How my social skills went from horrible to mediocre

Can you be more explicit about what it was in your study of data science that led you to notice your blindspots, or more generally what the "very powerful" ways of thinking about the world you found were? You mention the Wisdom of the Crowds, but it sounds like there was something in particular that made you realize the opportunity for growth.

I knew that people thought I had bad social skills, but they weren't able to explain the situation to me in a way that I could understand, because they were totally misinterpreting me, on account of not knowing what was going on in my mind.

A useful analogy is bug reports made by non-programmer users. They are sometimes right that there is a problem, but most attempts on their part to formulate what it is or "${deity-}" forbid what is the cause is so confused that saying nothing is an improvement. You have to reproduce and debug the problem yourself. Another example is writing: "the reader is always right" in the sense that unexpected negative reaction is a flaw in your model of the reader's perception of your work, even if the reader is wrong about the reasons for their reaction.

Each clue about an error is a poorly or misleadingly stated bug report, and there is usually nobody qualified to investigate the issue if you don't do it yourself, of your own initiative: formulating hypotheses, running tests, observing responses.

Some quick background: a friend and I run the sales department of a multi-million dollar company. We built that company from the ground up from about 15 clients to 5,000 and counting, and now manage 20+ sales reps.

Contrary to popular opinion, social interaction is really fucking easy. There's one common trait among likable people, (and I don't mean likable in the shitty, salesy sort of way where a person is so outgoing you feel obligated to say you like them, when in fact you think they're a giant turd)). That trait can be easily explained: you truly, genuinely care about other people's success more than yourself.

If you're a parent, it's a lot easier to internalize this attitude. When you have a little kid running around your house, you understand pretty intuitively how you can love something that, for the most part, does nothing but eats, shits, makes messes, and generally disobeys you. You see the potential in that little person. You see the commonalities. You realize that little gremlin is like you in so, so many ways. Eventually it will grow up and become a real person, and that is exciting.

I think you aren't alone: MOST LWers (myself included) probably view themselves as one level higher than a "baseline person". The problem that I've seen is, most smart people tend to react to "baselines" with a mixture of indifference, condescension and outright disdain. It's hard to tell what is worse. But baseline people aren't fundamentally lacking. They just haven't grown up yet. If you look hard enough, you'll realize the commonalities. You'll realize the potential. You'll realize that eventually, this baseline person you're talking to is going to grow up and become a full-on person.

Most people who are good with kids have a knack for talking to kids on the kids' level. The phonies are the ones who talk to kids like they are these subhuman creatures that can't comprehend anything more complex than Go Fish. The assholes are the ones who can't even be bothered to condescend themselves to talk to an 8-year-old. After all, what could an 8-year-old possibly say that's even remotely interesting?

Ultimately that's the key: realizing that, even an 8-year-old has the potential to bring something to the table eventually. Einstein, Feynman, Hofstadter, heck, even Yudkowsky, were all 8 years old at some point. But you can't force one of those into existence.

If you look at every person you interact with and say, "This could be the next Richard Feynman", regardless of whether it takes 10 years, 20 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to be invested in their success and their development as a person.

Nice article, congrats on improving your social skills! Some people are more social than others, but everyone is at least a little social :-)

I've improved mine a lot, too, and your post inspired me to stopped and think about how:

1. I realized that people are different. Just because I happen to like my characteristics a lot doesn't mean I am inherently better than anyone else. Other people might prefer their own characteristics. From this realization came a natural mastery of the art of self-deprecation, which turns out to be quite useful as a social skill.

2. I've expanded my list of mutually interesting conversation topic possibilities. For example, I always liked music, but I never really knew what bands I liked or the names of my favorite artists. Maybe in high school, I started remembering a few lyrics of songs, typing them into google and paying attention to what exactly I liked, which allowed me to add "music" to my repertoire of mutually interesting conversations. My list of fun things to talk about with "normal" people now includes (among other things): music, work, traveling, foreign languages, running, mountaineering, football, board games, health, and food. This is usually plenty.

3. I stopped assuming people don't care about the things I care about. I'll introduce them to my ideas, or ideas I've read about (being mindful of inferential distance and gauging their interest level as we go). I prefer to be the "idea-receiver" than the "idea-giver" but sharing ideas is still fun! People are a lot more receptive than I had previously thought. Most people enjoy talking about ideas at least for a little while, and probably even have one or two of their own. (If the idea is bad, I also have lots of fun asking questions and getting them to reconsider it without actually attacking the idea.)

4. I stopped assuming people weren't interested in my life. I started sharing more personal anecdotes, realized what people thought was funny/interesting, and shared more of the same. The more stories I told, the better I got at story-telling.

5. I started trying to find out what people are experts about and soak up their knowledge. I have one friend who knows a lot about history and is more than happy to talk about it. I've learned about law from the lawyers I know. Even if I don't particularly care about someone's area of expertise, it's often a lot more rewarding just to ask a few questions and listen to them speak passionately than to retreat back to "common ground."

6. I know myself and sometimes just have to accept myself how I am. I don't try to change myself too much. For example, I prefer socializing one-on-one or in small groups, so that's pretty much what I do when I can help it. Of course, I still end up attending some large-table gatherings, and I feel no guilt for letting my mind wander when the table wants to talk about movies and TV. I'll usually just make some self-deprecating remark to signal that I really have no knowledge and nothing to say about the topic. Then, having established that I'm not purposefully being antisocial, I feel free to tune everyone out and think about whatever I want until there's another shift in the conversation.

7. As for romantic interests, well, I guess I've improved there as well. This probably isn't too relevant to LW since I'm a female, look like a female, and consider myself lucky to be a female since most guys like their stereotypical male characteristics enough to want to find someone who shares them, and I share them a lot more than most other females do. I'm always finding out from people about guys who liked me back in middle school, high school, and college. Now I pretty much operate under the assumption that every guy likes me, just to be safe. So if a guy talks to me a lot, and I have zero romantic interest but still want to be friends, for clarity's sake, I'll find a way to casually let him know this without hinting that he might have liked me, so that if he did actually like me, he doesn't lose face. If a guy talks to me and I do have romantic interest, the assumption that he likes me is still beneficial since I'll be more confident around him. Of course, the easiest solution to the whole romantic problem is to just have a boyfriend, since it removes any trace of awkward uncertainty with all my other male friends.

8. Stemming from #1, I've learned to communicate differently with different people. If I know someone has trouble with reasoning and logic, I'm usually able to "speak to them in their own language" and get the same point across/achieve the same end result by appealing to their emotions. I could give examples of this, but this post is already getting quite long.

to. If somebody is angry at me and insults me, I know that it's not me who the person is insulting, it's instead the person's perception of me.

If you really believe that, wouldn't the same thing apply to praise of you as well?

(b) A woman sends signals of romantic interest, either accidentally, or whimsically. I mistakenly assume that she's carefully deliberating over the possibility of dating me, as I would be in her position. I decide to express interest in her.

She hasn't been thinking about whether or not she'd like to date me at all, she was instead engaging in casual preliminary flirting and/or wasn't carefully guarding against accidentally sending signals of romantic interest. So from her point of view it looks like "This guy expressed romantic interest in me without paying attention to how I'm feeling." She reactively reprimands me, or cuts contact with me, usually with connotations (even if slight) that I might not respect her boundaries.

I mistakenly think that she had carefully deliberated on how to respond to my expression of romantic interest. So I mistakenly perceive the false dichotomy:

 I'm a delusional potential rapist, and she sees this.
I'm not a delusional potential rapist, she knows that she's made me feel like I might be one. The woman who I loved has turned out to have so little empathy that she doesn't mind the fact that she's done this.

Both of these possibilities are extremely upsetting, and I fall into severe depression, totally oblivious to the fact that she was behaving in a reactive way and that her reaction is neither evidence that I'm a potential rapist, nor evidence that she doesn't mind me feeling like a potential rapist.

I am not a "Social Justice Warrior" (more a social justice wizard/rogue) but I am considering responding to this as someone who has tried to multiclass in both rationality and social justice.

My previous forays in this direction on LW (admittedly not very skilled or persuasive) were not well received. Is there interest in discussing social justice fails as a subset of social skill fails and thus as rationality fails?

Evaluate: do not immediately let the other know whether you agree or disagree;
Probe: do not keep asking questions and investigating;
Advise: do not counsel purely based on your personal experiences;
Interpret: do not try to define the motives of the behavior based on your personal experience.

Mimic the content: repeat what the other just said. This makes sure that you are listening and that the other knows you are. The good thing of mimicking is that there is no place for judgment;
Rephrase the content: tell the same story, but in your own words. You do not only show that you are listening, but also that you understand what the other is (literally) saying;
Reflect on feelings: focus on the emotions that lie behind what is told, not on the words that try to express these emotions;
Rephrase the content and reflect the feeling: this is a combination of the second and third form of empathic listening. It shows that you are really listening and understanding what message lies behind the words.'

For example, if a student tells me that I'm the worst teacher he or she has ever had, it makes me feel bad because I feel like I'm not contributing value, but I'm not at all upset with the student: my attitude is that the student is conveying valuable information to me, and that I should be appreciative.

I'm tempted to take that as a Crocker's rule invocation. But I have realized that you wrote this for people-like-you, that is, after all, pretty much its explicit purpose. As such, I'm not sure I have an criticism that I can't definitively think is helpful.

Nonetheless, I want to point out two general things about this will make this hard post to read for most people. First is the length, and even in this you note that you spend too much time explaining something that you've worked on. I think the length was partially unnecessary and not just a reflection of me not being your target audience (I assume). The second is that you come across as exceedingly arrogant. I think you are attempting to explain your background so that we understand the situation. But you explicitly call yourself smarter than the typical reader of the site that you are posting this on. Ouch! But again, perhaps this is just a reflection of you having a very narrow target audience and for them this could read like a "ah, finally someone gets it!"

I hope that you take this to be useful, particularly for when you write for a wider audience. For what its worth, my mental post it note has you labelled as a user that I should pay attention to. I say that since I kind of suspect that you already know everything I just mentioned and aren't bad at overcoming these in other situations, but thought this worth saying explicitly given the context of trying to improve.

I find it useful to have a conceptually explicit translation layer in some social interactions. Essentially, the meaning behind the words is often quite different from the literal words uttered and it's the job of the translation layer to figure out the former.

To riff off another thread, for whatever reason I don't have a problem pronouncing words "I don't know". But many people do. So if I ask someone a specific question and start getting some vaguely related bullshitty handwaving in response, the literal interpretation would be "He didn't understand the question". But then the translation layer kicks in and says "Oh, he actually means he doesn't know but cannot admit so openly". And instead of continuing on the futile path of trying to rephrase the question to be more clear, I'll just go find someone else who might know the answer.

There is also something else going on here, which I realized after learning about personality types, especially Jung's theories and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. One dimension separates along the primary mode of seeing the world (Sensing vs iNtuitive), with the former ones collecting individual facts and strictly following isolated rules, and the latter ones always looking for the generalized principle behind the facts and questioning the origin and sense of rules.

These two types have a lot of trouble understanding each others' way of thinking and frequently get into each others' hairs; e.g. S types tend to interpret N types questioning rules out of curiosity as a personal attack on their way of life (especially so if accurate), while N types tend to dismiss criticism by S types as small-minded bean counting and accuse them of missing the forest for the trees.

Now, there are roughly four to six times as many S types as N types around, and on top of that most weak cases of N types tend to hide it so as not to seem too weird. On the other hand, abstract topics (natural sciences, Less Wrong) tend to attract N types. From this baseline (and your description) I infer that you are also one of the aliens. You can't fundamentally alter your way of thinking to fit in (would you even want to?) - the best you can hope for is to find and befriend the other hidden aliens while trying to get along with the rest.

There's also a nice TED talk on the matter. Just google "Weirdos, Misfits and You". And you might like Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros". It's usually taken as a metaphor for something else, but I still find that it hits the mark pretty well. It's also short and fun to read, so there's no good excuse not to.

It didn't occur to me how significant this was. The number of hours that I had is perhaps as small as the number of hours that most people have by age 10. In hindsight it's obvious: of course I didn't have good social skills relative to other adults, in the same way that a 10 year old doesn't have good social skills for an adult. I just hadn't put nearly enough time in!

Just out of curiosity - do you think that all other people who put massive amounts of time into socializing get benefits that are proportionate to the amount of time put in? From our point of view, most people spend incredibly high amounts of time socializing, but does this make each and every one of them socially savvy to the same extent?

Also, what do you think of https://www.quora.com/How-did-successful-people-spend-their-time-when-they-were-young-between-ages-of-10-and-22/answer/Auren-Hoffman ?

Just wanted to mention that I like this write-up, though I suspect that the only transferrable takeaway for many others struggling with similar issues would be

Focusing on understanding how one is similar to others and how one is different from others can be a better way to become socially aware than usual efforts to "develop social skills."

Bu the description of your meta-cognition process is hopefully encouraging enough for others to try to emulate.

I now have a deep understanding that there are many instances in which people appeared to be hostile toward me when their feelings weren't directed at me, instead they didn't know enough about what was going on in my mind to be able to see that I wasn't the person who they thought that I was.

... If somebody is angry at me and insults me, I know that it's not me who the person is insulting, it's instead the person's perception of me. So people can't hurt me anymore.

Great!

I will point out that I much more frequently see people giving similar, but 'reversed' advice: see the emotional content of your interactions with other people as coming from you, not them. Instead of "they insulted me," it's "I insulted myself" (by interpreting their words as an insult).

One of the benefits of the "I generate my emotional reactions" view over the "other people are coming from a place of ignorance" view is that it highlights the critical importance of self-love, to both healthy individual functioning and healthy relationships.

(I say this with the knowledge that advice is best if it's a flow-chart, as explained in Beware of Other-Optimizing and All Debates are Bravery Debates. It's not clear to me that you specifically would be improved by making that mental shift, but I suspect it strongly enough to say this advice.)

I've developed the capacity to feel universal love and compassion the way Martin Luther King were able to.

This is interesting. How do you know?

(e) I say something that someone doesn't understand. I think "maybe the person needs more context," and follow up by giving more context. The person still doesn't understand, so I think "ok, I guess I have to give even more context" and so continue in the same direction. In fact, the amount of context that I would need to give for my point to be clear would take ~100 hours to convey, so that what I'm doing is actually not at all productive. The person perceives the situation as

Jonah is totally ignoring the fact that I'm not understanding what I'm saying, and keeps going on and on about the same thing, oblivious to my feelings

because he or she has no way of knowing that I'm explicitly trying to address the fact that the person is uncomfortable about not understanding.

Oh. Well. Oops.

But what alternatives are there? Should I just give up? That seems rude too.

edit: the tone of this post is angry, so you know. The anger is directed primarily at the paragraph I quote, which I consider utterly outrageous. It definitely spills over onto you also but I have nothing against you other than what spills over from this paragraph. I found your post had interesting insights in it otherwise. Anyway this post is pretty much an outraged rant so be warned.

Actually, here are the cliff notes because there were some objective things I identified.

teaching is a public performance role. dealing with customers complaints is literally part of the job, and one can additionally take it on more in the mantle of one's role as a teacher. Fielding a concerned intervention from a vetted personal friend is pretty much the opposite as a situation.

Making criticism unexplicit does not make it lighter, it just makes it more likely to be insiduous. The "criticism" in c) is formally information, informally advice, and only in subtext is it criticism. A friend cannot be expected to unravel this as it relates to a dear personal topic in real time. Phrasing criticism so that it doesn't look like criticism is dangerous.

criticising someone's chosen life path is a serious topic. The most salient thing about the topic is never going to be that you want them to be happy, unless you first explicitly state that you have an idea for them that might help them and you offer it in that spirit, but for them to judge it for themselves. -NOT just to drop it on them, if it's bordering a fault line.

People can prefer unhappiness and stress over happiness for many reasons. It may be more important for them to have a struggle to rise to to ensure they grow, for example. Moreover, if someone has taken drastic action in their life choices, for example if they quit their job, became a hermit, and lived off plants, one would assume that there was a serious reason for it, whether or not it was a good one. The pattern you describe of someone choosing to dedicate themselves to one very difficult problem they may or may not be able for is serious in the same way. The way to go in such a case is not to condense one's argument to 4 snappy lines, as one risks shearing through all kinds of layers of their understanding, in their attempt to meet you half way as a concerned friend. (-unless one understands them extremely well and can make the perfect such 4 lines), instead one has to check to see if one is proceeding from common ground.

-

You apparently do not understand what is wrong with c):

"There's strong evidence that there are only a few people in the world who have a chance of solving the math research problem that you've been working on for the past few years. It's very unlikely that you have the innate ability to solve it regardless of how hard you work on it. You're a good mathematician, you could make a lot of progress on easier problems, and that would probably make you happier."

The first thing is taking the outside view on someone's dedicated craft at all. One way people can become extreme outliers, the "few people", in the first place (if whatever dubious analysis produced such an absurd statement is even remotely correct) is by obsessive focus, and by not counting the odds. To sneak in the idea, in the very first sentence that your friend should be taking a many times removed outside view on this, (rather than throwing himself at his limits until he breaks, transcends them, or both) -and rapidly build assertions off this cannot be attributed to lacking social skills. Structurally, it's an excellently crafted psychological ambush from a friend.

And why would you even try to influence someone who's actions make no sense to you? If that's so then you clearly lack the common ground, or understanding of their motivations, to begin to speculate on what would fulfill their values, let alone craft this atrocity.

In this specific case, If someone is struggling at the limit of their ability to do something, anything at all, they don't want to hear from you why it's a bad idea, and still less how they'd be more hedonically comfortable if they'd just settle down and do the sensible thing.

And if a person has chosen to pursue a certain path, why would you presume that a half baked comment would be commeasurate with their deliberate personal decision on how and where to direct their lives?

It doesn't matter if they're completely, utterly, or even obviously wrong, attempting to change someone's chosen path through life is a serious thing! At best, absolute best, this is like holding an intervention for an alcoholic, but not bothering to think through how to phrase it or show some seriousness, and minimal respect. If someone's pathologically wasting their life. (in your judgement), you don't just go up to them and tell them, hmmm you might be better off not doing that. That''s even completely ignoring the question of ability and pushing oneself.

-You don't just condense the whole argument to 4 snappy lines in order to shear the hardest and fastest through their expectations, (as they reach out their mind to engage a trusted, vetted individual half way). Especially not when the question concerns values. To the extent that this person considers you a friend, they are liable to try to meet you half way to understand what you are saying, or further, but if they come even 20 or 30% of the way they might not be able to get back to where they where because it is so blatantly alien to the values implied by their choices, and presumably your personal knowledge of them.

-you argue the points, one at a time, first stating you premises and giving them a chance to say "no that doesn't apply to my situation" before you start building, rather than piling on six assumptions on back-to-back-to-back.. and assuming that they all hold just fine.

And the absolute best outcome here seems to be to rob someone of the probably-one-time life-experience of navigating their own way through what they've gotten themselves into and coming to their own conclusions.

Nowhere in this "helpful advice" is there any suggestion that you understand that your friend may want to have a hard problem to push themselves with, rise to the level of, meditate on, motivate them, etc.

"You would be happier" is not advice for a young, serious, mathematician. Obviously choosing a very dificult problem is not intended to directly optimist happiness.

There's the fact you chose to describe them as lacking innate ability, rather than (present) mathematical competence,

you described it as "the innate ability" as if it's one thing. -it's not even that their aptitude is not high enough, apparently they simply don't have "it", whatever "it" is.

with how very unlikely is put there, it conflates, in turn, the studies' view, with your view, with the universal view, with their view.

The fact that it is gentle makes it a hell of a lot worse by the way, not better. It's precisely the gentleness which makes it dangerous. You come with an attack, but as a friend, and gently. That is obviously far more dangerous because it has the potential to be insidious rather than stressful or traumatic. The fact that you describe it as criticism, while phrasing it as advice thinly masquerading as information, implies that you know what you're doing at least on some level.

At the end of the day what you're saying is precisely that "you're too bad at math to be able to meet your goals", except at least an order of magnitude worse.

And why would the salient thing about serious, drastic life advice/criticism/information be something about the adviser's feelings?

I could probably go on, I keep realising more things, but my head hurts enough already. I will leave it at this one: teaching kids is a public performance role. Fielding hecklers is part of the job. Taking an apparent friend's gently expressed concerns seriously is pretty much the opposite of that situation. (-which is what they seem so far as he can tell, but seemingly they're not even intended as such, not as advice, but as an admonishment, as if, by equivocation with professional duty to use bad feedback on one's professional work by one's clients, individuals are then supposed to field attacks on their current values (whatever their quality or rationality), from their friends, disguised as concern!)

With respect to gauging where people are coming from, one trap I've seen among smart people is to assume that who you are talking to is stupid based on a proxy, when it's easy to get better information.

To give an example, I'm an engineer and I see this sort of behavior relatively frequently from people who majored in physics, math, or computer science. Many of these people seem to believe that all engineers are stupid, or at the very least they see themselves as superior to engineers. After revealing that I'm an engineer, some of these people either stereotype me, or state disbelief. I've been told by a few people that I don't fit their model of what engineers are like (Usually they say that I'm too good at math). Best I can tell, these people do not update their beliefs about engineers after encountering me. They tend to think I'm an outlier, which is not that true in my experience.

To be clear, I don't find this offensive, but it's somewhat irritating.

This fits in with some things Nanashi said elsewhere in this thread.

Hey Jonah, props on being so honest in writing this article. I can relate to pretty much everything that you wrote.

I know that it's not me who the person is insulting, it's instead the person's perception of me.

Where do you apply this knowledge?

Over here, my perception is that you somehow disagree with most of the field of education. (If that's false, you can probably think of a way to show us.) And of course, even if I knew who you were, it would be ridiculous for me to believe you over most other experts just because you have "knowledge of the subject" in the same way that many others do.

You could write a different comment, excoriating Less Wrong for trusting single experts who appear to disagree with a field's majority position, and I would find it about as convincing as the linked criticism.

So ... Should I understand that you're now talking about subjects you have no interest in ?

Or your final point is that you're working on talking about subjects you do have an interest in with more "sociality" (and I don't get why people would take it differently if the subjects are, as I perceive, not common) ?