Improving my social skills is going to be my number one priority for a while. I don't see this subject discussed too much on LW, which is strange because it's one of the biggest correlates with happiness and I think we could benefit a lot from a rational discussion in this area. So I was wondering if anyone has any ideas, musings, relevant links, recommendations, etc. that could be useful for this. Stuff that breaks from the traditional narrative of "just be nicer and more confident" is particularly appreciated. (Unless maybe that is all it takes.)

Optional background regarding my personal situation: I am a 19 yo male (as of tomorrow) who is going to enter college in the fall. I'm not atrociously socially inadept, e.g. I can carry on conversations, can be very bold and confident in short bursts sometimes, I have some friends, I've had girlfriends in the past. However, I also find it very hard to make close friends that I can hang out with one on one, I sometimes find myself feeling like I'm taking a very submissive role socially, and I feel nervous or "in my head" a lot in social interactions, among other things. Not to be melodramatic, but I find myself wishing a decent amount that I had more friends and was more popular.

Here's a piece of advice I haven't seen mentioned on this topic: people are typically irrational about sex, and you can make yourself an appealing partner to a minority of people who aren't being "well served" by the general population simply by being extra open-minded. In short, I'm going to advocate exploring kink spaces.

First, cultivate the aliefs that there is zero shame associated with consensual sexual activity of any kind, and that there is no space for sex-specific morality in your code of ethics. The slogan "everyone owns exactly one body" is a good start.

If you've got this in your head, hopefully you'll want to do just about anything your partner wants you to. The attitude to cultivate is to be "good, giving and game".

Once you've got the mind-set right and done back-ground reading, you can start looking for kink meet-ups and groups in your area. The really nice thing for you is that kinksters are basically sex nerds: everything is talked about explicitly, negotiated, scheduled, double-checked, etc. There's worlds of hand-holding at every step.

I could be just plain wrong about this, but my belief is that sexual tastes can be "acquired" in the way you can learn to like strong cheeses, silent films, whatever. So have a go at acquiring this taste --- because I think it'd prove useful.

Not sure whether to vote up, as I refer to women as females in order to avoid being sexist, but I can see this already has many upvotes (I wonder what proportion of those upvotes were by women, though). In my experience, most of the prejudiced sayings/memes are directed at 'women', not at 'females', which is why 'women' feels more sexist to me. (although any reference to sex or gender that is not obviously necessary also feels sexist, so I normally leave any such references out entirely whenever possible.)

Why do you think it is that it can come across as either autistic or sexist?

FWIW I live in South Australia, in case this turns out to be a cultural thing.

Example of "hard": Not eating chocolate, when you have chocolate at home.

Example of "easy": Not eating chocolate, when you have no chocolate at home.

Switching from "hard" to "easy" is much easier than using your willpower to win at the "hard" mode. For some reasons many people don't realize that, and instead spend a lot of time talking about it, motivating themselves, inventing various punishment schemes, attending motivation seminars, etc.

I suspect that something similar can be used in many situations. The first aspect is: don't work harder, work smarter. The second aspect is: if it involves some kind of brain power (willpower, memory, creativity), feeling stressed (because you really try to do it the hard way) only makes it more difficult... but for some reason a lot of popular advice recommends increasing the stress (by using rewards and punishments of many kinds). -- I suspect this is the corrupted hardware in action (rewarding and punishing people brings higher status to one who does it).

Some people are afraid that doing things the "easy" way is somehow inferior, probably because it is not mysterious enough. That somehow if you stop eating chocolate by not buying it, you will be unable to resist it when someone brings you a piece of chocolate to your home. I suspect the experiments would show the other way round, because even resisting eating chocolate by not buying it creates a success spiral and changes your habits.

The difficult part is that sometimes you just can't find the "easy" way. For example, sometimes you are not sufficiently in control of your environment. But many people don't even try.

What's the difference between a monarchy and a dictatorship?

I am aware of a few potential differences, but the most significant one I can think of boils down to that there are a large number of well known ceremonial monarchies and not nearly as many ceremonial dictatorships.

This seems to go along with things like the concept of a Monarch having somewhat more limited powers seems well established ever since the Magna Carta, and that the original concept of Roman dictators seemed to be explicitly that they did not have to obey those kind of limits.

However, if you were to ask what is the difference between an Absolute Monarchy and a Dictatorship, I don't have much of an answer. Those seem much closer together.

Related thought: is a conversation bot crudely optimised to game the Turing test smarter than a labrador or a dolphin?

I always advise people to pre-commit to not re-dosing, no matter whether the first hit feels weak or strong.

Given that people often fail at precommiting, I'm reading this post and the grandparent as "stay far away from this stuff; it's dangerous."

I don't understand why objectivists seem to be held in low regard here. My exposure is limited to browsing a forum of objectivists[1] - they were indistinguishable from those here, though much more focussed on personal instrumental rationality in their topics.

I know they are formally a closed loop belief system limited by the writings of Ayn Rand (which I've not read), and have heard this belief system is flawed in some way. That sounds like a straw man.

I'm only interested in the steel man. What is the difference between rationality and objectivism?
The only one that comes to mind: Objectivism implies there is only one true way of some things, while rationality allows for individual variety in thinking processes (resulting from different information, experiences, terminal values, etc.)

However, if for one person their most desired thing is happiness - which can only be achieved through quasi-altruistic deeds - then I cannot see it as anything but objective and rational to carry out those deeds. Objectivism applied to the fulfilment of one's desires appears indistinguishable from rationality to me. Where am I wrong on this - or am I playing semantics?

[1] Knowing what to look for, I discovered the site again. They indeed are very skilled at applying instrumental rationality to various areas of their lives (exempli gratia what type of plastic surgery yields the most natural results?) - however in the Philosophy and Ethics sections, Ayn Rand philosophy abounds. They are describing the intent of an Important Figure (scary), without doing so for the purposes of then breaking it down; those that try the latter attack straw-man versions and are refuted.

What's your dosage schedule? Have you noticed a decreased ability to experience pleasure?

So I've recently decided to change my real name from an oriental one to John Adams. I am not white.

There’s a significant amount of evidence that shows that

(1) Common names have better reception in many areas, especially publication and job interviews.

(2) White names do significantly better than non-white names

(3) Last names that begin with the early letters of the alphabet have a significant advantage over last names beginning with the latter letters of the alphabet.

Source :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19020207 http://blog.simplejustice.us/files/66432-58232/SSQUKalistFinal.pdf http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/sunrpe/2006_0013.html http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf?new_window=1 http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

Therefore if I were to use "John", one of the most common 'white' first names, along with Adams, a 'white' surname that also begins with the letter A, it should stand that I would be conferred a number of advantages.

Furthermore, I have very little attachment to my family heritage. Switching names doesn’t cost me anything beyond a minor inconvenience of having to do paperwork. For some people, changing your name may be extremely worthwhile, depending on your current name, and how attached you are to it. At least, it may be worthwhile to consider it, and depending on the person, may be a very cheap optimization with significant benefits.