brings, in fact, I would even argue the more social you are the more you become an outlier, a walking NPC who’s constantly under peer pressure, anxiety, and depression when not meeting impossible expectations. It’s a large scale gaslighting making a spectrum where an extrovert is good, introvert is bad, meanwhile the ones who are lifting the society and keeping it running are the introvert nerds.
This is one of my pet peeves. Not the "anti-social" character described in the post, but rather the poster's attitude. I've tried a few times to formulate to myself what it is that irks me, let's see if I manage to do it today:
1. Not every social interaction can (or should) be an objective weighing of ideas. It's not the other person's responsibility to enter into a formal debate with you at your local dive bar or whatever.
2. For their opinions to be valid, the other person doesn't need to conform to your idea of an acceptable conversation style (see 1). Also, in my experience, "anti-social" responses are detected more readily in the other person than in yourself, you're not as cool and collected as you think you are.
3. Feelings aren't forbidden. You may be a bit repressed yourself, meaning you feel shame or disgust when confronted with other people's feelings. Guess what... that's also a feeling!
4. If you repeatedly encounter these "anti-social" people in your life (which I guess OP does since he wrote a post about it) there's one common denominator: you. Can you honestly measure up to your own rules, OP? It takes two to tango.
5. There's a good chance you're sandbagging your conversation, meaning you're talking about some topic that you've thought about a lot, to a completely unprepared party. In my experience with people making complaints like OP, this is often combined with a controversial opinion about said topic. Instead of truly testing your idea against someone, you provoke an emotional reaction and celebrate your superiority because you staid calm and the other person exploded. Charlie Kirk was good at this unless he encountered actual experts.
6. Related to the above: come on, it's perfectly normal to get defensive and upset when you find you're losing an argument, don't act like you don't do it.
some of these _are_ true _good_ advice for most ppl, beginner level as they may be, as by default they have been trained to be waaaaay too agreeable
There are way more ways to be anti-social.
This is soley a list of how to be explicitly negative internally and externally, the people in this thread equating it to disorders need to re-think the text. Its a list of what not to do as a human.
With respect to all; there is an incredible amount of subtle communications that go into standard conversations
Morality trumps sociability, something piece doesn’t mention.
E.g. “ when ambiguous, assume intent is malicious, ignorant, or amoral”
Most immoral actors cloak deliberately cloak themselves in ambiguity.
> Morality trumps sociability, something piece doesn’t mention.
IDK if I agree with that. If you could dissuade a nazi by biting your tongue and keeping the conversation going, wouldn't that be the morally right thing to do?
> Most immoral actors cloak deliberately cloak themselves in ambiguity.
Yes, but that still doesn't mean you should assume everybody to be one of those 'immoral' actors. Assume that somebody is normal, if they do something that proofs they're an 'immoral actor', only then assume that they're being dishonest.
author here: lmao how this got on hn i don't know
i wrote this bulleted list in a couple minutes as a way to rant about the lack of charity i was noticing in 2 places
- my family, where 2 members aren't speaking to each other for petty reasons, looking for the other to capitulate and admit they're the aggressor - on bluesky, where users are blaming every outage on ai
if you took extra meaning from it, i'm sorry or congrats!
that list fits the bill for becoming POTUS
The anti-social behaviors I'm seeing are a lot more primitive (engagement and reaction bait, and other "simulated conduct" as I like to call it), and the people engaging in them don't really need a guide. Sarcastic rants like this always strike me as somewhere between tonedeaf and insulting as a result. You know it perfectly well that it's those who should be minding these the most are the ones that never will (and won't even be reading this).
That said, if I may be so hypocritical to add to the list, the heavy reliance on pointing out fallacies is a pretty big one. A lot of the times it simply degenerates conversations into logical golf, with no semblance of trying to actually understand the other person remaining. Though in those cases, that intent was usually never really present to begin with.
> when ambiguous, assume intent is malicious, ignorant, or amoral.
If you're in a toxic environment, this is what it's like. It's a culture problem, not an individual problem.
Here are some examples, going to get anecdotal here:
- People stealing credit for my work
- Needing to kick them off of projects I'm on to protect myself
- Getting into political standoffs with people trying to pressure and threaten me into arrangements that fuck me over
- Had people I work with turn on me all of a sudden and try to throw me under the bus
- A manager forcing someone to work with shitty consultants (who were, of course, a personal connection), then using it to throw them under the bus
- People trying to gatekeep higher ROI work for favorites
- Management lying to people and misrepresenting opportunities to get them to join, then rug pulling once they've signed on the dotted line
The "antisocial" behaviors in the post are just the sort of rational emotional detachment which happens when you figure out that you're dealing with shitty people.
Maybe I'll get genuinely antisocial here: a lot of people in general are shitty people. Or at least, if you've attracted shitty people into your life in the past, it'll keep happening in the future and you're better off growing the emotional scar tissue (i.e. "avoidant attachment") instead of this victim blaming. There's something about you that makes them target you and you're better off having the artillery ready
> If you're in a toxic environment, this is what it's like.
I think you nailed it. People's behaviors are always adaptive to their environment.
AKA the guide to how to write tweets for the @realDonaldTrump account
> if you must ask questions, imply the correctness of your originally held position by wording your question suggestively
So, is the question legit? If so, why can it not be answered?
This reminds me a bit of StackOverflow. "Question already solved" elsewhere. Well, before StackOverflow, people often asked a question, and were told "read the manual". So, were these people pro-social? Does the ORIGINAL position hold any merit when it comes to a question? HOW is it even inferred that a question was asked "suggestively"?
These bulletin points are no good. They make too many assumptions. What does "anti-social" mean? When reddit moderators ban people and censor statements, is this pro-social behaviour?
> when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self
What horrible recommendations. Hopefully AI wrote those, because I can not believe a human wrote that, not even as sarcasm. I don't even see any sarcasm there. How do you detect sarcasm in written text accurately? Is my text sarcasm? Everyone agree or disagree with that? People are different. All that attempt to group into social or anti-social, is rubbish nonsense from A to Z.
hi! author here. the post was satire
I've seen a lot posts like this recently. This comment is coming from the perspective of someone who the author would consider "anti-social": I once reported my boss to HR for a racist remark, and then resigned in protest. By 2026 I have embraced being a somewhat Diogenesian outcast and progressive hall monitor. I lost friends over it.
So I find this post incredibly condescending, and it seems clearly directed at a few specific people this author had some sort of moral or political disagreement with. Which means the author is committing the exact sins he's inveighing against!
I will be a little more specific:
Who exactly is assuming bad faith here? When I have a moral disagreement with someone it's rarely because they are ignorant or insane, it's because we have a fundamental difference in values. As a progressive, usually the person I disagree with is quite cynical and deeply rational. They might in good faith assume I am a bleeding heart who is also somewhat rational. Sometimes hearts are irreconcilable: a rich person I went to college with decided to become a for-profit landlord, so we aren't friends anymore. I simply think they're evil and won't associate with them. Stuff like that is always confusing and upsetting, often for both people involved; I am sure my landlord apostate friend didn't see what the big deal was. The author's "view from nowhere" posture is quite childish. This is followed immediately by the author assuming malicious ignorance! "do not challenge or acknowledge the existence or influence of your assumptions, wholly trust your intuition and feelings" This is just pure sneering judgment. It doesn't mean anything, it's just name-calling. "People disagree with me because they're cowards!" Again there seems to be some very specific baggage here! Did he get in a fight on Twitter or something? Anyway, "your supporters can rally around" contradicts these people being "anti-social" and "isolating." Perhaps there are a large number of people who disagree with the author's values, and that's what he's really upset about. But rather than say "people disagree with me and I can't convince them otherwise" he is content to say "people disagree with me because they're antisocial cowards." This is itself antisocial and cowardly, isn't it? I think the author should be concluding "getting in fights on Twitter is bad for human souls." It does not seem like he is granting any of these anti-social people any grace, just a wall of unforgiving judgment. If they admit they are irrational weaklings then maybe the author will allow them a tiny helping of grace, as a treat. Indeed I get the impression the author doesn't understand me at all, and has no interest in doing so. It's a lot easier to just conclude I am a stupid coward.Avoid people who seek to be offended.
They always find a way to get what they seek.
> I have embraced being a [...] progressive hall monitor
Well, at a minimum, I do agree that the author seems to have intended this post for people like you.
The sociopath version:
Do every thing on this list under the hood while presenting the exact opposite as a facade for public consumption.
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> dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent
Of course, the majority is always right and we should yield to it right away /s
One heuristic for spotting when you might be wrong is that you hold a very uncommon belief.
It COULD be that you are correct and the world is crazy, but its far more likely that you are the one who is missing something. It's always worth stopping to double check when this happens.
Perhaps more importantly, if you do happen to be right when everyone else is wrong its important to determine your goals.
Is it more important to be right, or to be happy? If the answer is the latter then its sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social. Nobody likes to be told they're wrong, so is "correctness" worth more than that person's feelings? Very oten it is not.
> Nobody likes to be told they're wrong
I like to be told I'm wrong. While it is true that I am a nobody it means I'm about to learn something.
I don't really think you like it, but maybe you will like this.
> I like to be told I'm wrong.
I believe you, but in my own experience I've met more people who say this than who mean this.
Usually it's situational. People might genuinely like to be wrong when the novelty is fun or useful, for example in lab work or in low stakes classwork. However, they despise it with politics, their job, or anything else that might have actual consequences in their lives.
A lot of people believe this about themselves, but yes, like you suspect, they don't mean it when it counts.
> sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social
There's almost no time when it's better to try to convince somebody they're wrong. It won't help you, and it won't work anyway, so it won't help them either.
Sure if you're somebody's doctor, and even then you have to pick your battles.
Ever heard of tribalism and echo chambers? Wrongness being a function of number of dissidents is a terrible heuristic, in contrast to determining the lies and falsehood based on the soundness of the argument or logic.
Also, when a population group is large enough (e.g. entire world), it's quite likely a crazily-held belief is shared by other people, or people who would at least nod in agreement.
the thing with uncommon beliefs is not that they are likely wrong. but that digging in your heels is surely going to fail, regardless of who is actually right.
so your suggested response is the right approach, but it doesn't end there. you can try find a common belief and build up your argument from there. peoples opinions can be changed if you take the time to learn how their opinions are formed and present them with the opportunity to consider alternative ideas. ideally in such a way that they discover the truth on their own.
a key component is that unity enables change. it is better to be wrong but united, than right and divided. if we are united (and thus stay friends) then we can learn from being wrong and change direction. if we are divided then changing direction is difficult.
I think there are also different definitions of "digging in your heels".
What most people do is just whine and repeat themselves because they don't understand all the ways they're being misunderstood. They lack self-awareness because they lack sufficient experience hearing and digesting the arguments from the other sides. This is a missed opportunity.
What people should do instead is leverage their self-awareness once they have the spotlight and "magically know" which concerns to address when they are given that brief window of rebuttal. It's hard to get attention, so they must strike when the iron is hot. It takes a lot of experience, and most never get to that level. Repetition signals to everyone else they don't really know what they're talking about.
The majority of the audience may actually be on your side agreeing with you, but they won't stick their neck out for the truth if they know they're less informed and less experienced than you, yet even you still failed. They have no chance to do any better, so they just shut the fuck up. Everyone languishes. Your point is noted, but not winning. All you did was paint a target on your back for the next time you say anything. People would rather be winning than right. Agreeing with you once doesn't mean they side with you.
I think I can speak for most people with niche subjects of interest when I say that the commonly held beliefs on said niche subject tend to be pretty bad.
> Is it more important to be right, or to be happy?
Im going out on a limb here, but I'd say intelligent people will tell you - without a doubt - being right. Because being happy is a perception and always a transitive state. There's nothing holding you from being both right and happy.
> Nobody likes to be told they're wrong
Thats actually a southern european way of looking at things; Its a cultural trace that varies a lot by region. Pointing flaws in plans is actually something I saw as worthy of an appraisal in Germany.
Also, I always tell people when I think they are wrong. I no longer insist or argue, just point out what lead me to the conclusion; you don't want to be in the blast radius of a deaf manager, an incompetent colleague or a delusional partner. Win-win.
I’m going to ignore the whole socially-agreeable aspect.
Take a thousand subjects. I’m going to be wrong about 990 of them. Because I know just enough about it to think I might have a clue.
You could probably read up on something for five hours and have a better opinion on it than most people that you meet.
How many things are just passively received opinion? And what kind of signal is that? Oh no, all the Jacks and Jones disagree with me.
On the other hand there are some cases where you can go down some dark rabbit hole and gain false knowledge and education. Maybe studying political science or something.
>One heuristic for spotting when you might be wrong is that you hold a very uncommon belief.
this is only the case in a 'wisdom of the crowd' world where people hold uncorrelated, authentic, self-formed opinions. If you're in a world of mass opinion and mania where ideas spread virally it ceases to be an indicator. In that environment its not truth that determined popularity of a belief, but how transmittable they are. In a world where gigantic companies produce sociality being anti-social in the most literal sense is a very real survival and truth-finding strategy.
And of course it's more important to be right than happy. Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism. If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
As Cormac McCarthy said in his last book: “You would give up your dreams in order to escape your nightmares and I would not. I think it's a bad bargain.”
> If you're in a world of mass opinion and mania where ideas spread virally it ceases to be an indicator.
Not really. It continues to be an indicator, just a less reliable one. As I said, it's one heuristic. It increases your probability of being right more than it decreases it, but it isn't an absolute rule.
Fundamentally, science itself relies on this heuristic to some extent. The idea that an experiment be reproducible is essentially the idea that the majority of testers should agree on observed reality. You just have to be careful not to conflate opinion with observed fact, or to treat it as more than a heuristic evaluator.
> Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism.
Not at all.
You do not need to be correct to be happy, and there is no correlation at all between your ability to correctly understand the world and your capacity (or worthiness) to experience joy or to help others experience it. You are allowed to be wrong and happy, or apathetic and happy, or ignorant and happy, or even nihilistic and happy.
> If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
There's more than one type of happiness. The kind you describe is hedonic. The other type is referred to as Eudamonic, and it comes from connection, service, and a sense of purpose.
You'll never get to experience the second type if other people don't want to be around you because you've decided that your own narrow perspective is the One True Perspective (TM).
Don't get me wrong, I reject post-modernity and the horrifying idea that there is no objective truth. I just also reject the idea that any of us are valid arbiters of that truth, or that we must know the truth before being allowed to experience happiness.
> You are allowed to be wrong and happy
Nobody said you can't. They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society.
Your position seems to imply support for society-level submission to religious dogma. There's no point ignoring actual examples of all these ideas.
Hold an "uncommon belief"? According to you, it's a sign you're wrong. "the world isn't crazy, it's you who's missing something"... and you even say "let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social."
I don't think you meant to express support for strict religious rule and population submission, but that's how I'm reading it.
Your argument supports those who seek submission from the population. You don't require objective truth to play a role in happiness. You have found value in submission that serves to neutralise dissent. Dissent when coming from the few, isn't worth your time. Peg those few dissenters as "probably wrong" and call it a day.
A lot of folks seem to be interpreting my heuristic is if it were a hard and fast rule here. Thats not what a heuristic is.
A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows for quick decisions based on "most likely" outcomes. Its a statistical tool.
In my case I said it should be enough of an indicator for you to double check your work, not that you were automatically wrong. I stand by that.
That said, you're getting into epistemology now, and its important to differentiate between the observed facts and the biased interpetation of them.
I mentioned before that reproducibility in this way is important to science, and the reason it works with science is that we decouple the observation from the interpetation.
When most people observe that 2+2=4 and you get 5 it is likely that you're wrong. You should invest the time to double check your work.
If 50% of the world then tortures that observation through convoluted and error filled reasoning until they can interpret it to mean magic sky daddy wants you to let the priest touch your special no-no place you should ignore them.
Observed reality being in agreement is a much more reliable heuristic than agreement of interpretation, which is often filled with bias.
> They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society...
Happiness is an emotion. Imagine if I'd claimed society should only be allowed to feel lust on Tuesdays. This is no different. You are allowed to feel however you'd like to feel whenever you'd like to feel it.
Making up arbitrary rules about when you're "allowed " or "deserve" to feel good will make you miserable, and you don't have the right to tell the rest of us we have to abide by your misery making emotion rules.
You might consider asking yourself where this idea that you must meet specific prerequisites before being allowed to feel specific feelings came from, and then seriously considering whether it has merit, or if it even actually works.
Are you also restricting when you're "allowed" to feel negative emotions? How does that work? Are you really able to just... not be sad if you dont deserve it? Do you always feel happy when you DO deserve it?
I think the Protestant ethos is soo deeply embedded in you that you might not even know its there.
You don’t have to accept their conclusions, but they don’t have to accept yours either. You can walk away
Sometimes you just have to implement them :)
Ever heard the phrase "pick your battles"?
May the bridges I burn light the hills I die on.
Can I be your friend please.
Also this document is basically just how I act, or how I would still act if I was less self-aware; some combination of the two.
I suspect the author may have written this partly as a self-critique.