3 ms·

> Mainly just making a concerted effort, when something went wrong, to go back and analyze why it went wrong and what I should have done differently. It took a

> Mainly just making a concerted effort, when something went wrong, to go back and analyze why it went wrong and what I should have done differently. It took a lot of trial and error (like 10-20 years worth), and even today I will sometimes freeze up in social situations because all of the things I can think of to do in some situation are being flagged as "wrong" based on some prior experience. Perhaps you should write this down as a concise theory with falsifiable predictions of what kind of social behavior people really expect.

mercer 9y ago
Could you elaborate? One thing I learned only post-diagnosis is that all the stuff I thought I did to figure out how to fit in, in hindsight, was extremely scattershot and not very rational. A lot of the lessons I never learned as well as I thought I did. These days I try to be more methodical (keeping logs, lists of lessons, etc), in part because I'm allowing myself to lean more into my 'nature', and it's already proven effective.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > Could you elaborate? It is not completely obvious to me what kind of elaboration you desire. So if my longer explanation here misses the point this is probably the reason. :-) In your trial to find out the strange rules of society you surely made unwillingly lots of accidental experiments that often went wrong. At the end you probably developed some kind of theory of how humans seem to behave, where each rule that you developed is backed up by evidence from an accidental experiment. If you are interested in history of physics, you surely are aware that developing even what is called "classical mechanics" (I don't even want to start with electromagnetism, relativity or quantum physics) was a lifetime work of many generations of scientists. What a waste of time would it have been if everyone of them had to start from point 0. So you accidentally have developed something that might be a start of some kind of theory of how people/society really behave(s) (rather think of pre-Newton physics, e.g. Galilei already found out that (ignoring air resistance) the falling time is independent of the mass and the falling time increases by square root of the height; of course where these "strange" laws with strong experimental evidence come from needed the invention of calculus). So back to "What a waste of time would it have been if everyone of them had to start from point 0.". What a waste of time is it when people all the time had to derive all those laws to which "ordinary" people in society behave (and cannot explain why) from ground up. So document the rules about people/society/... that you found out and document the experimental evidence that gives strong evidence to you that these rules that you state do indeed hold (a scientific theory is worth nothing if it is not accompanied by a proper documentation of the experimental evidence for it). Perhaps (if it not embarrassing to you) it is a good idea to use tools that the web provides (e.g. some kind of wiki or Github) so that other people can cross-check your theories, validate your evidence or present counter-theories which also explain your experimental evidence. You are in a very early phase in a theory of the hidden rules of society (as I told: think where Galilei was in terms of classical mechanics), so this means you probably have to consider lots of frustrating foundational questions. So you are perhaps a true pioneer. But I believe it is worth it, because this might enable researchers who work in AI better understand humans/society.
lisper 9y ago
Well, here's a first cut: 1. Smiling and making eye contact are both HUGE levers (but you have to be careful not to overdo it). (And an interesting thing about smiling is that it has a reverse-feedback effect: if you smile, it actually makes you feel happier.) 2. What you wear matters. It shouldn't, but it does. Read "Dress for success." 3. Spend more time listening than talking. Ask more questions than you answer, even if you know all the answers. The object of the game is not to show off how much you know, it is to provide others with opportunities to show off how much they know. 4. Help with the grunt work even when you think it is beneath you. 5. Con't complain. Ever. About anything. (This is just a first-order approximation. There are situations under which it's OK to complain, but that's an advanced course :-) And this is one of the few situations where erring on one extreme will not get you into trouble. To the contrary, if you cement a reputation as someone who never complains even when you have good cause to, people will like you more. I'm personally still working on this one.)

mercer 9y ago

Could you elaborate? One thing I learned only post-diagnosis is that all the stuff I thought I did to figure out how to fit in, in hindsight, was extremely scattershot and not very rational. A lot of the lessons I never learned as well as I thought I did. These days I try to be more methodical (keeping logs, lists of lessons, etc), in part because I'm allowing myself to lean more into my 'nature', and it's already proven effective.

wolfgke 9y ago
> Could you elaborate? It is not completely obvious to me what kind of elaboration you desire. So if my longer explanation here misses the point this is probably the reason. :-) In your trial to find out the strange rules of society you surely made unwillingly lots of accidental experiments that often went wrong. At the end you probably developed some kind of theory of how humans seem to behave, where each rule that you developed is backed up by evidence from an accidental experiment. If you are interested in history of physics, you surely are aware that developing even what is called "classical mechanics" (I don't even want to start with electromagnetism, relativity or quantum physics) was a lifetime work of many generations of scientists. What a waste of time would it have been if everyone of them had to start from point 0. So you accidentally have developed something that might be a start of some kind of theory of how people/society really behave(s) (rather think of pre-Newton physics, e.g. Galilei already found out that (ignoring air resistance) the falling time is independent of the mass and the falling time increases by square root of the height; of course where these "strange" laws with strong experimental evidence come from needed the invention of calculus). So back to "What a waste of time would it have been if everyone of them had to start from point 0.". What a waste of time is it when people all the time had to derive all those laws to which "ordinary" people in society behave (and cannot explain why) from ground up. So document the rules about people/society/... that you found out and document the experimental evidence that gives strong evidence to you that these rules that you state do indeed hold (a scientific theory is worth nothing if it is not accompanied by a proper documentation of the experimental evidence for it). Perhaps (if it not embarrassing to you) it is a good idea to use tools that the web provides (e.g. some kind of wiki or Github) so that other people can cross-check your theories, validate your evidence or present counter-theories which also explain your experimental evidence. You are in a very early phase in a theory of the hidden rules of society (as I told: think where Galilei was in terms of classical mechanics), so this means you probably have to consider lots of frustrating foundational questions. So you are perhaps a true pioneer. But I believe it is worth it, because this might enable researchers who work in AI better understand humans/society.

lisper 9y ago

Well, here's a first cut: 1. Smiling and making eye contact are both HUGE levers (but you have to be careful not to overdo it). (And an interesting thing about smiling is that it has a reverse-feedback effect: if you smile, it actually makes you feel happier.) 2. What you wear matters. It shouldn't, but it does. Read "Dress for success." 3. Spend more time listening than talking. Ask more questions than you answer, even if you know all the answers. The object of the game is not to show off how much you know, it is to provide others with opportunities to show off how much they know. 4. Help with the grunt work even when you think it is beneath you. 5. Con't complain. Ever. About anything. (This is just a first-order approximation. There are situations under which it's OK to complain, but that's an advanced course :-) And this is one of the few situations where erring on one extreme will not get you into trouble. To the contrary, if you cement a reputation as someone who never complains even when you have good cause to, people will like you more. I'm personally still working on this one.)