ChristianKl comments on How my social skills went from horrible to mediocre - Less Wrong

29 Post author: JonahSinick 19 May 2015 11:29PM

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Comment author: JoeW 20 May 2015 09:16:00AM *  4 points [-]

(b) A woman sends signals of romantic interest, either accidentally, or whimsically. I mistakenly assume that she's carefully deliberating over the possibility of dating me, as I would be in her position. I decide to express interest in her.

She hasn't been thinking about whether or not she'd like to date me at all, she was instead engaging in casual preliminary flirting and/or wasn't carefully guarding against accidentally sending signals of romantic interest. So from her point of view it looks like "This guy expressed romantic interest in me without paying attention to how I'm feeling." She reactively reprimands me, or cuts contact with me, usually with connotations (even if slight) that I might not respect her boundaries.

I mistakenly think that she had carefully deliberated on how to respond to my expression of romantic interest. So I mistakenly perceive the false dichotomy:

 I'm a delusional potential rapist, and she sees this.
I'm not a delusional potential rapist, she knows that she's made me feel like I might be one. The woman who I loved has turned out to have so little empathy that she doesn't mind the fact that she's done this.

Both of these possibilities are extremely upsetting, and I fall into severe depression, totally oblivious to the fact that she was behaving in a reactive way and that her reaction is neither evidence that I'm a potential rapist, nor evidence that she doesn't mind me feeling like a potential rapist.

I am not a "Social Justice Warrior" (more a social justice wizard/rogue) but I am considering responding to this as someone who has tried to multiclass in both rationality and social justice.

My previous forays in this direction on LW (admittedly not very skilled or persuasive) were not well received. Is there interest in discussing social justice fails as a subset of social skill fails and thus as rationality fails?

Comment author: ChristianKl 20 May 2015 11:57:55AM 6 points [-]

I think that's largely depends on whether you manage to be explicit enough about your reasoning so that people who haven't taken the social justice class can follow your reasoning.

There's inferential distance. If you just reiterate SJW talking points that's likely not well received. If you manage to get deep enough that you actually communicate new insights, that's appreciated.