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I disagree — Cancer is something happens to you. Being socially inept is, barring medical conductions which complicate social interaction, entirely something wi

by nness 2y ago

I disagree — Cancer is something happens to you. Being socially inept is, barring medical conductions which complicate social interaction, entirely something within your control. "Chronic social cancer" does not exist. This kind of nitpicking is what the Kvetching Order avoids.

BiteCode_dev 2y ago
For having worked 30 years to get out of the socially inept zone, and given plenty of people consume known carcinogens willingly, I think this statement is a bit simplistic at best. Smokers know they should stop smoking but it's hard to do so. Yet the path is clear. If you are socially blind by nature, the path is really not clear and you are going to suffer from your ignorance while painfully battling to get out of a hole you can't see but feels very much is trapping you.
aloisdg 2y ago
> Being socially inept is entirely something within your control Ableism. What about neurodiversity? autism?
- nness 2y ago
  "Barring medical conductions which complicate social interaction" was the part you edited out? It's right there in the original comment...
joenot443 2y ago
Saying being socially inept is entirely within your control is like saying being bad at math is entirely within your control. You have to understand that for a huge chunk of the population, abstract inter-personal models like ring theory and the "Kvetching Order" are just genuinely above them and if you were to try and stop the conversation so you could educate them on how better to converse, you'd end up being the boorish one. Most people out there don't need Western psychology models to describe the emergent patterns in own their behavior. Most people just have friends and don't need to take a mental tally of whether they're the present adult in the room. I think that if you find someone's presence annoying or off-putting, it's probably not due to a lack of ring theory education, they might just have a personality.
- hansvm 2y ago
  Being bad at math _is_ entirely within your control.... The societal prior that most people are innately bad at math does throw a bit of a wrench in things. Alice doesn't get accolades for telling Bob that his failings are his fault and fixable, even in the best of scenarios. With a strong prior that spending thousands of hours studying won't help, Bob is further disinclined from even "wasting time" entertaining conversations attempting to explain the opposite position. Nevertheless, nearly anyone who gets over that particular mental trap and finds a halfway decent mentor (or even just a particularly adept late-undergraduate tutor) is able to learn those concepts.
bell-cot 2y ago
Disagree...but you make an important point. There are a lot of people whose social behavior shortcomings are of the "because I can get away with it" variety. If they need your approval, and have no power over you - out comes charming Dr. Jekyll. Otherwise, Mr. Hyde. It's a lot like teenage boys being able to pick up their rooms.

by nness 2y ago

BiteCode_dev 2y ago

For having worked 30 years to get out of the socially inept zone, and given plenty of people consume known carcinogens willingly, I think this statement is a bit simplistic at best. Smokers know they should stop smoking but it's hard to do so. Yet the path is clear. If you are socially blind by nature, the path is really not clear and you are going to suffer from your ignorance while painfully battling to get out of a hole you can't see but feels very much is trapping you.

aloisdg 2y ago

> Being socially inept is entirely something within your control Ableism. What about neurodiversity? autism?

nness 2y ago
"Barring medical conductions which complicate social interaction" was the part you edited out? It's right there in the original comment...

joenot443 2y ago

Saying being socially inept is entirely within your control is like saying being bad at math is entirely within your control. You have to understand that for a huge chunk of the population, abstract inter-personal models like ring theory and the "Kvetching Order" are just genuinely above them and if you were to try and stop the conversation so you could educate them on how better to converse, you'd end up being the boorish one. Most people out there don't need Western psychology models to describe the emergent patterns in own their behavior. Most people just have friends and don't need to take a mental tally of whether they're the present adult in the room. I think that if you find someone's presence annoying or off-putting, it's probably not due to a lack of ring theory education, they might just have a personality.

hansvm 2y ago
Being bad at math _is_ entirely within your control.... The societal prior that most people are innately bad at math does throw a bit of a wrench in things. Alice doesn't get accolades for telling Bob that his failings are his fault and fixable, even in the best of scenarios. With a strong prior that spending thousands of hours studying won't help, Bob is further disinclined from even "wasting time" entertaining conversations attempting to explain the opposite position. Nevertheless, nearly anyone who gets over that particular mental trap and finds a halfway decent mentor (or even just a particularly adept late-undergraduate tutor) is able to learn those concepts.

bell-cot 2y ago

Disagree...but you make an important point. There are a lot of people whose social behavior shortcomings are of the "because I can get away with it" variety. If they need your approval, and have no power over you - out comes charming Dr. Jekyll. Otherwise, Mr. Hyde. It's a lot like teenage boys being able to pick up their rooms.