Comment by onmobiletemp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by onmobiletemp | Hacker News Reader

I started paying attention to people and discovered a lot of this on my own over the course of three years. At some point i realized that whenever i talked to someone their eyes would glaze over and their face would go stony. Then theyd talk to someone else and their eyes would become focused and their face alive and animated. Laughter. I figured out this was because they didnt care about what i was saying or about my opinions. So i tried various things and looked at their eyes. Sometimes their eyes would become alive again and i could tell they cared. Slowly you learn what people want to hear. And its so true about smiling and body language, people feel uncomfortable if you dont project wellbeing. What you need to understand is that there is no logic in any of it. Humans are machines and the algorithms that they employ for attention and emotion are surprisngly uniform and very unintuitive for autists like me and you. Dont worry about the logic of whats hapenning, just think of what their algorithm is doing. Its verry dificult because you cant verify what people are thinking, you cant debug it and you cant start over -- you have to guess a lot. Overall people want to see big smiles and confident body posture. If you are slouched over people dont like it. If you stand up straight you will be amazed at how differently you are percieved. But it all has to be genuine. If youre trying to manipulate and understand people in a clinical way you will fail. All you need is a genuine desire to bond with people and the patience to pay attention to what seems to work and what doesnt.

I should also add that for me, and probably for most people like me, the process of figurimg out what people like and dont like is also partly a process of self discovery. Im not the kind of person thats in touch with himself. Discovering how your words impact other people will also teach you about how your mind, conciously or otherwise, reacts emotionally to the words of others. Overall ive been genuinely excited to learn about myself amd others and use that wisdom to help enjoy the presence of other people. For me its been a very productive process of growth and discovery. I think framing the problem of interpersonal relations within that context instead of the cringey, manipulative context of internet social tips really helped.

Actually, not only do I agree with your main point, but I think I know why it's a problem. (BTW, it's a problem for me too.) Most people today have the attention span of gnats. They crave talk in small, light, humor-based doses, like TV sitcom dialogue.

(And yes, I don't understand what most people want to hear either. Mostly I think they want others to compliment them, ask them to expound on themselves, and laugh at inane jokes.)

Your long-ish post implies that you prefer discourse (the antithesis of small talk). I suspect you'd like to pose an idea and then exchange ideas on it. While that was popular before the age of TV (much less internet), conversation on topics that resonate and last for 5+ minutes is unusual today, especially verbally, and it's likely that few strangers respond well to it. People like to tell / hear stories about other people, not discuss ideas.

Like you (I suspect) I suffer small talk badly, though in recent years I've learned to cut back on delivering 'large talk'... hopefully before peoples' eyes glaze over.

So much this. I am genuinely concerned about the direction of discourse and society in general with the way mass communication on the Internet has played out. Just look at how the damn president of the US communicates in tweets - short, authoritative and usually inflammatory. After that, all other conversation is drowned out by Twitter rolling responses in to another view.

The build up of these echo chambers and extremely brief communication patterns contributes greatly to polarizing people on all kinds of different issues. It's really terrifying to me.

This. I prefer discourse but most people just want to have light conversations so I have a slew of stories I can tell that are entertaining.

What made you believe that this so called 'large talk' was popular before TV? I feel people were simply more wordy before, not necessarily more expansive in terms of exchanging ideas.

I'm not even sure people were more wordy. TV has been widespread for three generations now. When people under the age of 80 talk about the time before TV, they're mostly revealing their imaginations and not any historical information.

> Its verry dificult because you cant verify what people are thinking, you cant debug it and you cant start over -- you have to guess a lot

I think there is a way to verify what people are thinking and that would be by asking them questions. As you point out later it has to be genuine and not a clinical encounter, and I'd also add not a self-serving one. If you genuinely want to understand what they are saying you would then be very present in the conversation rather than just trying to hear what you think you want or don't want to hear (ie: "I've got to found out if he/she's going to abandon me or break my heart" is a self-serving interest and will eventually have the opposite effect), but trying to understand what they are saying because you are curious about them and hold them in high esteem will go a far way and asking questions that help you try to understand their point of view.

Too many people are trying to either narrate the relationship or are trying to serve their own self-interests and apply way too much meaning to each interaction and if instead they saw an encounter as an opportunity to learn rather than to try to have it mean something personally I think they'd find a whole lot more success.

I'm not extremely experienced in social interaction but I've had to learn to be to be able to communicate better with my wife and this is what I've learned, my self-centered motives have prevented me from learning so much more from others and using curiosity and questions has been super helpful in helping me to overcome social anxiety and relationship conflict fears.

tldr; let go of your ego (don't take things personally) and try to learn what other people are saying by asking them genuine questions (rather than trying to do all the talking, you learn more this way).

I agree. Especially about not trying to force meaning and takimg genuine interest in people.

There is a lot of wisdom in your comments here. Especially impressive for the fact that the whole situation is obviously counter-intuitive for you.

> Humans are machines and the algorithms that they employ for attention and emotion are surprisngly uniform and very unintuitive for autists like me and you.

What do you (or anyone else reading this) think of evolutionary psychology in which context such aspects of human behavior can be somewhat consistently explained?

Did you just call me an autist?

Genuinely made me chuckle. Hats off to you sir!

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