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ikrase comments on Mistakes repository - Less Wrong
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Failing to learn one's social norms quickly enough, and failing to make any falsifiable tests as to whether I was making mistakes. I was nearly asocial in elementary school, middle school was just weird, and then high school was this horrible mess of thinking people were being freaked out by me, or avoiding me, or not avoiding me, or literally anything. In reality, lots of people loved me and I didn't need to fear or be awkward about asking favors of people or asking to hang out with them.
Buying big-ticket items such as computer equipment by numerical stats only. Compactness, physical construction quality, compatibility, and battery life (which is remarkably often not really rated, or degrades significantly) may be as important or more important than non-numerical quantities. For the specific example of laptop computers, this means to go for low-end Macs, business-level computers, and if you desire Linux, Lenovo Thinkpads. And the worst part is that I didn't end up spending that much less than I would have for something with much better construction quality, etc.
Not having any friends or interests outside of STEM (during university), or even outside a very specific nerdy mindset.
Holden Karnofsky discusses an exaggerated version of your laptop mistake here.
Seconded. I still find this hard to undo, though I've realized the problem at least for a few years now. The problem is that your sense of what people value and think about is highly, highly skewed if you just hang out with nerds. Further, people outside the nerd community have a broader emotional repertoire.
I realized that I had a narrow social circle when I counted how many of my friends can do "Integrate[Exp[-x^2],{x,-Infinity,+Infinity}]" in their sleep. You can use a similar test to figure out the narrowness of your social circle.
I would be very interested in hearing more about this -- my set of friends has a decidedly nerdy bias. Am I missing out on some feelings?
Some examples follow (caveat: these are generalizations based on small data-sets and each rule has exceptions. But I feel they're broadly true. Others, please support or contradict these 'rules').
My non-nerdy friends are more open to physical touch, such as hugging, playful touches during laughter, comforting touches and so on. Nerdy friends seem to restrict themselves to handshakes; some find even handshakes awkward.
More inclined to solidarity rituals. Typical example: non-nerd enjoys sports. Nerd dismisses them as artificial constructs designed to provide conflict as entertainment, and therefore doesn't want to participate in the ritual. Another example: nerds will typically take most conversations towards arguments/debates; non-nerds will see conversation as a solidarity ritual and keep it's flow more towards participant enjoyment.
Larger amounts of empathy. Non-nerdy friends seem more open to non-judgmental empathy. Nerds tend to dismiss someone's pain simply because it's part of a larger pattern. Example: non-nerdy friend says the condition of disabled people in India/China is very sad. Nerdy friend: yes, India/China have large populations and therefore life is cheap; and revels in his ability to "explain it away". The conversation becomes stunted because the nerd has refused to participate in the "empathy-field" that the non-nerd wanted to generate.
My experience is exactly the reverse of this.
Agree.
Insufficient data for a meaningful answer. Query: do you refer only to empathy for large groups of distant people, or do you also suspect that nerds have less empathy for individuals in their social groups? It is not obvious that these would be related.
This hasn't been my experience. There aren't many people I consider good friends who aren't somewhat nerdy (though some are non-STEM nerds - history, the arts, etc.), but their amount of nerdiness, intelligence and STEM interest don't seem to correlate much with how emotional they are. And I'm not sure how I'd deal with being around people much more emotional than my friends are, even though I don't think I'm someone who'se unusually bad at dealing with that, and I do usually enjoy when people share their feelings with me.
I wonder if going to a college where nerdiness is the norm is part of the reason for this? Maybe being cold has to do with being a minorty, rather than being nerds?
There could also be selection bias at work here - sharing feelings is one of the things that makes me think I'm friends with someone rather than acquaintances.
That's a bit like saying "breaking a leg". Nobody does that intentionally. The mistake lies in what you make of it: being purposely asocial is not a good idea (especially through college age).
There were methods available for me to learn them. All I had to do was just some freaking low-risk costless empirical tests to calibrate it. My parents were telling me to. Once I reached college I did the tests and now am reasonably social.
Provide more concrete examples please.
Failing to ask people to spend time with me or work on projects together even when that was probably expected of me and (not in hindsight, but at the time) probably had few to no possible negative consequences.
Why is that a mistake?
Because humanity is the most complex and interesting subject that exists, and limiting yourself to a small portion of it is a good way to miss out on all kinds of interesting things.
That would also apply to not having any friends outside of your country, or outside of your generational group, or outside of your socio-economic class, or ...
Also, “all kinds of interesting things” have opportunity costs.
I do have friends in all those groups, and consider them valuable as learning experiences in addition to the friendship. If you want to know people, cast a wide net. And knowing people has more value than you might think - politics, sales, even picking a neighbourhood to live in are all fields where a better understanding of human nature can be very valuable.