Group Rationality Diary, April 15-29

Over the weekend, a potentially unpleasant social situation I was involved in didn't turn into lots of horrible drama. Everyone involved, as far as I can see, handled it well and with great maturity; I was told by someone external to but aware of events that I acted very well in the aftermath. As far as I can tell, everything is cool and back to normal with all involved parties now.

What I have learned:

• I am better at certain social things, such as acting normally and avoiding awkwardness, than I had realized or expected.
• I am better at handling my own emotions, and I think at modelling and considering the emotions of others, than I had expected.
• I am not good at judging other people's level of drunkenness.

EDIT: Maybe it would be useful to put in some resources I feel have helped me to frame social interactions and lead me to these successes?

A very good advice-column blog called Captain Awkward has been great for helping me think about my own and others' emotions, and how to deal with them appropriately. Casually reading feminist blogs in general has given me a better insight to some social interactions (not necessarily to do with gender issues). I've been doing this on occasion for about 8 months, and I think it's helped a few times.

More recently, discussion of "creepiness" and social behaviour has been something I've read a bit about - not so much that I'm worried about being creepy myself (that's a small part of my motivation) but out of a general interest in gender interaction. A lot of this has been through Reddit; though it gets a bad press for misogyny, there's a lot of internal criticism that goes on, and areas dedicated to these topics, so it can be a useful resource for anyone who wants to read discussions in this area.

I recognized that I have a failure mode when introducing myself to new people: I immediately try to engage people on an intellectual level, and I don't have a backup plan if they don't go along with it. This often gives people the impression (perhaps subconsciously true) of a dominance move, and sometimes makes people feel that they were judged and found wanting. The result of this is that I end up with some people disliking or avoiding me if I introduce myself, when they would have been better disposed toward me if I'd met them some other way. (Not to mention the disutility to them!)

So I brainstormed some solutions which I'm going to put into practice:

• Making a conscious effort during introductions to "be present", to match body language, and to smile more.
• Reframe my most common questions to be less confrontational: for instance, I have a habit of asking people questions like "what do you do that's awesome?" or "what's something you believe that you'd expect me to disagree with?". While these questions provoke some really great responses from certain kinds of nerds (especially rationalists), I expect I can get many of the same benefits from "what's keeping you busy these days?" or "what's something that surprised you about X?" (if they mentioned they study X), both of which are less competitive in nature.
• Look for ways to meet people through intermediaries and take advantage of this: for instance, if A is introducing me to B, I could ask A about B something like "what's something you like about B?", using the fact that it's much more comfortable to talk up someone else than to talk up oneself.
• Possibly look for more systematized advice. Is there a better source yet than "How to Make Friends and Influence People", or should I just read that?

Addendum: I tried the first two while getting my hair cut by a new stylist yesterday, and it was a much more natural and fun conversation than ones I've had in the past with similar people.

I've been working and succeeding on my goal of growing Columbus Rationality. We just underwent a massive change: Previously we most commonly met in a private residence and had discussions, often on pre-set topics. As we grew to about a dozen regulars, discussions were getting unwieldy with that many people.

This month we joined the Humanist Community of Central Ohio (HCCO) as a sub-meetup. They are a very well-run umbrella non-profit organization, and we got some useful benefits from it, such as a nice meeting space, meetup.com postings, and organizational assistance.

Last week we had our first "official" meetup under the HCCO banner that was posted on their meetup page. 12 newbies RSVP'd on the meetup site, but only about half of those actually came (total of about 15 people attending). Having so many new people start at once has been a great Schelling point to switch from discussion-based meetups to more organized teaching meetups. Especially as the new people are actually new, as in they aren't already "rationalists" or "LessWrongers", but are just regular humanists who thought the meetup description sounded interesting, so we really get to start at the beginning and work our way through.

Last week we started with an interactive Intro to Rationality talk that covered a lot of the basic principles and sources. Next meetup we are working on setting people's goals and plans to meet them. Other upcoming meetups include techniques for truth-seeking conversations, and improv games.

In my personal life, I met my goal of finding an "Adult Person" job this month, which is immensely helpful in meeting a bunch of other goals as well.

Someone appears to have bombed the Boston Marathon. I live in the U.S. state that contains Boston. As of this writing I don't know who did it or why, but knowledge of what happened has triggered a desire within me for revenge. I almost certainly won't have the chance to act on this desire, and if I did the agent part of me would almost certainly override the desire. But in an effort to be mindful of my emotional state I note it.

This comment by hg00, and the links it contains, helped me notice that I had some cached thoughts about porn. I've now updated significantly on the potential negative effects of using too much porn and am experimenting with quitting both porn and masturbation for awhile to see what happens.

Started blogging experimentally in order to explicate some ideas and opinions I've had for a while and see if they stand the light of day. Learned a couple of useful things already, just by writing things down in a half-readable format.

A recent story about noticing my confusion: I noticed that the 2-pound bag of coffee beans I had just bought was also listed as 908 grams. That sounded wrong, since I "knew" a kilo was about 2.5 pounds. I thought the manufacturer might be rounding the English weight down since the gram measure was more precise. But then when's the last time you heard of a producer rounding the weight down?

A quick trip to Google and damned if a kilo isn't 2.2 pounds, not 2.5. I've been misestimating that for years!

Of course, this raises the question of how I got 2.5 stuck in my head. I suspect it's a case of anchoring and similarity bias. I.e. there are 2.54 centimeters in an inch, and my brain learned the pattern that to convert metric to English units, the factor is 2.5. I probably started using that number without conscious attention or thought.

I have recently been considering whether I have an exceedingly poor sense of my own internal states, or whether my understanding of how people experience their internal states is wrong.

For example, when I drink, I don't feel myself getting drunk. I don't have any kind of sense of what it "feels like" to get drunk, but I can observe that I'm acting in a drunken manner. The same applies for other drug use, illness, etc. I only tend to notice them when I try to act, and that action is altered in an unexpected way. This does not seem to be the typical narrative of how people experience themselves. It's certainly not how people describe such experiences.

How typical is this?

As did shimnux, I started a blog to much of the same effects.

I also got into habitrpg, this has been, easily, the best thing I ever did to install new habit; highly recommended.