So, probably like most everyone else here, I sometimes get complaints (mostly from my ex-girlfriend, you can always count on them to point out your flaws) that I’m too logical and rational and emotionless and I can’t connect with people or understand them et cetera. Now, it’s not like I’m actually particularly bad at these things for being as nerdy as I am, and my ex is a rather biased source of information, but it’s true that I have a hard time coming across as… I suppose the adjective would be ‘warm’, or ‘human’. I’ve attributed a lot of this to a) my always-seeking-outside-confirmation-of-competence-style narcissism, b) my overly precise (for most people, not here) speech patterns. (For instance, when my ex said I suck at understanding people, I asked “Why do you believe that?” instead of the simpler and less clinical-psychologist-sounding “How so?” or “How?” or what not.) and c) accidentally randomly bringing up terms like ‘a priori’ which apparently most people haven’t heard. I think there’s more low hanging fruit here, though. Tsuyoku naritai!
Has anyone else tackled these problems? It’s not that I lack charisma—I’ve managed to pull off that insane/passionate/brilliant thing among my friends—but I do seem to lack the ability to really connect with people—even people I really care about. Do Less Wrongers experience similar problems? Any advice? Or meta-advice about how to learn hard-to-describe dispositions? I’ve noticed that consciously acting like I was Regina Spektor in one situation or Richard Feynman in another seems to help, for instance.
“Fake it until you make it” is surprisingly good advice for this sort of thing. I had moderate self-esteem issues in my freshman year of college, so I consciously decided to pretend that I had very high self-esteem in every interaction I had outside of class. This may be one of those tricks that doesn’t work for most people, but I found that using a song lyric (from a song I liked) as a mantra to recall my desired state of mind was incredibly helpful, and got into the habit of listening to that particular song before heading out to meet friends. (The National’s “All The Wine” in this particular case. “I am a festival” was the mantra I used.)
That’s in the same class of thing as acting like Regina Spektor or Feynman; if you act in a certain way consistently enough, your brain will learn that pattern and it will begin to feel more natural and less conscious. I don’t worry about my self-esteem any more (in that direction, at least).
I suggest a lot of practice talking to non-nerds or nerds who aren’t in their nerd mode. (And less time with your ex!)
A perfect form of practice is dance. Take swing dancing lessons, for example. That removes the possibility of using your overwhelming verbal fluency and persona of intellectual brilliance. It makes it far easier to activate that part that is sometimes called ‘human’ but perhaps more accurately called ‘animal’. Once you master maintaining the social connection in a purely non-verbal setting adding in a verbal component yet maintaining the flow should be far simpler.
I suggest a lot of practice talking to non-nerds or nerds who aren’t in their nerd mode.
Non-nerdy people who are interesting are surprisingly difficult to find, and I have a hard time connecting with the ones I do find such that I don’t get much practice in. I’m guessing that the biggest demographic here would be artists (musicians). Being passionate about something abstract seems to be the common denominator.
(And less time with your ex!)
Ha, perhaps a good idea, but I enjoy the criticism. She points out flaws that I might have missed otherwise. I wonder if one could market themselves as a professional personality flaw detector or the like. I’d pay to see one.
Once you master maintaining the social connection in a purely non-verbal setting adding in a verbal component yet maintaining the flow should be far simpler.
Interesting, I had discounted dancing because of its nonverbality. Thanks for alerting me to my mistake!
Interesting, I had discounted dancing because of its nonverbality. Thanks for alerting me to my mistake!
I was using very similar reasoning when I suggested “non nerds or nerds not presently in nerd mode”. The key is hide the abstract discussion crutch!
Ha, perhaps a good idea, but I enjoy the criticism. She points out flaws that I might have missed otherwise. I wonder if one could market themselves as a professional personality flaw detector or the like. I’d pay to see one.
Friends who are willing to suggest improvements (Tsuyoku naritai) sincerely are valuable resources! If your ex is able to point out a flaw then perhaps you could ask her to lead you through an example of how to have a ‘warm, human’ interaction, showing you the difference between that and what you usually do? Mind you, it is still almost certainly better to listen to criticism from someone who has a vested interest in your improvement rather than your acknowledgement of flaws. Like, say, a current girlfriend. ;)
Interesting, I had discounted dancing because of its nonverbality.
In my last semester at college, I figured I should take fun classes while I could, so I took two one credit drumming classes. In African Drumming Ensemble, we spent 90% of the time doing complex group dances and not drumming, because the drumming was so much easier to learn than the dancing.
Being tricked into taking a dance class was broadly good for my social skills, not the least my confidence on a dance floor.
b) my overly precise (for most people, not here) speech patterns
The kind of ultra rational Bayesian lingustic patterns used around here would be considered obnoxiously intellectual and pretentious (and incomprehensible?) by most people. Practice mirroring the speech patterns of the people you are communicating with, and slip into rationalist talk when you need to win an argument about something important.
When I’m talking to street people, I say “man” a lot because it’s something of a high honorific. Maybe in California I will need to start saying “dude”, though man seems inherently more respectful.
I think most people here have some sort of similar problem. Mine isn’t being emotionless (ha!) but not knowing the right thing to say, putting my foot in my mouth, and so on. Occasionally coming across as a pedant, which is so embarrassing.
I may be getting better at it, though. One thing is: if you are a nerd (in the sense of passionate about something abstract) just roll with it. You will get along better with similar people. Your non-nerdy friends will know you’re a nerd. I try to be as nice as possible so that when, inevitably, I say something clumsy or reveal that I’m ignorant of something basic, it’s not taken too negatively. Nice but clueless is much better than arrogant.
And always wait for a cue from the other person to reveal something about yourself. Don’t bring up politics unless he does; don’t mention your interests unless he asks you; don’t use long words unless he does.
I can’t dance for shit, but various kinds of exercise are a good way to meet a broader spectrum of people.
Do I still feel like I’m mostly tolerated rather than liked? Yeah. It can be pretty depressing. But such is life.
As for dating—the numbers are different from my perspective, of course, but so far I’ve found I’m not going to click really profoundly with guys who aren’t intelligent. I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, it’s just a self-knowledge thing—conversation is really fun for me, and I have more fun spending time with quick, talkative types. There’s no point forcing yourself to be around people you don’t enjoy.
In my experience, something as simple as adding a smile can transform a demeanor otherwise perceived as “cold” or “emotionless” to “laid-back” or “easy-going”.
Date nerdier people? In general, many nerdy rational individuals have a lot of trouble getting a long with not so nerdy individuals. There’s some danger that I’m other optimizing but I have trouble thinking how an educated rational individual would have be able to date someone who thought that there was something wrong with using terms like “a priori.” That’s a common enough term, and if someone uses a term that they don’t know they should be happy to learn something. So maybe just date a different sort of person?
I wasn’t talking mostly about dating, but I suppose that’s an important subfield.
The topic you mention came up at the Singularity Institute Visiting Fellows house a few weeks. 3 or 4 guys, myself included, expressed a preference for girls who had specialized in some other area of life: gains from trade of specialized knowledge. And I just love explaining to a girl how big the universe is and how gold is formed in super novas… most people can appreciate that, even if they see no need for using the word ‘a priori’. I don’t mean average intelligence, but one standard deviation above the mean intelligence. Maybe more; I tend to underestimate people. There was 1 person who was rather happy with his relationship with a girl who was very like him. However, the common theme was that people who had more dating experience consistently preferred less traditionally intelligent and more emotionally intelligent girls (I’m not using that term technically, by the way), whereas those with less dating experience had weaker preferences for girls who were like themselves. Those with more dating experience also seemed to put much more emphasis on the importance of attractiveness instead of e.g. intelligence or rationality. Not that you have to choose or anything, most of the time. I’m going to be so bold as to claim that most people with little dating experience that believe they would be happiest with a rationalist girlfriend should update on expected evidence and broaden their search criteria for potential mates.
As for preferences of women, I’m sorry, but the sample size was too small for me to see any trends. (To be fair this was a really informal discussion, not an official SIAI survey of course. :) )
Important addendum: I never actually checked to see if any of the guys in the conversation had dated women who were substantially more intelligent than average, and thus they might not have been making a fair comparison (imagining silly arguments about deism versus atheism or something). I myself have never dated a girl that was 3 sigma intelligent, for instance. I’m mostly drawing my comparison from fictional (imagined) evidence.
I’ve dated females who were clearly less intelligent than I am, some about the same, and some clearly more intelligent. I’m pretty sure the last category was the most enjoyable (I’m pretty sure that rational intelligent nerdy females don’t want want to date guys who aren’t as smart as they are either). There may be issues with sample size.
Hm, probably. I’m not sure what my priors would be, either. So my distribution’s looking pretty flat at the moment, especially after your contrary evidence.
I think that the quality of relationships depends less on the fluid intelligence of the partners, or on anything else they might have in common, and more on their level of emotional maturity (empathy, non-self-absorption, communication skills, generosity), as well as their attachment to and affection for one another.
You may become more attached to, or feel more affection for, someone you believe to be intelligent, but then again you might achieve the same emotional connection through, for example, shared life experiences. Intelligence and common interests may make a mate more entertaining, but in my experience it’s really not terribly important for my boyfriend to entertain me; we can always go see a movie or play a game together for entertainment.
I’m arguing, in short, that intelligence is mostly irrelevant to relationship quality.
On a more personal note, I can testify that, however much you might admire intelligence per se, it is a terrible idea to date someone who is nearly but not quite as intelligent as yourself, who is also crushingly insecure.
I have myself been accused of being an android or replicant on many occasions. The best way that I’ve found to deal with this is to make jokes and tell humorous anecdotes about the situation, especially ones that poke fun at myself. This way, the accusation itself becomes associated with the joke and people begin to find it funny, which makes it “unserious.”
I often despair at inability to communicate everyday life ideas at my own level. It’s normal to have a textbook problem that is very difficult to solve, or to have a solution to said problem that is difficult to communicate. Sometimes it takes a lot of study to know enough to understand such a problem. But people don’t expect to encounter such depth in the analysis of everyday life situations, or indeed in explanations of trivial remarks, and so they won’t have the patience to understand a more difficult argument, or to learn the prerequisites for understanding it.
This leads to disagreements that I know (in theory) how to resolve (by explaining the reasons for a given position), but the other person won’t study. The only short-term solution is to accept the impossibility of communication, and never mention the tiny details that you won’t be able to easily substantiate.
An effective long-term solution is to gradually educate people around you, giving them rationalist’s tools that you’ll be eventually able to use to cut through the communication difficulty.
So, probably like most everyone else here, I sometimes get complaints (mostly from my ex-girlfriend, you can always count on them to point out your flaws) that I’m too logical and rational and emotionless and I can’t connect with people or understand them et cetera. Now, it’s not like I’m actually particularly bad at these things for being as nerdy as I am, and my ex is a rather biased source of information, but it’s true that I have a hard time coming across as… I suppose the adjective would be ‘warm’, or ‘human’. I’ve attributed a lot of this to a) my always-seeking-outside-confirmation-of-competence-style narcissism, b) my overly precise (for most people, not here) speech patterns. (For instance, when my ex said I suck at understanding people, I asked “Why do you believe that?” instead of the simpler and less clinical-psychologist-sounding “How so?” or “How?” or what not.) and c) accidentally randomly bringing up terms like ‘a priori’ which apparently most people haven’t heard. I think there’s more low hanging fruit here, though. Tsuyoku naritai!
Has anyone else tackled these problems? It’s not that I lack charisma—I’ve managed to pull off that insane/passionate/brilliant thing among my friends—but I do seem to lack the ability to really connect with people—even people I really care about. Do Less Wrongers experience similar problems? Any advice? Or meta-advice about how to learn hard-to-describe dispositions? I’ve noticed that consciously acting like I was Regina Spektor in one situation or Richard Feynman in another seems to help, for instance.
“Fake it until you make it” is surprisingly good advice for this sort of thing. I had moderate self-esteem issues in my freshman year of college, so I consciously decided to pretend that I had very high self-esteem in every interaction I had outside of class. This may be one of those tricks that doesn’t work for most people, but I found that using a song lyric (from a song I liked) as a mantra to recall my desired state of mind was incredibly helpful, and got into the habit of listening to that particular song before heading out to meet friends. (The National’s “All The Wine” in this particular case. “I am a festival” was the mantra I used.)
That’s in the same class of thing as acting like Regina Spektor or Feynman; if you act in a certain way consistently enough, your brain will learn that pattern and it will begin to feel more natural and less conscious. I don’t worry about my self-esteem any more (in that direction, at least).
I suggest a lot of practice talking to non-nerds or nerds who aren’t in their nerd mode. (And less time with your ex!)
A perfect form of practice is dance. Take swing dancing lessons, for example. That removes the possibility of using your overwhelming verbal fluency and persona of intellectual brilliance. It makes it far easier to activate that part that is sometimes called ‘human’ but perhaps more accurately called ‘animal’. Once you master maintaining the social connection in a purely non-verbal setting adding in a verbal component yet maintaining the flow should be far simpler.
Non-nerdy people who are interesting are surprisingly difficult to find, and I have a hard time connecting with the ones I do find such that I don’t get much practice in. I’m guessing that the biggest demographic here would be artists (musicians). Being passionate about something abstract seems to be the common denominator.
Ha, perhaps a good idea, but I enjoy the criticism. She points out flaws that I might have missed otherwise. I wonder if one could market themselves as a professional personality flaw detector or the like. I’d pay to see one.
Interesting, I had discounted dancing because of its nonverbality. Thanks for alerting me to my mistake!
I was using very similar reasoning when I suggested “non nerds or nerds not presently in nerd mode”. The key is hide the abstract discussion crutch!
Friends who are willing to suggest improvements (Tsuyoku naritai) sincerely are valuable resources! If your ex is able to point out a flaw then perhaps you could ask her to lead you through an example of how to have a ‘warm, human’ interaction, showing you the difference between that and what you usually do? Mind you, it is still almost certainly better to listen to criticism from someone who has a vested interest in your improvement rather than your acknowledgement of flaws. Like, say, a current girlfriend. ;)
In my last semester at college, I figured I should take fun classes while I could, so I took two one credit drumming classes. In African Drumming Ensemble, we spent 90% of the time doing complex group dances and not drumming, because the drumming was so much easier to learn than the dancing.
Being tricked into taking a dance class was broadly good for my social skills, not the least my confidence on a dance floor.
The kind of ultra rational Bayesian lingustic patterns used around here would be considered obnoxiously intellectual and pretentious (and incomprehensible?) by most people. Practice mirroring the speech patterns of the people you are communicating with, and slip into rationalist talk when you need to win an argument about something important.
When I’m talking to street people, I say “man” a lot because it’s something of a high honorific. Maybe in California I will need to start saying “dude”, though man seems inherently more respectful.
I think most people here have some sort of similar problem. Mine isn’t being emotionless (ha!) but not knowing the right thing to say, putting my foot in my mouth, and so on. Occasionally coming across as a pedant, which is so embarrassing.
I may be getting better at it, though. One thing is: if you are a nerd (in the sense of passionate about something abstract) just roll with it. You will get along better with similar people. Your non-nerdy friends will know you’re a nerd. I try to be as nice as possible so that when, inevitably, I say something clumsy or reveal that I’m ignorant of something basic, it’s not taken too negatively. Nice but clueless is much better than arrogant.
And always wait for a cue from the other person to reveal something about yourself. Don’t bring up politics unless he does; don’t mention your interests unless he asks you; don’t use long words unless he does.
I can’t dance for shit, but various kinds of exercise are a good way to meet a broader spectrum of people.
Do I still feel like I’m mostly tolerated rather than liked? Yeah. It can be pretty depressing. But such is life.
As for dating—the numbers are different from my perspective, of course, but so far I’ve found I’m not going to click really profoundly with guys who aren’t intelligent. I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, it’s just a self-knowledge thing—conversation is really fun for me, and I have more fun spending time with quick, talkative types. There’s no point forcing yourself to be around people you don’t enjoy.
In my experience, something as simple as adding a smile can transform a demeanor otherwise perceived as “cold” or “emotionless” to “laid-back” or “easy-going”.
Date nerdier people? In general, many nerdy rational individuals have a lot of trouble getting a long with not so nerdy individuals. There’s some danger that I’m other optimizing but I have trouble thinking how an educated rational individual would have be able to date someone who thought that there was something wrong with using terms like “a priori.” That’s a common enough term, and if someone uses a term that they don’t know they should be happy to learn something. So maybe just date a different sort of person?
I wasn’t talking mostly about dating, but I suppose that’s an important subfield.
The topic you mention came up at the Singularity Institute Visiting Fellows house a few weeks. 3 or 4 guys, myself included, expressed a preference for girls who had specialized in some other area of life: gains from trade of specialized knowledge. And I just love explaining to a girl how big the universe is and how gold is formed in super novas… most people can appreciate that, even if they see no need for using the word ‘a priori’. I don’t mean average intelligence, but one standard deviation above the mean intelligence. Maybe more; I tend to underestimate people. There was 1 person who was rather happy with his relationship with a girl who was very like him. However, the common theme was that people who had more dating experience consistently preferred less traditionally intelligent and more emotionally intelligent girls (I’m not using that term technically, by the way), whereas those with less dating experience had weaker preferences for girls who were like themselves. Those with more dating experience also seemed to put much more emphasis on the importance of attractiveness instead of e.g. intelligence or rationality. Not that you have to choose or anything, most of the time. I’m going to be so bold as to claim that most people with little dating experience that believe they would be happiest with a rationalist girlfriend should update on expected evidence and broaden their search criteria for potential mates.
As for preferences of women, I’m sorry, but the sample size was too small for me to see any trends. (To be fair this was a really informal discussion, not an official SIAI survey of course. :) )
Important addendum: I never actually checked to see if any of the guys in the conversation had dated women who were substantially more intelligent than average, and thus they might not have been making a fair comparison (imagining silly arguments about deism versus atheism or something). I myself have never dated a girl that was 3 sigma intelligent, for instance. I’m mostly drawing my comparison from fictional (imagined) evidence.
I’ve dated females who were clearly less intelligent than I am, some about the same, and some clearly more intelligent. I’m pretty sure the last category was the most enjoyable (I’m pretty sure that rational intelligent nerdy females don’t want want to date guys who aren’t as smart as they are either). There may be issues with sample size.
Hm, probably. I’m not sure what my priors would be, either. So my distribution’s looking pretty flat at the moment, especially after your contrary evidence.
I think that the quality of relationships depends less on the fluid intelligence of the partners, or on anything else they might have in common, and more on their level of emotional maturity (empathy, non-self-absorption, communication skills, generosity), as well as their attachment to and affection for one another.
You may become more attached to, or feel more affection for, someone you believe to be intelligent, but then again you might achieve the same emotional connection through, for example, shared life experiences. Intelligence and common interests may make a mate more entertaining, but in my experience it’s really not terribly important for my boyfriend to entertain me; we can always go see a movie or play a game together for entertainment.
I’m arguing, in short, that intelligence is mostly irrelevant to relationship quality.
On a more personal note, I can testify that, however much you might admire intelligence per se, it is a terrible idea to date someone who is nearly but not quite as intelligent as yourself, who is also crushingly insecure.
I have myself been accused of being an android or replicant on many occasions. The best way that I’ve found to deal with this is to make jokes and tell humorous anecdotes about the situation, especially ones that poke fun at myself. This way, the accusation itself becomes associated with the joke and people begin to find it funny, which makes it “unserious.”
I often despair at inability to communicate everyday life ideas at my own level. It’s normal to have a textbook problem that is very difficult to solve, or to have a solution to said problem that is difficult to communicate. Sometimes it takes a lot of study to know enough to understand such a problem. But people don’t expect to encounter such depth in the analysis of everyday life situations, or indeed in explanations of trivial remarks, and so they won’t have the patience to understand a more difficult argument, or to learn the prerequisites for understanding it.
This leads to disagreements that I know (in theory) how to resolve (by explaining the reasons for a given position), but the other person won’t study. The only short-term solution is to accept the impossibility of communication, and never mention the tiny details that you won’t be able to easily substantiate.
An effective long-term solution is to gradually educate people around you, giving them rationalist’s tools that you’ll be eventually able to use to cut through the communication difficulty.