People that think you’re an asshole
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leowid.com
When you're forty, you don't care what people think.
And when you're sixty, you realize that nobody was thinking about you in the first place.
Rather, I find it is that adults rule the conformance games that adolescents and teenagers play are “silly” all the while partaking in their own, which are of course not silly, but rather how one should conform and teenagers are wrong for not conforming to those ideals.
Consider that the parent who berates his child for smoking marihuana to be part of his clique will the next day consume alcohol at his office party, as to not be left out.
I don't think this is good example. I dont want my kids to drink alcohol yet. When I do drink alcohol, it is really not so that "I am not left out". Pretty much all office parties I have been at had bunch of people who were not drinking in them.
And marihuana has added effect of being illegal in many places.
And if your kid is smoking it so that the kid fits, it absolutely makes sense to treat it as issue. Regardless of whether you sometimes drink alcohol at office party.
I assure you that 40 years old do care about what people think. Partly, because people are simply wired that way, that is why we are social animals instead of solitary ones.
But the other is that it matters. What people think about you influences how they treat you, what they tell you and what chances they give you. It makes difference between being listened to and being ignored.
Now this doesn't mean you have to go crazy trying to satisfy everyone because you can't. People want contradictory things from you. You need to have your own moral or other principles to keep on track of a certain path in the face of rejection. But if everyone thinks you're an asshole, the answer isn't to just ignore everyone.
I think a better lesson is that it's better to have some haters and some who really like you than to have everyone be lukewarm about you and ignore you. The haters are no big issue unless they are really determined enemies, and the upside of the truly appreciative people is bigger. You can only get true deep connections if you accept the risk that some people won't like you. As long as you try to please everyone you won't really please anyone. See the story of the miller and his son.
Yes, we all understand that people stereotype. I think you're getting bogged down in the details and missing the overall point, which is far more generalized. The above story is meant to be short and clever, and to do so it glosses over a few things that you're meant to pick up contextually. The point it's trying to make is this:
20 year olds tend to think people are watching, judging, and remembering their every move and are concerned about it
40 year olds still tend to think they're being watched and judged, but don't care
60 year olds realize that everyone is too busy thinking about their own situation to really pay much attention to others beyond superficial stereotyping, and that unless you affect someone deeply with your presentation, they won't likely cling to previous judgements of you.
(Caveat that I haven’t looked into how deeply this has survived the psych and social psych replication crisis)
If you think people think about you all the time, then you benefit from the message of this story about the 20, 40, 60 year olds.
But don't take it too literally. It matters how you present yourself and what impressions you leave.
The good news is, you have to be really really bad to leave a long lasting bad impression (except if you personally screw someone over or cheat against them even in minor ways - people tend to remember that) and failed but honest attempts to get ahead don't tend to compound, but success does compound. Meaning it's worth playing a numbers game and diversifying your potential outcomes. A good impression can lead to a lot of value for years to come, a bad impression often simply means you can try again elsewhere with added experience.
But it does matter a lot in those years. Teens are correct in their assessment that fitting in is important. At least in some group. Doesn't have to be the "popular kids". As you grow up, achievements and status become more manifest, it's not so much about pretenses. Things are now more cemented and move slower. You have this or that profession with a certain status. You live in a good or a bad neighborhood, move in fancy or non fancy circles, can afford traveling or not, and so on. By contrast in your teens and early adulthood, all you have is how you perform in social interaction. Later you're like "maybe I'm awkward but I'm a surgeon and you're a fast food worker".
And when you're 60, the status fights are mostly over, you're living off of what you achieved earlier. So you think it was useless because now you have little to lose in future potential. You mostly have your familial and friendship situation cemented for the rest of your life, usually no more worry about who will marry you, whether you can be promoted high, whether your kids turn out good etc. Typically 60+ year olds don't have to prove themselves in the moment any more, they just ride on the past.
Then it damned on me: I couldn't really remember any other awkward nor embarrassing moments by others. All I cared about was I.
Relief. :D
When you are sixty, less of your life remains, so the stakes are lower. If you piss someone off to the point that they do you in - who cares?
Sure, I don't worry about what people consciously think of me, like "Does he think I'm incompetent because of that mistake I made? Does she like the way I'm dressed?". I'm more concerned with what they're not thinking, or rather the biases they may be unconsciously harboring about myself or others. Look at this [1], from a study on the relation of criminal sentences and attractiveness:
>Physical Attractiveness had a significant influence on judges sentencing. The more unattractive the criminal, the higher the sentence. Or conversely, the more attractive the criminal, the lower the sentence. The results of three studies show a minimum increase of 119.25% and a maximum increase of 304.88%.
That's pretty disturbing to me. It what other ways am I being treated and being shaped by the unconscious biases of others? Say Jim gets promoted into management and made leader of a project instead of me, because he's a "better fit" for the role. For what reasons is he a "better fit"? Imagine if the unconscious mind could speak. It might say something like this:
"Jim was made tribe leader because of his robust musculature. His square jaw arouses me to no end - such an indicator of higher testosterone, strength, and disease resistance will serve our offspring well. Broad-shouldered Jim can probably throw a spear hard enough to pierce fifty men. A warrior of his magnitude will surely lead us to victory against our ancestral foe, the Google tribe."
Okay, that's fine, but what does that have to do with shipping a profitable software product?
"Square. Jaw."
Completely absurd. We can never completely relieve ourselves of these kinds of biases, and of politics. But I believe we can mitigate it to a meaningful degree. We can have meaningful standards and metrics for evaluating people for certain roles. Horowitz talks about this kind of politics-mitigation in at least one chapter in his book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
[1] The Law Project. (2021, January 16). The Law Project. Retrieved from https://www.thelawproject.com.au/insights/attractiveness-bia.... (The relevant HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24044409)
As in, society is biased to pick the square-jaw guy for leadership, because society knows that society follows square-jaw guys in leader roles better.
Good leadership is less about convincing people to follow you than it is about being able to lead people in the right direction. David Koresh was highly charismatic and convinced a lot of people to follow him, but I doubt anyone would consider him a "good leader".
Often among roughly equally talented people what matters is to have a clear vision, any vision and to orient a whole group towards the same direction. It's really hard to judge in advance who is better in long term vision and strategy. Experts don't have a great track record in this and CEOs also don't seem to have a great sense of direction (ie their track record quickly regresses to the mean).
Leadership is to a large degree about crafting a convincing narrative and fostering acting in unison. "To make people long for the sea" etc.
Where it matters, people and organizations are able to overcome bias. We got a square-jaw man to the moon, but the rocket itself was not designed by a square-jaw men.
The key phrase: where it matters.
It isn’t likely that nobody thinks about me at all, given that I think about everyone else quite a bit.
Whoever coined this mildly amusing canard sounds a bit antisocial.
That's what changes over time.
People then end up frustrated because they often confuse being weak and hollow as being nice and being assertive and self-directed with being an asshole.
In a way, we are Veblen goods: it's all about status and perceived scarcity in the end, whether it's conscious or not. That is not necessarily a negative or depressing thing as it also is the engine behind great things happening.
I find myself drawn to these types--they may have asshole-ish moments or nice moments. That doesn't matter as much as my personal connection to them, the sense of whether I am rooting for them or not.
As a corollary, such people tend to be naturally charismatic, but I would venture that this is a direct consequence of their other traits. One arresting definition of charisma I have heard is that it is a measure of how much you can delineate yourself as an entity in the world and how you can use that to affect reality. Life-affirmation and a zest for living draw directly into that.
Note that I don't necessarily include intellectual brilliance in the equation, though it obviously helps.
And bad to act like an asshole.
If you act nice, and don't care what people think about you, you can't lose, and most people will like to have you around.
Assholes might still annoy you, but when that happens, your friends will help you to feel better.
Well, I'm an antisocial shut-in so maybe this is a fringe opinion to have for our techno-monkey tribes. :))
How to avoid rejection and get connection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeDt9dgFXFk
In each and every case these people were relatively underprivileged and could be described as underachievers. In some cases these people had more money than me, or they had more academic achievements, etc., so their feelings can't just be described as "envy" or "jealousy".
I think it's a more complex emotion that has to do with knowing both your status in society and what your future looks like - none of these people went on to achieve much in their career, and in a couple of cases they weren't even able to land a job in the industry in the first place, while I was already working on exciting projects when I was a student.
Some people are allergic to the success and hard work of others, but when it comes to working hard themselves they just "can't be arsed" for whatever reason.
Specifically, I strictly remember bullying this poor kid relentlessly during middle school because he (I kid you not) had lips so red he looked like he wore lipstick. You can imagine my shock when I later found out I was bisexual and that wearing lipstick is awesome actually.
It's not about people not liking you. It's about the implication of this fact which is that you might be a bad person. Are you a bad person? Or are you a good person which happened to have a behavior which turned others against you?
Second, is good to meditate on this idea of the image you are trying to keep consistent with everyone. It's almost like slaving away to make all people like you. But that's impossible because whatever you do someone might think you're an asshole anyway.
So just focus on being a good person in your eyes and the rest will follow. And be kind to yourself, we all make mistakes.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Happy Sunday.
This author seems like he wants to overcome this fear of how others may respond, and do the thing anyway. I'm reminded of the stages of emotional liberation:
First stage: Emotional slavery: we see ourselves responsible for others’ feelings.
Second stage: “Obnoxious”: we feel angry; we no longer want to be responsible for others’ feelings.
Third stage: Emotional liberation: we take responsibility for our intentions and actions.
[1] - https://about-nvc.tumblr.com/post/98642157391/from-emotional...
Being an asshole is not the worst thing you can be. A lot of famous, successful people who are well liked have somewhat asshole qualities. The thing you really do not want to be is an ignoramus--someone who is an asshole but with no redeeming qualities.
It is helpful to have awareness about how your behaivor and actions may affect others, depending on the situation and your relationship with them, and how they may perceive or react to it. I find the key is to have and develop values you consistently act and live by so even if someone reacts negatively or different from what you expected, you don't feel this means you did something wrong or need to change something about yourself.
Perhaps a good example of a positive "not caring what others think" might be dancing however you want; you don't feel embarrassed because you're not a good dancer you just do whatever.
Perhaps another good example is Bob is a vegan and hates that you aren't; now you don't really care anymore and can focus on eating the food you want to. Flip the roles, Bob eats whatever he wants and hates that you're a vegan; you again don't care.
If one is required to be concerned with not "being an asshole", how are risky ventures ever undertaken?
https://aeon.co/essays/so-you-re-surrounded-by-idiots-guess-...
Without the context of non-verbal communication or the closeness towards people we've never met we react differently online to offline. I think it's important not to lose sight of the idea that people can blow up online, call you every name under the sun and still be perfectly good people.
I found Innuendo Studios' Why Are You So Angry[1] and SSC's varieties of Argumentative Experience[2] really helpful in coming to terms with my own online behaviour. There's also a pg essay[3] that's fairly relevant. I particularly enjoyed Rationality.org's double-cruxing approach[4].
Right now I'm focusing on avoiding continuing discussions at the point they stop adding overall. Nobody's perfect but it's definitely keeping my internal Angry Jack at bay.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ&list=PLJA_jUddXv...
[2] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of-argumenta...
[3] - http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
[4] - https://www.rationality.org/resources/updates/2016/double-cr...