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solipsist comments on Mistakes repository - Less Wrong Discussion
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What are the bad things that can happen to you if you get accurately judged as nerdy, and how do they compare to the negative impact of having people assume all the wrong things about you?
This brings up an excellent point.
It's perfectly fine to be Packers fan, but I would judge a person who showed up to a wedding or funeral dressed as a cheesehead. I wouldn't judge them for being a Packards fan; I would judge them for disrespectfully violating decorum -- for choosing to signal that they are a Packards fan.
Projecting nerdiness is similar EDIT in that the first-order signal is not the harmful one. A nerdy appearance emits two important signals:
The second-order signal is the more negative and important. It isn't too bad if people think you are nerdy; it's bad if people think that you don't understand or don't care how most people perceive you. It signals a lack of self-awareness, or a deficient understanding of cultural norms, or blithe indifference. In my case, it accurately signaled all three.
Signaling my lack of self-awareness didn't cause bad things to happen; it prevented good things from happening.
No negative impact, and I don't think people do assume the wrong things about me. In conversation I'm usually transparent about who I am. You can credibly profess to be nerdy no matter what clothing you wear. You cannot credibly profess to understand unspoken social norms if your appearance contradicts your words.
I understand that it would be incorrect to show up at a wedding, funeral, or job interview wearing shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt with a bad science pun. Those are special occasions with different rules from the rest of your life, and fortunately they are rare.
Why, in everyday life, would dressing like a nerd indicate blithe indifference towards anyone? Would I seem more empathetic and human if my shirt advertised a band instead, or had buttons? What are some common environments where looking like a nerd is a disrespectful violation of decorum?
Looking like a nerd is not a disrespectful violation of decorum -- disrespectful violation of decorum was part of an analogy about first-order and second-order signaling. Sorry that this wasn't clear. I edited my original comment, and will restate and rephrase the crux of the comment here.
Let's take it as a premise that a large portion of people believe a nerdy appearance signals poor social prowess. Given the premise, people might emit nerdy signals anyway if:
You will notice that all of these explanations indicate the person has poor social prowess. Unless there is common knowledge that the premise is false, a nerdy appearance is evidence for poor social prowess. The expectation that people who look nerdy have poor social awareness becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
ETA This line of reasoning isn't air-tight. Still, it's a strong reason why some nerd-friendly people take a dim view on a nerdy appearances.
I'm not sure this one belongs to the list: I'd figure that not having to care about strangers' opinion about you signals self-confidence, not “poor social prowess”.
True that -- you can only countersignal to people who already know you. But those are normally the only people whose opinions about me I care about (except in job interviews, first dates, and the like -- where someone who doesn't know me well yet may affect me in the future), so why should worry about what I signal to anyone else?
I'm late to the party, but it's because you forgo new opportunities to meet people when you signal these things. For example, I knew a man who signalled nerdyness and had no social skills. Talking with him was uncomfortable and he would creep on women unknowingly, driving off other friends. Further, his lack of social awareness made it impossible to get rid of him once he was attached leading to an uncomfortable situation for all concerned. I had 3 other negative experiences from people who signalled nerdyness, each of which had serious problems. Essentially, by choosing to interact with new people who signal nerdyness in their dress I take on a higher than normal risk of having a negative experience.
A large proportion of people have had an experience like this and do not wish to repeat it, so by signalling nerdyness you essentially drive those people away. Aside from that, you make use of the horns effect when you could be using the halo effect. The end result is that signalling nerdyness puts a pointless obstacle in the path of your life.
Just signalling normalness puts you in a better position, because if you want to signal nerdyness to specific people you can just say "I play dwarf fortress" or something similar.
Empirically I think you are wrong. When I wear Vibram Fivefingers in public (with is a quite nerdy choice) it radically increases the amount of people that approach me.
I think we are using the term nerdyness to mean different things. When I say nerdiness I mean at least two of the following: poor dress sense, I'll fitting clothes, lack of deodorant, low personal hygene, excessively bad posture and bad hair style. What are you using the term to mean?
What if I've already met enough people? Dunbar's number is not infinity, so meeting people has an opportunity cost.
I'm guessing the real problem was his lack of social skills, not his nerdiness.
Are the people you know now awesome and in sufficient variety and number? If so, I can totally understand not needing to know more.
His problem was indeed his lack of social skills, but it was signalled by his nerdyess. The point here is not that there is a 1:1 comparison from these signalling characteristics to the end result, but that enough of the population thinks this way for it to alienate a large portion of the population when one signals in such a manner. That portion of the population includes many interesting people and should not be cast aside lightly. My life for example improved dramatically when I changed my signalling characteristics into a more confident and visually appealing style.
It's not just an issue of awesomeness and number but also time and distance. I have a pretty busy schedule these days so it would be nontrivial for me to find the time(/stamina) to hang out with more than a handful people on a regular basis; also, no matter how awesome someone is it'd be hard for me to be friends with them if they live halfway across the globe, so what matters isn't how awesome my friends are on an absolute scale, but how awesome my friends are compared to other people in my area. If I lived in the Bay Area and had more time than I know what to do with, things would presumably be different.
Sufficient is no absolute term, it is dependent on free time and other resources. Which is another way of saying I agree. With that said there is unavoidable attrition of friends from changing circumstances, locations, schedules and other factors that get in the way. I find it optimal to spend a certain small proportion of time seeking out new experiences with new people. After all, what are the chances that the people I currently know are the most suited to me out of the tens of thousands in the surrounding area? It feels like a betrayal to think such a thought, but I can come up with no good reason why I should listen to that particular emotion.
Eventually things change and I see no reason to replace the friends who must leave my life with the first reasonably compatible people to come along, when I could instead take a proactive stance and do better. We decide the people we want in our lives
As far as first dates go, getting in bad relationship because you are fundamentally incompatible is a lot worse than just not making the second date.
If a woman has a problem with me being nerdy, then it's no problem that the interaction ends at the first date.
On the other hand full openness about who you are is very conductive to building trust and emotional intimacy.
I don't think that true. If you engage in an action with full confidence and that confidence is clearly visible in your body language and most people who engage in the same action without much social confidence you can counter signal.
Nitpick on wording: I wouldn't call wearing a suit to a wedding “looking like a non-Packers fan” -- it's not like non-Packers fans are all that much more likely to do so than Packers fan; I'd call it “not looking like a Packers fan”. By the same token, on hearing “looking like a non-nerd”, I think about an appearance that's significant evidence than you're not a nerd; I'd refer to an appearance that doesn't provide much evidence one way or another as “not looking like a nerd”.
The things in bold -- I cannot put myself in the mindset where these things appear inherently bad. Would you mind explaining why should one make an end value out of respecting social and cultural norms?
I suppose you could frame it like that too. Which are those good things? (Some guesses ahead of time: getting compliments on your outfits? Socializing more easily with certain segments of society? Modifying people's perception of you into something more positive, as an end in itself or as a means to something else, e.g. a promotion?)
I assumed negative impact because I'm right on the other side of the pond: I have very good intuitions on dressing in a conventionally pretty, fashionable way, and yet this skill has always had negative value for me, as it influenced people's reactions to me in a way that worsened my interactions with them. But I'll expand on this only if it proves necessary.
One idea: Social power is contagious, so people want to associate with people that other people want to associate with. This leads to information cascades - one type of person has more power for some reason, so people want to associate with that type of person, so even more people want to associate with that type of person - and the "type of person" that this converges to gets called "normal".
Another idea: By caring about social norms, you signal that you care about not having people disapprove of you, which gives the group power over you - "I'll limit my sheep's grazing of the commons, because I don't want to look bad."
This is excellent and is relevant to my thoughts.
I defined it as self-hatred, but lack of self-awareness is close.