LESSWRONG
LW

All of thepokeduck's Comments + Replies

Building Weirdtopia
thepokeduck00

I really like your idea for comprehensive sexual education. Something I have said for a long time is that everyone should have their heart broken once, as part of being human, because once you know what that feels like, you understand the stakes of romance. I feel that this post takes that sentiment and expands and develops it much more fully.

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6MartinB
You can construct similar arguments for other topics: * everyone should go to war once, to experience fights, and learn why peace is so valuable * everyone should get severely hurt once, to learn to value his body And from recent experiences: everyone should get a root canal once to learn to take care of his teeth. Heartbreaks are not necessary in my book.
wedrifid160

Something I have said for a long time is that everyone should have their heart broken once, as part of being human, because once you know what that feels like, you understand the stakes of romance.

That's... horrible. You're advocating doing permanent emotional damage to people. Sure, most of the will heal, some will grow from the experience but none will be the same. It's torture.

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Open Thread, August 2010-- part 2
thepokeduck140

What fosters a sense of camaraderie or hatred for a machine? Or: How users learned to stop worrying and love Clippy

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959704575453411132636080.html

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4NancyLebovitz
I recommend reading the article-- I didn't realize people could be recruited that easily.
How to always have interesting conversations
thepokeduck80

That is good advice.

A friend of mine video taped his conversations with people. (By which I mean, there was a video recording of some event, and he left it on following, to capture his social interactions.) In this way, he was able to see not just things he said, but also gauge people's reactions to his body language. He said it was difficult to watch at first, but had a huge benefit to his social skills.

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6Lonnen
Video taping may not be the preferred way to go about it, but there is something to be said for reflection. While you are unlikely to get better without practice, merely sinking time into conversation won't necessarily help, and may harm you. Without analyzing your attempts, even if it's only a brief list of what went well and what didn't, you may be practicing and learning bad habits. 100 ungraded math problems doesn't make you better at math, and 100 uncoached squats may injure you. Take a few moments after conversations to assess at least what went well and what didn't. If you have access to an honest friend, you can do even better. Converse with a third party (your friend can participate or merely be near enough to observe) and run a sort of post-conversation analysis later. Treat it like any other skill you're serious about learning. I've seen this help more than one struggling introvert.