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Encountering people who live on that level can be a trip. I went to lunch with some classmates after lecture. I had been fixated on the content. But the salient

Encountering people who live on that level can be a trip. I went to lunch with some classmates after lecture. I had been fixated on the content. But the salient facts to one of my classmates were instead: who had spoken, with how much confidence, how often, for how long, how the professor seemed to feel about it. It was eye opening. There was this whole other dimension to the room, which I could barely see, but to her it was front and center. I don’t aspire to be like that primarily or exclusively, but sometimes it’s helpful to notice and pay attention to.

whatshisface 6y ago
The funny thing is focusing on that will severely hamper your ability to perform in the actual conversation. Outside of gauging the reaction of the specific person you're talking to, if you want to score highly on the "talked for a long time with high confidence and everybody enjoyed it" axis you need to keep your eye on the ball so to speak.
ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
And yet everyone silently hates those people, people who waste everyone’s time just to prove how smart they are, usually failing in the process. There were always those people in my lectures.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > everyone silently hates those people What? No. I don’t have a good sense for this. Having friends and colleagues and a partner with the focus and attention span for it is invaluable. Like it or not, power dynamics are real. And teams with someone tuned into their social dynamics can work better than one purely technical and aloof. Just because one doesn’t have a sense for a thing doesn’t make that thing despicable.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    I think he's talking about people who respond to the professor's questions in lecture.
    - ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
      Or worse, ask pointless questions just to prove they understand the content.
  - ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
    As the other child of this comment said, I’m not talking about being socially aware. I’m talking about people who are so obnoxious they turn everything into a competition so they can validate their own ego, quite the opposite of being socially aware. Lectures aren’t a competition of who said what.
cosmodisk 6y ago
While I appreciate the usefulness of such observational skills and I can do it to a decent degree, I tend not to most of the time. I just switch it off.I don't want to live my life where every interaction is some spy game or thriller,where everyone in the room scans each other for clues. Having said that, I must admit that observational skills pulled me out of very very difficult situations a few times.
- randycupertino 6y ago
  > I don't want to live my life where every interaction is some spy game or thriller,where everyone in the room scans each other for clues. I had a coworker with this mindset and it seemed incredibly tiring on her mindset. She would routinely total up the cost of the exec's outfits and jewelry/shoes/purse and also always be measuring herself against everyone else in the meeting room. Who hadn't brushed their hair, who had recently gotten teeth whitening treatments, she even noticed when one of the directors got a facelift over work from home. She was able to point out his facelift scars via a screenshot she took. She ended up getting let go for creating a "mean girl" culture when she iced out some new hires. It just seemed like a very dystopian way to view our coworkers. I prefer to see everyone as a potential friend and not look for flaws.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    The trick is see such things, gain that information, and then choose to use the data in a way that is nice for the person. That is one element of kindness. For the facelift example, you notice it, and then remark about how youthful the director looks in that new shirt. For the shoes example, you notice it and then remark about their good fashion sense. For the hair example, you go to them and see how the home life is going (colicky kids, a new medical diagnosis, a death in the family, or pure unawareness, etc) It may seem like 'pandering', but only if you do it to people who can give you a raise. You have to do it for the janitors, bus-drivers, and bar-tenders too. Because you want everyone's life to be a bit better that day. It's kinda like being a culty-mad-scientist. You have to have all the knowledge, the years of experiments, the cash flow, the ancient texts, the elaboratory. It takes a lot to awake the elder god from it's slumber. But the most crucial step, and the last one at that, is the smarts to know to not to wake up the eldrich world ending demon at all.
phist_mcgee 6y ago
And anecdotally, these keen observation skills I think are more concentrated in women. A lot of times, I find that women in my life are more interested in how I or others are feeling/acting, than the exact details of what actually is happening. I like to think of this as report talk vs rapport talk. Men may just report facts to each other with very little emotion attached, whereas women will try and bond and strengthen relationships by telling stories about people and their feelings. This is why men struggle to understand why women in their life are angry that they never talk or don't share how things are with their day. It's because a lot of times, the two people think that the information they are sharing is what is important, and the other person thinks that it is too much/too little detail. I think those observational skills make women much more suitable for negotiating and understanding nuances, where sometimes men may struggle to have seen the smaller details. But of course making sweeping gendered statements is usually not accurate or helpful, just some observations in my opinion, and of course MANY people do not fit into this generalisation.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  Women developed these skills because they are hardwired to care for offsprings. Women are better at noticing small details, they have better hearing and have a sharper sense of smell. Go back to cavemen times, the men had to follow the blurry beast for dinner. The women had to be alert and vigilant to protect their young. We might think we have come far, but evolution is slow. We are basically living with cavemen genes in an urban jungle. Sometimes generalizations are true. Evolution takes millions of years.

whatshisface 6y ago

The funny thing is focusing on that will severely hamper your ability to perform in the actual conversation. Outside of gauging the reaction of the specific person you're talking to, if you want to score highly on the "talked for a long time with high confidence and everybody enjoyed it" axis you need to keep your eye on the ball so to speak.

ytwySXpMbS 6y ago

And yet everyone silently hates those people, people who waste everyone’s time just to prove how smart they are, usually failing in the process. There were always those people in my lectures.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> everyone silently hates those people What? No. I don’t have a good sense for this. Having friends and colleagues and a partner with the focus and attention span for it is invaluable. Like it or not, power dynamics are real. And teams with someone tuned into their social dynamics can work better than one purely technical and aloof. Just because one doesn’t have a sense for a thing doesn’t make that thing despicable.
- closeparen 6y ago
  I think he's talking about people who respond to the professor's questions in lecture.
  - ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
    Or worse, ask pointless questions just to prove they understand the content.
- ytwySXpMbS 6y ago
  As the other child of this comment said, I’m not talking about being socially aware. I’m talking about people who are so obnoxious they turn everything into a competition so they can validate their own ego, quite the opposite of being socially aware. Lectures aren’t a competition of who said what.

cosmodisk 6y ago

While I appreciate the usefulness of such observational skills and I can do it to a decent degree, I tend not to most of the time. I just switch it off.I don't want to live my life where every interaction is some spy game or thriller,where everyone in the room scans each other for clues. Having said that, I must admit that observational skills pulled me out of very very difficult situations a few times.

randycupertino 6y ago
> I don't want to live my life where every interaction is some spy game or thriller,where everyone in the room scans each other for clues. I had a coworker with this mindset and it seemed incredibly tiring on her mindset. She would routinely total up the cost of the exec's outfits and jewelry/shoes/purse and also always be measuring herself against everyone else in the meeting room. Who hadn't brushed their hair, who had recently gotten teeth whitening treatments, she even noticed when one of the directors got a facelift over work from home. She was able to point out his facelift scars via a screenshot she took. She ended up getting let go for creating a "mean girl" culture when she iced out some new hires. It just seemed like a very dystopian way to view our coworkers. I prefer to see everyone as a potential friend and not look for flaws.
- Balgair 6y ago
  The trick is see such things, gain that information, and then choose to use the data in a way that is nice for the person. That is one element of kindness. For the facelift example, you notice it, and then remark about how youthful the director looks in that new shirt. For the shoes example, you notice it and then remark about their good fashion sense. For the hair example, you go to them and see how the home life is going (colicky kids, a new medical diagnosis, a death in the family, or pure unawareness, etc) It may seem like 'pandering', but only if you do it to people who can give you a raise. You have to do it for the janitors, bus-drivers, and bar-tenders too. Because you want everyone's life to be a bit better that day. It's kinda like being a culty-mad-scientist. You have to have all the knowledge, the years of experiments, the cash flow, the ancient texts, the elaboratory. It takes a lot to awake the elder god from it's slumber. But the most crucial step, and the last one at that, is the smarts to know to not to wake up the eldrich world ending demon at all.

phist_mcgee 6y ago

And anecdotally, these keen observation skills I think are more concentrated in women. A lot of times, I find that women in my life are more interested in how I or others are feeling/acting, than the exact details of what actually is happening. I like to think of this as report talk vs rapport talk. Men may just report facts to each other with very little emotion attached, whereas women will try and bond and strengthen relationships by telling stories about people and their feelings. This is why men struggle to understand why women in their life are angry that they never talk or don't share how things are with their day. It's because a lot of times, the two people think that the information they are sharing is what is important, and the other person thinks that it is too much/too little detail. I think those observational skills make women much more suitable for negotiating and understanding nuances, where sometimes men may struggle to have seen the smaller details. But of course making sweeping gendered statements is usually not accurate or helpful, just some observations in my opinion, and of course MANY people do not fit into this generalisation.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Women developed these skills because they are hardwired to care for offsprings. Women are better at noticing small details, they have better hearing and have a sharper sense of smell. Go back to cavemen times, the men had to follow the blurry beast for dinner. The women had to be alert and vigilant to protect their young. We might think we have come far, but evolution is slow. We are basically living with cavemen genes in an urban jungle. Sometimes generalizations are true. Evolution takes millions of years.