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Bryan-san comments on Stupid questions thread, October 2015 - Less Wrong
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This is an interesting heuristic! Has it led you to any unexpected situations or conclusions?
Well, the unexpected thing was how many people it screened out. I started asking "What do you love" as a conversation starter as a way to bring out the best side of people as quickly as possible - but I was surprised to see how many people didn't have a satisfactory answer.
Pretty quickly, I found that those people tended to be the people who I didn't enjoy
Living in society requires being able to tell white lies, especially in cases where absolute truth is not expected. Someone asked that question who couldn't figure out what to say was probably trying to figure out what kind of lie appropriate social behavior requires him to tell.
Conversation between actual human beings is not there just for the truth value of the conversational statements. Don't treat it like it is; asking that question and expecting that you can treat the results as sincere and truthful shows that you don't understand people.
I'm actually not asking the question for the truth value. It's about changing the energy of the conversation (which is EXACTLY what conversation is about). When people begin to talk about things they love, it brings them into a completely different headspace, and totally changes the dynamic.
A lot of this is about my energy as I approach the question, if they can see I'm being sincere and non-judgemental, they'll feel open to reciprocating that energy.
Filtering out those kinds of people when you seek friends is useful.
But "those kinds of people" here means "people with social skills".
That doesn't mesh with my experience. Someone with social skills will usually ask me to clarify, or say "hmm, that's an interesting question" then give a really interesting answer.
If they don't have anything they really love (or it's a socially unacceptable answer, like one of the ones I gave) then they'll deflect gracefully, at which point I'll talk for a bit more then end the conversation.
One's without social skills who have something they love will often give a short answer, and then I'll have to ask a few more probing questions or relate it to what I love before they really start to open up about it.
Ones without social skills who don't have anything they love will say so, and again I'll talk for a bit more then end the conversation.
Not in the social circles in which I move and that includes a bunch of people who make money with coaching and social skill training.