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TimS comments on "Stupid" questions thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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I like this idea! I feel like the current questions are insufficiently "stupid," so here's one: how do you talk to strangers?
The downsides of talking to strangers are really, really low. Your feelings of anxiety are just lies from your brain.
I've found that writing a script ahead of time for particular situations, with some thoughts of different possible variations in how the conversation could go.
Honestly, not sure I understand the question.
Yeah, it was deliberately vague so I'd get answers to a wide variety of possible interpretations. To be more specific, I have trouble figuring out what my opening line should be in situations where I'm not sure what the social script for introducing myself is, e.g. to women at a bar (I'm a straight male). My impression is that "hi, can I buy you a drink?" is cliché but I don't know what reasonable substitutes are.
"hi, can I buy you a drink?" is also bad for other reasons, because this often opens a kind of transactional model of things where there's kind of an idea that you're buying her time, either for conversation or for other more intimate activities later. Now, this isn't explicitly the case, but it can get really awkward, so I'd seriously caution against opening with it.
I feel like I read something interesting about this on Mark Manson's blog but it's horribly organized so I can't find it now.
That sort of things vary a lot depending on what kind of culture you're in.
"Hi, what's your name?" or "Hi, I'm Qiaochu" (depending on the cultural context, e.g. ISTM the former is more common in English and the latter is more common in Italian). Ain't that what nearly any language course whatsoever teaches you to say on Lesson 1? ;-)¹
Or, if you're in a venue where that's appropriate, "wanna dance?" (not necessarily verbally).
(My favourite is to do something awesome in their general direction and wait for them to introduce themselves/each other to me, but it's not as reliable.)
I conjecture that "Hi, I'm Qiaochu" is a very uncommon greeting in Italian :-).
I think you need to taboo "introducing yourself." The rules are different based on where you want the conversation to end up.
I think to a first-order approximation it doesn't matter where I want the conversation to end up because the person I'm talking to will have an obvious hypothesis about that. But let's say I'm looking for women to date for the sake of concreteness.
Sorry, I have no experience with that, so I lack useful advice. Given your uncertainty about how to proceed, I suggest the possibility that this set of circumstances is not the easiest way for you to achieve the goal you identified.
I am wary of this reasoning. It would make sense if one was uncertain how to pick up women in bars specifically but was quite familiar with how to pick up women in a different environment. However the uncertainty will most likely be more generalised than that and developing the skill in that set of circumstances is likely to give a large return on investment.
This uncertainty is of the type that calls for comfort zone expansion.
Environment matters a lot. Bars (for example) are loud, dark, sometimes crowded, and filled with inebriated people.
I CANNOT STRESS THIS POINT ENOUGH:
Thinking in terms of "picking up women" is the first problem. One should take the approach that they are "MEETING women". The conceptual framing is important here because it will influence intentionality and outcome.
A "meeting" mindset implies equal footing and good intentions, which should be the foundation for any kind of positive human interaction. Many women are turned off by the sense that they are speaking to a man who wants to "pick them up", perhaps sensing that you are nervous about adding them to your dating resume. It's hard to relate to that.
Isn't the goal to engage romantically with a peer, maybe learn something about relationships.
With that little rant out of the way, I think its important to think of where you are best able to have a relaxed and genuine conversation - even with a friend.
If you see a woman at the bar that is especially attractive and worthy of YOUR attention, perhaps admit to her candidly that the location is not your milieu and ask inquisitively if she normally has good conversations at bars. If she says yes and stops at that, chances are she's not interested in talking more with you or simply is not a good conversationalist.
Beware of 'should'. Subscribing to this ideal of equality rules out all sorts of positive human interactions that are not equal yet still beneficial. In fact, limiting oneself to human interactions on an equal footing would be outright socially crippling.
I've been reading PUA esque stuff lately and something they stress is that "the opener doesn't matter", "you can open with anything". This is in contrast to the older, cheesier, tactic based PUAs who used to focus obsessively over finding the right line to open with. This advice is meant for approaching women in bars, but I imagine it holds true for most ocassions you would want to talk to a stranger.
In general if you're in a social situation where strangers are approaching each other, then people are generally receptive to people approaching them and will be grateful that you are putting in the work of initiating contact and not them. People also understand that it's sometimes awkward to initiate with strangers, and will usually try to help you smooth things over if you initially make a rough landing. If you come in awkwardly, then you can gauge their reaction, calibrate to find a more appropriate tone, continue without drawing attention to the initial awkwardness, and things will be fine.
Personally, I think the best way to open a conversation with a stranger would just be to go up to them and say "Hey, I'm __" and offer a handshake. It's straightforward and shows confidence.
If you're in a situation where it's not necessarily common to approach strangers, you'll probably have to to come up with some "excuse" for talking to them, like "that's a cool shirt" or "do you know where the library is?". Then you have to transition that into a conversation somehow. I'm not really sure how to do that part.
EDIT: If an approach goes badly, don't take it personally. They might be having a bad day. They might be socially awkward themselves. And if someone is an asshole to you just for going up and saying hi, they are the weirdo, not you. On the other hand, if ten approaches in a row go badly, then you should take it personally.
Here's a recent example (with a lady sitting beside me in the aeroplane; translated):
from which it was trivially easy to start a conversation.
Don't leave us hanging! Why the hell could she speak all those languages but not English?
She had been born in Brazil to Italian parents, had gone to school in Italy, and was working in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
That gives two explanations for Italian and zero explanations for Spanish, so I'm wondering if one of the Italian explanations was supposed to be Spanish.
I can't remember whether she told me why she could speak Spanish. Anyway, romance languages are similar enough that if you're proficient in Portuguese, Italian and French you can probably learn decent Spanish in a matter of weeks.
True; in fact, I would expect her to be able to read it pretty well without any study whatsoever, once she had those three surrounding languages down. Actual study then becomes very cost-effective, and might even be done on one's own in one's spare time, once one has decided to do it.