How Studying Body Language Changed the Way I Socialize | Hacker News Reader

How Studying Body Language Changed the Way I Socialize

dearcharlottebook.com

188 pointsphilipkd94 comments

When I notice a conversation veering into an unpleasant territory, I perk up, do the empathy-thing, and I naturally bring it back to something more pleasant.

I'm not comfortable with this as a general strategy stemming from a universal mantra. Learning this as an adult is impressive and probably exceptional, but it's a phenomenon we're all familiar with. We all know people who behave like this reflexively and have done so their entire adult lives. It can be pleasant to hang out with people like that in a heterogeneous group where not everyone is comfortable with everyone else, but they make damned unsatisfying friends and lovers. Policing comfort zones is a sure-fire intimacy killer, and it isn't exactly a triumph of empathy to avoid uncomfortable topics of conversation, even if it requires prodigious skill at empathy. Children of troubled and violent households, such as Bill Clinton, are the poster children for glib empathy that is a mile wide and an inch deep. (No political aspersions meant, by the way; I liked him as a politician and a president.)

I would argue that in this case we are seeing a misguided (and probably temporary) "zeal of the convert", and by convert I mean someone who has discovered the practical value of this Clintonesque "emotional easing." Emotional easing is much like quantitative easing: it shifts unpleasantness out of the current context. It's a valuable tool, but it can't be applied universally. I'm not comfortable calling it empathy, either. "Perking up" when another person's uncomfortable emotions come to the fore and steering the conversation away teaches them that their problems are their own, and that their full selves are excluded while a partial self (with unpleasantness filtered out) is welcome. That's appropriate in some social contexts, but not all, not by a long shot, just like quantitative easing is only appropriate in certain contexts. And it's the opposite of empathy, even though executing it requires a limited use of empathy. Empathy means feeling what another person is feeling because your human bonds transcend the difference between you, not strategically tapping into their problematic feelings so you can override them with your own more attractive and pleasant ones.

>"Perking up" when another person's uncomfortable emotions come to the fore and steering the conversation away teaches them that their problems are their own, and that their full selves are excluded while a partial self (with unpleasantness filtered out) is welcome.

I suspect that the author meant this in non-intimate situations, however I agree with your general trend of reasoning. These types of people are comforting to the extreme, I would assume that would (technically) make them satisfying friends and lovers. I'd love to see a clarification of your use of unsatisfying here.

People who like to dodge awkward conversations, and who are skilled at it, will dodge the awkward conversations you really want to have with them. In the case of romantic relationships, they'll dodge the conversations you desperately NEED to have with them, and you'll get stuck in a hopeless rut where they repeatedly make you feel like a problem is being addressed when it really isn't. You might not blame them for it right away, but believe me, the results are unsatisfying.

On a not entirely unrelated note, people will also use empathy to respond to requests for things. You can spend years with someone before you learn that expressing empathy is their way of avoiding saying "no." (You'll figure this out much faster if it's a working relationship instead of a romantic one.)

Empathy can be a powerful, powerful force, and it can act on either party.

> I would argue that in this case we are seeing a misguided (and probably temporary) "zeal of the convert"

While many of your points are valid, I don’t see the author as a misguided person who has made a temporary, superficial discovery about interpersonal relationships. Having gone through a lot of this myself, I see the author as taking a huge first step towards the growth of his emotional intelligence. He implies that he has a history of speaking his mind (with a lack of tact). Now he is learning to emphathize and have pleasant relationships. The next step is learning to balance those things. Speak your mind when doing so is important, and consider the impact of your words while doing so. Sometimes telling someone a hard truth is the true kindness. As the author points out, the way you deliver those messages determines whether they are helpful or just hurtful.

Learning the technique for yourself is one thing. Applying it universally is another, and applying it to other people is yet another. He shouldn't assume that if a conversation takes a negative twist that somebody has screwed up and the empathetic thing to do is to put it back on a positive track. For example, I was waiting to cross the street the other day, and a woman came running past me and ran across the street against the light so she could catch a bus that was about to pull away. A black kid standing next to me said, "If I did that, that cop over there would have pulled over to get me." It was an unpleasant and awkward thing for me to contemplate, and probably not the right thing to say if the kid wanted to put me at ease or be the most charming possible company, but all he wanted was a little microdose of empathy from a stranger. (In retrospect, I'm impressed he was optimistic enough to expect it. I hope I delivered.) Trying to put that conversation back on a pleasant track would not have showed much empathy; in fact, it probably would have made him feel more alone instead of less alone.

I don't mean to send a harsh personal judgment about the author, by the way, only his message. The zeal of the convert is something that happens naturally to everyone when they discover something that opens up new possibilities for them, whether it's a social technique or a programming language.

Awesome practical example. Yer right. Life is definitely more nuanced, and acting "pleasant" 100% of the time doesn't make sense.

Is that what you really want? To me it's just promoting the manipulation of other people. Because hey, it's a skill so it's ok.

Doesn't it bother you? To know that the person you are talking to, is mirroring your emotions, or offering sympathy, to manipulate you into liking them?

I very much prefer the Aspergers-like honesty. I would rather hear 9 harsh, blunt, honest criticisms a day and 1 genuine complement than to receive 10 fake, sugar-coated, vague, manipulative signals.

Don't think you'll be the only mastermind learning these and no one else will know about it. Keep in mind, if you do it, if you apply these techniques in your day to day interactions so will other people. And think about it for a second, from the perspective of a subject. Do you really want to be the subject to these social tricks and manipulations?

This thought truly bothers me. To hear a complement and not knowing if it was true and genuine or I was complemented simply because that person had read "How to influence people and win friends" last week and wanted to try his manipulation techniques on me.

Maybe instead of promoting these social skills we need to promote the appreciation of honesty and having some self control over our emotions.

I think you are making the distinction because someone learned it consciously.

People who have high social skills likely do this stuff all the time, perhaps without realising it.

Of course people will speak negatively about "manipulating people" but the fact is that it's simply part of how the world goes round, in which case it's probably best to be one of the people who is skilled and resolve to use your powers for good.

The alternative would be trying to persuade highly sociable people to imitate aspies.

You can try and persuade everyone to be honest, but in a world full of honest people being the only liar will bring huge advantages.

Faking this stuff doesn't work well in the long run. How to win friends and influence people says to give people genuine compliments.

I've gone through this kind of transportation. Certainly doesn't feel malicious to me. The main result is that people are a lot happier to be around me.

Your argument feels analogous to someone worried by the teaching of logic. The students will become too clever and use their skills to outsmart the others.

I've seen hustlers use these skills for malice of course. Some get fooled by them, but they're pretty transparent to most people if used insincerely.

I think it's kind of like how people say having a good product is the best marketing.

Being a nice guy (or girl!) is the same idea made personal.

I don't think it's fair to say that all of the skills are aimed at manipulation through means of social interaction.

There's nothing particularly wrong with empathy, it's all about connecting with people and building a better understanding through feeling. Unfortunately numerous self-help book titles often make it seem as if this is a hack, or a manipulation, in its essence though I feel that it's not.

Agreed. I find numerous parallels between that and learning to program.

The new hire who shows up at their desk with "Learn Java in 24 Hours" feels like a "manipulator" and "huckster".

The one who makes a deep study of the Gang of Four book looks like a Carnegie or Clinton from the outside.

The one that grew up around computers looks like a "natural". However, they just went through those previous two stages of learning while nobody was looking.

The "natural" uses the same external behavior as the rest, but at such an unconscious level as to evade easy detection by themselves or others.

I think the author was getting at actually focusing on having empathy for others when speaking to them to help understand their emotional state. Having empathy for others is not an attempt to manipulate them.

But is someone telling you their exact feelings at that moment really honesty? If everyone were completely honest with each other, the world would be a vastly different place.

Let's say you invite a co-worker out to lunch. He doesn't like you. He could either say, "I don't like you," or "I'm busy."

In your world, he would be straightforward about his feelings and tell you he doesn't like you. This kind of communication injures egos and causes hostility and friction. It makes for an unpleasant work environment.

Instead when he says, "I'm busy," you don't know if he was really busy or he doesn't like you. He may even say, "I'd love to go out to lunch with you, but I'm busy. So sorry. Let's do it another time."

So you ask him again the next day. He's busy again. You ask him again the day after. Still busy. He never asks you out to lunch and never makes an effort with you.

Now what you have here is a truly honest signal. His actions are an honest signal. His words are bullshit. Everyone's words are bullshit. People will lie to themselves under social pressure and act like they are interested. But a person's actions don't lie.

What you are describing is more of a white lie because you were put into the situation.

You might say I'm busy because telling that person you don't like them has no benefit for either of you, you're gonna have to work with each other and yes that would make things more unpleasant than it had to be.

That I think is very different from actively making an effort to manipulate others for your own gain. It is almost suggesting that you give up your own taste and personality so that you can match with as many people as possible.

This is very strongly evident in the western culture. I can sense it because I'm from a different place where there is no concept of "popularity" or "coolness" unlike what you constantly see in the west through movies and media.

I don't think "fake niceness", empty compliments, and subterfuge are tenets of empathy or what the author was trying to express.

The author provides this example interaction:

    Person A: I like this band.
    Person B: They're okay.

Where you might have implied that the author is saying it should've happened like this:

    Person A: I like this band.
    Person B: Yeah, they rule!

I think the author and the case for empathy were thinking along the lines of something more like this:

    Person A: I like this band.
    Person B: Have you ever seen them live? (Begin convo fork into live shows
                you've both seen. Share experiences.)

That's how you build value and connect with people.

"They're okay" is not honesty. There's no virtue in arbitrary judgement that does nothing but punish people for revealing their joys to you. It just squanders the opportunity where a connection could've been made.

I think empathetic social skills very much encompass the appreciation of honesty, and connecting with the emotional state of others does require self-control over your own state.

You might also like this Less Wrong essay:

"Defecting by accident is lacking the awareness, tact, and skill to realize what the secondary effects of your actions are and act accordingly to win."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/372/defecting_by_accident_a_flaw_com...

Thanks for this link, I liked how it gave specific examples of behavior to correct, all of which I could recognize from personal experience. Particularly this one, when asking questions:

  Instead of your underlying point coming across as "your
  idea is unfeasible," it comes across as, "You've brought
  this good idea to us, and I hope we're smart enough to
  make it work."

The interesting thing for me reading this article was, when I got to the section where he discusses comments on his post, I couldn't help but think, "Damn, the internet would be so BORING if everyone was that nice all the time." What would be the fun of an internet where everyone is so positive and generous all the time?

Maybe I'm just addicted to intellectual sparring. Who knows.

Intellectual sparring doesn't necessitate being not nice.

True, but a sharp debate can be quite delicious.

This isn't a "but". A good debate is characterized by mutual respect. Otherwise, points go unadvanced beyond their initial assertion, because they aren't properly challenged. There is an important reason that the most commonly called-out fallacy is the argumentum ad hominem; its usage undermines the debate itself. It also happens to be the internet's favorite tactic, and it's a huge part of why the internet is not good at getting things done.

Honestly, the Internet and the world at large is missing out on many, many possibilities for "intellectual sparring" because they've made it extremely debate-hostile in the name of having fun and "can't you take a joke". People would rather cram things down by force or not at all, because if they open the floor to conversation, their ideas will be lost in the haze of personal accusation. I wasn't able to find a list, but there are a lot of women bloggers who have signed off for good because harassment created a cost in time and energy that outweighed the benefit of contributing to the public debate.

Be honest with yourself. Recognize that what you really enjoy is the gamesmanship of one-line zingers. Don't call it a debate until you can tell me what the Ps and Qs are.

I felt the same way.

I think I'd rather try to develop an intuitive feel for when to defect and when not to defect, so you can make these snap judgments on the fly and have them not work out too badly for you.

I also found his example pretty interesting. There have definitely been times that I have called out my boss, or my PM, or an executive in a meeting or e-mail thread. And in most places, that would be career suicide. But the thing is - the alternative, in most cases, is to let a wrong decision go through. Usually the meeting is where the decision gets made; if you wait until afterwards to bring up your concerns, then time has to be spent getting everyone back on the same page, which is more embarrassing and costs a lot more for the company. When your code affects a billion people and makes billions of dollars in revenue, every single person needs to be able to blow the whistle, regardless of hurt feelings, and say "This is dumb; let's not do it." I tell Nooglers I mentor that the most valuable thing they can do for the company is to challenge obviously-wrong product decisions and not let them go through.

I try to make it up by praising things I actually do like, honestly. But I've found it's a much better strategy to be prickly on some things and effusively praising on others than to be uniformly inoffensive.

It is possible to spar, disagree with, criticize, part ways etc amicably and all the while being nice. I've seen people like that, it is not an easy skill to learn though

No question about the practical value of any of this, as the power of these abilities has been discussed and dissected many times, but I'd like to make a brief case as to _why_ some find this distasteful, after many years of reading forums like this and talking to people who openly expressed hatred of it (it being non-verbal signals, subtext, etc.)

First, there is the issue of merit. It seems like this grants those with good social intelligence an "unfair" advantage, since the skills involved aren't involved in actually creating/fixing/understanding anything concrete; its power comes from its ability to persaude, detect, and signal. Some perceive this sort of skill as seeming fake and superficial.

Second, it flies in the face of the idea of radical honesty and transparency, as it deals with situations and ideas having to do with saying one thing (or nothing at all) but meaning another. This feels very dishonest, and ugly. Some would like to live in a world where absolutely everything is completely explicitly stated, and no one gets offended, but uses everything said as a learning experience. This may seem naive (because the ability to think and say things others may find subjectively offensive is great), but the desire persists nonetheless.

I'm personally torn on the subject, as both ways have their serious negatives, but it's worth stating here anyway.

I can appreciate why this comment is so up-voted. It's easy for us to think in terms of black and white, binary, here are the lines, true and false if statements.

But on both points, the analysis is still coming from the same mindset/framework of thinking.

On the issue of merit, if you can't communicate about the merit, the merit might as well not exist. In a case where someone has merit to solve a problem, but not the social skills to properly communicate, the person is very similar to a computer program that can receive input and provide output. Computers are great at following instructions to the letter, so much that if they do something wrong, it's usually the user's fault. But how often do we realize now that a program was designed ineffectively so that we now blame the application rather than the user (see any industrial design review), and how often do we wish we could implement machine learning capabilities that would allow the application to correctly guess what the user is really trying to do? People have the ability to adapt social interactions to the user (call it better AI) and also provide this dyanmic feedback (call it machine learning). We can rise above the level of dumb computers that receive input, provide output, and then blame the user if the output isn't actually what the user was looking for.

On the issue of radical honesty and transparency, and feeling very dishonest and ugly. I really can appreciate this, I can. But in learning to be empathetic to others (especially my mother, whose mind operates in a totally different manner than my own, leading to many arguments with her when I was younger and I'll admit more immature), I realize that for them not taking into considerations someone's feelings is equally ugly. The words I usually hear are "You don't know anything about my problem, stop acting like you do."

Basically in such interactions, I'm not helping, even if I'm right. If we want to speak about merit, the true test should not be my level of knowledge, but rather, did I solve the problem? If I can't solve the problem, how much is my merit really worth? That reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/793/

I definitely sympathize with this. I used to be (and to some extent still am) the sort of person who would get in a lot of social trouble for being too blunt about things, or for focusing on results rather than social niceties. But I’ve come to realize that in order to really value merit and honesty, good communication skills are a prerequisite. I’m going to focus on the second issue, since I think the merit issue is clearer. (There’s a reason we value languages other than assembly, and people like Bill Nye.)

If you want to be honest, you must first learn communication skills. It is impossible to communicate honestly if you can’t communicate.

Languages do not inherently contain meaning. The only reason we are able to speak and understand each other in English is because there is a social consensus that certain words and phrases mean certain things. If you try to speak to someone who isn’t part of that social consensus (because they speak only a different language, say), your words are meaningless.

Therefore, if you say some words to people, and every time they invariably interpret your words as meaning, “This person is socially aggressive and is disagreeing with me as a power play”, then that is what those words mean. It is almost entirely irrelevant that you intended them to mean, “It is my objective analysis that your plan is bad.”

Since you probably don’t believe, “I want to make a power play on this person”, you are accidentally being dishonest by stating your opinion the way you did. If you want to communicate, “I think your plan is a bad one, and that we ought to try something different”, then you must put in the effort to actually learn how to communicate that.

To take a concrete example, say a friend were to invite you to a movie. The movie is quite bad, and you have a variety of criticisms of it. At the end of the night, your friend asks, “So what did you think?” If you wish to communicate, “I thought it was a bad movie”, you cannot scowl and say, “Typical hollywood tripe.” That would accidentally be dishonest, because you would be communicating, “I’m in a bad mood, and quite possibly angry at you. Also, I’m completely uninterested in your opinion.” Instead, you might try something like smiling and saying, “Oh, it was exactly as terrible as I was expecting. I’m already composing my facebook take-down in my head. What did you think?” This more honestly communicates, “I found the movie lacking, but I’m in a good mood and glad we spent time together.” (Alternatively, if you do happen to be in a bad mood, it’s probably not because of the movie. So you might look thoughtful and say, “Well, I thought it was pretty mediocre, but I’ve been in a bad mood recently anyway, because of X, so I might just be being unfair.”)

The importance of learning some sort of social intelligence is so underrated. You see all these front page posts on hacker news "I taught my 5 year old son and daughter how to program in five different languages" like its something that will really better these children's lives. You want a happy successful kid? Teach them the art of being social and having meaningful interactions with other people. I've wasted so much of my life trying to be the best student or programmer I could possibly be. I turned 24 this year and I'm proud of how well I've done and what I've accomplished in my career to date, but without friends to enjoy it with, success is pretty shallow.

I always had trouble figuring out how to behave or what to say in public settings. Trying my best to be the nicest guy in the room, but ending up coming off aloof and arrogant.

Until I learned the fine art of chit-chat.

I had an old Army buddy who was a master at chit-chat. He was a lawyer, of course. Anyway he'd drag me to parties, take me by the arm and work the room. It was an amazing show. Listening to his conversations and watching his body language I learned how to be non-offensive and how it was ok to talk about nothing important at all.

And that was my biggest huddle; learning that most people in social settings don't want to be serious. That that wasn't the point.

At least for myself, I think there's a gray area between being socially awkward and being selfish. And if the selfishness is not intentional then I might even call it self-ignorance.

I had the good fortune in my 20's of hanging around an uncle who was amazingly charismatic - the type that lights up the room, as they say. I tried to emulate him for a while and of course it never really worked all that well for me. But I did become more aware of my own habits. Before that I had always thought I was a pretty considerate person. It took some self analysis to realize that I was pretty stingy with compliments and I didn't really take much interest in what other people were doing. I didn't do thoughtful things for people very often. A lot of times I think I still don't do enough but I'm a lot more aware of it now. The sad thing is that it really doesn't take that much. Some people seem to get it earlier than others but it took me into my 20's before I really became aware of how I treated other people.

I appear to be the odd man out, here.

I have always felt empathy for others. I've always been able to put myself in their shoes.

I went through my "Neo in the Matrix" period long, long ago. Long before the Matrix came out. I was able to manipulate people like it was nothing.

One day, I realized how unethical that was. I was toying with other people for my own ends.

And so, like a comic book character, I started using my powers for good. When I manipulate people now, it's for their good, not mine. For example, people generally do not take advice, no matter how good it is. But you can manipulate them into it. Like Inception, you have to make it at least partially their idea. You ask them pointed questions that have only 1 answer. Of course, they'll come up with that answer. It's now their idea.

Strong-willed people can still resist it. But these are the people that have always been hardest to help, anyhow. If you've tried your best, you can't feel bad for failing to help them. They simply won't let you.

I've tried stuff like this. The problem is that my brain gives me wrong/negative interpretations of the other person's emotions most of the time, and I leave almost every social interaction feeling like a failure. This naturally feeds back on itself. Anyone else dealt with something similar?

I hear you. I do feel that, like many other skills, this also can be learned and mastered. There have been times when I've been pretty adept at recognizing and responding to signals. But over the past few years, I have lapsed.

Just as an example: today, at a talk, I was talking to this woman and we had a pleasant conversation. Then, as the talk is about to start, she says something to the effect of "I'd love to learn more about your work". My response (with a mouthful of pizza)? "Sure!". And then I focused back on the speaker as he was about to start speaking. Much later I realized she wanted to continue the conversation later, and wanted my card or some contact info. But by then she was gone (she left early).

So, for me, it's not that I don't pick up signals; I do pick up many, but they have a much lower priority in the brain's CPU and my responses don't incorporate the signals. My brain finally realizes the inputs way after the opportunity has passed.

I never heard it phrased that way but yes, I feel the exact same way.

I realize now that I've learned to 'lean into the discomfort,' but I still have those feelings almost all the time...

"I feel like Neo at the end of The Matrix now." As much as I hate to admit it, I can identify with this. Becoming socially literate for me too has felt and continues to feel almost like a superpower. That "Wow! I can't believe I can do this!" feeling is a bit of a rush.

I think what the author is describing is something of a growing trend. It has become relatively easy to make it through to adulthood with very low social intelligence. Society (school and parents, both quite possibly lacking in social intelligence in their own right) reward you for high analytical intelligence, and technologies (videogames for instance) help us function OK without the close groups and social ties which used to be so important in pre-industrial societies. But the further you go into life, the harder it is to proceed, succeed and be happy with a major deficit in social intelligence. Luckily, just as social intelligence is taught implicitly by parents who possess it to their children, so can anyone learn it themselves. It really is a learnable skill! And the shift to valuing it is a good swing of the pendulum back from the excesses of "pure" rationalism (quote marks because a system of rationality that doesn't value geting along with others is not very rational in my books). I think emotional/social literacy is perhaps even more fundamental than our other "traditional" literacies. We've just forgotten the habit as a society of teaching it to our children.

Speaking of books, "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman is fantastic for this stuff. Psychotherapy is also very, very useful (if of course it's with a good therapist).

Edit: One more thing. I was standing outside a computer room after hours at my university recently, trying to get in. There's this swipe card device that you have to swipe your student ID past to unlock the door, and I've always struggled to get this particular device to work, compared to others around campus. So this night while I'm swiping fruitlessly away a girl and a guy come up and stand there waiting for me. After a couple of seconds the girl says "Maybe if you try swiping it in the middle it will help." I do and instantly it works. Problem solved.

What really hit me was the way this girl phrased her comment. I've seen her in this same room many times late at night, and she clearly knew exactly what I was doing wrong. She could easily have achieved the exact same result many other ways - "You need to swipe it in the middle" - "Don't you have any idea what you're doing?" "Here, let me do that" "No, that's wrong, you should do this." Instead she phrased it as a gentle suggestion, without explicitly confirming that it was what I needed to do. Phrasing it that way let me choose to take the suggestion without sacrificing my autonomy, gave me an option to turn the suggestion down without face, and even let me take some of the credit for getting it right.

All in all, it was a deft response to a situation where someone else may easily have caused offence with inconsiderate phrasing. Not a big deal in its own right, but small moments like that stack up. As a result this girl clearly goes through life much more smoothly than the people described in this article. So while maybe she can't blitz a test or an essay like a more analytically-minded person, I think her "soft" skill is incredibly, incredibly valuable - I think analytically-minded people have much to learn from people like her.

One of my favorite character arcs in all of literature is that of Spock's, from that stereotyped "rationality" through developing his own comfort with human emotions. Even as from the outside, it seems little has changed, the initial Spock and the final Spock are very different people. Kirk's journey is flashier and easier to find in the story, but far more trite and it's been done a hundred times. I don't know of very many parallels to the Spock arc. I grew up with Star Trek but I find I didn't really "get it" until much later in life. I wish the Original Series wasn't so painful to watch because of its superficial flaws, because while I would not presume to say it's the "best" Star Trek, it probably is the most legitimately "literary" at its best.

I have had a growing hypothesis that my social intelligence with acquaintances and big groups (as opposed to close friends) is actually very bad. As is probably the case with most of us here, I didn't suspect this because my intelligence in all other arenas is excellent. I think I was further insulated from the problem because I was in small schools through high school, and never really felt socially deficient as a result.

In the 8 or so years since then, being thrust into more circumstances where I don't already know everyone, I have really started to notice it. In some ways, (if my hypothesis is true) realizing what the problem is has been a huge relief- I'm no longer mystified about why some people seem to have large social networks, and I have a small one. It's almost like someone finding out they were colorblind, and then realizing that maybe that was the reason they didn't really like some visual art that everyone else seemed to love.

But, I'm still unsure how to approach this problem. This article gives me some hope, but not too many specifics. My working relationships are all excellent, however. Its more just the "hanging out" with people my age, and finding social groups. I suck at that. Does someone with similar experiences want to chime in?

Excellent question, and one I would love an answer to as well! I am very comfortable working with people, and get along great with everyone. I would go as far as to say I'm usually quite an important part of most groups I am a part of, once everybody gets to know me.

The thing that frustrates me, however, is how few people I end up "hanging out" with, and really enjoy the company of. I put that down to a sort of "social fatigue" because of my being an introvert. I'd be curious to see if this is a problem anybody else has managed to conquer.

Not knowing much about your situation, here are some general tips that may or may not be useful. Also, recommending again Daniel Goleman's work for developing basic social literacy.

1) Be happy about the size of your social circle. Some people think they have to run out and make lots of friends as quickly as possible. I think it's better to hang out with the people you know and work on just having a good attitude. More friends (if that's really what you want) will happen of their own accord.

2) Relatedly, let things evolve naturally. It's better to be relatively hands-off, go with the flow and resist the temptation to manufcature new relationships/friendships/hobbies/social interactions.

3) Do things you like, regardless of where they take you socially. Some people think you can't go to a movie without friends. I think the opposite - you should be doing stuff you enjoy, without worrying too much about whether there are people doing it with you.

4) Then, look for opportunities to invite people to do stuff with you. If it's stuff you like doing anyway, you'll be more enjoyable to hang out with.

5) Be open to anything. People offer you chances to go do new things - dinner at their place, a concert, paintball - all the time. Take up the opportunities. If you're agreeable, eager, and ready to learn, people will love having you around.

6) Be faithful. Some people seem to have a bad habit of ditching old friends when new, cooler ones seem to be available - like now they have a chance to hang out with the cool kids, so they're going to get rid of those embarrassing old weirdos they were making do with for a while. Don't do this! It won't make you happy, it'll just make you a fake asshole. Staying true to your old friends, regardless of their quirks, is key to staying true to yourself, and very important if you are doing better socially and making friends. Remember your roots.

7) Say nice things. Just make an effort to say nice things, often. Compliment people on their clothes, taste in music, abilites, work they've done, house, whatever. You might think you're very complimentary but I think it can be surprising (if you're anything like me) how much people appreciate hearing you voice your approval aloud. People love it.

8) Use agreeable words like "yes," "sure," "okay," "awesome," and so on. Say "great" instead of "good." Say "great!!" instead of just "great." Just try consciously to change your language to use more positives. At first it might feel a bit weird but it makes a big difference, and it becomes more natural. You will just become a more positive person. (Did you notice that I tried to give as much of this advice in positives rather than negatives?)

9) Be yourself. Do you want to hang out with people right now or just be on your own? Do you what you want to do. Pay attention to your own feelings, and try and communicate what you are feeling clearly - while being respectful and considerate of course. Pay attention to your inner state.

10) Real importantly, it's okay if you don't click with everyone. Maybe what you're looking for is just two or three really close friends. If so, those are going to be people you can really, really relate to. Feeling comfortable with others starts with honesty. It's not about trying to act cool or super friendly, it's about being yourself around people you trust and who trust you. It's not always easy to find people who fit with you (and for whom you fit likewise) but it's worth it. The main thing is not to worry, with these things it can feel like nothing is changing and nothing will ever changes for aaaaaaages, then suddenly, overnight, it all just happens. It usually finally happens, I think, when you relax and forget to worry about it.

Hope that helps. Feel free to correct me if my advice doesn't map to your specifics. Otherwise, good luck : )

Thanks for the thoughtful words. Based on my text alone, I can see how these would apply. I think I know all these things intellectually. I probably put most of them into practice. I wonder if a big part of the problem is I work from home, and I work all the time. Or is that symptom? You deserve serious kudos for the list, regardless.

Perhaps if work is something you find so absorbing and such an important part of your life, any natural social solution would develop from your work interest. I don't know what you do, but are there any ways you could meet up with people doing similar stuff or with similar interests locally? Can you do any of your work away from home, in a more social environment (Starbucks e.g.)? Maybe there's a local cafe you could make a habit of visiting regularly. Just little ways to get out of your comfort zone a bit. Heck, maybe you could organise a local HN meetup? I notice you haven't put any info on your profile - maybe be a little more open and give an email and a location? Likewise on other newsgroups or online communities you enjoy. There's nothing wrong with meeting people from online.

Other things I could think of involve going on a little vacation, maybe seeing if there are some clubs or programmes around your area you could sign up for, or volunteering. Also would you consider looking into trying your hand at a random job? Say you put up some fliers for mowing people's lawns. Or offer to teach people computer skills. You can meet nice people, and teaching is a good way to practice being generous and respectful with others.

If you don't mind me asking, what sort of work do you do? And what sort of place do you live in? I'm a uni student in a pretty cozy small town, I'm sure your situation is quite different from mine :)

Im a developer at a small startup, I work from home, in Portland, OR.

I wonder if a big part of the problem is I work from home, and I work all the time

FWIW, I find that when I spend a lot of time alone, social interaction can get awkward and I need a little time to get into the "flow" again.

"As is probably the case with most of us here, I didn't suspect this because my intelligence in all other arenas is excellent."

I'd like to branch off from this comment a bit. What happens when your intelligence, like wealth (a comparison I recently started making), creates a gap between yourself and others? What happens when you want to talk about really interesting things ('go to a fancy restaurant') but others basically clam up ('can't afford it')?

Over the last decade and a half, my personal 'wealth' has been created from finding and maintaining varying interests. Most people I talk to don't seem to have any. They work/play, spend/earn, watch tv, listen to music and go out with friends to bars/clubs. And when you ask them about their interests, they rattle off the list I just made. I suppose it has to do with the idea that education is something you're forced to deal with and 'luckily' it's over after college.

Finding those (IRL) who have interests or who believe in lifelong learning is like finding a needle in a haystack.

I've often made excuses to myself along the lines of "there are just fewer people I get along with because I'm gifted" or something like that. But I can't buy those completely, because there are plenty of people smarter than me who don't seem to have that problem.

Edit: You might reframe what friends are for? Common interests are really important, but not an absolute necessity.

I was like this several years ago myself, the key is in being humble whilst still being argumentative without sounding like a wanker - it's possible!

Tis' a fine line! I throw in plenty of humble statements as I like to think the only thing I really know is that I know nothing (though this makes me want to learn more, question more). I also throw in bits and pieces of random things I've studied and hope the other person doesn't just find it interesting for a moment but rather goes home thinking about it. Of course, possible they don't find it interesting at all and just think I'm a wanker.

Indeed it is a fine line, but there is plenty of things you can learn along the way to make that line a little less fine until it gets to the point that the line might not even exist anymore!

Give yourself some credit, you know stuff, and you can know even more if you want to :-)

That is what self growth is all about after all!

I find that having an understanding of human psychology is a critical step towards being effective with this kind of stuff, because it helps you work through the psychology of other people for a common goal (ie, a random conversation with a stranger, job interview, speech, etc).

Without it, your flying blind. When I was younger and flying blind it cost me a number of futures I will never see now.

Humbleness can come off as exploitable and dumb, just as much as it can come off as being intelligent, it's not just what you say, it's also how you say it!

Safe journeys!

>because there are plenty of people smarter than me who don't seem to have that problem.

They do have this problem. Since childhood they are surrounded by dumb and uninteresting people. Cynicism and distrust in the common sense of the fellow humans are already there by age of 12. But this is unproductive, and they make conscious effort to mingle, so they don't have to be alone all the time, have somebody to mate with, have playdates for their children, but it continues to be a struggle and sacrifice and they continue to stay intellectually alone.

There is a way out though - each typical step in society that is pre-programmed for smart people is also a filter - getting to school for gifted children, good university, then good, hard to get to, company, then changing it to better one filters out dumb people from your acquaintances and makes people around you nicer to talk to and easier to get along with. The downside is that they typically have not so stellar "emotional intelligence" as well, and, depending on occupation, there could be a gender bias (so mating within peer group could be problematic).

Your last statement is quite possible but I've found two groups forming: those who like to go out and those who like to think yet have accepted going out, albeit in more interesting ways. The latter might go to an open-mic night or spend their evening seeing a new foreign film and later, a beer or two in a venue where people can actually hear each other. While those things are preferable to me, they are icing on the cake since the subjects discussed along the night are about a new study they read or a new connection they made while taking a walk that day. If these people ever need to go a few layers deeper because you've got them excited, they can easily go deeper. I'm 31 and I've probably personally met maybe 6 people like this...ever.

Completely agree with you, although I think it is more about the personal desire to learn than education in itself.

If you don't have the personal desire to learn in the first place, then I doubt that education can genuinely "teach" you this.

Where does this desire come from? It comes from within, so it can't be "taught" to most people who are unreceptive in the first place.

During my life of 27 years, I have met only a few other individuals with the same eagerness for self growth as I have, and hundreds of people who have no interest or concept of what self growth even means and dozens of additional people who are somewhere in between and use their social skills to manipulate other people instead of manipulating themselves to be better people.

Funny, funny world we live in!

I actually thought of having some sort of internet social network that would help people find other people like them using criteria like "believe and practice lifelong learning", "have diverse and special interests" and features like that I actually believe CAN be defined, even mathematically.

It sometimes amazes me how "socially retarded" thing like Facebook and Google+ are... there's so much more one could do in these areas that all the "facebookies" that mentally jerk of in hackathlons and quickly code new "cool" video sharing features should be doing instead...

Yeah, that part really stinks. I've had that thought, too. I suppose in some sense this is what subreddits are, but no one cares about being your friend on Reddit.

...but imagine what would be to see someones G+ or Fb profile on Reddit (or request to see it and only have access to it of the Reddit user gives it to you) and then add it (submit a friend request) in a way such that he/she sees that you added him via Reddit and automagically sees your most recent common Reddit "conversations" on the side of the accept/deny friendship request so has enough infos and context to quickly make a decision... combine this with some non-annoying non-awkard psychometrics for whoever chooses to use them/accepts being used by them and it would start to be less "socially" retarted...

...the only HARD thing to do would be to make all these things unobstrusive enough so that they's happen without taking extra time and incurring too much cognitive overload

...or maybe 90% of users would be too "IT dumb" too actually benefit from and therefore use these advances ...and they would not bring enough extra revenue for behemonts like Fb

Comments like this make Hacker News pretty great.

Of course if the guy had said the same thing, he would be a passive aggressive jerk, saying "maybe" when he who darn well what the problem was. But the girl had long flowing social skills, and two large, soft skills, and these that made her delivery more pleasant...

Gross. Sexist much?

There are different social standards for men and women having almost nothing to do with appearance. While a man might appear to be passive aggressive in a negative way if his advice isn't assertive enough, a woman will look like a pushy bitch if she's too assertive. It cuts both ways.

Uhh... I have no idea why you feel the need to be so hostile about this. Also, I don't agree with you. Generally girls are sharper socially than guys, but I have met plenty of guys with great social skills, as well as girls with limited skills, and many other variations.

And if you're suggesting that I automatically approve of the social behaviour of attractive girls, then I am afraid I beg to differ.

Here's a great site anyone considering the state of their friendships and social life should check out:

http://www.succeedsocially.com

The sort of topics it covers:

"How To Think Of Things To Say When Making Conversation"

"When People Don't Seem Interested In Starting Friendships With You"

"When You Feel Like Your Social Circle Is Indifferent To You"

"Social Mistakes Intellectual People Can Make"

"Reasons Someone May See You As Weird"

Just start clicking around randomly and you'll probably find an article that draws your attention. Hope it helps any of you folks out there who see that they may be doing something wrong but can't figure out what it is.

>After a couple of seconds the girl says "Maybe if you try swiping it in the middle it will help."

Personally, I'd find that way of expressing it slightly annoying, though I'm not sure why. Perhaps because it's worded as a suggestion without saying why this suggestion is worth considering. Maybe if I tried swiping it while singing Yankee Doodle Dandy, it would also help?

The way that I would word this sort of suggestion is, "I've noticed that I have better luck when I swipe it in the middle." That's just a helpful fact, devoid of prescription, while also expressing to some degree that I have been similarly frustrated by the device in the past.

Then again, I probably have Asperger's too, so what do I know?

My gut reaction to her way of expressing it was also negative, although I'd give her the benefit of the doubt in person because she's just trying to help.

I think it's because it's condescending. In two ways - on one hand, it's pointing out something that's obvious in hindsight. On the other, it's blatantly trying to sugarcoat that it's obvious, as if you can't handle the fact that you don't know everything.

I would've just said "Try the middle" or "Right down the center". Simple and basically devoid of emotion.

OTOH, I think that one thing this example highlights is: audience matters. I find that I talk one way with computer types, another way with my liberal-arts college friends, and a third way with my Harry Potter fandom friends. And occasionally I mix it up, and then my college friends think I'm a rude asshole, or Hacker News thinks I'm overly circuitous and can't get to the point. You can't have a conversation devoid of context; the fact that this example happens outside a computer room is pretty relevant.

(replying since it's too late to edit into my comment...)

Also, this is one of those cases where body language says a lot. "Try the middle", said cheerfully and with a smile, comes across a whole lot differently than when said slowly & gruffly, in a low tone of voice, with your arms crossed across your chest.

Hard to capture in text, but at the time she said it very simply, no impatience or bite. It didn't come across as at all condescending or sugar-coated, to me at least.

> It really is a learnable skill! ... We've just forgotten the habit as a society of teaching it to our children.

I think that's a hasty generalization.

Some people are merely introverted, and can improve their social intelligence through everyday practice. Others, however, actually have a neurological condition (i.e. Asperger's Syndrome, which the article mentions). At least for some subset of them, "social intelligence" is little more than analytic intelligence applied to something that has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. You can discern the signal from time to time if you concentrate hard enough, and you can put an abstraction layer on top of all the analytic processing so that the result looks somewhat like "social intelligence". But at bottom, it's always like trying to do floating-point calculations on a processor that was only designed for integer calculations. It's inefficient by many orders of magnitude, because you have to fake every step.

Of course, there isn't a clear line between an introverted neurotypical and an Aspie. But just because the transition is gradual doesn't mean that the difference doesn't exist.

It makes me sad whenever an article like this uses the word "Asperger's" to describe typical introverted programmers. (This is a complaint about the article, not the parent comment.) It also makes me sad to read comments that make excessively broad generalizations about how people (should) acquire social intelligence. (This is a complaint about the parent comment.) Overgeneral advice, even if well-intentioned, could give neurotypicals the misleading idea that Aspies behave like they do because of their own fault (lack of effort).

Nowadays, we often throw around psychiatric terms to describe behavior that falls within the normal range. "I'm feeling ADHD today." "He's a bit of an Aspie." "She acts as if she has bipolar disorder when she's drunk." etc. Although some of these are meant to be comical and we all have some use for metaphors and exaggerations, we should be careful not to make serious generalizations based on such informal usage of terms.

I do find it interesting that we ask Aspies to become more empathetic, but we don't ask neurotipicals to become a little less hung up on social niceties.

Obviously, neurotypicals get the benefit of the doubt for "how people should be", since there are so many more of them. But we don't ask gays to be straight, despite not being "normal", numerically, so why should we ask Aspies to be more empathetic? Why assume an Aspie is broken, by default? Where's the proof that lack of empathy is a problem for anything other than working with neurotypicals?

I can't help but wonder that the future might not actually belong to neurotypicals. That, perhaps, the Aspie mutation might be better adapted to a world that is becoming more and more computerized and less and less hospitable to neurotypicals.

For example, consider Zynga. How many normals are completely wasting their lives and earnings on an objectively stupid social game because their normal, empathetic minds have been hacked to "like" and see value in it? We all can see that it's sad, and yet we know there's virtually nothing that can be done for them, short of banning those games. They simply cannot adapt, where Aspies can (and have).

Neurotypicals seem to think Aspies have "anti-social" lives, but those I've met seem pretty happy. And at least from my perspective, are really straightforward to get along with, if you can understand their behavior and not take offense and what would normally be a slight in neurotypical-land.

Perhaps trying to turn Aspies into neurotypicals is really only beneficial today because most of the world is normal, so Aspies, to some degree, need to work with neurotypicals if they are to achieve anything.

But how long will that be true? When will a critical mass of Aspies exist, or the world become hospitable to them despite not having to pretend to be neurotypicals?

And what then? Do we continue to try and "make the gays straight", so to speak? Or do we realize that an Aspie is just as valid a way to live as anything else, and not a disability to be overcome?

It's strange to see evolution happen right in front of us. I don't have any answers, but these are the thoughts that have occurred to me for some time now, and I thought I'd share.

We do do this. Have you never been involved in a work conversation where someone says, "Get to the point, you're wasting everyone's time."

Have you never gone to someone to make a request, and you're starting out with a long spiel about your reasons, and the other person says, "Look, I'm busy, just tell me what it is you want."

I see these kinds of conversations a lot. It's not always in one direction.

Yes, being busy is an excellent excuse to behave a bit like an Aspie, even if you're neurotypical.

Aspies (and introverts in general) thrive in environments where people are evaluated more on the basis of getting shit done quickly and accurately, and less on the basis of how often they drink with their boss. It's maker's schedule vs. manager's schedule all over again.

So, in a sense, modern societies' increasing emphasis on efficiency and productivity might work in favor of Aspies. So does urbanization, which allows you to disregard what your great-aunt's second cousin thinks about your new socks.

Do you think that aspies are less susceptible to Zynga games? I don't know either way but in my own experience aspie types that I have met seem much more likely to be hooked on games like WoW certainly.

I'm not sure that the comparison to gays works so well because by and large being gay doesn't affect your day to day relationships with other people apart from in specific circumstances. Unless you act in a stereotypical gay fashion it's quite likely that nobody will ever know you are gay unless you tell them. I've met plenty of people whom I've known have been gay but in all likelyhood I've met countless more who have been gay and I've had no idea.

It's very hard to hide if you are an aspie or socially retarded in some way and it's something that is likely to affect your relationship with everybody who you meet. By and large these effects will also be negative since people are uncomfortable around people they regard as "weird".

Zynga specializes in social games. FarmVille is rather pointless if you're not interesting in visiting your friends' farms and chatting about each other's cows. WoW, on the other hand, is fun to play even if you're not into idle chitchat.

Now, Minecraft, that's an Aspie's wet dream.

The very low prevalence of the condition means that people with Asperger's would have to enjoy vastly higher rates of reproductive success to become a substantial portion of the population. That doesn't seem to be the case.

And that presumes that there is a mostly genetic basis for the condition (the womb environment does seem to factor into autistic spectrum disorders).

Wikipedia describes Asperger's as a "pervasive developmental disorder", characterised by "significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests" and also often "physical clumsiness and atypical use of language." This description, along with my impression of how people with the condition function in life, brings to my mind an image of people who are socially-blind, unable to avoid constantly tripping, stumbling and smashing into the obstacles of social terrain around them.

While I support the move to view Asperger's more as a different way of being human rather than a defect per se, this does not to me sound like the making of a new master race. If Zynga was the result of a Asperger's conspiracy to hijack the frivolous satisfaction pathways of "neurotypicals" and so take over the world, I might think differently. But it's not. People with Asperger's don't seem to be interested in conquering the neurotypical world, they seem to be happiest staying at home playing with computers and avoiding other people.

Basically, my impression of Asperger's sufferers is that they lack the social insight and intuition to succeed in the real world. They do okay in carefully-constructed bubbles with interesting non-human toys and machines to play with. But they can't cope with normal human beings.

Additionally, your characterisation of normal human beings as too dumb and clueless to resist mindless games is... rather crude I think. You sound bitter.

>Basically, my impression of Asperger's sufferers is that they lack the social insight and intuition to succeed in the real world.

Or, phrased a different way, they seem to be incapable (or uninterested in) tricking and manipulating their fellow man simply for their own benefit, regardless of the detriment to others.

>They do okay in carefully-constructed bubbles with interesting non-human toys and machines to play with.

Or phrased a different way, they help mankind progress by focusing on the physical world, solving problems and creating tools... rather than attempting to gain benefits for themselves by manipulating and suckering other humans in a series of "con artist" games.

>But they can't cope with normal human beings.

Or, again viewed from a different angle -- they have difficulty dealing with (to them) unpredictable,lying, manipulative, socio-parasitic people.

>Additionally, your characterisation of normal human beings as too dumb and clueless to resist mindless games is... rather crude I think. You sound bitter.

Or there is the possibility of the opposite view -- that it is YOU who are more than a bit 'bitter' -- technology is largely a black-box puzzle to you, so you allow others to deal with it, and instead concentrate on parasitic (people manipulation) means of satisfying your needs and wants.

And then you justify this by denigrating those who deal with (and advance) technology in ways that you cannot.

Hmm. I appreciate the strength of your feelings. That said I disagree with you on a couple of points here.

Before I explain my thinking though, I first want to apologise if I came across as overly dismissive of people with Asperger's in my last post. I assure you that was not my intention. I do not intend to attack or criticise. Seriously. I have nothing against people with Asperger's - I find the whole notion that there is or should be some sort of conflict between neurotypicals and people with Asperger's baffling. I feel sympathy for people with Asperger's just as I feel sympathy for all human beings, especially so because it seems like people with Asperger's have a pretty hard time of life in a lot of areas.

>they seem to be incapable (or uninterested in) tricking and manipulating their fellow man simply for their own benefit, regardless of the detriment to others.

>Unpredictable, lying, manipulative, socio-parasitic people.

I will try and summarise what you seem to be suggesting: the world is a seething mass of deceit and trickery, and people with Asperger's are just too honest for their own good. The "lying parasite" view of humanity.

I disagree with this. I think what you are describing does not reflect reality. I think you are expressing a stereotype, and a pretty extreme one at that. Personally, my experience of the world is that people are generally very generous and honest. Regardless, what is more important for me here is to understand WHY you (or in general someone with Asperger's) would come to feel this way. Here are my two guesses. NB: this is all just my speculation. I am not claiming to know for sure that any of this is right.

The first guess is that someone would Asperger's would naturally become extremely frustrated by their inability to understand the feelings and motivations of others, and thus function smoothly in normal society. I can only imagine how frustrating that must be. Often, when people are frustrated like that for such a long time, quite naturally they develop a justification to minimise their sense of failure or not-fitting-in - something along the lines of "It's not my fault - it's their fault! They're all fucked - the whole system is fucked." This helps because, instead of feeling like they have failed because they can't do something, they feel like they have succeeded because they purposefully chose to avoid something. Psychologically, they have regained a feeling of autonomy and control.

My second guess is that someone with Asperger's might assume that their own feelings and ideas about what they are expected to do are widespread. This is called projection in psychology. That is to say, someone with Asperger's might feel like they are pressured to "pretend" or "lie" in order to please others. Which could lead to thoughts like "Why do I have to pretend - shouldn't people accept me as I am?" This could be worsened if they feel like the reasons people offer sound instrumentalist - like they must pretend to be a certain way (caring, interested, jolly etc) so normal people will like them. This sounds like manipulation - and quite naturally again someone with Asperger's could assume that this is how ALL people work - they all pretend to be nice, they all feel like shit inside, they all just do it to get what they want. They project their internal state onto the world at large.

These two guesses may or may not be correct. Please note I am trying to offer them without judgement of any sort. I think they are the sorts of things that any perfectly normal person would do in that sort of situation. If you feel like crap, you try to make it better somehow.

But again, and especially on the second point, that view of normal society is just not correct. People are on the whole honest. Seriously. For most people, sympathy with others come pretty naturally. For most people, some days they feel good and some days they feel like crap, and they act however they feel. They don't walk around constantly trying to suppress their inner state, filled with deceit and distrust, just trying to manipulate each other!

The second point I want to rebut is your assumption that I do not understand technology. That it is a "black box puzzle." I'm sorry, but you're just plain wrong on that one. Why should you assume that social intelligence and analytical intelligence are mutually exclusive? It makes no sense to me - I can only hazard a guess that it might be a superiority reaction - thinking something like "Well yeah, but they don't understand what I'm great at."

Third, (and I apologise for rattling this off, I'd spend more time going over my thoughts but I'm in a bit of a rush) is your idea that neurotypicals and people with Asperger's are necessarily at war with each other - that normal society is a lazy, parasitic entity that feeds off the work of people with heightened analytical intelligences, chewing them up and spitting them out just because they don't have the inner dishonesty to protect themselves. Again, I think this is wrong, and curious to boot. Do you really feel like you are so abused and mistreated? That wider society is so dismissive of people with Asperger's? Society is a pretty sprawling construct - it's not like there's a council of neurotypicals that gets together every three years to set policy on the oppression of people with Asperger's or anything.

In summary, I think you have a highly mistaken impression of "normal" people and "normal" society. More importantly, I think you should realise that no sensible person thinks that the best way to go through life is to pretend not to be yourself - whether you're "normal" or not. If I was talking to someone with Asperger's, I would never say "pretend to be XYZ." I would try and help them explain some of the social cues and reasoning that might make their life difficult in the absence of understanding. But hell, if you feel angry or reclusive, then be angry or reclusive. If you don't care about what someone is saying, don't pretend to. That's how normal people work, I swear. They just act as they feel.

The only caveat is, just as no one should expect you to pretend to be a certain way, don't expect anyone to pretend to like the way you interact with them. If someone is upset about something and you laugh or respond flippantly or dismissively, it is their right to not like your response, and their right to avoid showing such feelings to you in the future, and their right to avoid being around you. Honesty cuts both ways.

>I can't help but wonder that the future might not actually belong to neurotypicals. That, perhaps, the Aspie mutation might be better adapted to a world that is becoming more and more computerized and less and less hospitable to neurotypicals.

This will ENTIRELY depend on who out-reproduces the other.

>Neurotypicals seem to think Aspies have "anti-social" lives, but those I've met seem pretty happy.

But not necessarily reproductively successful.

>When will a critical mass of Aspies exist, or the world become hospitable to them despite not having to pretend to be neurotypicals?

Quite probably the opposite will happen (has happened, and is happening).

In a very ironic/paradoxical sense, it is the "Aspies" (people who have historically "obsessed" over machinery, technology and the physical world -- to the detriment of their own sexual reproduction) who have enabled the technophobes to successfully increase in numbers far beyond what they were capable of before. When human reproductive choices were far more limited (because travel was limited, total number of human interactions were limited, technology spread/scaling was limited, etc) then the anti-social (a-social? under-social?) Aspie types still had a chance to reproduce in sufficient numbers such as to pass on their genes. In addition, at previous levels of technology access to information/tools essentially required interaction with other human beings (to a far larger degree than with current technology).

The modern world -- with everything from antibiotics to automobiles & jet airplanes -- has led to humans having wider circles, to the greater marginalization of Aspie types; and recent technology (especially the internet) has facilitated a self-withdrawal of more and more Aspies; such that more and more of them are likely to be genetic dead-ends.

Ergo the chances of Aspies reaching some "critical mass" is not only highly unlikely, it is improbable.

> At least for some subset of them, "social intelligence" is little more than analytic intelligence applied to something that has a very low signal-to-noise ratio.

Yep, that's exactly what it feels like to me. I recently got diagnosed with Asperger's. I find it impossible to do "social intelligence" in real time during a conversation.

The frustrating part is that the signal is obviously there, since other people pick up on it just fine.

Do you find it possible to identify the signals by analysing interactions after the fact, not in real time?

Sometimes I realize hours or days later that I missed something obvious and important, but of course I cannot do this for every social interaction because I don't have time. Also, thinking about it leaves me mentally exhausted in the same way that organic chemistry and advanced mathematics (two subjects I find easy) do for neurotypicals. But my after-the-fact realizations are contingent upon my noticing and remembering specific details that indicate emotion, which is totally hit-or-miss.

Paul Ekman has extensively documented micro expressions, which are trace views of the signal. Studying them will teach you the normal, longer expressions too, that's how I learned.

How exactly does asperger's work? For me the learning process went:

Learn that crinkles under the eye mean smile is real --> observe it quite a bit --> learn to see it naturally and intuitively

That doesn't feel any different from any normal skill acquisition. But I may have had the advantage of some neural mechanism absent in aspie brains.

Anyway, the whole process only took a few months. Ekman has som microexpression training CDs, highly recommended.

> learn to see it naturally and intuitively

What exactly does it mean for something to become natural and intuitive? It's not unimaginable for an Aspie to learn to observe all sorts of behavioral hints -- BBC's recent incarnation of Sherlock Holmes does this exceptionally well -- but does he actually reach the decision that "This person is telling the truth" by the same process that a "normal" person does?

In my experience as an Aspie, it never happens automatically, and it never feels natural. I can hear every line of the code that's being interpreted and executed in my mind. I have a fast CPU, so it doesn't take long, but it definitely happens.

    if (smile) {
        try {
            check_wrinkles(under_eyes);
        }
        catch (CantTellException) {
            make_do_with_rough_assumption();
        }
    }

Even worse, Aspies tend to focus intensely on one thing at a time, so multi-tasking is risky business. An Aspie who learned to watch for wrinkles under eyes in real-time might focus so much on nothing but wrinkles under eyes, so that much more obvious signs of lying go completely unnoticed. In other words, check_wrinkles() blocks everything else. Similarly, even though I have extensive experience both in walking around and in hearing my own name, if somebody calls my name from behind while I'm walking, there's over 50% chance that the call won't even register, because every event handler must wait while walk() blocks. Also, the whole program crashes when an unanticipated exception occurs, resulting in extreme frustration.

As a consequence, when an Aspie finally gets enough practice to pass as normal, he might look like a normal person to casual observers, but the Aspie himself is always painfully aware that what he's doing is neither natural nor intuitive. At best, he's got the script cached in RAM for quick access.

Thanks for the explanation. Focus would definitely get in the way, since interpreting body language requires seeing many things at once.

I'll explain natural and intuitive by an example. In grade 8, I learned to juggle. Not well, but good enough. The process involved clumsily learning several motions and putting them together.

Now I can still juggle, despite years of not doing it. The skill, to the level that I trained it is intuitive. It no longer feels like many things, but just one.

Likewise, I learned to interpret many gestures. At first, I could only interpret them slowly, separately and consciously. Now I interpret them quickly, jointly and unconsciously most of the time.

Are there any skills you've acquired that can now run unconsciously in the background, or does everything require conscious effort and focus?

It sounds like the latter, but I'm curious how this works for things that require multiple separate actions, like driving, computer operation, cooking. Those feel like one thing, but really they're several smaller actions joined together.

Aspies are often noticeably clumsy when it comes to bodily movements. When they play sports, they use more analytical thinking than physical instinct. I often played badminton with my brother when I was young. Every time, I found myself analyzing the trajectory of the shuttlecock to decide where to put my racket. By the time I'm done, it's often too late to move my body into the right position. Ditto for pretty much every other sport I've tried. Beside social ineptitude, lack of skill in sports is a common reason why Aspies feel alienated in school.

But there is something called muscle memory, which allows even Aspies to do certain highly repetitive physical tasks without having to think too much. Typing and walking seem to fall into this category, though if there's nothing else to occupy my mind, it's not impossible for me to start being analytical about every step of a walk. I don't know where juggling fits in the spectrum, because I've never tried it, but the spectrum exists. Some types of bodily movements just seem to require some mysterious skill that can't be emulated with fast-but-single-threaded analytical reasoning.

Cooking is a piece of cake. You just apply a function to some ingredients, take the output, and feed it into the next function. Muscle memory takes care of stir(), and since it doesn't involve much thinking, I can afford to insert interrupts here and there to handle other events.

>Paul Ekman...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17221309

"M. O'Sullivan and P. Ekman (2004) claim to have discovered 29 wizards of deception detection. The present commentary offers a statistical critique of the evidence for this claim. Analyses reveal that chance can explain results that the authors attribute to wizardry..."

I wasn't talking about the "wizard" claims. Ekman literally wrote the book of facial expression classification:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System#s...

You could argue that the system is bunk, of course, but that's a different argument from te wizardry claims.

First I read about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy in the book from from 190x. Yes, the beginning of the twentieth century. They stimulated facial muscles with electricity and it allowed them to create emotions' expressions and classify them. So Ekman isn't even first to do that.

I see the FACS as a modern extension of the physiognomy. With all the scientific foundation of the latter.

I have both Asperger's and vision impairment. I can't discern microexpressions; I don't see crinkles under eyes or dimples on cheeks. What other ways are there?

If you can do it "not in real time" it means you could also get good enough at it to do it "in real time". I don't say that you should as you probably (assuming the best) are a great human being the way you are, and you shouldn't try be more like neurotypicals because other people tell you to. Or that you should be blamed for liking the way you are and preferring to stay this way.

But remember that the human brain is a wonderfully adaptive thing: neurotypicals can become more like you and you can become more like them (but they don't have to and you don't have to), so don't let the fact that someone "diagnosed" you one way FOOL YOU INTO BELIEVING THAT YOUR BRAIN IS NOT (ALMOST) INFINITELY ADAPTIVE! That's the greatest danger of diagnosing these things, it makes people forget about the IMENSE adaptive potential of their own mind (and this potential is universal, you could just as well use it to better undertand quantum mechanics as you could to "become" more like neurotypicals, your life, your choice!)

One point I would like to make: being an introvert doesn't mean you can't interact in a group situation (or have low social intelligence), it's just not your preferred situation.

I'd rather be reading a book than socialising with colleagues after work, but I do it and am far from a wallflower.

I also had an instructor on a course (on brainstorming) and he was very energetic, dynamic and dominated the room (in a good way). I chatted to him after the course and got on the subject of Myers-Briggs, and he said he was actually an introvert. He had just learnt (through training as an actor amongst other things) to be an extrovert when the situation required it.

What is considered "social" is also a cultural issue. People often talk about Steve Jobs being an asshole. I suspect he too didn't ascribe to the prevailing no-fault social model in de USA.

In terms of social interaction, the USA is the exception, not the norm. Many other cultures are more direct, critical, and less respectful of other's opinions if they "know better". For Aspies it would be easier to live elsewhere.

Americans somehow are no longer used to being told that they're wrong. They demand respect for their opinions (or worse: beliefs) which they won't get elsewhere unless based in facts/reason.

Have you ever worked with Europeans, especially people from The Netherlands or Russia?

Free advice is meted out generously and without excuses. According to them, Americans are extremely hung up on certain "niceties" that Dutchies (and much of Europe) consider "fake" or "politically correct". In reverse, Americans generally consider the French (and Dutch, and Russians, etc.) "rude".

I'm not necessarily saying the directness/truth is better, but it saves a bunch of time/bull as pointed out elsewhere. It requires some getting used to for the non-initiated... but once they do, they like it. My clients pay me for it.

I love working with 'Aspies', but I won't take them into a client meeting anymore. :-)

(chuckle: Customer is very happy with a new feature and remarks "oh wow, that must have taken a long time to implement". I was happy he said so, because we were close to going over budget and I wanted to send him another invoice. Aspie programmer, rightfully proud of his work: "oh no, not at all, perhaps 15 minutes!")

Steven Pinker's book 'The Stuff of Thought' deals with this sort of phrasing. And he explains it quite better than what I can. So here is the relevant excerpt from the book:

Why don't people just say what they mean? The reason is that conversational partners are not modems downloading information into each other's brains. People are very, very touchy about their relationships. Whenever you speak to someone, you are presuming the two of you have a certain degree of familiarity--which your words might alter. So every sentence has to do two things at once: convey a message and continue to negotiate that relationship.

The clearest example is ordinary politeness. When you are at a dinner party and want the salt, you don't blurt out, "Gimme the salt." Rather, you use what linguists call a whimperative, as in "Do you think you could pass the salt?" or "If you could pass the salt, that would be awesome."

Taken literally, these sentences are inane. The second is an overstatement, and the answer to the first is obvious. Fortunately, the hearer assumes that the speaker is rational and listens between the lines. Yes, your point is to request the salt, but you're doing it in such a way that first takes care to establish what linguists call "felicity conditions," or the prerequisites to making a sensible request. The underlying rationale is that the hearer not be given a command but simply be asked or advised about one of the necessary conditions for passing the salt. Your goal is to have your need satisfied without treating the listener as a flunky who can be bossed around at will.[1]

Analytically minded people would do well to pick up this book and try to understand the science behind our interactions.

[1] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1659772,00....

The girl's example reminds me a bit of "blowing the dust out of the connector" by Raymond Chen:

Here's the trick: Don't ask "Are you sure it's plugged in correctly?"

If you do this, they will get all insulted and say indignantly, "Of course it is! Do I look like an idiot?" without actually checking.

Instead, say "Okay, sometimes the connection gets a little dusty and the connection gets weak. Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get the dust out, then plug it back in?"

They will then crawl under the desk, find that they forgot to plug it in (or plugged it into the wrong port), blow out the dust, plug it in, and reply, "Um, yeah, that fixed it, thanks."

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/03/83244...

I really enjoyed reading this article. It was almost as if I was reading about myself!! Naturally I am very introverted. I also love sitting back and studying social interactions that are happening around me.

I have a lot of friends who see me as an unemotional robot. For example, a good friend from high school died in a motorcycle accident a few months ago. I was very calm showing very little worry or stress about it when I found out. My friends who were there were kind of shocked by how calm and worry free I was about it. To me, logically there was nothing I could do to bring him back so why worry about it? At the funeral there was some crying and mourning for him but that was it.

But even though I don't show a lot of emotions I do have a way to look into people's eyes as we have a conversation and I am able to meet them emotionally. I start to create rapport by talking at the level and speed as them. Make sure they feel listened when they talk by giving back feedback. It really works very nicely.

I'm a programmer with not much care to show emotions but meeting people emotionally is one of the most powerful things you can do in your social life.

The book mentioned in the article, "Definitive Book of Body Language" is an excellent resource. However, it is more of an encyclopedia - comprehensive, but lacking in context. I began this journey some years ago and found Navarro's "What Every Body is Saying" a more helpful starting place. Gives a framework to help understand body language, something that may prove helpful if you are starting from square zero.

When you want to apply these things during a negotiation. http://www.academia.edu/425074/The_Nonverbal_Skills_You_Need...

no evidence - no science...

asperger can no longer be "a thing" soon, as it seems it will be removed from the next DSM... so these people either have nothing or are mild autistic or something.

it also appears that 20% of ppl 'diagnosed' with this 'grow out of it'

"it is nearly impossible to diagnose accurately, indeed statistics show that about 20% of those given the diagnosis later "grow out of it" and show no symptoms as adults, which admits the possibility that they were misdiagnosed in the first place. Also there have been many reports of opportunistic diagnosis of this syndrome in people who were simply different than their peers."

http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/myth.html

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