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Barry_Cotter comments on How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy - Less Wrong Discussion
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What motivation do people with social skills and those norms have to help those with less social skills? Because unless there's something in it for them they're not doing it. Many of the kind of people who have social skills find hanging out with the kind of people who don't actively unpleasant. That is actually overlaps substantially with the way creepy is used; people whose social skills are so low that they are unpleasant to be around in a group, who do not have redeeming features/high status.
Also, other people's lack of social skills? Mostly not my problem. The only people I would give social skills advice to unsolicited would be those who are clearly likely to be receptive to it, i.e. people who are in a status hierarchy I'm in where I'm superior. Most people who ask for advice don't want the real thing, and sugarcoating it and getting the real message through is hard.
Which is why Internet articles are so wonderful. You can give general, detailed, justified advice with many examples, and it's not a personal attack on anybody in particular.
What I find really annoying is the following dynamic:
1) not allowed into existing groups, people without social skills form their own group
2) said group acquires higher status (largely because people without social skills frequently have other useful skills)
3) people with social skills notice the new group with rising status and start joining it
4) said high-social-skills people use their skills to acquire high positions in the group and start kicking the original low-social-skills people out
This more-or-less describes the history of geek/nerd culture over the past several decades.
Do you find this more annoying than other patterns where people lacking X trait and thereby excluded from valuable X-having groups form their own groups, create value within those groups, and then lose control of those groups (and the associated value) to X-havers who appropriate it?
Because it seems to me there are a great many Xes like this. Wealth is an obvious one, for example.
I don't know enough about geek culture to tell how closely that model fits reality; but it looks plausible. I have some doubts about step 4), I prefer explanations that don't involve malice.
An alternative model is that people with social skills tend to be used to subtle and implicit modes of interaction (guess culture vs. ask culture), and the group's explicit modes of interaction makes them uncomfortable (giving rise to this thread).
Yet another model that skips step 1): small groups with a homogenous membership will have simple norms; as the group gets successful it grows and attracts more people and more diversity (in age, sex, nationality, and interests), and the simple norms don't work as well, and "success" in the group depends more and more on being able to handle social complexity ("social skills" and "politics" in the office politics meaning).
I never said step 4) involve malice.
"Malice" may have been a bit strong; maybe it's something like "I prefer explanations that don't imply moral blame for one of the parties involved".
I only provide the explanation, assigning blame or other moral elements is up to you.
Whining about it doesn't strike me as the thing to do. Trying to adapt to it in the short term and/or to fix it in the long term would be better IMO.
Well, one component of fixing this dynamic is drawing people's attention to it. Especially people who may be unknowingly perpetuating it.
Yes.
I would say that if the people with the high social skills have the option of removing the people with low social skills from the group then there is little/no incentive to help them beyond perhaps altruism.
But in many situations these mixed groups are forced, and teaching the people with low social skills to interact according to the understood cultural rules can make them more pleasant company. So if you're continually forced into an environment with someone, improving their social skills can be of direct benefit to you. Examples would include a coworker in a team work environment, a family member or in-law, the roommate or significant other of a valuable friendship, etc.