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Cyan comments on The Ultraviolet - Less Wrong
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Paul Graham's essay Why Nerds are Unpopular is essential reading for this thread, especially for folks who are getting caught up in neurotypicality/autism vs high IQ. Short version: nerds have more interesting things to learn than social skills.
On the other hand, social skills are instrumentally useful. A network of contacts takes time, but learning enough skills to avoid unintentionally pissing people off, and enough to be likable don't take too too long, and have a lot of benefit.
Indeed. In
"interesting" =/= "useful"!
The article seems to be mostly true in areas with closed communities, like high school, and I'm not sure how much it applies to later social non-success.
Status isn't zero-sum when you can walk away, and while building a network of contacts takes time you would hopefully do so with people you like (who, being nerdy, are more likely to have profitable technical skills).
People ganging up on you because they need something to hold their group together and they know that you don't have many allies is different from people not allying with you because you give off the impression of being someone they don't want to associate with.
Formal schooling creates a hot-house environment for social development: it's artificial and fosters growth of things that wouldn't grow otherwise. The point I want to make with respect to the current discussion is that when nerd types fail to thrive in it in their formative years, it puts them behind in social development, and some have extreme difficulty catching up. Those who never catch up can fail to associate successfully even with other nerd types.