Distracting wolves and real estate agents

Interesting! So instead of trying to come out on top as Alpha, one can just avoid being ranked entirely. Does that work with humans? It seems like this is something many introverts would prefer.

Also, to what degree can one prevent oneself from unconsciously ranking others? Are there / could there be (in actuality, as opposed to pretense) such things as status-free social groups? And if so, is that a good thing?

My guess is that mobs where everyone is anonymous are relatively social status free, and we know there are both positive and negative side effects to that. Is anonymity required for a status-free group to exist though?

We just told him we were insulted he wanted us to sign a piece of paper and if he wanted to work with us, he was just going to have to trust us. It worked in our case.

If we're so smart why do we spend our whole attention on the informational content of messages and not the context under which they're being communicated?

I've only realized that this is a big part of my problem recently.

I still don't think I could do it.

Because you thrive in this environment, it's hard for me to believe you couldn't learn to do such things - but delightful if true.

I don't want to dispense misguided generic advice, but I find I prefer, rather than believing "I (probably) can't do X", to instead tell myself "I expect to perform poorly at X, until I get enough experience really trying". In either case I can avoid ever trying, but with the second I feel better, and am more likely to consider plans where I have to do X, and so may actually get around to some productive trying+failing.

Of course, it may really be correct to think yourself permanently below-par (either in cost to learn or eventual ceiling).

Is it a coincidence that some pickup artists are also magicians?

They're definitely not mutually exclusive :)

Presumably you mean that magicians are more likely to be pickup artists than non-, or conversely, but didn't want to over-claim.

I think part of the "trick" is that you distract yourself at the same time—the way to not think of a pink elephant is to concentrate on something else.

I would like to voice some dissent. I think that consequentially, organizations like the Real Estate industry are capitalizing on social niceness to get more money out of both the buyer and seller. Individual agents are in it for themselves, and are not being truthful if they claim to have your interests in mind. This is largely true of the entire service industry. Not to say they are evil, should be destroyed, or whatever. But since they are using social dark arts to get your money, I see little problem with using whatever tools at your disposal to keep them from it. Like the wolves, they may not know better, but they are still preying on you.

One feature of a lot of organizations is that the agent has some discretion, but the option that helps you the most is often less convenient. If the person likes you, or if you are related to someone they consider important, or if you can bribe or threaten them in the right way, the world is far more open to you than if you quietly accept your fate. This is similar to the situation in the book Games Prisoners Play when a new inmate to a prison was asked a key phrase in the form of a yes-no question. If they answered in the affirmative or negative, they were obviously new and were treated as such (worse if they lied). If they knew the proper answer, they were immediately afforded some level of respect.

If you can't identify when you are playing a game, you are bound to lose it, and you will pay for it.

I am also unskilled at deceiving or distracting people. But I don't think that's an inherent personality trait. I believe that most interpersonal interaction consists of subconscious skills and scripts that can be executed subconsciously once we decide to execute them. The following skills are things I had to learn:

• Start a conversation with a stranger
• Arrange to meet someone at a later date
• Ask a stranger for directions
• Ask someone a personal question
• Be interviewed by police
• Buy things from a store
• Order food at a sit-down restaurant
• Ask a store clerk for a discount (I'm still working on this one)

I had to practice all of these several times before I could execute them without feeling flustered, and I had to practice some more before I could execute them while my mind was elsewhere. Deceiving or distracting someone seems like just another skill, except you'll fail the first few times you do it because your flustered state will give you away. No big deal.

I'm not sure the common cause is rationality as much as it is (trans)humanism. There are many traits that readers of this blog tend to share, and rationality certainly isn't the only one. I'm the same way, and while I think rationality may be part of the cause, I suspect the larger cause is my humanist tenancies. I'm also rule utilitarian about lying, so there's that.

And of course one could argue that the distal cause of the humanism/utilitarianism is rationality, but let's not go there.

Do you have links about the wolf-zookeeper interactions? It seems fascinating, but my Google Fu did not find anything good.

I definitely recognize what you're going through, and feel the same thing myself. I can't pull off a trick like that if I know I'm deceiving/misleading someone against their interest. Heck, that explains a lot of my difficulties.

I've been wracking my brain to come up with a realistic scenario where I wouldn't feel bad about engaging in this sort of behavior. The only thing I could come up with was buying a new car.

I would probably be very nice and try to grab empathy by using vague words (such as fairness, etc.), asking the real estate agent to 'help me out', and explaining things in terms of feelings. Hopefully, after the initial discussion, I wouldn't have to keep doing this over and over again, but even if I do, this has the advantage of seperating the "persuade real-estate agent to keep working with you while not signing a contract" from the "get information" part, and so is probably less likely to distract me from the important bits.

I don't think this would be terribly hard for me. I'm trying to think of possible explanations for this, but none of them are feeling like they model my internal mechanics well.

Disclaimer: I have never actually worked with a real estate agent.