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> Is that actually true? Yes. Conversing with people requires some amount of empathy as you must consider someone else's words in order to be in a state of lis

> Is that actually true? Yes. Conversing with people requires some amount of empathy as you must consider someone else's words in order to be in a state of listening. It's not distinct from "real life". _It is_ your life. > "... win you anything big" It's just my impression, and I could be mistaken, but this sounds overly pragmatic. Living life this way leads to getting entrenched in local maxima. It's better to also consider what others want and find compromise. What you sacrifice in absolute immediate gains, you exchange for longer term possibilities and networking. On the flip side, don't burden yourself with responsibilities that don't interest you, and don't compromise with people who won't appreciate it. All that said, what I "won" is my social life and career which I am grateful for. To answer if it's anything "big" is all relative. It's a big deal to me. There's no need to be braggadocious. Life is what you make it.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
>It's just my impression, and I could be mistaken, but this sounds overly pragmatic. Living life this way leads to getting entrenched in local maxima. You find a lot of people who suffer from severe social maladjustment and view life as a zero-sum game all over the place (I blame the rise of using game theory to model real situations without a finite turn limit). It's very rare you'll be able to "argue" these people into conceptualizing other humans as unique individuals, it pretty much always comes from problematic upbringings
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  I feel this is far more primal than we might think. That it’s wired into some people that everything has to be about, “how does this benefit me?” And I think this would be unsurprising. That sounds like a healthy evolutionary trait. I think there are people that for one reason or another can overcome this instinct and see a bigger picture of society. And I think these groups generally coalesce for reinforcement and forms of ideological security. Then they give these groups names.
  - d23 4y ago
    Empathy appears to be just as wired into us and evolutionarily advantageous for us as a species. Without it, I don't think we could have formed societies or even tribes in the first place.
    - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
      Ya, humans main strat in the wilderness was being cool to each other and forming strong tribal units. But if your care givers have low empathy, that typically is passed onto the offspring, which is the mechanism behind generational trama
    - mirror_neuron 4y ago
      My (unsubstantiated, off-the-cuff) theory is that empathy/altruism and selfishness are held in equilibrium. Altruistic traits lead to cooperation, which leads to civilization and surplus, which makes selfishness less damaging to society (and thus more adaptive for the individual). Too many selfish individuals damage the trust that leads to that surplus, which keeps the number of the selfish in check.
joenot443 4y ago
> It's just my impression, and I could be mistaken, but this sounds overly pragmatic. Well said. This is a frustration I find when giving interpersonal advice to highly analytical, technical folks. Very quickly they're eager to relate what they're experiencing back to mechanisms they're used to (min/max algorithms, video games strats, etc.), usually to their detriment. They're used to the pattern of 1) Gather evidence 2) Understand system 3) Apply actions to system. The art of interfacing with other humans is so profoundly different from any other activity we take part in, I think it's silly to allow the analytical side of our brains to have too much control. The best advice I've been able to give socially stunted engineers is just to think less, and rely more on instinct than on heuristic. The most socialized, well liked, and gregarious people you remember from high school probably never read a self-help book or a Tips for Making Friends blogpost in their life. They followed their instincts and didn't think too much.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  >The art of interfacing with other humans is so profoundly different from any other activity we take part in, I think it's silly to allow the analytical side of our brains to have too much control. The best advice I've been able to give socially stunted engineers is just to think less, and rely more on instinct than on heuristic. Maybe our basis for measurement is not capable of measuring the data present. Sort of like how when scanning something sometimes the resolution is just too low and thus discards data that is there but we don't see it.
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  What if my instincts are to not be social...
  - what_is_orcas 4y ago
    It is ok for one to not be social if one doesn't want to be social.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

SQueeeeeL 4y ago

>It's just my impression, and I could be mistaken, but this sounds overly pragmatic. Living life this way leads to getting entrenched in local maxima. You find a lot of people who suffer from severe social maladjustment and view life as a zero-sum game all over the place (I blame the rise of using game theory to model real situations without a finite turn limit). It's very rare you'll be able to "argue" these people into conceptualizing other humans as unique individuals, it pretty much always comes from problematic upbringings

Waterluvian 4y ago
I feel this is far more primal than we might think. That it’s wired into some people that everything has to be about, “how does this benefit me?” And I think this would be unsurprising. That sounds like a healthy evolutionary trait. I think there are people that for one reason or another can overcome this instinct and see a bigger picture of society. And I think these groups generally coalesce for reinforcement and forms of ideological security. Then they give these groups names.
- d23 4y ago
  Empathy appears to be just as wired into us and evolutionarily advantageous for us as a species. Without it, I don't think we could have formed societies or even tribes in the first place.
  - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
    Ya, humans main strat in the wilderness was being cool to each other and forming strong tribal units. But if your care givers have low empathy, that typically is passed onto the offspring, which is the mechanism behind generational trama
  - mirror_neuron 4y ago
    My (unsubstantiated, off-the-cuff) theory is that empathy/altruism and selfishness are held in equilibrium. Altruistic traits lead to cooperation, which leads to civilization and surplus, which makes selfishness less damaging to society (and thus more adaptive for the individual). Too many selfish individuals damage the trust that leads to that surplus, which keeps the number of the selfish in check.

joenot443 4y ago

> It's just my impression, and I could be mistaken, but this sounds overly pragmatic. Well said. This is a frustration I find when giving interpersonal advice to highly analytical, technical folks. Very quickly they're eager to relate what they're experiencing back to mechanisms they're used to (min/max algorithms, video games strats, etc.), usually to their detriment. They're used to the pattern of 1) Gather evidence 2) Understand system 3) Apply actions to system. The art of interfacing with other humans is so profoundly different from any other activity we take part in, I think it's silly to allow the analytical side of our brains to have too much control. The best advice I've been able to give socially stunted engineers is just to think less, and rely more on instinct than on heuristic. The most socialized, well liked, and gregarious people you remember from high school probably never read a self-help book or a Tips for Making Friends blogpost in their life. They followed their instincts and didn't think too much.

nebula8804 4y ago
>The art of interfacing with other humans is so profoundly different from any other activity we take part in, I think it's silly to allow the analytical side of our brains to have too much control. The best advice I've been able to give socially stunted engineers is just to think less, and rely more on instinct than on heuristic. Maybe our basis for measurement is not capable of measuring the data present. Sort of like how when scanning something sometimes the resolution is just too low and thus discards data that is there but we don't see it.
brokenmachine 4y ago
What if my instincts are to not be social...
- what_is_orcas 4y ago
  It is ok for one to not be social if one doesn't want to be social.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]