Hm, I guess the true fact about other social situations is that most of the time when this stuff happens it’s because the person really doesn’t want to talk to you (“Social Intercourse”, David, Larry). Eg. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, but it was nice talking to you”.
And what’s different here is that it actually is quite likely that a group at a rationalist party having a conversation would be in a high context state that is sensitive to adding newcomers. So when they tell you this, it’s actually quite likely to be true and quite unlikely to be an excuse. That does seem like a good thing to point out. Also I assume people at rationalist parties are generally pretty nice and unlikely to be unfriendly to someone.
I think the problem is that newcomer is a relative term. If I have a high-context conversation usually there are people where I think they would have the context to productively join the conversation because of their background and others who wouldn’t be able to productively join.
Hm, I guess the true fact about other social situations is that most of the time when this stuff happens it’s because the person really doesn’t want to talk to you (“Social Intercourse”, David, Larry). Eg. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, but it was nice talking to you”.
And what’s different here is that it actually is quite likely that a group at a rationalist party having a conversation would be in a high context state that is sensitive to adding newcomers. So when they tell you this, it’s actually quite likely to be true and quite unlikely to be an excuse. That does seem like a good thing to point out. Also I assume people at rationalist parties are generally pretty nice and unlikely to be unfriendly to someone.
I think the problem is that newcomer is a relative term. If I have a high-context conversation usually there are people where I think they would have the context to productively join the conversation because of their background and others who wouldn’t be able to productively join.