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I've always wondered if a lot of "eccentric" people aren't just behaving the way everybody would naturally behave if they could get away with it. I say and do

I've always wondered if a lot of "eccentric" people aren't just behaving the way everybody would naturally behave if they could get away with it. I say and do a lot of things because I have to if I want to have food to eat and a place to sleep, but I'll never know how different my behavior _might_ have been if I were rich enough or brilliant enough that people would just put up with whatever I happened to feel like doing at any given moment.

nur0n 9y ago
Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both...
- azhu 9y ago
  Or perhaps brilliant people care a lot and just have the ability to pull it off so well that everyone else thinks they don't care. The real answer to how to be happy is not to not care how you affect others, it is to master your ability to affect them how you intend to. Those who recommend the "not giving a fuck" approach step on their own bootstraps given how large a fuck they give about not giving a fuck.
  - vorpalhex 9y ago
    Not giving a fuck isn't the same as apathy. Today I spent an hour waiting for some poor chap to repin a simple lock at the hardware store - I didn't give a fuck that he was a bit clueless and flying by the seat of his pants - but if someone scammed me tomorrow I would absolutely jump into action. There are things that don't matter (someone a bit clueless working earnestly) and things that do (scammers, violence, etc). The goal is to differentiate and respond appropriately.
- geezerjay 9y ago
  > Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both... IMHO, it's neither. If others want something from you then they pamper you to get what they seek, and the more indispensable you are the more they tolerate. Over time you feel no pressure to adapt your behaviour because those who deal with you feel compelled to adapt to you.
kizer 9y ago
I think I behave in an eccentric manner because I was raised by two liberal parents and am an only child. Although I always made friends just fine. I'm bright, but no genius. At least not yet. I often feel somehow that the eccentric behavior and intelligence are the result of a latent property, like some kind of general freedom of mind. Also I have (will inherit) some assets that generate money on their own. So I guess I can "get away" with it.
- anonytrary 9y ago
  > I'm bright, but no genius. At least not yet. Is your comment supposed to be satire? No one has ever said "When did they become a genius?" about someone who is considered a genius. I think, at least colloquially, genius is considered to be innate.
  - proverbialbunny 9y ago
    The brain physically changes in response to life's experiences. To dismiss life experience and believe genius is exclusively innate is a hard pill to swallow. By understanding how a thing works, the more power one has to change it. Therefor, the better one understands their own intelligence, the more power they have to change their intelligence. However, being able to tease apart intelligence requires a high prerequisite intelligence, muddying the water between innate and not. In whole, I do not think intelligence is exclusively nature or nurture. Asking someone, "When about do you think you became a genius?" is a great question. I might have to steal that one next time I bump into a genius offline.
    - musage 9y ago
      Genius or not, I have an IQ of 142 and don't understand my intelligence one bit. I don't even understand what "understanding one's intelligence" would mean. But I think being used to being able to learn things on the fly or solve new problems gives a lot of confidence to keep doing that, and that really helps. Often I feel friends or relatives are struggling with something because they aren't really trying, if they don't know the solution they don't spend enough time to find or even invent one.
majos 9y ago
On a related note, I think this idea explains the appeal of smart jerk god characters (Doctor Who, Doctor House, Rick Sanchez, Sherlock Holmes...) to a sizeable portion of nerds (including me). "So smart they can't help but need you" is not a healthy goal, but damn if it isn't seductive.
- teaspoons 9y ago
  it's time for the smart jerks to die along with their stupid expositional picture-walls
- Ntrails 9y ago
  To me it's not so much "So smart they can't help but need you", as it is "being right is more important than anything else". The world doesn't work like that (often), but it's an attractive ideal in some ways
baxtr 9y ago
I catch myself often wanting to behave more eccentric, but then somehow societal laws keep pulling me back. I wish I had the guts (like Steve had) to be blunt to anyone
- vkou 9y ago
  Steve was a huge asshole to a lot of people, when he had power over them. There's eccentric behaviour, and there is being a jerk. One's harmless, if odd - the other goes out of the way to ruin someone's day. You don't want to be the second one. Consider the interaction between John Carmack and Steve Jobs that was posted the other day: > One time, my wife, then fiancée, and I were meeting with Steve at Apple, and he wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be scheduled on the same day as our wedding. With a big smile and full of charm, he suggested that we postpone it. We declined, but he kept pressing. Eventually my wife countered with a suggestion that if he really wanted “her” John so much, he should loan John Lassiter to her media company for a day of consulting. Steve went from full charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t do that keynote. Do you really want to be remembered for anecdotes like that?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- sullyj3 9y ago
  It doesn't take guts to be blunt to people you have power over.
  - tluyben2 9y ago
    People that (potentially will) have power over you, often respect you being blunt to them. That does not make it easier as there is a significant group of egomaniacs that cannot stand it so you need to know who you have in front of you.
hyperpallium 9y ago
power corrupts, or... powerlessness conceals?
hyperpallium 9y ago
It's related to conformity. If you automatically, naturally and agreeably fit in with what everybody else does, you won't tend to think outside the orthodoxy. But if you question everything, try to work things out from first principles, and wonder what happens if things are done differently... well, you're "eccentric", at best. It seems logically possible for a person to be a perfect conformist socially, and a wild free-thinker intellectually, but it wouldn't usually happen that way. https://xkcd.com/242/ https://xkcd.com/242/
- RealityVoid 9y ago
  I honestly do not think that is the case. Using a sample size of one(me) I can tell you that while I'm very agreeable and sometimes too nice to people around me, when it comes to my opinion about things or digging for the truth, I will push and dig and (sometimes recklessly) support unpopular opinions, even if in the minority. I surely can't be that unusual.
  - hyperpallium 9y ago
    This is interesting. Voicing an unpopular opinion is not "agreeable", but if you can't ever act on your truth, you may as well not have ever had it. My comment, in the context of yours, comes across as childishly excusing/justifying antisocial behaviour. I'm not sure what to thinkn= of that. But I just meant that tendencies tend to transfer.
  - hyperpallium 8y ago
    Here's the Psych 101 background to my view: people don't just pretend to conform, their perceptions conform https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments By its nature, it's hard to notice this in yourself. I like to think of myself as capable of independent thought. But when I've been solo camping for a few days, some of my perspective evaporates on contact with others, like a dream on waking. It's hard to even notice it leaving. I imagine they leave imperceptibly in daily life.
    - 8y ago
dfee 9y ago
I’d be considered eccentric. It’s not discipline or the lack thereof. There is a piercing focus that overwhelms the demands of normalcy. But I won’t talk about me. I’ll talk about a friend of mine. He stepped away from his role with the US Gov’t and spent the last year wandering through Africa and Eastern Europe. I don’t concern myself with him having a roof over his head, because he always will. He just doesn’t define himself by living in SF and putting a roof over his head; nor does he bemoan what could have been. He just is.
- opinionator1 9y ago
  ^ Low-value humblebrag that adds nothing to the conversation.

nur0n 9y ago

Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both...

azhu 9y ago
Or perhaps brilliant people care a lot and just have the ability to pull it off so well that everyone else thinks they don't care. The real answer to how to be happy is not to not care how you affect others, it is to master your ability to affect them how you intend to. Those who recommend the "not giving a fuck" approach step on their own bootstraps given how large a fuck they give about not giving a fuck.
- vorpalhex 9y ago
  Not giving a fuck isn't the same as apathy. Today I spent an hour waiting for some poor chap to repin a simple lock at the hardware store - I didn't give a fuck that he was a bit clueless and flying by the seat of his pants - but if someone scammed me tomorrow I would absolutely jump into action. There are things that don't matter (someone a bit clueless working earnestly) and things that do (scammers, violence, etc). The goal is to differentiate and respond appropriately.
geezerjay 9y ago
> Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both... IMHO, it's neither. If others want something from you then they pamper you to get what they seek, and the more indispensable you are the more they tolerate. Over time you feel no pressure to adapt your behaviour because those who deal with you feel compelled to adapt to you.

kizer 9y ago

I think I behave in an eccentric manner because I was raised by two liberal parents and am an only child. Although I always made friends just fine. I'm bright, but no genius. At least not yet. I often feel somehow that the eccentric behavior and intelligence are the result of a latent property, like some kind of general freedom of mind. Also I have (will inherit) some assets that generate money on their own. So I guess I can "get away" with it.

anonytrary 9y ago
> I'm bright, but no genius. At least not yet. Is your comment supposed to be satire? No one has ever said "When did they become a genius?" about someone who is considered a genius. I think, at least colloquially, genius is considered to be innate.
- proverbialbunny 9y ago
  The brain physically changes in response to life's experiences. To dismiss life experience and believe genius is exclusively innate is a hard pill to swallow. By understanding how a thing works, the more power one has to change it. Therefor, the better one understands their own intelligence, the more power they have to change their intelligence. However, being able to tease apart intelligence requires a high prerequisite intelligence, muddying the water between innate and not. In whole, I do not think intelligence is exclusively nature or nurture. Asking someone, "When about do you think you became a genius?" is a great question. I might have to steal that one next time I bump into a genius offline.
  - musage 9y ago
    Genius or not, I have an IQ of 142 and don't understand my intelligence one bit. I don't even understand what "understanding one's intelligence" would mean. But I think being used to being able to learn things on the fly or solve new problems gives a lot of confidence to keep doing that, and that really helps. Often I feel friends or relatives are struggling with something because they aren't really trying, if they don't know the solution they don't spend enough time to find or even invent one.

majos 9y ago

On a related note, I think this idea explains the appeal of smart jerk god characters (Doctor Who, Doctor House, Rick Sanchez, Sherlock Holmes...) to a sizeable portion of nerds (including me). "So smart they can't help but need you" is not a healthy goal, but damn if it isn't seductive.

teaspoons 9y ago
it's time for the smart jerks to die along with their stupid expositional picture-walls
Ntrails 9y ago
To me it's not so much "So smart they can't help but need you", as it is "being right is more important than anything else". The world doesn't work like that (often), but it's an attractive ideal in some ways

baxtr 9y ago

I catch myself often wanting to behave more eccentric, but then somehow societal laws keep pulling me back. I wish I had the guts (like Steve had) to be blunt to anyone

vkou 9y ago
Steve was a huge asshole to a lot of people, when he had power over them. There's eccentric behaviour, and there is being a jerk. One's harmless, if odd - the other goes out of the way to ruin someone's day. You don't want to be the second one. Consider the interaction between John Carmack and Steve Jobs that was posted the other day: > One time, my wife, then fiancée, and I were meeting with Steve at Apple, and he wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be scheduled on the same day as our wedding. With a big smile and full of charm, he suggested that we postpone it. We declined, but he kept pressing. Eventually my wife countered with a suggestion that if he really wanted “her” John so much, he should loan John Lassiter to her media company for a day of consulting. Steve went from full charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t do that keynote. Do you really want to be remembered for anecdotes like that?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sullyj3 9y ago
It doesn't take guts to be blunt to people you have power over.
- tluyben2 9y ago
  People that (potentially will) have power over you, often respect you being blunt to them. That does not make it easier as there is a significant group of egomaniacs that cannot stand it so you need to know who you have in front of you.

hyperpallium 9y ago

power corrupts, or... powerlessness conceals?

hyperpallium 9y ago

It's related to conformity. If you automatically, naturally and agreeably fit in with what everybody else does, you won't tend to think outside the orthodoxy. But if you question everything, try to work things out from first principles, and wonder what happens if things are done differently... well, you're "eccentric", at best. It seems logically possible for a person to be a perfect conformist socially, and a wild free-thinker intellectually, but it wouldn't usually happen that way. https://xkcd.com/242/ https://xkcd.com/242/

RealityVoid 9y ago
I honestly do not think that is the case. Using a sample size of one(me) I can tell you that while I'm very agreeable and sometimes too nice to people around me, when it comes to my opinion about things or digging for the truth, I will push and dig and (sometimes recklessly) support unpopular opinions, even if in the minority. I surely can't be that unusual.
- hyperpallium 9y ago
  This is interesting. Voicing an unpopular opinion is not "agreeable", but if you can't ever act on your truth, you may as well not have ever had it. My comment, in the context of yours, comes across as childishly excusing/justifying antisocial behaviour. I'm not sure what to thinkn= of that. But I just meant that tendencies tend to transfer.
- hyperpallium 8y ago
  Here's the Psych 101 background to my view: people don't just pretend to conform, their perceptions conform https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments By its nature, it's hard to notice this in yourself. I like to think of myself as capable of independent thought. But when I've been solo camping for a few days, some of my perspective evaporates on contact with others, like a dream on waking. It's hard to even notice it leaving. I imagine they leave imperceptibly in daily life.
  - 8y ago

dfee 9y ago

I’d be considered eccentric. It’s not discipline or the lack thereof. There is a piercing focus that overwhelms the demands of normalcy. But I won’t talk about me. I’ll talk about a friend of mine. He stepped away from his role with the US Gov’t and spent the last year wandering through Africa and Eastern Europe. I don’t concern myself with him having a roof over his head, because he always will. He just doesn’t define himself by living in SF and putting a roof over his head; nor does he bemoan what could have been. He just is.

opinionator1 9y ago
^ Low-value humblebrag that adds nothing to the conversation.