moridinamael comments on How I Ended Up Non-Ambitious - Less Wrong
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For several years I have known that I 'max out' at groups of five. If I'm in a conversation with up to four other people I'm charming and relaxed. Add a sixth and I clam up and turn into a totally different person. My working explanation is that my, as you call it, social modeling circuitry gets saturated and can't handle the combinatorial jump. For me it feels like an exponential increase in difficulty. I can't get the timing right, I don't feel like anything I say is interesting enough to cut in.
Interestingly, I am excellent at public speaking, because there's no need to model the audience on an individual basis.
Can you train yourself to pretend certain people do not even exist?
I trained myself to pretend that people exist. This is maybe the achievement I'm most proud of, besides this.
My training is pretty useless when someone stops earning the effort. They effectively stop existing.
I'm pretty sure this is the most joke-theoretically perfect joke I've ever encountered. Not only did I laugh, but 3 minutes later I was still laughing again for new reasons.
Joke theory is such that the maximisation thereof is bestiality puns? I mean, it cracked me up too but my theoretical conception calls for a perfection where the lewdness is on the subtle side of the spectrum!
I'm of the Michael O'Donoghue school. Jokes should be like Teflon-coated "cop killer" bullets. The subtlety part of the compression algorithm is only there to ensure delivery.
Thank you. Six years ago, I was working as a mover and carrying a box labeled "DR" for dining room. There was a Lab running around the customer's front yard. Suddenly!
Could you expand on that?
I'm exaggerating a bit. Of course I didn't ever think I was hallucinating other people (although I did fantasize as a kid about being the only real person on Earth -- everyone else was part of an alien experiment that centered on me). Rather, my subjective other-human-caused mental sensations vacillate between obliteratingly intense and nearly nonexistent. So by "trained myself to pretend that people exist" I really mean that I've improved my ability to modulate my perception of other-people-radiation so it isn't a choice between trickle or firehose in the face. Which has allowed me to communicate better and form lasting relationships.
To observers it probably seems like I'm an occasional solipsist, but that's just a coping mechanism.
I'm now being entertained by contemplating the difference between an occasional solipsist who believes that they are occasionally the only real person in the world, and one who occasionally believes they are (and have always been) the only real person in the world.
Sounds like something Oliver Sacks would write about.
I wonder what the first kind of occasional solipsist would think happened to all the other people when they became the one real person.
Well, if one considers p-zombies a coherent idea (which I don't), I can't see how it's noticeably less plausible to have someone who is sometimes genuinely conscious and sometimes a p-zombie. From there, to the idea that everyone is like that, seems a small step.
Of course, this also allows for the occasional solipsist who believes that occasionally there's only one real person in the world and it isn't them.
Years ago someone said to me "There are only forty-seven real people in the world, the rest are just bad special effects" to which i replied "I take exception to that: I am a damn good special effect!"
I actually find a variation on the part-time zombie to be...spot on, In terms of what the algorithm feels like. All you need is a bit of sleep deprivation.
That is the funniest thing I have seen in quite a while.
Wow. That is a really brutal joke.
I'll take that as a compliment...?
Yes. You shocked me.
Fascinating suggestion. Worth a shot.
This is a decent suggestion, but limited. I'm similar to moridinamael (except I find my cliff isn't as steep; 6 is when I start feeling my ability degrade and ~9 is where it's almost gone), and I find it easy to see most people as irrelevant in technical contexts (lectures, work, etc.) but not in most social contexts. If I'm at a party with 12 people, the only way I've found effective to stay talkative is form a subgroup that's 5 or fewer and just focus on them. Writing off active participants is a recipe for awkwardness / hurt feelings, which shutting down prevents.
That's really interesting!
I have a similar "transition mode", but it's between one-on-one conversations and groups of three. If I'm talking one-on-one, I usually contribute at least 50% of the conversation, sometimes significantly more. In theory, talking to two other people should result in me contributing about 1/3 of the conversation...but it's more like 5%. I think part of it is because the conversation dynamics with three people are more complicated, making it hard to manage things like taking your turn without interrupting the others. Part of it is because in a group of three, I'm not needed to avoid awkward silences.
The amount I'll actually talk in a group conversation drops even more steeply above three. I wouldn't say specifically that I'm less relaxed, that I'm uncomfortable, or even that my comments become less interesting, but I tend to go to "listening mode" instead of "talking mode", which is less work for me anyway.
I have no problems in public speaking, or elaborating on a question someone asks me specifically during a group discussion.
I'm the same. Great one-on-one, and extremely awkward when there are two or more other people, which I find to be very exhausting due to the extra conversation dynamics you note. It's also very difficult too when you're the sort of person who likes to periodically be silent for a period in order to think more deeply about what you're talking about -- with more than one other person there, somebody else will just start a new conversation on a new topic to avoid the "dreaded silence".
Yeah, I've played in front of thousands of people with no problem. It really is the workload of individual modeling.
I'm not sure what the threshold represents. Do you find that you rarely coast on small talk, preferring instead to ask pointed questions for which you expect well-articulated truthful answers, all with the agenda of developing the most accurate model of that person within the time given?
I wouldn't say I'm quite that clinical about it. I try to connect with people, I try to imagine what it's like to be them, and there is a certain amount of calculated questioning in order to determine if I'm seeing them clearly. I try to make people feel liked and respected even when I'm arguing with them, and general would rather be polite than win an argument. When there are too many people, I feel like my interjections will not serve to meaningfully connect with anyone, so I refrain from saying anything.
So I suppose you're exactly right that I generally don't use small talk, except as an "opener.". I'm quite bad at it. Of course, I doubt that anybody but myself notices any of this about me.