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I think its more a matter of spending all your school years being "remedial" for inter-personal skills (IPS). Think of IPS like it was a school subject. If you

by PaulAJ 5y ago

I think its more a matter of spending all your school years being "remedial" for inter-personal skills (IPS). Think of IPS like it was a school subject. If you are learning maths slower than everyone else then when it is time to move on to multiplication you are still trying to get the hang of carrying the tens in addition. To catch up you have to go faster than everyone else, but that isn't possible. Now you have to leave addition and start doing multiplication, and you still haven't got the hang of addition, without which multiplication doesn't make sense. Pretty soon you are floundering in a mess of abstractions built on other abstractions that you don't understand, and it all goes downhill from there. Of course there are remedial classes for maths, reading etc. They help a lot; sometimes some dedicated tuition can pin down the specific issue and deal with it. But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. If you fail to get the hang of IPS when you start school the process is very similar to failing elementary arithmetic. You can't understand why everyone else is doing the things they are doing, or what they mean when they say things. So you get excluded by classmates during break, which means that you don't learn new IPS. And when you do catch on to something you do it wrong, or you don't realise that it's what everyone was doing last year, so now its considered childish. So you stay excluded, always wondering what the magic words are that will let you break into the social circle. Eventually you reach adulthood, and you still don't know this stuff. You are like someone who managed to get through school without learning to read (still happens, sadly), and now finds themselves being shouted at by the boss for not bothering to read the instructions.

phkahler 5y ago
>> But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. It's called Therapy. Unfortunately they will try to teach it covertly because "normal" people can't take direct constructive criticism of their behavior.
- majormajor 5y ago
  I've gone to a few types of therapy and none have them have really been anything like "practice building social skills" at all. I imagine it would be more like a class where every project is a group project but you're required to not either slack off or do it all yourself, and your grades depend on how much the rest of team enjoyed working with you, maybe. That's still limited to "work social skills" vs "personal life social skills," though.
  - hammock 5y ago
    > "practice building social skills" Child psychologists will do this. (not all, and not all the time of course)
  - nzmsv 5y ago
    Someone did actually start a business doing exactly that: https://jaunty.org/ https://jaunty.org/
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> I've gone to a few types of therapy and none have them have really been anything like "practice building social skills" at all. I said they do it covertly. They laugh at your joke? It might be they find it funny, or it could be they are offering positive feedback for you making an attempt at appropriate social behavior. They use non-verbal feedback all the time to encourage or discourage things, which can make their behavior very strange at times until you realize what's happening. If you call them out on what they're doing they are very likely to gaslight you and deny your perceptions. It gets really fun when they try to use an extinction schedule and politely dismiss something as uninteresting that would otherwise be at least on "oh that's nice". Bullshit, these are some of the aspects of therapy that I call bullshit and can actually be harmful to "clients".
    - voakbasda 5y ago
      You are describing operant conditioning. And, yes, it backfires horribly once the subject becomes aware that they are being manipulated in such a manner.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  This is itself terrible advice. Therapy is delivered by people who are overwhelmingly of a certain political persuausion and very, very far from being representative of their client population in many other ways. You are far better off asking friends or family for advice in most cases. Your therapist does not care about you. If they cared about their clients they would burn out in well under six months. You will learn a lot more about social skills in acting or improv classes or through spening a lot of time with the same group of people who will be blunt with you when you're being fucking weird. The therapist is not your friend. They will not give you useful advice that makes them feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable. They do not care about you.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> This is itself terrible advice. I don't advocate it. Not at all. Just pointing out that it exists. The field has a lot of huge problems that need to be overcome IMHO. As you say, they tend to be of a particular political persuasion (or forced to accept things), and are taught/told that they can still handle any type of client (which is just self serving on their part).
haskellandchill 5y ago
Yes I had to teach myself these skills in my 20s since I was blissfully unaware of how far behind in my 10s. Basically I run explicit programs for body language and simulate other's mental states, etc. It takes a good chunk of processing power so I try to position myself higher in the hierarchy so I can just be myself and delegate the social processing to naturals. I use language transactionally as a command and interrogation method, which rubs people the wrong way. If you're the boss that's ok. If you're dependent on people that's not going to work. It is what it is, I can be obsequious if needed but it's gonna make me stupid due to computational resource constraints. People would say I'm a sociopath but I'm really nice. My empathy is turned up to 1000% so I'm very sensitive to other's emotional states oddly, though I have the coarsest ability to make others feel better, and it usually backfires. Anyway if I can figure it out it certainly can be done and there's probably a book about how to do it.
- anonfornoreason 5y ago
  No idea why you are downvoted here, this is exactly what I have to do (though maybe a little less extreme than you), and it's a learned skill for some. I have just always erred on the side of either being my own boss through self employment and an in-demand skill, or early on by working jobs that require extreme competency or that had a fast pace. I definitely understand exactly what you mean with transactional language and command/interrogation (I ask people to rephrase things alot when I want to confirm what they are trying to get across but aren't directly stating it).
  - haskellandchill 5y ago
    I tend to get downvoted a lot. That's how I know I'm right.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > Anyway if I can figure it out it certainly can be done and there's probably a book about how to do it. It's been done. There are many, many books about it. They're not explicitly about teaching social skills though. They're about a specific subgoal of socialising that is common and deeply felt, which generalises to more or less all of social life. You're not a sociopath, you're autistic. Welcome to the club.
toast0 5y ago
> But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. It's often not part of formal school instruction, but there are social skills classes available, at least for children. Typically through ocupational/behavioral therapists.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  I can attest to this, as for various reasons my parents sent me to social skills when I was young. The classes themselves have a lot in common with both anger management and conflict resolution pedagogy, in that the method was mostly to build skills by practicing explicit, step-by-step processes until they converted into intuition. I have to say, I participated grudgingly when I was younger, but with a few decades' hindsight I think the classes have given me a long-term advantage over my peers; rather than a house of cards built on habit and intuition, my habits and intuitions are built onto an explicit framework that I can readily integrate new social skills into.
noodlenotes 5y ago
Additionally, if you're always being excluded from normal social circles, you end up only hanging out with people like yourself who also don't know how to read. So your group of misfits tries to cobble together their approximation of what reading looks like and ends up with their own misfit language. When they have to communicate with normal people again as adults, there's a disconnect.
megameter 5y ago
There is a certain thing that I realized and got somewhat good at only recently: what we call a social "skill" is a bidirectional skill of performance and appreciation. It has to be, to be communicative. Therefore, being "good" at socializing is extremely contextual. People speak of having a different personality when they speak a foreign language. This is a predictable outcome, since without total fluency, they will neither speak nor listen with identical competence. And this also means that a group like a high school class can have a nominal social order, but it's premised on popular appreciation, which molds a certain "type" into the cool kids - the ones who actively work on appealing to a broad "teen audience" in their communication. After getting a little bit of an edge, it self-reenforces and becomes what that class knows to appreciate, at which point the cool kid's performance skills don't actually have to progress much further and they can just coast along the wave through graduation. It's more often people who can't be appreciated in what they're doing yet(immaturity from their classmates, lack of direction from parents and teachers, unusual thought patterns etc.) who get the "outcast" label. For the most part, they are not "bad" at socialising, they're just tuned differently. And so if you go to a gathering assuming "actually, maybe everyone is pretty bad at communicating on average" and then look for ways to fill in gaps according to their filters and preferences, the doors can open really fast. It just takes a lot of knowing oneself to succeed, since your ability to adapt style can only go so far - you're better off giving an amazing performance in the communication styles you're good at than a mediocre one in a popular, more competitive style.
alex_munroe 5y ago
What makes the situation worse is that there's a huge stigma/taboo against learning the social skills, especially for guys. If you want to go on a diet, there are countless books/journals/courses that will help you out. If you want to exercise, or learn to draw, or to play chess, or any other skill, there's abundance of support and information. But if you're nerdy and socially awkward, it's hard to get any mentorship/support without being labeled a creep. You're on your own, you either have to "get" it naturally (by having good parents, happy childhood, etc), or be shamed into staying away from the attractive and socially well-adjusted people. Some of the most life-changing learning resources I've ever encountered (like RSD) are very difficult to recommend to people, so it's harder to help out the guys who are struggling the way I used to.

by PaulAJ 5y ago

phkahler 5y ago

>> But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. It's called Therapy. Unfortunately they will try to teach it covertly because "normal" people can't take direct constructive criticism of their behavior.

majormajor 5y ago
I've gone to a few types of therapy and none have them have really been anything like "practice building social skills" at all. I imagine it would be more like a class where every project is a group project but you're required to not either slack off or do it all yourself, and your grades depend on how much the rest of team enjoyed working with you, maybe. That's still limited to "work social skills" vs "personal life social skills," though.
- hammock 5y ago
  > "practice building social skills" Child psychologists will do this. (not all, and not all the time of course)
- nzmsv 5y ago
  Someone did actually start a business doing exactly that: https://jaunty.org/ https://jaunty.org/
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> I've gone to a few types of therapy and none have them have really been anything like "practice building social skills" at all. I said they do it covertly. They laugh at your joke? It might be they find it funny, or it could be they are offering positive feedback for you making an attempt at appropriate social behavior. They use non-verbal feedback all the time to encourage or discourage things, which can make their behavior very strange at times until you realize what's happening. If you call them out on what they're doing they are very likely to gaslight you and deny your perceptions. It gets really fun when they try to use an extinction schedule and politely dismiss something as uninteresting that would otherwise be at least on "oh that's nice". Bullshit, these are some of the aspects of therapy that I call bullshit and can actually be harmful to "clients".
  - voakbasda 5y ago
    You are describing operant conditioning. And, yes, it backfires horribly once the subject becomes aware that they are being manipulated in such a manner.
barry-cotter 5y ago
This is itself terrible advice. Therapy is delivered by people who are overwhelmingly of a certain political persuausion and very, very far from being representative of their client population in many other ways. You are far better off asking friends or family for advice in most cases. Your therapist does not care about you. If they cared about their clients they would burn out in well under six months. You will learn a lot more about social skills in acting or improv classes or through spening a lot of time with the same group of people who will be blunt with you when you're being fucking weird. The therapist is not your friend. They will not give you useful advice that makes them feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable. They do not care about you.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> This is itself terrible advice. I don't advocate it. Not at all. Just pointing out that it exists. The field has a lot of huge problems that need to be overcome IMHO. As you say, they tend to be of a particular political persuasion (or forced to accept things), and are taught/told that they can still handle any type of client (which is just self serving on their part).

haskellandchill 5y ago

Yes I had to teach myself these skills in my 20s since I was blissfully unaware of how far behind in my 10s. Basically I run explicit programs for body language and simulate other's mental states, etc. It takes a good chunk of processing power so I try to position myself higher in the hierarchy so I can just be myself and delegate the social processing to naturals. I use language transactionally as a command and interrogation method, which rubs people the wrong way. If you're the boss that's ok. If you're dependent on people that's not going to work. It is what it is, I can be obsequious if needed but it's gonna make me stupid due to computational resource constraints. People would say I'm a sociopath but I'm really nice. My empathy is turned up to 1000% so I'm very sensitive to other's emotional states oddly, though I have the coarsest ability to make others feel better, and it usually backfires. Anyway if I can figure it out it certainly can be done and there's probably a book about how to do it.

anonfornoreason 5y ago
No idea why you are downvoted here, this is exactly what I have to do (though maybe a little less extreme than you), and it's a learned skill for some. I have just always erred on the side of either being my own boss through self employment and an in-demand skill, or early on by working jobs that require extreme competency or that had a fast pace. I definitely understand exactly what you mean with transactional language and command/interrogation (I ask people to rephrase things alot when I want to confirm what they are trying to get across but aren't directly stating it).
- haskellandchill 5y ago
  I tend to get downvoted a lot. That's how I know I'm right.
barry-cotter 5y ago
> Anyway if I can figure it out it certainly can be done and there's probably a book about how to do it. It's been done. There are many, many books about it. They're not explicitly about teaching social skills though. They're about a specific subgoal of socialising that is common and deeply felt, which generalises to more or less all of social life. You're not a sociopath, you're autistic. Welcome to the club.

toast0 5y ago

> But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. It's often not part of formal school instruction, but there are social skills classes available, at least for children. Typically through ocupational/behavioral therapists.

InitialLastName 5y ago
I can attest to this, as for various reasons my parents sent me to social skills when I was young. The classes themselves have a lot in common with both anger management and conflict resolution pedagogy, in that the method was mostly to build skills by practicing explicit, step-by-step processes until they converted into intuition. I have to say, I participated grudgingly when I was younger, but with a few decades' hindsight I think the classes have given me a long-term advantage over my peers; rather than a house of cards built on habit and intuition, my habits and intuitions are built onto an explicit framework that I can readily integrate new social skills into.

noodlenotes 5y ago

Additionally, if you're always being excluded from normal social circles, you end up only hanging out with people like yourself who also don't know how to read. So your group of misfits tries to cobble together their approximation of what reading looks like and ends up with their own misfit language. When they have to communicate with normal people again as adults, there's a disconnect.

megameter 5y ago

There is a certain thing that I realized and got somewhat good at only recently: what we call a social "skill" is a bidirectional skill of performance and appreciation. It has to be, to be communicative. Therefore, being "good" at socializing is extremely contextual. People speak of having a different personality when they speak a foreign language. This is a predictable outcome, since without total fluency, they will neither speak nor listen with identical competence. And this also means that a group like a high school class can have a nominal social order, but it's premised on popular appreciation, which molds a certain "type" into the cool kids - the ones who actively work on appealing to a broad "teen audience" in their communication. After getting a little bit of an edge, it self-reenforces and becomes what that class knows to appreciate, at which point the cool kid's performance skills don't actually have to progress much further and they can just coast along the wave through graduation. It's more often people who can't be appreciated in what they're doing yet(immaturity from their classmates, lack of direction from parents and teachers, unusual thought patterns etc.) who get the "outcast" label. For the most part, they are not "bad" at socialising, they're just tuned differently. And so if you go to a gathering assuming "actually, maybe everyone is pretty bad at communicating on average" and then look for ways to fill in gaps according to their filters and preferences, the doors can open really fast. It just takes a lot of knowing oneself to succeed, since your ability to adapt style can only go so far - you're better off giving an amazing performance in the communication styles you're good at than a mediocre one in a popular, more competitive style.

alex_munroe 5y ago

What makes the situation worse is that there's a huge stigma/taboo against learning the social skills, especially for guys. If you want to go on a diet, there are countless books/journals/courses that will help you out. If you want to exercise, or learn to draw, or to play chess, or any other skill, there's abundance of support and information. But if you're nerdy and socially awkward, it's hard to get any mentorship/support without being labeled a creep. You're on your own, you either have to "get" it naturally (by having good parents, happy childhood, etc), or be shamed into staying away from the attractive and socially well-adjusted people. Some of the most life-changing learning resources I've ever encountered (like RSD) are very difficult to recommend to people, so it's harder to help out the guys who are struggling the way I used to.