Bound_up comments on How my social skills went from horrible to mediocre - Less Wrong
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Comments (199)
I'm tempted to take that as a Crocker's rule invocation. But I have realized that you wrote this for people-like-you, that is, after all, pretty much its explicit purpose. As such, I'm not sure I have an criticism that I can't definitively think is helpful.
Nonetheless, I want to point out two general things about this will make this hard post to read for most people. First is the length, and even in this you note that you spend too much time explaining something that you've worked on. I think the length was partially unnecessary and not just a reflection of me not being your target audience (I assume). The second is that you come across as exceedingly arrogant. I think you are attempting to explain your background so that we understand the situation. But you explicitly call yourself smarter than the typical reader of the site that you are posting this on. Ouch! But again, perhaps this is just a reflection of you having a very narrow target audience and for them this could read like a "ah, finally someone gets it!"
I hope that you take this to be useful, particularly for when you write for a wider audience. For what its worth, my mental post it note has you labelled as a user that I should pay attention to. I say that since I kind of suspect that you already know everything I just mentioned and aren't bad at overcoming these in other situations, but thought this worth saying explicitly given the context of trying to improve.
I more get the impression that he's just not trying to mince words.
His statements of his thoughts and his perceived reasons for social isolation are expressed bluntly and succinctly.
It would have been more socially acceptable for him to preview all of his good points with disclaimers about how wrong he believed himself to "probably" be, and we probably would have understood him as expressing social deference rather than actual uncertainty, but I get the feeling he's focusing on appealing to LW's reputed value of truth and meaning, and cutting out the niceties for brevity's sake.
All of which I personally approve so long as he's aware of it. It could be a stumbling block to communication in other forums.