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Barry_Cotter comments on Polyhacking - Less Wrong
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I agree with everything you said, and with everything michaelsullivan said. They're not in conflict. Barring a Friendly Singularity and CEV people with poorer social skills are going to have worse lives, and worse, improving your own social skills or improving other people's social skills is not going to change the fact that there is a bottom 10%, and life is going to suck harder for them.
Life is a bitch and it is quite abnormal to act on any sympathy one may have with the creepy/awkward/annoying person near you.
For any young geek reading this, here are a few ways of improving your social skills/ decreasing mild to moderate social anxiety
succeedsocially.com has a lot of reasonably useful advice too, and if you're a romantically deprived male there's plenty of instrumentally useful advice in the PUA subculture but the lowest hanging fruit is * Shower daily and use anti-perspirant. That's not negotiable. You needn't use deodorant but honestly you probably should. * Smile more, greet people i.e. say "Hi" a lot. * The more people you talk to the more likely you are to make friends; the more girls you talk to, and know, the more likely you are to find someone you're interested who is interested in you </end heteronormative> * If you can get into an exercise regimen, most people can make relatively large gains pretty fast for not much time or work. This will make you hotter and more confident. Some people are fucked genetically but they're a small minority. Try to get fitter * Learn how to tell if clothes fit and never buy anthing that doesn't fit again. There's much more to fashion but that is the single biggest gain you can make and it will take well under two hours. There's a guide here and plenty more good stuff here particularly in the sidebar.
Also, Everything gets better after you leave High School, and it can continue to get better for a looong time.
Although I largely agree with what you've said here for the socially inept, I think the prevalence of the sentiment of that final statement may well lead to a great many people being disappointed when they arrive at university and find themselves more isolated than ever.
You are entirely correct. I could more accurately have said "For the majority of people with bad high school experiences, the post high school environment, whether in college or at work is much, much better. If this is not true for you then making a concerted effort to make the acquaintance of people who share your interests will, in the majority of cases, make your post-high school experience much better. If that doesn't worktry to improve your most basic social skills and go back to step 2, meeting people with similar interests."
Is that more or less accurate? How could it be improved?
I think, more or less, yes. But, just in case high-schoolers who have had trouble in the past are reading this, we should give as much specific advise as we can: Don't expect university to be easier in social terms; there are less people ready to score a quick status-boost from putting you down, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be charitable with their friendship. I think the most important piece of advise is "join a club." Really - it's the quickest and most effective way to hack yourself out of loneliness.
Also it got easier to hang out with other fellow geeks. It might be useful to learn the common stuff for the sake of getting along in life. But there is no need to actually spend too much time with people you do not enjoy.
What do you consider to be the comon stuff? Agreed that spending lots of time with people you don't get on with is mostly unnecessary, but a little social nous goes a long way, and in many situations it's a large force multiplier in your effectiveness.
For me, it got worse.
Sorry to hear that. How and why? I'm under the impression that your over-riding, basic problem is that you would prefer to not be, maintaining this preference even under medication that makes the experience of being alive more or less pleasant. Is that impression accurate?
I suspect that the average person as intelligent and (perhaps slightly more) motivated than you, but without the outlook on life would end up with a dead end, not terribly well paid job with ample leisure possibilities, or on some variety of social welfare, and mostly satisfied-ish with their life, as evidenced by lack of action to change it. I say that because I am that guy.
<Other Optimising> How goes the moving out of parents' house? I strongly recommend it from my own experience. Even a pretty crap badly paid, low status job and pack of lose, mildly substance abusing, poorly socialised friends is a huge improvement. Freedom is, in my experience fantastic, and a social life makes it much better. </end Other Optimising>
Short answer: In high school I was "popular". In college I basically had to start over socially. I did okay with that in my first two years, but in my third year onward it kind of fell apart and I ended up fairly isolated. (It didn't help that I took six years to graduate and my freshman-year friends all graduated in four.) I also hated most of my classes, and the ones I didn't loathe were merely tolerable.
Awesome post, thanks for it.
Probably atypical counter-example: I'm pretty sure I had significant opportunities to get laid my last year in HS (which, being an idiot, I did nothing about), more so than I have since.
Well I know very little about you but if you're kind of nerdy and went to a co-ed high school then developed a much nerdier social circle on hitting university, and as a result had less opportunity you wouldn't be too atypical. On idiocy, did you know the opportunities were there and not take them or are they obvious only in retrospect? If the latter I wouldn't bother dwelling on it because you couldn't have known, and if you didn't take them for principled reasons you no longer endorse I wouldn't either. Values change. Now if you knew damned well you could have, wanted to, and still somehow couldn't do it, then yes, you were an idiot. Speaking as someone who was in that last category well after high school.