Any thoughts about how to move from small talk to more interesting topics?
It seems that being extroverted is mostly about simply building certain extroverted habits. I’ve just noticed that I should probably try and replace my default response to “How are you?”/”What’s up?” with something with hooks for interesting topics, or maybe just saying whatever’s on my mind at the moment.
It occurs to me that certain situations and topics constantly reoccur, and that these present useful opportunities to transition to a more mutually interesting topic. For example, I should probably condition my response to mentioning the weather into “hon...
This thread is for asking the rationalist community for practical advice. It's inspired by the stupid questions series, but with an explicit focus on instrumental rationality.
Questions ranging from easy ("this is probably trivial for half the people on this site") to hard ("maybe someone here has a good answer, but probably not") are welcome. However, please stick to problems that you actually face or anticipate facing soon, not hypotheticals.
As with the stupid questions thread, don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better, and please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
(See also the Boring Advice Repository)