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GabrielDuquette 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.
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.