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No advice here, but I started thinking what the sort of advice you are looking for would look like, and whether much such advice even exists.
A different skill from social interactions, and probably a simpler one is playing Go. A notable thing about Go is that there isn't much instruction in the form of "if this happens, do that". That doesn't work, as there are too many possible game configurations, and whatever form a successful player's skill actually takes can't really be verbalized. Instead, people are just told to expect to lose a bunch of games at first, during which they are expected to build up the difficult to verbalize pattern matching abilities about what works and what doesn't in different situations. A bit like the advice to have a bunch of social interactions which you expect not to end very successfully.
Of course social interactions also have a much wider space of viable approaches than games of Go, so the analogy of needing to do things the hard way to build non-verbalizable pattern matching skills might not be that tight.
Reg Braithwaite has an article about the problems with a certain type of personality and trying to learn Go, when you just can't seem to go from declarative knowledge to procedural skill when picking up the game. Maybe it's relevant to learning social skills as well.
Are you kidding? There are plenty of books teaching Go, full of verbal instruction, covering the basics (take territory first in the corners, then the edges, then the middle), standard opening patterns (joseki), detailed tactical situations (tesuji), proverbs, middle game, end game, every aspect of the game. Of course, it takes practice to turn that advice into skill, as with any skill, but the advice is there, and it works.
For someone who can learn from it. People do learn from it -- I did, back when I played Go, and the books and Go magazines would not be published if they were not useful.
So what distinguishes those who find it straightforward to learn Go by study and practice, as I did, and those who get into the emotional stew that Braithwaite describes? What distinguishes those who learn to ride a bicycle by practice alone, as I did, from those who need instruction also? What distinguishes those who are willing to have a go in social situations and manage to observe, learn and improve, from those who are not, or do not?
If I knew that, I could set up as a personal development guru.
BTW, while I find Braithwaite's account weird in relation to go, it pretty much sums up how I used to feel about socialising, so I have some experience of both sides of this. I don't actually socialise any more than I used to, though.
BTW2, it's just occurred to me that there are many books on social skills for people with Asperger's syndrome. I've not read any of them and I can't comment on how useful they are, but I happen to be aware of a publisher that specialises in books on autism and Aspergers, Jessica Kingsley. FWIW.
Yeah, bad wording on my part. There's a lot of instruction, but I understand that a great deal of practice is utterly vital in order to put the instruction into efficient use. The assumption I'm basically after is that if someone would study Go literature fulltime for a year but wouldn't play any games, they would still play their first games very poorly. I'm not sure to what degree this is really the case.
I have a friend (admittedly a very very smart friend) who become interested in Go after studying combinatorial game theory and discovering that the infinitesimal game value "up arrow" actually occurs in Go, and that game theorists had had productive conversations with Go masters on the subject -- the theory actually had applications.
Using nothing but readings in this area and a few games with me, the friend leveled up from "pure but highly read" beginner to about 14kyu (relative to IGS in 2002?) within four or five games.
My impression is that true tacit knowledge exists, and that theory really doesn't help it a lot... but also that it mostly comes up in domains where the brain is going to be relying on muscle memory a lot, like dissecting the nervous system of shrimp or juggling or such. As a separate thing there are deeply theoretical domains where something appears to be tacit knowledge but its really just a matter of observers not understanding need for patient study when dealing with large inferential distances.
Silas, I've never gone from "social difficulties" to "no social difficulties" based on a direct and obvious course of study, but one very general life heuristic I've found to work well for similarly major work is to search for "the best self help book on the subject" whenever I notice a thing about myself that I really want to cultivate or "fix".
Sometimes it takes me a half a day on Amazon to make an educated guess about which book might meet my "best on the subject" criteria. One of the things I look for are reader reviews of books that recommend some other author or book as clearly superior to the book being reviewed - the best of these suggested books "jump subjects" by invoking a distinct set of keywords or different focus which opens up a whole new "vein of thought" on the subject. Discovering veins, finding "best of breed" within each vein, and then comparing the best of breeds is what can take a while.
Another quick thought: I think you might be living in a small town where you expect to stay for years or decades. If this guess is correct, I would take social advice from "city people" with a huge grain of salt. The environment, opportunities, upsides, downsides, and the social expectations based on this different environment can be substantially different. You can't "throw people away" in a small town... even if you don't like someone, you'll have to live in proximity to them for decades. This also might open the possibility of a weird "solution" to your situation: move! :-)
Would you care to recommend some "best of breed" books?
I'm not sure I would unreservedly recommend books I find this way, because they aren't all full of things I wholeheartedly endorse. They're usually experiments prompted by a sense of personal inadequacy and some of them are kind of embarrassing, but.... here are some books I found in roughly the way I recommended to Silas and what I think of them now:
When I was having difficulties navigating casual not-really-friendly acquaintances with other women (like in the workplace) where I couldn't just avoid people who gave me bad vibes, I found Catfight to be reasonably helpful. I decided on this over various books about "queen bees" that seemed unscientific and possibly amoral... but I haven't read any of those to justify the impression. This book helped me flesh out some details in a pet theory of mine about the way the "aesthetics of signaling" are a major locus of negotiation in real-world socially-embedded virtue ethics. I liked it a lot for that reason, though the text didn't contain the theory explicitly.
When I was trying to figure out what I should be thinking (when planning for retirement) or saying (when my parents brought up investing), I discovered a classic called The Intelligent Investor which was written by the mentor of Warren Buffet and which helps deflate some of the horrible epistemology around investing. I can't really speak for the utility here, because I've had very few opportunities to apply the knowledge since acquiring it but a nice theoretical example of its content is that it pointed out the difference between inside view and outside view calculations of investment value. Given the distinction, it counsels the use of the outside view with a reference class including market conditions over periods of time longer than a human investing career (though it doesn't use the precise terminology to say this that this community might use for such things).
At one point I was wondering if I should change my sexual ethics and I searched my way to Why Men Love Bitches but reading this mostly this helped me decide that the whole subject area was almost as morally bankrupt as PUA stuff, and even more intellectually bankrupt (relying almost solely on anecdotes rather than the PUA community's "self congratulatory theory plus quick and dirty experimental method"). I had my first date with my husband about two months after reading this and I suspect that part of the reason the relationship has been so rewarding (lots has to do with him being amazing) is that I had much more internal clarity about what I wanted in a relationship and what I was willing to give in order to get it. The book helped bring the clarity, even if it didn't directly apply.
Lately I've been in the planning stages for a startup where I expect to be in a leadership position and I thought I should spend some time seeing if I had any gross character defects I could patch before subjecting future employees to potential misery (or to at least have criteria for recognizing a co-founder to help in the absence of a patch). The best I could find in this area wasn't that great, but it was Smarts: Are We Hardwired For Success?. It turned out to be kinda shallow and sad with poorly designed psych instruments and unsupported cognitive biases about personal immutability all over the place.
"Smarts" mostly just confirmed for me that any subject area people usually come to with selfish motivations (esp in business writing ) will mostly have crap for epistemology. I don't even have a single working hypothesis as to why this is so common in this area, but I have various suspicions that are all generically reinforced every time I find books like this.
The only really valuable thing I got out of "Smarts" was a working theory for "style conflicts" I'd seen between people who are good at (and value) flexible reaction to surprises and people who are good at (and value) up front planning and diligent execution. I've been trying to get better at Aumann updating with people when high-level abstractions are used as justifications when there are tactical differences of opinion. This was one of the first real "hits" I've had in that area (though that wasn't what I bought the book for).
( For what I wanted, I should have bought Leadership and Self Decption, which I didn't find by the "best of breed" strategy, but found next to my bed when I was falling asleep in Benton House after a day hanging out with SIAI's Visiting Fellows. Most of the one-star Amazon reviews of this book appear to be true, but the topic (someone's pet theory about the psychological mechanisms behind self deception in social contexts) was fascinating and helped me find some areas where I probably really was broken and it was simple to detect this and fix it.
I'm not sure how that book ended up in that bedroom, but I am grateful for whatever serendipity (or Machiavellian plotting :-P) brought it to my awareness! )
In the course of gearing up for the startup I also tracked down a "brass tacks and details" book on the subject (which is still in my "to read" queue) called The Startup Company Bible For Entrepreneurs. I haven't looked at this book enough to form a substantive opinion.
"Why Men Love Bitches" is a really great book (and it works just as well if you reverse the genders). That's one of the books that helped me learn about people and relationships and figure out what I want as well. I'm sorry to hear you decry the whole PUA/dating/social skills/relationship advice field as bankrupt; I've found these materials and quick-and-dirty experimental method very useful for figuring out what works and feels right for me.
I'm curious, what do you mean about changing your sexual ethics?
Another classic that I found in a similarly serendipitous way is Cialdini's "Influence".
The problem I had with them is that advice in this area generally applies an instrumental view to "other people", without attention to the kinds of people the skills are likely to work on, and whether those people (after the interaction or deep into it) are likely to be better people who are retrospectively happy about their interactions with you.
For most of my life I've been of the opinion that the idea of "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" is a sham excuse that people invent after having been partly responsible for causing an emotional trainwreck that was very painful to most of the people involved. My working hypothesis, then and now, is that it is probably better not to get romantically entangled with someone unless you and your sweetie are both capable offering and granting something approaching research grade informed consent (as opposed to merely judicial grade where its pretty much deemed not to have been obtained only in cases of gross fraud or dramatic mental impairment).
I'm not talking about getting signatures before smooching with someone, but I am talking about (1) thinking about it first, (2) imagining possible consequences for both parties (and possible children who may be created) in the coming weeks, months, and years, and (3) doing one's best to avoid harm to anyone given such thoughtfulness which probably requires some time in private and lengthy conversation.
Cialdini's "Influence" is an interesting example of the social skills literature, because he ostensibly wrote it as a "defense against the dark arts" textbook to help people avoid being manipulated. In practice, it is studied mostly by compliance professionals as one of the most epistemologically sound manuals that exists on the subject of the "dark arts" in general. I don't think it is an accident that sound epistemology and benevolent moral intent went together like this.
Though there is great ethical value in helping people avoid influence techniques, I contend that there is also great ethical value in teaching people how to influence others. I argue that social skills (of which social influence is a subset) are distributed inequitably in society, and that this result is unjust. Some people are dramatically better at social influence (status, etc...) than others knowingly or unknowingly, due to different personality traits and upbringings. There are the haves, and the have-nots in the area of social skills.
The only way for social equality to exist is for people to be in the same bracket of social skills (and social influence ability). We can't make things equal, but we can compress the disparity between the top and the bottom, so the people at the bottom aren't getting stomped on so badly.
Either the haves must give up their social skills, or the have-nots must attain more social skills. The first solution is impossible. With their higher social status, the haves can't be forced to do so, and they will scoff at requests to disarm out of the goodness of their hearts. The cool kids aren't going to change how they do things no matter how much the uncool kids stamp their feet. Furthermore, some of the haves are naturally that way due to their phenotype, and they can't lower their social skills (at least, not without the help of the Handicapper General ).
The solution is for the have-nots to learn to be more socially influential. Yet if you do so, you join the ranks of the haves, though you may be one of their more restrained and reflective members. Unfortunately, if you become one of the haves you will still encounter have-nots. You should avoid stomping on them, but they may end up at a disadvantage relative to you. It isn't your fault that they aren't educated about social influence, and it isn't your individual responsibility to do so.
A society where disparities in social skills have been compressed by pulling people at the bottom upwards would be more equal than what we have today. Reducing this inequality is a good thing. There would be great transparency about social influence. That's part of the reason I write so much about these subjects: I'm trying to do my part to get the knowledge more evenly distributed. Yet there is a strange agreement in society between the haves and the have-nots: they both often look down on have-nots trying to become haves.
I also believe that there should be more discussion of the ethics of social influence. Yet in discussions of the ethics of social influence, I often notice a greater degree of scrutiny on people who are learning social influence, rather than on those who are already doing it. Furthermore, some ethical criticisms of social influence (usually leveled at those learning it) seem overly idealistic. When social influence and status is woven so deeply into the fabric of society, the phrase "don't hate the player; hate the game" can often be a valid defense.
This is reminding me of Westerfeld's Uglies, a pretty good science fiction novel about a society where everyone gets plastic surgery at age 16 to make them extremely beautiful.
As might be expected in a novel, there's an arbitrarily added catch to the beauty, but would just having the surgery be standard be a bad idea?
The novel was inspired by Raphael Carter's ""'Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation' by K.N. Sirsi and Sandra Botkin"", a short story which explores the implication of people having the option of not noticing whether people are beautiful or not.
I see learning status gaining skills as an arms race. That is you gaining more social influence will encourage others to gain more to try and stay ahead of you so that they can get what they want. Thus forcing you to spend more time and energy on socialising. It is not as simple as have and have-nots.
I'd guess the haves socially denigrating the have-nots for trying to get more social skills is part of their way of fending off competitors.
Why the have-nots might do it? Well if they are part of your social group there are a number of reasons.
They might not want to be on their guard around you in case you try and manipulate them.
They might worry that you will become less interesting to talk to or less of a friend as you spend less time with your head in a book/consuming in-group media and more time shmoozing and climbing the greasy pole.
If they are not part of your social group, then yep a legitimate bias unless they are trying to defuse the arms race. Which is a bit overly idealistic I'll grant you.
With just a little elaboration on the relevant bias at work this would make a fantastic top level post. This insight in particular made me laugh:
Thanks for sharing your list Jennifer
If you're interested in a few people's theories about self deception (perhaps on a more philosophical level), including an entry by Tom Schelling (though it wasn't about self deception as much), you might like The Multiple Self
Kathy Kolbe's The Conative Connection might be a better view of style conflicts.
A summary
Thanks a lot for the link to CGT and Sprague-Grundy theory. It's a beautiful area of math that I once knew in detail, but somehow managed to forget completely.
My way of saying thanks: take a look at Ford circles.
Great article. Thanks so much for linking to it. I interpreted the article to be about dealing with anxiety, though, not about learning skills from declarative knowledge. And yes, it's relevant for social situations as well, especially:
And the courage to socialize incompetently is a huge part of what it means to have social skills.
I think it's an article about not finding a way to deal with anxiety.
Wow. That linked article is killing me softly. I wish he had a general solution to that problem expressable in declarative knowledge--I've never played Go, and certainly don't plan to now, because I know exactly what he's talking about.