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NancyLebovitz comments on Rationality, Transhumanism, and Mental Health - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: ialdabaoth 14 October 2012 09:11AM

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Comment author: TimS 15 October 2012 01:27:50PM *  9 points [-]

Your response suggests you have received a lot of negative feedback for your social interactions. Be careful not to overgeneralize those negative reactions to others. Especially don't overgeneralize from your interactions with your schoolmates, because the status games in school are not well correlated with achieving anything productive.

More generally, keep in mind that social ability is not a statistic (like Charisma on a RPG character sheet), it is a skill. Like all skills, it improves with practice. MixedNuts' advice to you is good, especially this post.

For whatever reason, being reflexive about social skills is extremely taboo in modern society. That means it is difficult for someone with social skill deficits to find someone what can provide helpful feedback for improvement. By contrast, a football player could listen to her coach for constructive criticism and suggestions on how to practice. But the fact that people don't talk about how to improve social skills does not mean improvement is impossible.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 October 2012 01:44:39PM 3 points [-]

Just to note that attacking someone for lack of social skills can happen in families as well as in high school.