Most of the examples in the list are about comfort zone expansion
I don’t think that’s right/I don’t think that’s the point of the list, though John’s quoting it out of context might’ve led to losing the point. Duncan’s post suggests that different people in the same social context can view exercises from this list either as potentially humiliating comfort-zone-pushing challenges, or as a silly-playful-natural thing to do. Which one it is then depends on whether the given person views the people in that social context as people they can be vulnerable around or not. I. e.: precisely the difference between interacting with your wife vs. random people.
(Duncan’s post then goes into more detail about natural personality-clusters which differ by, among other things, whether their strong-default mode is one or the other.)
Thanks, that’s helpful context! Yeah, it’s worth flagging that I have not read Duncan’s post beyond the list.
Duncan’s post suggests that different people in the same social context can view exercises from this list either as potentially humiliating comfort-zone-pushing challenges, or as a silly-playful-natural thing to do.
Seems like my reaction proved this part right, at least. I knew some people must find something about it fun, but my model was more like “Some people think comfort/trust zone expansion itself is fun” rather than “Some people with already-wide comfort/trust zones find it fun to do things that other people would only do under the banner of comfort/trust zone expansion.”
(Sometimes the truth can be somewhere in the middle, though? I would imagine that the people who would quite like to do most of the things in the list find it appealing that it’s about stuff you “don’t normally do,” that it’s “pushing the envelope” a little?)
That said, I don’t feel understood by the (fear of) humiliation theme in your summary of Duncan’s post. Sure, that’s a thing and I have that as well, but the even bigger reason why I wouldn’t be comfortable going through a list of “actions to do in the context of a game that’s supposed to be fun” is because that entire concept just doesn’t do anything for me? It just seems pointless at best plus there’s uncomfortableness from the artificiality of it?
As I also wrote in my reply to John:
It’s hard to pinpoint why exactly I think many people are highly turned off by this stuff, but I’m pretty sure (based on introspection) that it’s not just fear of humiliation or not trusting other people in the room. There’s something off-putting to me about the performativeness of it. Something like “If the only reason I’m doing it is because I’m following instructions, not because at least one of us actually likes it and the other person happily consents to it, it feels really weird.”
(This actually feels somewhat related to why I don’t like small talk—but that probably can’t be the full explanation because my model of most rationalists is that they probably don’t like small talk.)
I don’t think that’s right/I don’t think that’s the point of the list, though John’s quoting it out of context might’ve led to losing the point. Duncan’s post suggests that different people in the same social context can view exercises from this list either as potentially humiliating comfort-zone-pushing challenges, or as a silly-playful-natural thing to do. Which one it is then depends on whether the given person views the people in that social context as people they can be vulnerable around or not. I. e.: precisely the difference between interacting with your wife vs. random people.
(Duncan’s post then goes into more detail about natural personality-clusters which differ by, among other things, whether their strong-default mode is one or the other.)
Thanks, that’s helpful context! Yeah, it’s worth flagging that I have not read Duncan’s post beyond the list.
Seems like my reaction proved this part right, at least. I knew some people must find something about it fun, but my model was more like “Some people think comfort/trust zone expansion itself is fun” rather than “Some people with already-wide comfort/trust zones find it fun to do things that other people would only do under the banner of comfort/trust zone expansion.”
(Sometimes the truth can be somewhere in the middle, though? I would imagine that the people who would quite like to do most of the things in the list find it appealing that it’s about stuff you “don’t normally do,” that it’s “pushing the envelope” a little?)
That said, I don’t feel understood by the (fear of) humiliation theme in your summary of Duncan’s post. Sure, that’s a thing and I have that as well, but the even bigger reason why I wouldn’t be comfortable going through a list of “actions to do in the context of a game that’s supposed to be fun” is because that entire concept just doesn’t do anything for me? It just seems pointless at best plus there’s uncomfortableness from the artificiality of it?
As I also wrote in my reply to John: