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query comments on How my social skills went from horrible to mediocre - Less Wrong
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Some quick background: a friend and I run the sales department of a multi-million dollar company. We built that company from the ground up from about 15 clients to 5,000 and counting, and now manage 20+ sales reps.
Contrary to popular opinion, social interaction is really fucking easy. There's one common trait among likable people, (and I don't mean likable in the shitty, salesy sort of way where a person is so outgoing you feel obligated to say you like them, when in fact you think they're a giant turd)). That trait can be easily explained: you truly, genuinely care about other people's success more than yourself.
If you're a parent, it's a lot easier to internalize this attitude. When you have a little kid running around your house, you understand pretty intuitively how you can love something that, for the most part, does nothing but eats, shits, makes messes, and generally disobeys you. You see the potential in that little person. You see the commonalities. You realize that little gremlin is like you in so, so many ways. Eventually it will grow up and become a real person, and that is exciting.
I think you aren't alone: MOST LWers (myself included) probably view themselves as one level higher than a "baseline person". The problem that I've seen is, most smart people tend to react to "baselines" with a mixture of indifference, condescension and outright disdain. It's hard to tell what is worse. But baseline people aren't fundamentally lacking. They just haven't grown up yet. If you look hard enough, you'll realize the commonalities. You'll realize the potential. You'll realize that eventually, this baseline person you're talking to is going to grow up and become a full-on person.
Most people who are good with kids have a knack for talking to kids on the kids' level. The phonies are the ones who talk to kids like they are these subhuman creatures that can't comprehend anything more complex than Go Fish. The assholes are the ones who can't even be bothered to condescend themselves to talk to an 8-year-old. After all, what could an 8-year-old possibly say that's even remotely interesting?
Ultimately that's the key: realizing that, even an 8-year-old has the potential to bring something to the table eventually. Einstein, Feynman, Hofstadter, heck, even Yudkowsky, were all 8 years old at some point. But you can't force one of those into existence.
If you look at every person you interact with and say, "This could be the next Richard Feynman", regardless of whether it takes 10 years, 20 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to be invested in their success and their development as a person.
Thanks for this comment; I don't know about social interaction being really fucking easy, but I agree wholeheartedly with your recommendations for how to see other people.
Seeing this modeled in the people around me has had a huge positive impact in my life. I'm surrounded by people who, while not skilled at rationality, continually look for the potential and value in other people and openly strategize about how to nurture that viewpoint. (Of course, it would be even better if they were also skilled rationalists, and I'm trying to add that component into my community life as well.)
I'm not sure how many, but I think most people around here are "pro-human" in the sense of thinking every persons life, happiness, and fulfillment is a value to be ultimately pursued (though I make no argument about the opportunity cost of doing so in general at the current time.) Accepting this on an intellectual level is different than emotionally integrating it, and the emotional integration of this has been really fulfilling for me, as well as having the positive impacts on social interaction that you mention.
I think the tendency to feel negative toward "baselines" can be seen as an attribution error in light of those values. You may be annoyed/disgusted/confused by the other person's lack of understanding in the moment, but the cause of your response can be seen as conditional to that situation, and you can remind yourself of all the good things you would wish for this person given the ability to make them happen.
I'd tentatively recommend anyone finding themselves feeling negative toward "baselines" cultivate a group of people around them who take this view, even if they have bad epistemics. I hear that Unitarian Universalists may be good for this, as they're open to atheists while having some of the same pro-human community values. My recommendation is tentative, since I think other people may respond differently to the trade-off of community epistemics versus nurturing this viewpoint; but if you have people around you who can satisfy both, then spend time with them!
Edit: I think I want to add a warning/disagreement that you don't want to end up being condescending or fatherly/motherly unless it's an appropriate relationship for that. This is one of the ways interaction isn't easy. But I do find it really helpful to cultivate this as an internal viewpoint.
Thanks for the reply. The part about it being "really easy" was a glib attempt at humor, in the same vein as saying, "Losing weight is really easy: you just stop eating so much and start working out more!" Or "It's easy to quit smoking, just don't smoke!" As with many things in life there's a big gap between knowing what one should do and then actually doing it.
As you said, intellectually accepting something tends to be much easier than emotionally integrating it. I wish I had better advice when it came to that part of things. The best I can do is just point to the key premise behind social skills and hope to highlight some mistakes that smart people tend to make when approaching the issue.
Another example of what you mention in your first paragraph that I've said before: It's easy to break the world record in any running event. Just run faster than the world record holder did!
It should be fairly obvious that it's not just a case of running faster. A list of necessary conditions for success is not a solution. (Though it can be a good start.)
I go into this in further detail in this post
Defining the success conditions is a critical first step, and you'd be surprised at how many people don't do that. Many people frame their goals as a state-of-being, e.g. "I want to be the fastest runner in the world" rather than a success-condition, e.g. "I want to beat the current world record holder."