I would like to analyze my instinctive reaction here rather than express it. Please support me in this.
I don't think my idea of "obviously fake smile" maps to social incompetence. It just implies insincerity. Many people, even those who are not malevolent assholes, dislike seeing insincerity.
That's the first-level idea, and I am prepared to reject it because of the possibility that you may, in fact, be sincere about saying things like that. But being excessively nice is not always an incidental choice to make. In fact, I believe that I would pretty much never be able to sincerely say something as saccharine as the early comments in this thread. Thus, if many people behave in that way, I would be forced to choose between being rude and being insincere.
Oh, come on, you call that saccharine? This is saccharine XD
As for insincerity, it's not that I'm insincere, it's that I'm very profuse in my demonstrations of affection, respect, and so on. The emotion behind is genuine, I'm just very openly demonstrative about it. If the other person has codes where only a much greater favour is deserving of such open displays of positivity, they see the discrepancy and deduce that I am sending false (or exaggerated) signals.
The same is true in reverse. Some people have a norm of violently lashing out at anything they di...
This is my first attempt at starting a casual conversation on LW where people don't have to worry about winning or losing points, and can just relax and have social fun together.
So, Big Bang Theory. That series got me wondering. It seems to be about "geeks", and not the basement-dwelling variety either; they're highly successful and accomplished professionals, each in their own field. One of them has been an astronaut, even. And yet, everything they ever accomplish amounts to absolutely nothing in terms of social recognition or even in terms of personal happiness. And the thing is, it doesn't even get better for their "normal" counterparts, who are just as miserable and petty.
Consider, then; how would being rationalists would affect the characters on this show? The writing of the show relies a lot on laughing at people rather than with them; would rationalist characters subvert that? And how would that rationalist outlook express itself given their personalities? (After all, notice how amazingly different from each other Yudkowsky, Hanson, and Alicorn are, just to name a few; they emphasize rather different things, and take different approaches to both truth-testing and problem-solving).
Note: this discussion does not need to be about rationalism. It can be a casual, normal discussion about the series. Relax and enjoy yourselves.
But the reason I brought up that series is that its characters are excellent examples of high intelligence hampered by immense irrationality. The apex of this is represented by Dr. Sheldon Cooper, who is, essentially, a complete fundamentalist over every single thing in his life; he applies this attitude to everything, right down to people's favorite flavor of pudding: Raj is "axiomatically wrong" to prefer tapioca, because the best pudding is chocolate. Period. This attitude makes him a far, far worse scientist than he thinks, as he refuses to even consider any criticism of his methods or results.