5 ms·

You know how you tie your shoes every day, but then one day you stop to think of how to tie your shoes and you find that you don't know how! And the only way to

You know how you tie your shoes every day, but then one day you stop to think of how to tie your shoes and you find that you don't know how! And the only way to tie your shoes is to stop thinking about it and let your muscle memory take over. That's how reading that article made me feel about social interaction.

andreyf 18y ago
This is a terrible guide for analytical people who over-think things to begin with. When you first approach an attractive stranger, having established at least an indication of mutual interest through eye contact, try to make eye contact again at about 4ft away, before moving any closer. At 4 ft (about two small steps away), you are on the borderline between what are known as the 'social zone' (4 to 12 ft) and the 'personal zone' (18in to 4ft). If you're having problems socializing with people, drawing 'zones' around them and following strict rules of interaction isn't going to help.
- eli 18y ago
  Yeah, but if you didn't even realize that 18" is way too close that's a bigger problem.
- dkarl 18y ago
  People who over-think things are paralyzed by uncertainty when it comes to social interaction because it seems so intellectually intractible. The rules and guidelines aren't meant to encourage their compulsive ratiocination; they're meant to serve as a security blanket, to give people enough courage to actually start interacting. Simply by being short and comprehensible, they provide authoritative reassurance that flirting doesn't require a highly sophisticated understanding. Once a person is reassured enough to get started, the rest will come with experience.
  - biohacker42 18y ago
    I don't know, it seems paralyzing to try and keep that stuff in mind and react in real time. I agree with the rest will come with experience but I'd preface that with just go out and hang out near other people.
    - dkarl 18y ago
      "it seems paralyzing to try and keep that stuff in mind and react in real time" You're leaving out step three: 1. Read guidelines and reassure yourself that flirting is something you can understand and perform acceptably at. 2. Work up your courage and go to a bar/party/gathering where your friends say you will meet women. 3. Freak out when you actually get to the bar/party/whatever and consume a large quantity of alcohol to take the edge off your anxiety. 4. Find someone to talk to, forget all the rules, and either bomb out completely because they find your awkwardness off-putting or do just fine because your nervousness and ineptitude are within their acceptable range.
  - carterschonwald 18y ago
    Actually computing equilibria in even toy mathematical models of social collaboration is horribly intractible even at a single time step. So what you wind up being best off doing is randomly choose your initial location and just follow the local gradient of fun, then iterating this a few times and choosing the best one.
    - jey 18y ago
      Nobody is suggesting doing game-theoretic analyses before engaging in social interaction. Obviously someone who thinks that they can completely derive their actions from formal rules of behavior is doomed to fail, but it's not like the only two possible choices are "behave completely randomly" and "perform a game-theoretic analysis of the situation based on formal rules". Guides like this provide a good set of heuristics and help the socially unskilled people understand the general ideas and general concepts which socially skilled people seem to just pick up from their environment. This is important so you can pick a reasonable starting location before doing your hill climbing algorithm -- if you just choose a completely random starting point, everything is just extremely discouraging, there's no useful feedback from the environment (other than "YOU FAIL"), and there's absolutely no fun gradient to maximize. (Or at least, the fun gradient is so negative in all directions that it's difficult to figure out which way is up.) It always amazes me how socially skilled people apparently can't even understand what it means to be socially unskilled. It would be as if everyone who learned to ride a bicycle later completely forgot that they had to learn this skill, then just went around telling everyone who didn't know how to ride a bicycle, "you just get on and pedal, it's so easy, I don't see why you keep falling, you must not be trying".
      - carterschonwald 18y ago
        regarding the first part, you're absolutely right, but understanding the worst case computational complexity of a problem does lend a certain appreciation to the average case complexity that happens when people implicitly approximately solve those problems. Admission: My current research project involves studying the computational complexity of socially inspired optimization problems. Turns out that even the simplest nontrivial ones are PPAD Hard or #P hard. (so special cases or approximations become key very quickly) This is why its useful to put social problems into at least semi-mathematical language to make it easier to spell things out to the socially oblivious (but still logically endowed, which sadly isn't always the case) or to make it easier to discuss a complex social issue with a friend
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- chris11 18y ago
  Rules are useful even in social situations. Sure, experience and intuition will be a lot more natural and successful, but not everyone has that to use. And besides, everyone needs a little work on social skills, and rules will at least give them specific suggestions to implement. That's why advice columns are so successful. It's like playing music. I've played the trumpet for years. Sure I don't consciously think about the specific fingerings that I need to use next, it just comes naturaly. But I got that intuition from many hours of practice following rules and doing drills. I wasn't just handed a trumpet and told to play something. And when I'm having trouble with a section of music, I break it apart into tiny sections, and usually slow the tempo down. None of that is natural, but it's all necessary to play a piece of music.
TrevorJ 18y ago
That is a great way to sum up how I felt about it. For example, the facial.= expressions - I was always able to intuit a real smile vs. a fake one, but only if I am not thinking about it.

andreyf 18y ago

This is a terrible guide for analytical people who over-think things to begin with. When you first approach an attractive stranger, having established at least an indication of mutual interest through eye contact, try to make eye contact again at about 4ft away, before moving any closer. At 4 ft (about two small steps away), you are on the borderline between what are known as the 'social zone' (4 to 12 ft) and the 'personal zone' (18in to 4ft). If you're having problems socializing with people, drawing 'zones' around them and following strict rules of interaction isn't going to help.

eli 18y ago
Yeah, but if you didn't even realize that 18" is way too close that's a bigger problem.
dkarl 18y ago
People who over-think things are paralyzed by uncertainty when it comes to social interaction because it seems so intellectually intractible. The rules and guidelines aren't meant to encourage their compulsive ratiocination; they're meant to serve as a security blanket, to give people enough courage to actually start interacting. Simply by being short and comprehensible, they provide authoritative reassurance that flirting doesn't require a highly sophisticated understanding. Once a person is reassured enough to get started, the rest will come with experience.
- biohacker42 18y ago
  I don't know, it seems paralyzing to try and keep that stuff in mind and react in real time. I agree with the rest will come with experience but I'd preface that with just go out and hang out near other people.
  - dkarl 18y ago
    "it seems paralyzing to try and keep that stuff in mind and react in real time" You're leaving out step three: 1. Read guidelines and reassure yourself that flirting is something you can understand and perform acceptably at. 2. Work up your courage and go to a bar/party/gathering where your friends say you will meet women. 3. Freak out when you actually get to the bar/party/whatever and consume a large quantity of alcohol to take the edge off your anxiety. 4. Find someone to talk to, forget all the rules, and either bomb out completely because they find your awkwardness off-putting or do just fine because your nervousness and ineptitude are within their acceptable range.
- carterschonwald 18y ago
  Actually computing equilibria in even toy mathematical models of social collaboration is horribly intractible even at a single time step. So what you wind up being best off doing is randomly choose your initial location and just follow the local gradient of fun, then iterating this a few times and choosing the best one.
  - jey 18y ago
    Nobody is suggesting doing game-theoretic analyses before engaging in social interaction. Obviously someone who thinks that they can completely derive their actions from formal rules of behavior is doomed to fail, but it's not like the only two possible choices are "behave completely randomly" and "perform a game-theoretic analysis of the situation based on formal rules". Guides like this provide a good set of heuristics and help the socially unskilled people understand the general ideas and general concepts which socially skilled people seem to just pick up from their environment. This is important so you can pick a reasonable starting location before doing your hill climbing algorithm -- if you just choose a completely random starting point, everything is just extremely discouraging, there's no useful feedback from the environment (other than "YOU FAIL"), and there's absolutely no fun gradient to maximize. (Or at least, the fun gradient is so negative in all directions that it's difficult to figure out which way is up.) It always amazes me how socially skilled people apparently can't even understand what it means to be socially unskilled. It would be as if everyone who learned to ride a bicycle later completely forgot that they had to learn this skill, then just went around telling everyone who didn't know how to ride a bicycle, "you just get on and pedal, it's so easy, I don't see why you keep falling, you must not be trying".
    - carterschonwald 18y ago
      regarding the first part, you're absolutely right, but understanding the worst case computational complexity of a problem does lend a certain appreciation to the average case complexity that happens when people implicitly approximately solve those problems. Admission: My current research project involves studying the computational complexity of socially inspired optimization problems. Turns out that even the simplest nontrivial ones are PPAD Hard or #P hard. (so special cases or approximations become key very quickly) This is why its useful to put social problems into at least semi-mathematical language to make it easier to spell things out to the socially oblivious (but still logically endowed, which sadly isn't always the case) or to make it easier to discuss a complex social issue with a friend
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
chris11 18y ago
Rules are useful even in social situations. Sure, experience and intuition will be a lot more natural and successful, but not everyone has that to use. And besides, everyone needs a little work on social skills, and rules will at least give them specific suggestions to implement. That's why advice columns are so successful. It's like playing music. I've played the trumpet for years. Sure I don't consciously think about the specific fingerings that I need to use next, it just comes naturaly. But I got that intuition from many hours of practice following rules and doing drills. I wasn't just handed a trumpet and told to play something. And when I'm having trouble with a section of music, I break it apart into tiny sections, and usually slow the tempo down. None of that is natural, but it's all necessary to play a piece of music.

TrevorJ 18y ago

That is a great way to sum up how I felt about it. For example, the facial.= expressions - I was always able to intuit a real smile vs. a fake one, but only if I am not thinking about it.