#moderate social competence with alison

[sinesalvatorem]

What I’ve Learned From Thousands of Conversations

I really, really like talking to people. It’s just a phenomenal experience. I find communication in general exhilarating, and every new person I meet makes me feel like my mind is expanding.

However, not all conversations are created equal. For me, personally, most of them are good. However, there’s definitely a gap between good and amazing, and I’ve noticed that some things can influence where a conversation falls along that spectrum.

I think the two most important things I’ve learned are that almost everyone is interesting and most people are bad conversationalists. There is actually nothing contradictory about these, and I’ll examine them each:

Almost everyone is interesting: Most people have a variety of unusual life experiences, ideas, opinions, hobbies, etc. Even people who see themselves as boring pretty much always have these. The thing that distinguishes self-identified boring people from self-identified interesting people is the degree to which they look at their own experiences and see them as same-old, same-old or as “Oh, wow, I bet tons of people have no idea what this is about”. This probably has a lot to do with how much you believe the people around you are different - I have rarely met an immigrant who hadn’t learnt that they weren’t boring.

In my experience, what makes an idea or experience interesting to learn about is when it’s distinct from my own experiences, but I can also see the relationship between it and what I know and care about. Seeing the path from here to there. The existence of that pathway, and how clearly I can see it, is what leads to the feeling of stimulation.

This is related to the idea of inferential distance. If someone’s interests and experiences are very far away from yours, you may see no obvious route to them. This is where a lot of the work of making conversations interesting comes in - you have the build the pathway, so that each step seems natural.

This is where people being bad conversationalists comes in. Most people don’t do this naturally or, when they do, they do it in a rather slip-shod manner. This has led to me having to very awkwardly ask “Oh, so would you say X is like Y?” a lot, while often getting an “eh, not reeeally...” reaction. But, hey, you gotta try a few possible connections until one sticks. Once you have one, you can get pulled along toward the object of interest pretty quickly.

Another way most people are bad at conversation is topic generation or topic-chaining. Most people don’t come up with things to talk about at a particularly high rate or do it very clunkily. This works out OK once someone else is willing to adopt the work of keeping the conversation moving forward. What’s much worse is when people respond to your attempts to open up the conversational field by shutting it down. The reason social advice warns against responding to questions with one-word answers is because it limits the potential to move the conversation, but people do this all the time anyway.

Which is alright for me, honestly. I can still usually get to great conversational territory, even if I have to wade through poor conversational skills to get there. But I think this is another axis of social interaction that’s often overlooked: Patience. You can be a good conversationalist without being a patient conversationalist, or vice versa.

A good conversationalist can maintain a good conversation. A patient conversationalist can put in the time and effort it takes to make the conversation good. Two good conversationalists can have an exciting conversation, but an exciting conversation with a bad conversationalist only happens when the other person is very patient.

I know some good conversationalists who are very impatient. They walk into a conversation and expect it to go from silence to glowy-Buddha-brain!insightful in under sixty seconds. They definitely have pretty cool conversations, but they have them with only a small number of people, while thinking the vast majority of people have nothing worthwhile to say.

While those people are a minority, I definitely expect I’m waaay into the tails when it comes to conversational patience. I know very, very few people who are as patient in conversation as I am, and they tend to become counsellors or priests or something else that utilises edge-case levels of patience. Personally, I just like bumping into people who’ll talk to me and going from there - I can give pretty detailed biographic summaries of the last four Uber drivers I met.

After a self-sustaining conversation is established, there can still be things that make it more or less pleasant. Most of the things I find unpleasant manifest as some sort of conversational friction. They make the conversation grating and difficult to engage in. An external cause might be a loud environment, and an internal one might be having an auditory processing disorder.

However, the most important ones (and the hardest to deal with) tend to be interactional. ie: they’re only the case because of the specific people interacting. It might be a failure to understand each other’s accents, or each other’s politeness customs, or to communicate boundaries. The worst ones cause an interaction to just fail, but many of them are just small annoyances that add up to a less pleasant experience. A common one for me would be being interrupted.

Another thing that seems to mess with most types of conversation is having an elephant in the room. Whether it’s the small talk before a sales pitch, or chatting with your professor before working up to asking them for a recommendation, the conversations that are built around dancing toward a request tend to suck. Like, really bad, compared to almost anything that doesn’t have this aspect. I think this might be part of why talking to people on online dating sites is so terrible: besides people just being bad conversationalists, they’re also being bad conversationalists with an elephant in the room (ie: going on a date).

Unfortunately, I can’t really give an exhaustive list of causes of friction, because I don’t hold them all in my head. It’s mostly a matter of being distracted by them in the moment - having the grating feeling - before setting it aside to get on with the conversation. This has costs and benefits. It’s good that I can set it aside quickly so that I can keep enjoying most conversation, but bad in that it makes it hard to figure out what I should do about it. One of the few things I’ve definitely been able to figure out is that, on average, I experience markedly more friction with men, which may have left me with an unconscious bias toward spending time with other women.

Generally, as people get to know each other’s ins and outs more, the friction goes down. They figure out how they need to communicate with each other to be understood and not get on other’s nerves. Most of the elephants leave the room. They become familiar enough that the feeling of awkwardness (often the most oppressive friction) goes away.

I’ve found that, by far, one of the things with the largest influence on conversational quality is the environment you’re conversing in. Even apart from the obvious things like how noisy it is, the environment can have a dramatic impact. One way is by reducing tensions and making the participants feel relaxed. (I generally find sitting on beds to be most relaxing, but a lot of other people seem to read this as sexual, which makes it more uncomfortable.)

But a less-appreciated way is by priming conversations. A room with a lot of stuff in it does this well, because lots of things pop into your head as your eyes drift over the items in it. Each gadget and doodad and tchotchke fires off a different thought, which can lead to a new line of conversation or alter the path of your current one. Having lots of books or magazines or art around is ideal for this.

Of course, it’s important to have a stimulating environment, rather than a distracting environment. A stimulating environment keeps your brain generating new thoughts. It will prod you to think of things when your mind wanders, but can itself fade into the background when you’re in the middle of something more important. A distracting environment is one that can’t fade into the background. It’s one that detracts from conversation by making it harder to focus on what’s being said. In my experience, having objects that move around or flicker is the worst for this.

An environment can also be stimulating by being good for eavesdropping. If people nearby are having interesting conversations, it can prompt you to also go down interesting lines of conversation. Here it’s again important to distinguish between stimulating and distracting - you want interesting conversations to be audible to you, but not to drown you out. And, of course, you want this to be a space where overhearing others (and being overheard) isn’t rude. I’ve found that study halls and common rooms at universities are the best places for this. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were intended for this purpose.

For reasons of coziness and stimulation, I’ve found that the very best place I can go to have a meaningful conversation with someone is to their home. If not there, a study hall is the best runner up (or anywhere else that’s like a library you can talk in). After that, I’d go with a walk along a quiet road, or going off into nature.

Notably, I’ve found that conversations over text usually aren’t as good as equivalent conversations in person. This is largely because a text field is less stimulating, but also because text conversation is usually far lower bandwidth. People tend to speak much more quickly than they can write, so you can usually have a higher level of stimulation from speech (unless you think very carefully before you speak, or you have an auditory processing problem). The gap in information-transfer jumps much further if you can read body language. For these reasons, I will pretty much always prefer speaking in person to texting (even apart from the fact that I like physical contact and gesticulate a lot).

Given what a huge part of my quality of life consists of human interaction, I might be happy living as a nomad for a year or more. Traveling from place to place to meet new people and learn new things from them. This was basically my experience of couch-surfing in London, and it was very good for me. I would love it if I could be like Paul Erdős; travelling from place to place to meet as many people as possible and share ideas (though probably with less math).

As it stands, my house is a pretty good substitute. The people in it don’t change much, but all my housemates are fun people to talk to. It’s especially exciting to get several of them into a single discussion, because they bounce ideas around really well. They all have broad knowledge and broad interests, but with specialties in different areas, which I think is ideal.

But I want to talk to everyone - no matter how bad of a conversationalist - because everyone has unique interests and insights. And, for finding new voices and new perspectives, nothing seems to beat going to where the people are.

[Is there anything you’ve learned in your life about how conversations work, what your personal preferences for them are, or what the strengths and weaknesses of different environments might be? Please let me know!]

#tragic backstory #moderate social competence with alison #how to speak alison #godless extrovert #long post cw

[sinesalvatorem]

Taking Me On A Date: A Comprehensive Guide

(As comprehensive as I can make a Tumblr post I wrote on the spur of the moment, that is. I will try to update over time with more info and links. You can also use this as general advice on interacting with me.)

I recently got into some conversations about how and why someone might want to take me on a date. As such, I’ve decided to write up in one place as much as I can figure out about what I’d want out of a date and what other people should expect from me.

What I Like:

I am bisexual, and am happy to go on dates with people of any gender/sex. I lean androphilic, which means I’m into a cluster of traits that tend to be correlated with maleness. I find testosterone-influenced features and masculine gender presentation and stuff to be sexy. However, they’re just part of what I find attractive, and I can be attracted to people with very little of either.

I’m someone with a mostly-male body (I haven’t been on HRT very long) and a very feminine personality / presentation / behaviour set. I can be reasonably described as a transgirl, though these days I’m somewhat confused by what being trans means. However, the important thing to note is that in any situation with gender roles I will almost certainly be most comfortable and happy in the female one.

This means that, among other things, I’d like you to take the initiative as much as possible. Suggest what we do, place an order on my behalf (after consulting me, ofc), escalate things yourself, etc. If things are going well, I would very much like it if you tried to kiss me (or asked to kiss me, if you prefer). [How to tell if I want to be kissed] If I really like you but I have to take the initiative to go anywhere, I will have a hard time, because doing so is very out of sync with my personality. I can and will do it if it’s clear that we both want it and you aren’t moving, but be aware that this is vastly dispreferred.

I also really like being complimented. You can be as shallow or silly or dramatic as you want, and I won’t interpret your compliments as fake or be repulsed by them. For more on how I perceive (and use) complements, see here.

I usually enjoy physical contact. In general, leaning against me, resting your hand on my leg, putting your arm around me, etc are all very nice. If for some reason they aren’t, I’ll pull away and say something to that effect. However, this is rare. Overall, err on the side of touching me, if you would like to. Kissing is as described above. If making out (ie: sustained, enthusiastic kissing) ensues, you can grope to your heart’s content.

Going on a date with you does not necessarily mean I would like to sleep with you, nor do I assume that everyone who goes on a date with me would like to sleep with me. However, it is a possibility. What I like sexually is an essay in itself but, luckily, an essay I’ve already written. You can read the guide to my sexual preferences here or browse my NSFW blog here.

What I Dislike:

Please do not issue direct commands to me for any reason. For anything you would command me to do, you should just ask me to do it instead. Seriously. Using the imperative with me ends very badly. Please consider this a hard limit.

I don’t like being talked down to. Don’t get me wrong - I like learning about things. However, talking to me like I’m too dumb to get what you mean, or saying things to the effect of “Oh, of course you wouldn’t know this”, will generally annoy me quite a bit. I like feeling like I’m learning something collaboratively with someone else, rather than providing them with an opportunity to feel superior.

Relatedly, I don’t like getting into heated arguments on dates. Especially if it’s in a public venue. I’m OK with arguing in a general sense, but it kind of counteracts the date experience. Here I can’t say I’m perfect - I might very well make the comment that leads to the argument. However, if I notice that this has happened and point it out, I would very much appreciate it if you were willing to set the argument aside for another time.

If I state a boundary in advance, please DO NOT approach it in the expectation that I will stop you at the right time. I encourage you to verbally ask what to do about something that seems like an edge case, but do not give the impression in your actions that you’re going to violate the boundary because you expect me to enforce it myself.

For an example taken from a Less Wrong thread:

Person 1: The other week I was making out and cuddling with a girl, and we'd already explicitly negotiated that we wouldn't be having sex. So at some point we were spooning, and I asked "Can I touch your breasts?". She hesitated, so I said, "Ah, that's a no, don't worry". She was obviously relieved, and we continued without any problems. This sort of thing only comes up a small minority of the time, but when it does I think it's actually pretty important to verbalise things. So I'm wondering whether you have a different system, or just never find yourself needing to check in with someone that directly?

Person 2: With the breasts, no, I wouldn't explicitly ask in that way. Hands go on body, hands caress slowly toward breasts. Pay attention to response. Another way is to look where you intend the hands to go, and go there. Perhaps a comment on the breasts first.

Person 1:  For me it really depends on my model of what I think they want. Like, assume I'm pretty sure that there'll be a line somewhere. Obviously, the right thing to do isn't just "escalate until they give an explicit 'no' (either verbally, or by moving my hand away)". But even if you just proceed cautiously and keep gauging their response, they're likely to spend a lot of the time thinking about when/whether you're going to push past where they're comfortable, and steeling themselves to give that no when it happens. Especially with girls, most will have had more than a few negative experiences with pushy guys.

What person 1 did is an example of what I’m in favour of. What person 2 did would freak me out. Person 1′s response perfectly illustrates why. I frankly do not have the mental energy to keep track of how close you’re coming to overstepping my boundaries so I can enforce them. If you want to go further, please use words first.

(Note that I’m not saying that what Person 2 did is in any way Universally Bad. It probably works fine for some people. However, it does not work for me. I am writing this guide in advance specifically because what works for one person may not work for another, and I want to clarify where I stand.)

How To Communicate With Me:

When speaking to me, there is basically no need to worry whether what you’re saying to me is too private/TMI/unwanted/etc. I have no “Woah! Too much information!” reaction to speak of. If you’d like to tell me something, I’d like to know it, because I am infinitely curious about everyone. I am always in favour of deepening knowledge. (However, I will generally try to track how I speak to you to ensure I’m not stepping over any of the usual boundaries. This is me asymmetrically giving you permission to disregard that for me.)

I am somewhat guess culture in that I can’t clearly communicate my preferences one-on-one in-the-moment. (Which is why it’s so much easier to just write up this Tumblr post in advance.) Here is a very detailed explanation of what’s going on with my communication style. In case you TL;DR (though it’s only 2 pages), the important bits to note are:

I encourage people to ask me whenever they want something from me, because communication needs to happen somehow. If you can hedge it by giving me an obvious acceptable out (“but I know it’s far away…”, “but if you’re too busy…”, etc), that would be great, because it would feel 100% safe, but you don’t have to.

If you give me an out and I don’t take it, but I do raise an objection, assume that’s my true objection and you can troubleshoot it. If you don’t give me an out and I raise an objection, it may be my way of grasping for an escape clause. In that case, only troubleshoot to the first level, and back off if I keep giving excuses. If I start trying to pull out my hair, you probably broke me.

I view going on a date as exploratory. I want to learn how much I like you and how well we get along. I can usually tell pretty quickly how well I like someone from the cues I pick up in interaction. By the end of a first date, there’s a ~80% chance that I know whether I’m into you. However, if I’m unsure, I’ll lean toward trying another time. You can definitely ask about scheduling a second date right after the first one, and you can call me back as soon as you want. Rules about how long you need to wait are silly IMO.

I hate talking on the phone or via email. Instant messaging through Tumblr or Facebook is preferred, and SMS is OK. Even so, I am sometimes bad at keeping in touch with people online, even if I like them a lot and/or can consistently meet them in person. More details here.

I am OK with you being as explicit (or crass) as you want about the degree to which you’re into me from the get-go. This could be “You’re OK to hang out with” or “You are what gives the universe meaning” or anything inbetween. Yes, I’m completely aware of how weird that is in a first date context. No, I don’t particularly care that it is. (I will probably avoid being weird, though, because not everyone is as weirdness-tolerant as I am.)

After the date, if you invite me to go back to your house, I will assume that this is a polite way of asking to sleep with me, because this is how that’s generally used. (You can also directly ask me if I want to have sex with you but, if you’re looking for a polite way to ask, this is ideal.) If you ask me to head back to your place and I don’t want to sleep with you, I’ll decline, which works well enough if what you were actually asking was whether I wanted to sleep with you.

However, it’s possible that you want to invite me to hang out at your house for non-sexual reasons! And then my declining would be unfortunate if I actually did want to hang out more! In that case, you can say you want me to go home with you “for non-sexual reasons”. In that case, I won’t assume that you definitely don’t want to sleep with me, but I will assume that you won’t be disappointed if I decide not to. If you don’t want to sleep with me, or you do want to while also wanting me to visit for other reasons, this is the way to ask.

Logistics:

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area so, if you also live there, you can go out with me now. If not, you may be able to go out with me if/when I visit your city in the future.

To the greatest degree possible, I want you to plan it. Of course I want you to consult me on what I want and to ask if I approve of the place/time before we go but, the more you take over the planning, the more I’ll enjoy it. From The Art of Charm:

If you want the girl to like you and enjoy herself on the date, then you’ve got to take control every step of the way.  Deciding what to do, where to go, how long it will take – all that logistical stuff – it’s all up to you.

The ability to lead is something all women find attractive in a guy.  And by taking on this burden of responsibility, it means that the girl you’re out with doesn’t have to worry about these things.  She can just relax, go with the flow, and enjoy herself and the time you’re spending together.

Frankly, the claim that “all women” find this attractive is false. However, I find this attractive in people, so I won’t deny that this is good advice about me. Specifically, the thing about it relaxing your date would be super true of me, and I will definitely enjoy my time with you a lot more if I can focus on you instead of on logistics.

Getting around will require me using the train system unless you want to pick me up yourself or pay for an Uber/Lyft for me. I can’t drive and I have a vendetta against buses. As such, I would appreciate it if we met up somewhere near a Caltrain or BART station.

I try to be very clear on whether I’m going to show up to something. If I cancel, I try to say so as far in advance as possible, and I also like to form plans at least two days in advance (preferably 3-5). I also try to confirm via messaging whether we’re definitely getting together on the day of the meeting, so the other person can back out. I am sometimes late due to the vagueries of the train system (or annoyingly early, because I almost always leave home early), but so far I’ve never flaked on my dates without saying anything. I would strongly encourage you to likewise tell me in advance if it isn’t going to work out - doubly so if I make the 5½ hour roundtrip to Berkeley (which I’m willing to do if we actually meet).

If things involve money, I would greatly appreciate it if you paid. This is because I’m broke (am recent immigrant who is new to the jerb-thiefing). However, don’t worry about me being an expensive date - you can openly optimise for thrift and I’ll be down with it. I also try to order things from the cheaper end of the menu. I disapprove of spending other people’s money as much as I disapprove of spending my own.

If going out involves getting food, we’ll need to discuss my very complicated and kind of restrictive diet. Just bringing that up in advance.

See Also:

Guides on how to go on dates that I approve of (for giving good advice on how to go out with me) are this Reddit post, this article from The Art of Charm, these two WikiHow pieces (Article 1 & Article 2), and this guide from Instructables. Rescripting Sex by Cliff Pervocracy is also relevant.

My OkCupid dating profile and match questions, and my face and voice.

My Tumblr profile, my description of how to message me online, my post asking to meet up with people in the Bay, and my general social skills advice.

#tragic backstory #how to speak alison #moderate social competence with alison #dating #is this nsfw? #long post cw #food cw

[sinesalvatorem]

Social Competence: How do increase the density of insightful things I say in conversation? I want people to like talking to me, but I think I have a low signal-to-noise ratio. This mostly comes up at parties/social gatherings. I don't say anything because nothing I think of is interesting. Is there a way to improve SNR?

I hope you don’t mind if I don’t answer the object-level question (how to increase insight-density in a conversation) in favour of answering what I think is the meta-level question (how to be a pleasant conversationalist). [Also, all advice given here is aimed at the readership in general.]

I want to focus on the latter because signal-to-noise ratio is a terrible way to think about conversations.

This is because conversations have basically no “noise”. A lot of people with the not-geek not-autism thing hate when conversations go over things that don’t feel deep or insightful. Similarly, a lot of people who like clear systems would like to purge all the irregular verbs from their language. However, natural communication doesn’t work that way. Just as fully-regular constructed languages are hard to speak, conversations purged of “noise” are hard to have.

Firstly, because the “noise” serves an important purpose. It’s the bit of the conversation where people display the pattern of their own thoughts. When you’re aiming to be insightful, you give the other person what you think they want to hear, which tells them little about the kind of person you are. However, when you freely meander through conversation space, it lets people trace what pattern your thoughts generally follow.

Furthermore, the “noisy” parts of the conversation are generally the ones where personal information is shared. It’s where you talk about your weekend, your family, your hobbies, and all the other things that make you uniquely you. As I’ve said before, letting people see into you is what allows you to make close friends.

I think I’ll just quote HPMOR!Draco on it over and over again forever, because this is the first law of friendmaking:

Harry glanced away uncomfortably, then, with an effort, forced himself to look back at Draco. “Why are you telling me that? It seems sort of… private…”

Draco gave Harry a serious look. “One of my tutors once said that people form close friendships by knowing private things about each other, and the reason most people don’t make close friends is because they’re too embarrassed to share anything really important about themselves.” Draco turned his palms out invitingly. “Your turn?”

It doesn’t actually matter whether or not it’s embarrassment causing it. It could also be an unwillingness to seem inane. Whatever causes you to not show others who you are, that is an obstacle to becoming close to them. It’s not the signal-to-noise ratio that makes people feel connected to you, but actually feeling like they know you. 

Seeming insightful can get people to listen to you, but it won’t form a friendship on its own. It’ll be more like being a lecturer. People may seek you out to hear you speak about that particular topic, but they will only care a little about you-as-a-person. They may remember what you said on the philosophy of identity, but they won’t remember your birthday (which’ll be your fault for never telling them).

The second thing is that artificial attempts to increase the signal-to-noise ratio are generally self-defeating. If you’re trying to filter out all the uninteresting things you might say, you’ll often end up saying nothing at all. Far too many times, I’ve seen two nerds have a brief interaction, followed by both of them staring at each other trying to come up with things to say, and then drifting away from each other for the rest of the evening. Almost invariably, they wonder why the conversation died.

Conversations die when you hold yourself back from speaking. In my opinion, not wanting to seem boring is a particularly bad reason to have that hesitation. In the worst case scenario of being boring, the other person stops talking to you and drifts away. In all scenarios where you let a conversation die, the other person stops talking to you and drifts away.

However, even if you can keep the conversation by throwing out random bits of insight-porn, you will usually end up talking about the least insightful things out of the set of insightful things you could talk about. You’ll talk about the few things you manage to throw out as non-sequitur, which are generally not where the most stimulating interactions lie.

Most of the really interesting conversations I’ve had have been ones that evolved organically. The conversations you can have when both sides have a general feeling of understanding and common knowledge are usually far superior when to the ones where each person is trying to see how many layers of signalling they can be on.

So, in conclusion: Don’t hesitate to be inane. Say the things that are on your mind! Explore conversation-space! Avoid being frustrated by a conversation not being 10 lightbulbs a minute. The best conversations - and all close friendships - are built on background knowledge.

People who asked to be tagged/alerted in posts like this include: @cai10, @rhainelovespeople, @whyarealltheuseramestaken​, @curlyhumility​, @amakthel, @lilithmeetsprometheus​, @dhominis​, @overlordtulip​, @bannableoffense​, @78nanosieverts​, @onthecareandfeedingofcatgirls​, @tempestwindblown​, @robustcornhusk​, @cafemachiavelli​, @apprenticebard​, @andhishorse​, @h3lldalg0​, and several others who were untaggable for some reason.

If you also want to be tagged in future social skills post, like this post [link] to let me know. If you don’t know about this series or this blogger, you can learn more here [other link].

#moderate social competence with alison #tragic backstory #hpmor #anonymous

[sinesalvatorem]

Is polyamory more rational than monogamy?

Only in the sense that being an aromantic asexual is more rational than any other romantic or sexual orientation. ie: More convenient preference sets are more convenient.

However, if the utility function isn’t up for grabs, what’s more “rational” is just about what’s the most effective way to fulfill your preferences. If you have preferences which are best fulfilled by being in a polyamorous relationship, then being polyamorous is what’s most rational. If you have preferences which are best fulfilled by being in a monogamous relationship, then being monogamous is what’s most rational. (And, if you’re an aromantic asexual, then you don’t actually have to deal with this question. Lucky >.

It’s important to actually figure out what your preferences are, though. Different people want different things, and you won’t really know what’s right for you until you think about what the things you want are. It’s easy to think that you should be monogamous or you should be polyamorous if you mostly know people who are one or the other.

So, at risk of sounding suuuper corny: Listen to your heart. When you visualise yourself in one type of relationship or the other, how do you feel? Excited? Stressed? Content? Bored? Happy? Sad? That’s probably an indication of what works better for you.

(Though it’s only an indication - you won’t actually know until you try. So, erm, good luck with that.)

Of course, an additional factor to consider is how convenient it is to have your favoured relationship style in the subculture you belong to. Among rationalists, monogamy probably means a slightly more limited dating pool, and sometimes mild social disapproval. Almost everywhere else, polyamory would mean an extremely limited dating pool and strong social disapproval. So do remember to factor in the environment when deciding what’s right for you.

[More moderate social competence to be found here]

#dating #polyamory #moderate social competence with alison

[sinesalvatorem]

Moderate social competence: how do you go from "friendly acquaintances" to "actual friends who interact regularly" with someone?

(All answers given to MSC questions are addressed at all readers, rather than just the asker. So, if you’re reading this, then “you” here means, well, you.)

Depends on a couple factors, really

For one thing, do you have anything forcing you together? If you’re meeting up regularly for work or class or a club or because you both drink yourselves to death at the same pub each Friday, then it’s easy to get constant interaction. In that case, there’s less pressure to work hard at it. If you want to build the type of friendship where you meet because you like each other, then you can do the things below, but more slowly.

If you don’t have anything forcing you together - that is, if you wouldn’t end up interacting were it not for actually putting in effort to do so - then you need to work harder and faster at getting the other person to feel close enough to you to put in that effort themselves.

So, the specific thing you’re doing is building a feeling of connection/intimacy/bonding/whatever. It’s making the other person actively care about and think about you and want to be around you. To be honest, my brain optimises for this at a level that I don’t directly observe, so I’m not sure what my algorithm is here either. So I’ll just be dumping some introspective guesses about what I’m up to:

Firstly, people generally like to feel important and interesting, so you want to give the impression of paying attention to them a lot. However, it’s important to balance this. Most people are offput by people looking like they’re obsessed with them, either because it gives the impression that they could be dangerous or because it seems like they might be faking it to get something from you.

In my experience, you want to pay attention such that they think you’re completely focused on them while you two are interacting (eye contact, responding promptly, remembering what they say to you) but, until you’ve built up some amount of intimacy, like you aren’t thinking about them when you’re not interacting.

(If the friendship is progressing well then, in the early stages, you’re both thinking about each other a lot while pretending that isn’t happening. Because human social games are weird.)

((Note for anyone reading this who speaks to me: You can feel free to skip the pretending-you-forget-about-me-when-I’m-not-around thing in the event that you’re only doing it for social reasons, because I’m hard to creep out.))

Once you’ve established that you’re paying attention to them and think they’re interesting, then you need to make yourself interesting. This mostly means using the conversational skills I talked about here and here, plus identifying what the other person’s interests are and talking about those (preferably ones you have in common).

Next comes the part a lot of people find most difficult: Sticking your neck out. After you’ve determined that this is someone who listens to you, you have to start letting more of you shine through. Specifically, things that are likely to be interpreted as personal or vulnerable. This is the kind of costly signalling friendships are built on.

Here you should take the example of Draco Malfoy from HPMOR chapter 7 (ONLY ABOUT SHARING PRIVATE THINGS. NOTHING ELSE FROM THAT CHAPTER.) in telling the story of falling off the broomstick. Telling stories that reveal weakness, emotion, vulnerability, etc. However, it’s important to scale this. You start with the small vulnerabilities and work your way up. Throughout, you should be looking for the other person to reciprocate with their own personal details. From the referenced story:

Harry glanced away uncomfortably, then, with an effort, forced himself to look back at Draco. "Why are you telling me that? It seems sort of... private..."

Draco gave Harry a serious look. "One of my tutors once said that people form close friendships by knowing private things about each other, and the reason most people don't make close friends is because they're too embarrassed to share anything really important about themselves." Draco turned his palms out invitingly. "Your turn?"

‘TMI’ is the thing that happens when you jump too far too fast and leave the relationship’s Overton Window. You can generally assume that the window of allowable things encompasses everything up to the most personal thing the other person has said, plus a little bit more. The trick is to keep pushing it a little wider with frequent, small shoves. If the other person is also doing this then you’re succeeding and intimacy is being built.

However, if the other person isn’t reciprocating, one of two things is probably happening. The more common one is that they don’t actually want to be intimate with you. Not wanting to be connected to every human being ever is an alien preference to me, but I have heard about people being like that, so I’ll take this absurd desire at face value. Quite a few people will not actually shift their Overton Window, even if you try to, so trying to build intimacy isn’t a good idea.

The other option is that they like you but are too shy to reveal anything about themselves even with a lot of opportunities and prompts. These people would want you to continue doing a friendship at them, even if they aren’t giving any tangible signs of reciprocation.

The problem is that incredibly shy people and people who don’t like you are really hard to distinguish from each other, because their behaviour is very similar. TBH, even I have a hard time distinguishing them, and probably over identify mega-shy people as people who don’t like me. This sucks a ton for shy people, who already have a lot on their plate, but there’s not much to be done about it, because you can only distinguish people who are visibly different. You can’t actually see inside the shy person’s head, after all.

How long all of this takes can vary a ton. I’ve heard a lot of people say intimate friendships where you share secrets take weeks or months to build. Though, admittedly, that sounds crazy to me, as I’ve had people admitting stuff to me that you’d only tell a priest in just four hours of sober conversation. So, while a scale of months should be considered reasonable, do be aware that it can be massively faster sometimes.

(If you want to be taught how to take over the (social) world just like Draco was, then you can also have your daddy buy you tutors.)

#moderate social competence with alison #advice #tragic backstory #hpmor #dronegoddess

[sinesalvatorem]

Moderate social competence: If someone often does something that annoys you, but the action isn't inherently bad or infringing on your boundaries, and you otherwise enjoy spending time with that person, are there any options between "get used to it" and "directly tell them that it bothers you"? (Context: my mom often asks about my grades, which is fine, but I recently had a tough exam and now she asks if I know my grade yet literally every time we talk. I asked her to stop, which made her sad.)

There probably are other options, but I don’t actually know of them. I would just say directly that I find it uncomfortable when I’m asked about my grades frequently and would rather she not do that. Like, I’d find a way to say it very gently, with the exact framing depending on the context - but I’d still just be direct.

(I don’t really know how not to be direct, because I’m a Fake Guess Culture Girl who just says exactly what she’s thinking most of the time.)

If anyone who has more experience with indirect signalling than me would like to help out, please do so! What would you do in the situation @yumantimatter is describing?

[More moderate social competence to be found here]

#moderate social competence with alison

[sinesalvatorem]

Ozy says weirdness points aren't a thing. Do you disagree?

Kind of? I think that something sort of like weirdness points are a thing but not the thing described in the LessWrong post. You have more license to be weird if you come across as legible and understandable to people, so you don’t come across as a weird question mark, just a person that has weird interests and a legible motivational structure.

It’s more threatening when you are perfectly normal in most ways and there’s just one way which you’re super weird. It’s better to be weird in several ways to varying degrees because then you’re parsed as an eccentric person, which is itself and understandable role, rather than a person who’s hiding secretly a dozen kinks in their basement. People being surprised by you being weird in one way is way more threatening to them than if they just expected you to be weird from the start.

So the way that the LessWrong article acts like weirdness points are a scarce resource that you’re trying to ration so there’s less over here and more over there is inaccurate, because you instead want to build a certain role in which your weirdness seems normal rather than moving weirdness around and concentrating it in any one place.

(This was originally much longer and had stronger explanations and defenses of points, but then Tumblr deleted all of it. @endecision rewrote it from my notes, but it’s still a quarter of what it was when it was fleshed out :( )

(If you want to know more and actually get my brain to start re-generating what it said before, ask me questions about the above pls.)

[More moderate social competence to be found here. Who I am and why I’m writing it is over here.]

#moderate social competence with alison

[sinesalvatorem]

Moderate social competence: What do I do if I feel rushed to speak and answer questions in a conversation? That problem leads me to accidentally lying (oversimplifying, outright constructing fictional events) when I want to tell the truth and accidentally telling the truth where on reflection I'd rather not (my boundaries, other person TMI, it being not a good idea to say it, etc) and getting caught up in the moment and being afraid I'm about to get interrupted or not permitted to finish saying.

That’s one of the times filler words are actually good. You have your “hmm”s and “uhhh”s and “basically”s and “like”s for exactly this purpose.

When you really need to speak quickly, you start saying something (a couple words that you think you can build on) and then throw in some “uhhh”s and “well”s after that while you collect your thoughts. Yeah, you won’t sound perfectly articulate, but almost everyone does this anyway, so no one will judge you too much for it in casual conversation.

However, it’s also worth remembering that you usually don’t have to rush to answer. Even if a conversation feels fast-paced, it’s usually OK to say “Hmmm…” and stare into space for a few seconds to come up with a good answer, unless you’d otherwise be interrupted. This looks a bit weird but, in my experience, people let it slide easily enough.

The important thing there is actually following through on that, though. A lot of socially awkward people start feeling Super Awkward whenever they pause, because it feels like, if they lose the momentum, they’re no longer allowed to contribute. Maybe because they wasted the other person’s time or maybe because what they have to say doesn’t feel like it’s worth the time they made that person wait.

Don’t listen to this feeling. When you’ve paused to collect thoughts, don’t worry that this means you just killed the conversation. If the other person is still facing toward you (whether their chest is pointed toward you is a better metric than whether their face is, jsyk), then you still have their attention, and they’d like you to finish. Being afraid of having killed the conversation and then not going back to it is what kills it. Just think of this as resuming a paused videogame and you’ll be fine.

[More moderate social competence to be found here. Who I am and why I’m writing it is over here.]

#moderate social competence with alison

[sinesalvatorem]

About Sine Salvatorem

I recently started writing a series of posts giving social skills advice to help people better navigate various social situations. Soon afterward, I had a sudden influx of new followers.

This was pretty cool, as it means that there are enough people out there who want this kind of advice that they suddenly come out of the woodwork when you start offering it. As such, you should expect to see me doing more of that. If you want to be alerted when new social skills posts go up, please like this post so I can add you to the list.

However, that does mean that there are now a bunch of people who showed up at this party with no idea what’s going on. That’s why I’ve written this explanation of myself and my blog.

Who Am I?

I’m Jean Valjean Alison! I’m a nineteen year old linguistics fangirl from the Caribbean who is in the process of emigrating. I really like talking about linguistics, economics, history, Judaism, and how weird the Caribbean is. Honestly, I just like talking. Constantly. That’s why I have a blog and an always-open askbox.

In Tumblr style, my descriptors would probably be something like [Black | Caribbean | Migrant | Lesbian | Trans | She/Her | Jewish | ENTP]. I’ve been told that having this many marginalisations can make me intimidating to talk to, as people are scared of stepping on my toes. But, like, I have no toes. Don’t worry about it. If you ever feel like saying hello, or telling me I’m full of crap, or anything in between - my ask box is open.

I’m from the island of [Redacted] in the Caribbean. I’ve hidden the name on my blog because my blog is relatively high-traffic while my country is small. Thus, if I namedropped it constantly, it would be easy to run across my blog while Googling my country, so people from my extremely homophobic country might find me. This would be bad.

However, figuring out the reverse is fine. I’m cool with people who read this blog learning where I’m from, so I don’t really hide it. It’s very easy to figure out by reading my posts about my homeland plus some light Googling. You can also feel free to say where I’m from in offline discussions or in private messages. Just not on the open web, please.

This is my face and this is my voice. If you want to speak to me but feel shy about doing so, please read this. Other places you can find me are on Facebook (anyone who reads this blog can friend me), Patreon (donations appreciated but not required), and OkCupid (if you want to see whether I’m always this bad at self-description). I have a Frozen fanblog (relatively inactive), an NSFW blog, and an effortpost-only Medium blog. I can be hired here. Here is everything you could possibly want to know if you wanted to go on a date with me.

What Is This Blog?

This is kind of a mishmash of things I like (or at least want to talk about). As such, it’ll tend to have a fair bit of the linguistics and history and stuff I mentioned before. It may also contain some stuff you’re unlikely to see a lot of elsewhere, such as:

What living in the Caribbean is like

Caribbean music, language, and culture

People constantly mocking me for being from a country with small lakes

Descriptions of how odd the US looks from the outside, and my immigration experience

Social skills and awareness advice

What it’s like to go from a lonely nerd with no friends to being Confusingly Popular

Careful explanations of things in general: social norms, economics, Jewish stuff, Caribbean memes, etc.

IDK, the Black Jewish lesbian trans migrant experience, or something?

Being worn down by the sheer force of this blog’s unrelenting friendliness

I try to keep the proportion of politics on my blog at under 10% most of the time, because ain’t nobody got time for that. There is occasionally nsfw discussion, but I try to tag all of it either ‘#nsfw’ or ‘#is this nsfw?’, so you can blacklist those. Additionally, I have a highlights page that lists some of my better writing.

A lot of blogs on Tumblr have ‘Before You Follow’ pages. Most commonly, these pages list various types of people and ask that they not follow that blog. I have no such page. If I disagree with everything you stand for, then I want you to follow me. If you’re a homophobe or a TERF or a white supremacist then I want you to read my posts and, hopefully, change your mind. I’m willing to state my case if you’re willing to listen.

I encourage everyone who reads this blog to please take this survey. Even if you just got here, I’d like to know what kind of person you are. You can quit it after just one page of 12 questions, so it’s very short.

What’s Moderate Social Competence with Alison?

This is a series of blog posts in which I try to teach people the social skills I learned over years of trying to overcome being painful awkward and socially clumsy. Growing up, I had a pretty shitty school experience because I was socially incompetent and widely disliked for it. After several years of hard work, I self-taught myself enough social skills that I’m now surrounded by friends, the centre of attention at parties, and get flown across the world to meet fans.

I think that the change over time was significant enough for me to have learned quite a few insights that I can teach others. From personal experience, I can say that being lonely and not knowing how to get friends sucks really badly. As such, I think it’s important that there be useful resources.

The problem is, I think a lot of commonly given advice is said not because it works but because it sounds nice. “If you just be yourself then people will like you!” certainly sounds like a nice thought, but it doesn’t help people who need advice that’s actually useful. I don’t think it’s because the people giving advice are malicious, but I think most people who have never had to methodically learn social skills don’t understand what they’re doing. It’s just an instinct that they can’t explain.

Since I learned what I know from scratch, I think I’m better placed to explain what I know. My advice is based mostly on personal experience of where I am now and where I started. It is focused on teaching you how to meet specific goals: forming close friendships, knowing what to say in a conversation, changing the subject of a conversation, correcting others, enforcing your boundaries, etc.

I am mostly able to do this because people send me questions I can answer. So, if you have a question about socialising, please ask! I also really appreciate feedback, additions, and corrections - especially since I only have my own experiences to work with. If you have anything to add to a post I’ve made, please just throw it in there! I appreciate every contribution to this endeavour.

In Conclusion:

This blog, its advice, and its terrible memes are open to everyone. Feel free to reblog or share anything that isn’t tagged ‘#do not reblog’. Feel free to ask me any question that comes to mind. If you want to speak to me, then just go ahead and IM me here on Tumblr or on Facebook. If you want to help this blog figure out who it’s reaching, please take the survey here.

And if you think people you know would like to know about that (especially if they’d appreciate social skills explanations), feel free to reblog this post or send it someone you know.

#moderate social competence with alison #tragic backstory #meta #facts about me

[sinesalvatorem]

Social competence-ish thing: Being poly is important to me because I like dating multiple people, but I experience what by poly standards is extreme intractable jealousy (by mono standards it's maybe 60-70th percentile or so, note that I'm male and the male percentiles seem to be higher jealousy). How do I navigate this? Do I just need to be mono or find chicks who like intense power imbalances (note: I'm a subby switch sexually so I'm not sure the latter works here)?

Hmmm. You say “intractable” jealousy, so I assume you tried attacking the problem at the jealousy end and found that you couldn’t? Alternatively, you might have decided that you didn’t actually want to not have your current jealousy pattern, which is also a valid choice.

Either way, the point is, I’m assuming the amount of jealousy is fixed. The easiest way forward from here is to find mono people and start dating them monogamously. This is probably the best choice for most people in your situation.

On the other hand, you could look for people who were willing to date only you, but didn’t care about you dating other people. This is probably the thing you’d like more, but might be too much work to achieve, as finding people with the relevant preference set would involve high search costs. Plus, like, the poly community will mostly think you’re terrible, but IDK how much you care about people’s opinions of you.

(CW for wild theorising since I have no experience with it):

In the event that you do that anyway, I don’t know to what extent “wanting power imbalances” is the relevant trait here. I would assume that the people who’d want to date you would have the reciprocal preference set to yours. You want to date multiple people and experience jealousy; they’re only interested in dating one person and don’t experience jealousy (or have sufficiently little that they don’t mind you dating others). Maybe a desire for an unbalanced relationship would contribute, but I doubt it’d be the main factor for most compatible people.

(NB: I don’t talk about it here, because acknowledging it leads to feelings of self-loathing, but if you want to talk to a poly person with painful, intractable jealousy, you can PM me.)

#moderate social competence with alison #dating #polyamory

[sinesalvatorem]

Like this post if you want to be tagged when new Moderate Social Competence posts come out, to ensure that you see them. (Anyone can ask to be tagged, regardless of whether I follow you or you follow me or any of that. Just if you want a heads up.)

#moderate social competence with alison #meta

[sinesalvatorem]

Hello! I have a social advice question based on some recent interactions, but sorry it's oddly specific. After meeting someone for the first time in person at an event or such, when you have nothing explicitly forcing you to meet/interact later, how would you signal that you want to hang out/participate in later group activities without coming off as either too distant or too familiar? Especially if you think it was implied that they were interested in/intending to interact with you later.

Oddly specific questions are totally fine! The askbox is open!

I would generally go with something along the lines of “It was great meeting you! I hope we run into each other again.”

But that’s just the general form of the thing. It’s basically a two-part statement where there are multiple options for each slot. The first part is you expressing that meeting them was good. You can put a compliment here, like “You’re [cool/fun/interesting/knowledgeable]!”.

The second part is you expressing the desire to meet again. You can be more or less forward about this - saying “I’d like to see you again” is more certain than “I hope we bump into each other again”. The former might be taken as too serious? But it also gets you a better chance of them offering you their contact details, since it implies you’re willing to put in more work.

(I pretty much always go with the former, and it works fine for me. However, I don’t actually know if this is just because I’m socially skilled enough to have an inexhaustible supply of weirdness points. If you only want to see them at this event and not otherwise, say “I hope we run into each other here again”, or something.)

Alternatively, you can point at a specific thing that person said or did and say you want to talk/do more about it at a later date, so they are aware of the interest and have a specific thing to look forward to, instead of the nebulous concept of “social interaction”. I once asked about a cool EA person’s research paper on Marxism to have an excuse to meet them again and can confirm that this is a successful approach.

(Unfortunate side effect is that they initially assumed I was not interested in interacting with them as a person in any capacity outside of “person who writes stuff about Marx”. So, uh, bear potential misunderstanding in mind.)

[More moderate social competence to be found here. Who I am and why I’m writing it is over here.]

#moderate social competence with alison #tragic backstory

[sinesalvatorem]

Moderate social competency ask: how to correct people without them getting offended/upset?

Correcting people (especially in public) will almost always cause some embarrassment. However, you can try to control how much.

Firstly, if this is something you don’t need to correct /immediately/ but can do in private later, then please do. Public vs private is the most powerful variable on this thing. Just take them aside later and ask them if they were sure about it when they said [X], because you think it’s [Y]. If you have to do it in public, then:

If it’s something where they’re likely to admit the mistake the moment it’s brought up, you can be like: *earnest curiosity voice* “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that [the correction]?” Then, if they suddenly realise their error, they’ll usually correct it with roughly the minimum amount of self-consciousness you can get. On the other hand, if they think they’re right, they’ll probably brush you off and charge on obliviously. So, uh, that’s a trade off.

(I, and a lot of women I know, use this method to correct people a lot. However, since it’s the easiest method to brush off, it often doesn’t work. For completely mysterious and unknown reasons, women often complain that men don’t take corrections, while men complain that women aren’t assertive enough. I wonder what could be going on?)

((In other news: The communication gap (gendered and otherwise) is huge and no one knows what anyone else is trying to say to them.))

The next step up in confrontationalness and likelihood of getting taken seriously is something like *friendly, earnest voice* “I’m sorry, but I think you might have forgotten about [correction]”. Feel free to pad with excuses for why the other person probably made the mistake in good faith (and not due to any character flaw). Maybe they were tired or were rushed or had a slip of the tongue.

(This is basically the highest level of confrontational I ever get with someone who isn’t personally pissing me off. I am too cute to start fights D= )

The level up from here is to give the same correction as above, but citing sources and directly demonstrating why they’re wrong and stuff. Still try to maximise friendly tone and body language. This is more likely to make them defensive but is very hard to ignore. However, anything more confrontational than this is likely to make them more entrenched and less willing to agree with you. Try to treat this as your upper bound.

#moderate social competence with alison #advice #tragic backstory #gender #anonymous

[sinesalvatorem]

Hi Alison! As you know, but your followers dont, I've just been through a breakup a couple of weeks ago, and have more or less returned to normal functioning (yay! Hurrah!) Now, I have a date the coming week with a cute guy I met at work, which is great, but. How should I answer any questions about past relationships (or any question that would involve my ex in the answer) without a) crying and making him feel really bad and b) repressing my feelings too much and looking like an ice queen? Xoxo

Congratulations on the date!! :D

For the most part, I’d just recommend being upfront about the fact that you don’t want to go there. Just tell him in advance that you just went through a painful breakup and that you’re not in a position to talk about it yet. Then go on the date with the expectation that the subject will be avoided.

Bonus points in that, if he’s decent with emotional boundaries, he’ll let it lie. As such, you have a quick filter for rejecting him if he’s not the type of person who’ll respect your boundaries. It’s the kind of thing that pretty much only doesn’t work if he’s a dick - and, if he’s a dick, you want to find out fast.

#moderate social competence with alison

[sinesalvatorem]

Moderate social competence: In groups of 3+, is there a way to be involved in a conversation when it's not directly involving an area I'm knowledgeable in? I tend to be quiet unless I know what I'm talking about, and this typically results in me being silent in 99% of conversations where there's more than one other person involved. I sometimes try to ask questions, but these sound stilted to my ears.

As a humanities person who hangs out among rationalists, I can relate. The way I handle this is super hard to explain, though. Like, I can demonstrate it, sure. But the exact algorithm behind the special blend of bullshitting, asking poignant questions, slipping in jokes, and pulling on the topic that I do is not something I know how to explain.

Honestly, I wish someone who was good at describing things could follow me around watching when I have conversations, because I bet a lot of this stuff would make more sense if observed from the outside. Then I might know what I’m doing.

#moderate social competence with alison #tragic backstory #social rules make no sense #tempestwindblown

[sinesalvatorem]

Social competency ask! I'm an autistic woman. I infodump a lot. Is there anyway to do this without being accused of mansplaining (I realise this is probably harder for autistic men too), or should I just try not to infodump?

So, I think a lot of the actual practical work is figuring out when and where to infodump.

Firstly, do you notice when you’re infodumping? Like, while talking about your special interest at length, are you aware that that’s what you’re doing? This is the thing that the rest of the infodumping advice hinges on so, if not, a first step would be to practice noticing what you’re talking about.

The next step is noticing whether this is a good time or place. Outside of edge cases like formal events, this basically boils down to a question of “Are my listeners enjoying this?”

Signals of finding a conversation engaging include (but are not limited to): looking directly at you, facing toward you, not leaning away, having changes of facial expression depending on what you say (smiling at jokes, frowning at expressions of frustration), and asking questions about the topic you’re discussing. If you see these signals, there’s a good chance your conversational partner is interested and you can infodump away.

Since you specifically expressed concern about mansplaining, I assume you care about not seeming like you’re explaining something to someone which they already know. I think that, generally, the best way to do this is to purposefully frame what you’re doing as sharing something cool rather than educating or interrogating someone else.

For example, a favourite way to begin talking about a topic is “Did you know...”. This can be nice enough when the other person doesn’t actually know. However, if they do know what you’re telling them, it can sound condescending. An easy way to avoid that impression is to instead open with “I recently learned that...”, because then you’re leading with the fact that you find this thing cool, rather than questioning the other person’s knowledge. (And, yes, it’s fine to say this even if you didn’t learn this thing recently.)

If the other person is actually an expert in this field - the situation mansplaining was originally coined to refer to - then you want to be even more careful about this. “Did you know [very basic thing]” can come across as you questioning the competence of their education (or even research!).

However, this does give you the opportunity to ask questions about your special interest. You can say “Hey, Dr [name], I’m really fascinated by [subject]. Could you answer a question of mine?” to get into a conversation. If they’re an academic you’ve read, say “I really liked your paper on [thing] and have some questions about it”. Academics eat that shit up because they are always somewhat surprised that anyone bothers reading their stuff who isn’t paid to do so. The more obscure and under-cited the publication, the more flattered they are that someone actually cares.

#moderate social competence with alison #advice #autism #infodumping #mansplaining #anonymous