One of the things that makes Michael Vassar an interesting person to be around is that he has an opinion about everything. If you locked him up in an empty room with grey walls, it would probably take the man about thirty seconds before he'd start analyzing the historical influence of the Enlightenment on the tradition of locking people up in empty rooms with grey walls.

Likewise, in the recent LW meetup, I noticed that I was naturally drawn to the people who most easily ended up talking about interesting things. I spent a while just listening to HughRistik's theories on the differences between men and women, for instance. There were a few occasions when I engaged in some small talk with new people, but not all of them took very long, as I failed to lead the conversation into territory where one of us would have plenty of opinions.

I have two major deficiencies in trying to mimic this behavior. One, I'm by nature more of a listener than speaker. I usually prefer to let other people talk so that I can just soak up the information being offered. Second, my native way of thought is closer to text than speech. At best, I can generate thoughts as fast as I can type. But in speech, I often have difficulty formulating my thoughts into coherent sentences fast enough and frequently hesitate.

Both of these problems are solvable by having a sufficiently well built-up storage of cached thoughts that I don't need to generate everything in real time. On the occasions when a conversations happens to drift into a topic I'm sufficiently familiar with, I'm often able to overcome the limitations and contribute meaningfully to the discussion. This implies two things. First, that I need to generate cached thoughts in more subjects than I currently have. Seconds, that I need an ability to more reliably steer conversation into subjects that I actually do have cached thoughts about.

Below is a preliminary "conversational map" I generated as an exercise. The top three subjects - the weather, the other person's background (job and education), people's hobbies - are classical small talk subjects. Below them are a bunch of subjects that I feel like I can spend at least a while talking about, and possible paths leading from one subject to another. My goal in generating the map is to create a huge web of interesting subjects, so that I can use the small talk openings to bootstrap the conversation into basically anything I happen to be interested in.

This map is still pretty small, but it can be expanded to an arbitrary degree. (This is also one of the times when I wish my netbook had a bigger screen.) I thought that I didn't have very many things that I could easily talk with people about, but once I started explicitly brainstorming for them, I realized that there were a lot of those.

My intention is to spend a while generating conversational charts like this and then spend some time fleshing out the actual transitions between subjects. The benefit from this process should be two-fold. Practice in creating transitions between subjects will make it easier to generate such transitions in real time conversations. And if I can't actually come up with anything in real time, I can fall back to the cache of transitions and subjects that I've built up.

Naturally, the process needs to be guided by what the other person shows an interest in. If they show no interest in some subject I mention, it's time to move the topic to another cluster. Many of the subjects in this chart are also pretty inflammable: there are environments where pretty much everything in the politics cluster should probably be kept off-limits, for instance. Exercise your common sense when building and using your own conversational charts.

(Thanks to Justin Shovelain for mentioning that Michael Vassar seems to have a big huge conversational web that all his discussions take place in. That notion was one of the original sources for this idea.)

How to always have interesting conversations
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I have a lot of trouble finding the motivation to talk with people in real time. I keep wishing that they would write down their ideas as a blog post or such, so I can read it and think about it at my leisure, with Internet access handy to check out any factual claims, etc., and figure out whether what they're saying makes any sense.

As far as I can tell, most people, while engaging in real-time conversations, do not feel this discomfort of having insufficient time and resources to verify the other participant's claims (or for that matter, to make sure that one's own speech is not erroneous). Is it because they are too credulous, and haven't developed an instinctive skepticism of every new idea that they hear? Or do they just not take the other person's words seriously (i.e., "in one ear, out the other")?

If you aren't afraid of making mistakes you can learn and grow MUCH faster than if you are.

If you aren't afraid of noticing when you have made mistakes you can learn and grow MUCH MUCH faster than if you are.

The main thing though is that once you have learned an average amount the more you learn the less typical your thought patterns will be. If you bother to learn a lot your thought patterns will be VERY atypical. Once this happens, it becomes wildly unlikely that anyone talking with you for more than a minute without feedback will still be saying anything useful. Only conversation provides rapid enough feedback to make most of what the other person says relevant. (think how irrelevant most of the info in a typical pop-science book is because you can't indicate to the author every ten seconds that you understand and that they can move on to the next point)

9Wei Dai
I'm afraid of making mistakes, but I'm not afraid of "noticing" my mistakes. Actually I'm mainly afraid of making mistakes and not noticing them. I think this psychological drive is in part responsible for whatever productivity I have in philosophy (or for that matter, in crypto/programming). Unless I can get some assurance that's not the case, I wouldn't want to trade it for increased speed of learning and growth. Even aside from that, what is the point of learning faster, if you end up learning a lot of facts and ideas that aren't true? I've gotten quite good at skimming books and blogs. This seems like a relatively easy skill to pick up.

"Even aside from that, what is the point of learning faster, if you end up learning a lot of facts and ideas that aren't true?". Your Bayes Score goes up on net ;-)

I agree that fearing making and not noticing mistakes is much better than not minding mistakes you don't notice, but you should be able to notice mistakes later when other people disagree with you or when you can't get your model of the world to reach a certain level of coherence. This is much faster than actively checking every belief. If a belief is wrong and you have good automatic processes that propagate it and that draw attention to incoherence from belief nodes being pushed back and forth from the propogation of the implications of some of your beliefs pushing in conflicting directions, you don't even need people to criticize you, and especially to criticize you well, though both still help. I also think that simply wanting true beliefs without fearing untrue ones can produce the desired effect. A lot of people try to accomplish a lot of things with negative emotions that could be accomplished better with positive emotions. Positive emotions really do produce a greater risk of wireheading and only ... (read more)

6khafra
Perhaps the difference here is one of risk sensitivity--similarly to the way a gambler going strictly for long term gains over the largest number of iterations will use the Kelly Criterion, Michael Vassar optimizes for becoming the least wrong when scores are tallied up at the end of the game. Wei Dai would prefer to minimize the volatility of his wrongness instead, taking smaller but steadier gains in correctness.
2Wei Dai
I doubt that's the case if you take into account the difficulty of changing one's mind after noticing other people disagreeing, and the difficulty of seeing inconsistencies in one's own beliefs after they've settled in for a while. Obviously we can strive to be better at both, but even the best would-be rationalists among us are still quite bad at these skills, when measured on an absolute scale. Similarly, I suggest that in most cases, it's better to be underconfident than to be overconfident, because of the risk that if you believe something too much, you might get stuck with that belief and fail to update if contrary evidence comes along. In general, I'm much more concerned about not getting stuck with a false belief than maximizing my Bayes score in the short run. It just seems like learning new knowledge is not that hard, but I see a lot of otherwise intelligent people apparently stuck with false beliefs. ETA: To return to my original point, why not write your conversation ideas down as blog posts? Then I don't have to check them myself: I can just skim the comments to see if others found any errors. It seems like you can also reach a much bigger audience with the same effort that way.
9MichaelVassar
I don't think, at a first approximation, that written communication much less careful than Eliezer's sequences can successfully communicate the content of surprising ideas to very many people at all. I see lots of intelligent people who are not apparently stuck with false beliefs. Normatively, I don't even see myself as having 'beliefs' but rather integrated probabilistic models. One doesn't occasionally have to change those because you were wrong. Rather, the laws of inference requires that you change them in response to every piece of information you encounter whether the new info is surprising or unsurprising. This crude normative model doesn't reflect an option for a human mind, given how a human mind works, but neither, I suspect, does the sort of implicit model it is being contrasted with, at least if that model is cashed out in detail at its current level of development.
3drethelin
just chiming in two years after the fact to remark that this is EXACTLY why I hate reading most pop science books.
1meedstrom
just chiming in ten years after the fact to remark that you could flip the page when this happens.

Let me try a Hansonian explanation: conversation is not about exchanging information. It is about defining and reinforcing social bonds and status hierarchies. You don't chit-chat about the weather because you really want to consider how recent local atmospheric patterns relate to long-run trends, you do it to show that you care about the other person. If you actually cared about the weather, you would excuse yourself and consult the nearest meteorologist.

Written communication probably escapes this mechanism - the mental machinery for social interaction is less involved, and the mental machinery for analytical judgment has more room to operate. This probably happens because there was no written word in the evolutionary context, so we didn't evolve to apply our social interaction machinery to it. A second reason is that written communication is relatively easily divorced from the writer - you can encounter a written argument over vast spatial or temporal separation - so the cues that kick the social brain into gear are absent or subdued. The result, as you point out, it is easier to critically engage with a written argument than a spoken one.

[-]jmmcd120

You don't chit-chat about the weather because you really want to consider how recent local atmospheric patterns relate to long-run trends, you do it to show that you care about the other person.

No, you chat about the weather because it allows both parties to become comfortable and pick up the pace of the conversation to something more interesting. Full-on conversations don't start in a vacuum. In a worst case scenario, you talk about the weather because it's better than both of you staring at the ground until someone else comes along.

1AShepard
You are certainly correct, and I think what you say reinforces the point. Building comfort is a social function rather than an information exchange function, which is why you don't particularly care whether or not your conversation leads to more accurate predictions for tomorrow's weather.
3[anonymous]
These are difficult concepts for those of us who work regularly with meteorological data!

You seem to have an oddly narrow view of human communication. Have you considered the following facts?

  • In many sorts of cooperative efforts, live conversation (possibly aided by manual writing and drawing) enables rapid exchange of ideas that will converge onto the correct conclusion more quickly than written communication. Think e.g. solving a math problem together with someone.

  • In many cases, human conversations have the goal of resolving some sort of conflict, in the broad Schellingian sense of the term. Face-to-face communication, with all the clues it provides to people's inner thoughts and intentions, can greatly facilitate the process of finding and agreeing upon a solution acceptable to all parties.

  • A good bullshit detector heuristic is usually more than enough to identify claims that can't be taken at face value, and even when red flags are raised, often it's enough to ask your interlocutor to provide support for them and see if the answer is satisfactory. You'll rarely be in a situation where your interlocutors are so hostile and deceptive that they would be lying to your face about the evidence they claim to have seen. (Even in internet discussions, it's not often t

... (read more)
3Wei Dai
Yes, I agree there are some situations where live conversation is helpful, such as the first two bullet points in your list. I was mainly talking about conversations like the ones described in Kaj's post, where the participants are just "making conversation" and do not have any specific goals in mind. I typically find myself wanting to verify every single fact or idea that I hadn't heard of before, and say either "hold on, I need to think about that for a few minutes" or "let me check that on Google/Wikipedia". In actual conversation I'd suppress this because I suspect the other person will quickly find it extremely annoying. I just think to myself "I'll try to remember what he's saying and check it out later", but of course I don't have such a good memory. It's not that I think people are deceptive but I don't trust their memory and/or judgment. Asking for evidence isn't that helpful because (1) they may have misremembered or misheard from someone else and (2) there may be a lot more evidence in the other direction that they're not aware of and never thought of looking up. I think we covered that in an earlier discussion. :) But why do people find random elements in the environment interesting?
7Vladimir_M
Wei_Dai: But this seems to me, at the very least, irrationally inefficient. You have a finite amount of time, and it can surely be put to use much more efficiently than verifying every single new fact and idea. (Also, why stop there? Even after you've checked the first few references that come up on Google, there is always some non-zero chance that more time invested in research could unearth relevant contrary evidence. So clearly there's a time-saving trade-off involved.) Sometimes, yes. But often it's not the case. There are good heuristics to determine if someone really knows what he's talking about. If they give a positive result, what you've been told in a live conversation is only marginally less reliable than what a reasonable time spent googling will tell you. This is an immensely useful and efficient way of saving time. Also, many claims are very hard to verify by googling. For example, if someone gives you general claims about the state of the art in some area, based on generalizations from his own broad knowledge and experience, you must judge the reliability of these claims heuristically, unless you're willing to take a lot of time and effort to educate yourself about the field in question so you can make similar conclusions yourself. Google cannot (yet?) be asked to give such judgments from the indexed evidence. Yes, but you've asked about the motivations of typical people. For everyone except a very small number of outliers, this is a highly relevant factor. Are you asking for an answer in everyday human terms, or an evolutionary explanation? In this particular context, it should be noted that human conversations whose purpose is fun, rather than achieving a predetermined goal, typically have a natural and seemingly disorganized flow, jumping from one topic to another in a loose sequence. Comments on various observations from the environment can guide this flow in interesting fun-enhancing ways, which is not possible when people are just exchangi
5Vladimir_Nesov
My solution is to try to not have any opinion on most subjects, other than background ignorance, despite having heard various specific claims. (And I sometimes argue with people that they, too, should have no opinion, given the evidence they are aware of!)
4Wei Dai
You're right, that would be highly inefficient. Now that you mention this, I realize part of what is attractive about reading blogs is that popular posts will tend to have lots of comments, and many of those will point out possible errors in the post, so I can get a higher certainty of correctness with much less work on my part. I guess what I'm really interested in is whether I'm missing out on something really great by not participating in more live conversations (that aren't about solving specific problems).
6Richard_Kennaway
Always have a goal. "Just making conversation" doesn't count. That's a high-level description of the activity that leaves out the goal, not a description of something that actually has no goal. Your goal might be "learn from this person", "let this person learn from me", "get to know this person", "get an introduction to this person's friends", "get into bed with this person", or many other things, or even at the meta-level, "find out if this is an interesting person to know". Unless your efforts are about something, the whole activity will seem pointless, because it is. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who had the same urge?
5Benquo
One of the nicest things anyone's done in conversation with me is say "hold on, I need a few minutes to think about that," actually go off and think for several minutes, and then come back to the conversation with an integrated perspective. I felt deeply respected as a mind. People who don't appreciate this sort of thing aren't trying to make themselves understood about something surprising, so I expect that by your values you should care less about making them happy to talk with you, except as a way of getting something else from them.
5MichaelVassar
I seriously wouldn't mind the verification effort if done by a fast googler, and quietly thinking for a few minutes regularly is Awesome for conversation.
[-]gwern110

most people, while engaging in real-time conversations, do not feel this discomfort of having insufficient time and resources to verify the other participant's claims (or for that matter, to make sure that one's own speech is not erroneous).

Conversation is not about information.

3Lightwave
Conversation is not only/mostly about information. FTFY
1nazgulnarsil
this relates back to the what was mentioned higher up about people having differing goals for their conversation. the default goal is to strengthen, weaken, or confirm status positions. non-status information is often considered incidental. also note that hardly anyone is conscious of this.
9JRMayne
Wow. I get involved in interesting conversations with some frequency; I don't think it's because I avoid verification or am too credulous. I think your explanations are a false dichotomy. First, a lot of conversations involve expertise that I don't have, and I find interesting. Jobs that are not mine are often interesting; I usually try to ask about what things about someone else's job are fun or interesting. I'm always happy to talk about my job; being a prosecutor means you've got a storehouse of stories. In conversations where I am relatively equally situated with my counterpart as far as knowledge, it's pretty easy to disagree while having a great conversation. I met a guy in September of '08 after internet discussions on a topic unrelated to politics, and we ended up discussing Biden-Palin for two hours. It was a really fantastic conversation, and we voted opposite ways in the election. We did this because we conceded points that were true, and we weren't on The Only Right Team of Properness; we were talking about ideas and facts that we mostly both knew. We also didn't have our head in the sand. And when one of us gave a factual statement outside the others' knowledge, the other tended to accept it (I told the story of the missing pallets of hundred dollar bills, which he hadn't heard.) Now, I've certainly corrected false statements of fact in conversation (ranging in tone from, "Are you sure about that?" to "That's verifiably false.") I try not to make false statements of fact, but I have been wrong, and I make it a point to admit wrongness when I'm wrong. (In some circles, given my general propensity for being right and my assertion of a general propensity for being right, this leads to much rejoicing, on the order of Sir Robin's minstrels getting eaten.) But there's something really fun about electric conversations that I think you're missing here. Fun and funny conversations.... I couldn't live well without them. And I'm not too credulous. And I take
1Wei Dai
But you're sure to accept a lot of false statements that way. Why are you not worried about it? Thinking about why conversations might be fun, I can see two reasons: 1. The "game" aspect (i.e., signaling/status/alliance). I tried to explain earlier why this aspect doesn't hold much interest for me. 2. Obtaining novel information. Once I realized how unreliable most people's beliefs are, the anxiety of accepting false information interferes too much with this "fun". Also, I can get a much bigger "information high" from reading something like this. Is there some other element of fun conversation that I might be missing?
4[anonymous]
I think there's a lot more to insight than true or false. Hearing a perspective or a personal experience does broaden your knowledge. In the same way that reading fiction can be enlightening -- you are still learning, but using the part of your mental equipment designed for subconscious and tacit social exchange. In my experience, most of the occasions when I changed my mind for the better resulted from hearing someone else's point of view and feeling empathy for it.
1bogdanb
Indeed. I find that often (though by no means always) it’s interesting to find out why and how someone comes to believe something that, to me, is obviously wrong. The transition between “people are mad and stupid” to “there’s method to this madness” is interesting and useful, even if it doesn’t lead to “fixing the mind” of your immediate interlocutor. At the very least, it gives you a subject to think about later, to try and find out ways of fixing the beliefs of others, in future conversations. (I often have insights on the correct, or at least a good, way of answering a fallacy quite a while after having a conversation. I can cache them for later, and sometimes get to use them in later conversations. Gathering such pre-cached insights can make you seem deep, which at least makes people more attentive to what you say.)
3Vladimir_M
Are you sure that you're not being biased here? If people really are so unreliable, even when they are serious and upfront, how do they ever get anything done in practice? Or could it be that you're failing to employ the standard heuristics for judging the reliability of people's claims? (Note that this also involves judging whether what's been said was even meant to be said authoritatively. People often say things without implying that they believe them firmly and on good evidence.)
2Jonii
What's the fun element in board game called "go"? I find that particular game really fun to play, and really interesting, but it seems rather pointless to try to argue if it's "objectively" interesting or fun, or even what specific aspects make it fun and interesting to me. It just is. You can replace "go" with any fun and entertaining thing that you do. How would you defend that your fun thing against someone who came along and wanted to know, just like you do now, why and how is that fun thing really fun? http://lesswrong.com/lw/1yz/levels_of_communication/ Also, willingness to humor the claim other makes for the sake of conversation isn't on that list, as it's neither "not taking other seriously" nor "being too credulous".
2Wei Dai
1. If other people find some activity fun but I don't, it might be that I'm doing it wrong, and with the correct understanding I can make it fun for myself. 2. On the other hand it might be that others only find it fun because they're being insufficiently reflective. Maybe if they understood better what they're really doing, they wouldn't find it fun anymore, and would spend the time furthering some other goal instead (hopefully one that better matches my own purposes, like working to answer scientific/philosophical questions that I'm interested in, or reducing existential risk :) 3. I'd like to understand my values, and human values in general, both for the purpose of FAI theory, and to satisfy my philosophical interests. "Fun" is obviously a part of that.
6Mass_Driver
I have this weird problem, based on the way my utility function seems to be set up -- I want people to do what they really enjoy, even at the cost of them not working on my favorite projects. So, on the one hand, I would like people to be sufficiently reflective to figure out what they really enjoy doing. On the other hand, if reflection just destroys people's existing, flawed sources of fun without providing an alternative source of fun, then I wouldn't want to encourage it. Imagine a 50-something small business owner with a community college education -- maybe he runs a fast food restaurant, or a bike repair shop -- who really likes his local sports team. He goes to or watches most of their home games with a few other friends/fans and gets really excited about it and, on balance, has a lot of fun. If I could somehow motivate him to reflect on what professional spectator sports are like, he might not enjoy it as much, or at all. But what good would that do him? Wouldn't he be equally likely to plow his new-found surplus energy into, say, watching TV, as to suddenly discover existentialist risks? Even if he did work on existential risks, is there any reason to think that he'd enjoy it? I feel like differences in what people choose to do for fun might reflect differing theories about what is fun, and not just a failure to reflect on one's activities. Even if the masses' theories about what is fun are philosophically indefensible, they may nevertheless be real descriptions about what the masses find to be fun, and so I have trouble justifying an attempt to take away that fun without letting go of my commitment to egalitarianism.
0NancyLebovitz
I think it would depend on how his pleasure in spectator sports is eliminated. Does he simply find out that spectator sports are pointless, or does he find out that his leisure time can have more to it than spectator sports?
1Mass_Driver
I assume it would be the former, no? Aren't most people aware that they have a choice of hobbies, even if they don't realize why/that the one they've chosen is particularly banal?
2NancyLebovitz
I don't think most people are good at breaking habits to find what they'd be enthusiastic about.
5Richard_Kennaway
Most people do not practice ninja-level rationality in any part of their life. Why would conversation be any different?
5Will_Newsome
I have the same problem, but funnily enough, I see it as a problem with myself and not a problem with real-time conversation. The ability to consider complicated ideas and follow chains of reasoning without having to verify any of the individual dependencies is a skill I would like to pick up.
2Psychohistorian
"Most people do something that I do not do. Is it because there's something wrong with them?" This is perhaps unfairly uncharitable, but it does seem to be the point you're getting at. Obvious popular alternatives include that you're not credulous enough, or that people are capable of evaluating other people's claims sans wikipedia.
-1[anonymous]
"Most people do something that I do not do. Is it because there's something wrong with them?" This is perhaps unfairly uncharitable, but it does seem to be the point you're getting at. Obvious popular alternatives include that you're not credulous enough, or that people are capable of evaluating other people's claims sans wikipedia.

This is related to a crazy idea I once had of preparing a "canned conversation" or a conversation tree that you could use to start a conversation with a random person on the subway and walk away leaving them a singularitarian.

6jhuffman
I would support this product and/or service.
1drethelin
any progress?

This seems like something that natural conversationalists already do intuitively. They have a broad range of topic about which they can talk comfortably (either because they are knowledgeable about the specific subjects or because they have enough tools to carry on a conversation even in areas with which they are unfamiliar), and they can steer the conversation around these topics until they find one that their counterpart can also talk comfortably about. Bad conversationalists either aren't comfortable talking about many subjects, are bad at transitioning from one subject to another, or can't sense or don't care when their counterpart doesn't care about a given topic.

The flip side of this is that there are 3 ways of improving one's conversational ability: learning more about more subjects, practicing transitions between various topics, and learning the cues for when one's counterpart is bored or uninterested by the current topic. Kaj focuses on the second of these, but I think the other two strategies ought not be forgotten. It's no use learning to steer the conversation when there are no areas of overlapping interest to steer to, or when you can't recognize whether you are in one or not.

2Taure
I think you brush upon a quite important point here: good conversation is less about being good at conversation and more about not being bad at it. People will talk quite happily with someone who is utterly boring, so long as it's not for too long and they've got nothing better to do. People are only really put off a conversation when a person does something odd. Prime among these are non-sequiturs, unusually extreme opinions (especially about topics people normally don't have extreme opinions about), and discussing topics which are generally understood as not being suitable for general conversation (such as topics which are invasive/personal, obscure, or too academic for the context - it's fine to talk intellectually in the appropriate place, but not to strangers at a bar/club).

This is actually great advice. Not to scare anyone away (since I know the point is to have interesting conversation....), but the techniques discussed are essentially identical to what they teach during sorority recruitment practice. (I assume it's the same for fraternities, not that anyone cares). During recruitment, each girl will talk to hundreds of potential recruits in a short amount of time and has to be a very skilled conversationalist in order to assess the personality and interests of the other person. You're taught to steer very basic small talk ("What's your major?" "Where are you from?") into directions to find something unique and interesting about the person, and you only have a couple minutes to do it. They practice this for many, many hours a day leading up to recruitment. After a few weeks of this, you really can talk to anybody about anything.

The point of the post is to make conversations interesting, so you need to be able to steer the talk from mundane to something better, without making the other person feel like they're being pulled to one of your pet topics. Best way to do this is practice. Improv comedy is actually a related (and equally practicable) skill, interestingly enough...

3NancyLebovitz
Is there a handy description of the technique?
-3[anonymous]
Great suggestion. I'll go try that. (???)
2Vive-ut-Vivas
Dunno where your confusion lies, but my point was only that if you spend enough time practicing talking to people, it gets easier, regardless if you're a sorority girl or SIAI research fellow. Everyone can do it.
0SilasBarta
Everyone can assemble a sorority and large number of recruits that they are expected to speak with in quick succession?
3Vive-ut-Vivas
Everyone can find somebody to practice small talk with. The benefit of conversation practice isn't contingent upon doing so in quick succession, but accumulation of conversation experience over time. You can increase your skills very rapidly even without access to the condensed conversational environment of fraternity/sorority recruitment. I don't even recommend participating in that if you can avoid it, since it's a very stressful experience. But it does make you really good at talking to people. Go to a bar, people are usually there to talk. Interestingness varies considerably, of course. If you work, make small talk with your coworkers. If you're in school, say hello to the person sitting next to you. Make a habit of doing this wherever you go. That's the best way to practice.

Go to a bar, people are usually there to talk.

Not to me, they aren't.

If you work, make small talk with your coworkers.

I already do that, but don't become better automatically by doing so. (Plus, they're engineers who, like me, are generally not neurotypical.)

Seriously, have you ever actually been bad at conversation and tried out your own advice? You're speaking exactly like someone who's never had a problem with this and so doesn't know what barrier such a person has to cross.

Until you can specify an actual procedure you can reasonably expect to work, you're just telling me to eat cake when I'm low on bread. If I could follow your advice, I wouldn't need it.

You're speaking exactly like someone who's never had a problem with this

You're speaking exactly like someone who intends to keep their problem. It looks like people are trying to give you some advice, and perhaps they're not doing great at that right off the bat, but maybe you could help them help you?

Your "conversation" here goes something like this - statement, statement, statement, statement, rhetorical question, statement, most of it with an undercurrent of agression. Here is a concrete suggestion: ask a question. "So you're saying opening a conversation comes easily to you, can you give me some examples of lines you've used?"

Or maybe "Here's what typically happens to me when I try to start a conversation, can you help me figure out what I'm doing wrong or what I should do differently?"

Sorry, you're right -- I'm speaking out of frustration regarding a) people's inability to explain (remember my upcoming article), and b) the past instances of let-them-eat-cake sociality advice. Vive-ut-Vivas isn't the first extrovert to do so here, and she won't be the last. I will try to be more productive with future replies.

I understand your frustration. I should have made it clear that I wasn't attempting to help people who are trying to get to the barrier of making small talk in the first place; I was directing my advice to those who are interested in making the transition from small talk to interesting conversation. You're right that I haven't been particularly helpful in addressing that first point. I think that with some reflection I might be able to give decent advice on that topic, but that will require more introspection.

I haven't been particularly helpful in addressing that first point. I think that with some reflection I might be able to give decent advice on that topic, but that will require more introspection.

I appreciate your saying this very much.

5simplyeric
This might sound weird, but: internet chat rooms (is that what "Second Life" is for nowadays?). I know chat rooms have a reputation, but I've read that they've been shown to have potential for actually increasing social skills (I'm searching for the relevant article, but I know I read it in a journal over a year ago). But, you have to be proactive about it. And of course discerning. a. You have to find the right venue a.1. chat rooms have a reputation for a reason a.2. you need to go to a venue where everyone is not there to talk about what you typically talk about. b. You have to be conscious about what you are doing: b.1. not talking to people who are into what you are into (somewhat redundant to a.2.) b.2 you have to be self-aware of the process...what is working, what isn't b.3. you have to try to step out of your "comfort zone" in order to learn new approaches, new social skills, as it were The thing is, people are there to talk...so, seek out those people, and talk. I'm not saying it's "easy"...it's just one idea.
2Richard_Kennaway
Simpler even than an internet chat room are Omegle (text chat with a random stranger) and Chat Roulette (video chat with a random stranger).
5simplicio
Just one social blunder after another.
0Richard_Kennaway
You're there to talk, they're there to talk, you say hi, and they disconnect. Where is the "blunder" and who is making it?
4khafra
His most obvious faux pas, if that was Chat Roulette, was not immediately exposing himself--conversants on that forum tend to become suspicious if the expected visual greeting is not performed.
2simplicio
No worries, I was just amused. I've chatted on Omegle before. I have actually kept in contact with a couple people, including a young lady from Portugal who sent me YouTube videos of her grandmother and her singing old folk songs.
0fezziwig
I'm very late to this party, but just in case: to a mundane, "what ho" doesn't look like a casual, old-timey greeting, it looks like a typo for "what a ho". Maybe that's what went wrong here.
4Vive-ut-Vivas
Of course not, with that attitude! ;) I certainly don't know enough about you to advise you on how you may be sending people the wrong signals in conversation. Do you have any friends that are good conversationalists? Take them with you. That's actually how I learned! "Shadowing" a popular friend is a great way to pick up conversation skill. I'm sure you know someone who's good at this, since popular people, by definition, know lots of people! Not sure I've ever been "bad" at conversation, but I - like everybody else! - have had to work on improving it by practice. Anyway, I fear we've drifted a bit from my original point, which was directed towards people who want to talk to other people in a situation where both parties are already willing to talk. Advising on how to talk to people who aren't interested in conversation off the bat will require more thought on my part. ETA: Hit "comment" too early.
1Taure
I think that one of your main problems may be that you're thinking of conversation as something it isn't. There is no procedure for success. Genuine conversation is procedure-less (or at least practically so. I guess with sufficient processing power and knowledge of all the hundreds of variables you could replicate it, but I think such a feat would be beyond the abilities of the conscious mind). I used to be extremely introverted. I found talking to people I didn't know very awkward. Even moderate acquaintances were tricky. Then I went to university and made some new friends. Went out. And then just decided to talk to people. Alcohol helped. A lot. Now I am what many would call extroverted, though I still feel, in many ways, like an introvert pretending to be an extrovert. I don't think there is really such a thing as introverted and extroverted people at all. People are encouraged to think of these things as part of their "essential character" (TM) - or even their biology. And in some medical cases, this is obviously true (such as in autism). But for most people, it's not a lack of ability, it's a lack of will. People think about worst case scenarios. They think about (as you mention somewhere else in these comments) weirding out a load of people. And maybe you would. But the key, I think, is then to disregard your fear and just talk anyway. The idea of an extroverted social animal who feels no fear is a false ideal, I think. Everyone will have jokes that fail, everyone has conversations that, the moment they start, you know that this person is really not for you at all. What the "extrovert" does that is different is simply to keep talking anyway. I obviously don't know about your life, so cannot say anything truly accurate about it. However, from what I see in your posts, I would say than your problem is not ineloquence, but fear of failure. To be pithy: "If at first you don't succeed, try and try again." And like I say above, try not to think of it as a pr

I think that one of your main problems may be that you're thinking of conversation as something it isn't. There is no procedure for success.

You can't create a procedure that maps out every branch in a conversation tree, no. But I think you are underestimating the ritualization and standardization of social activity. There really are patterns in how people do things. There are considerable norms, rules, and constraints. People who are intuitively social (whether they became that way earlier or later in life) may have trouble articulating these patterns.

Within these constraints, there are infinite ways to behave, and you can be as spontaneous as you want. Intuitively social people experience social interaction to be natural and spontaneous because their intuitions keep them within those constraints.

Conversation is "procedureless" in the same sense that musical improvisation is "procedureless." You can't map out the rules for improvisation in advance. But there are some chords that work well (or badly) after others that you can know in advance. You can know whether you are in a major or minor key, and if you have the concept of major/minor mode and key, then i... (read more)

-1Taure
Certainly there are patterns in social interaction. However, I think that if you go into social interaction aware of these patterns and meaning to act on them, then this very awareness will in fact ruin your social interaction, because one of the rules of genuine social interaction is that it's free flowing and natural-feeling. If you treat it like a formula, you'll break it.
4mattnewport
What evidence do you have for your theory?
0Taure
Which bit of it?
0mattnewport
The second paragraph.
0Taure
I assume you mean of my reply to HughRistik. No statistical data, if that's what you want. However, I think that in this case it isn't needed. It seems clear that following a conversation by rules and algorithms will be unable to replicate genuine conversation. Very little of a conversation is about what is actually said. You have to read body language, you have to read into what isn't said, you have to use intuition because you read these things unconsciously, not consciously. I can't be bothered to find it at the moment - or in the foreseeable future - because this topic just doesn't mean hours of time to me, but I do recall studies in which people's ability to register body language consciously was compared to our ability to read it by intuition, sub-consciously. The results were something like this: the conscious mind could only spot 2 or 3 body language signs, whereas the unconscious mind was able to pick up on up to 15.
2mattnewport
You seem to be denying the possibility of teaching anyone to be better at conversation by explaining various norms, rules and constraints to them and getting them to practice while consciously attending to this information, at least initially. I don't think anyone would deny that the ultimate aim of any such instruction would be for the student to internalize the rules to an extent that they were applied largely unconsciously and automatically - most skills make this progression as they are developed. However I've seen plenty of people claim that instruction of this kind can be effective at improving conversational skills for people who are not able to 'just do it' as you seem to advise. Convincing evidence to the contrary would help save people from fruitless expenditure of time, money and effort trying to develop conversational skills if you were able to provide it.
0Taure
I think the idea of learning conversational social norms and so forth by practice/instruction is a very different issue to consciously using a decision procedure to dictate your conversation. The instruction you describe is pretty much a description of what most people experience growing up, through a combination of what their parents teach them and experience/trial and error. This is not the same thing as standing next to someone and going through a mental flow chart, or list of "dos and don'ts" every time it's your turn to say something. The former is genuinely learning conversation, the latter is trying to fake it.
2HughRistik
I'm not sure of this distinction. Why can't a conscious decision procedure be an element of instruction? Conscious decision procedures are a time-honored teaching tool in domains with similar features to social skills: music, sports, and dance. Look at musical or athletic exercises, and dance routines. Why does applying the same heuristics to learning social skills attract disdain? I think we agree that beginners who are making most of their choices at a conscious level will often produce clunky results. The cause that I am making is that a lot of cognitive systemizing about social interaction can be a valid and productive learning tool to many people. Clunky results can be better than no results, and pave the way to learning how to socialize without so much conscious processing. In many domains (e.g. music and dance), there is a time-tested process of consciously breaking down knowledge into component pieces, and teaching them to the student at a conscious level. Over time, the student stops needing to consciously attend to that knowledge, and it becomes encoded in intuitions and muscle-memory. See the four stages of competence: * unconscious incompetence * conscious incompetence * conscious competence * unconscious competence
2mattnewport
HughRistik was discussing the possibility of helping people to develop these sorts of skills who for whatever reason failed to acquire them when growing up. Many people claim that explicit instruction can be a valuable tool in developing such skills later in life. If true this is a lot more useful to people suffering from this problem than your 'advice'. To riff on HughRistik's music analogy, is a guitar player 'trying to fake it' by practicing scales and chords and learning musical theory before they have mastered improvisation?
0Taure
You're missing my point somewhat. I'm not saying you can't get better at conversation. Nor am I saying that there aren't tips/instruction you can give. On this very page you see me do so here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2co/how_to_always_have_interesting_conversations/2a1j?c=1 Further, I just said above that this is exactly how people normally develop their conversational abilities. My point is simply that decision procedures/algorithms are not the way to go, because they will not produce natural sounding conversation. In fact, using them to teach someone conversation would be counter-productive, because it would give them a false idea of what conversation is like. It represents conversation as mechanical, and if a person approaches a conversation as if it were mechanical then they will not succeed in having a genuine conversation.
4HughRistik
And matt and I are asking, what makes you so sure of this? Have you tried this approach? Have you watched other people try it? In the short term, no. Matt and I agree with you here. But remember, many socially-unskilled people already can't produce natural sounding conversation. They are wracked with indecision and "analysis paralysis" because they have no way to select a way to behave merely through their intuitions. People experiencing anxiety-provoking analysis paralysis can't produce natural sounding conversation. Giving them something to say and a set of algorithms or rules can cut down on the amount of analysis they are normally doing, and allow them to make progress. Again, I agree, but these problems are actually better than what a lot of socially unskilled people are currently facing. In conversations, they immediately put their feet in their mouths, or they get analysis paralysis and fade into the background. Either way, they don't learn anything, because they are either getting negative feedback, or no feedback at all. For many people, being able to have mechanical conversations is actually a better starting point for learning natural conversation, than the alternatives of "instant foot-in-mouth" or "analysis paralysis." Being able to get into conversations and have exchanges with people, even at a clunky level, gives you valuable social experience to fuel a more intuitive and spontaneous set of social skills. Once you get your foot into the door of social interaction, and get responses and feedback from people, then you can start learning on an implicit unconscious level via operant conditioning. Decision procedures and algorithms can be excellent ways to get people to the place where real learning can begin. Strangely, it actually works pretty well to algorithmically learn a clunky level of social skills to get your foot in the door, gain implicit social knowledge from operant conditioning, and then forget or diminish your reliance on algorithms (t
2mattnewport
It's seems our main area of disagreement is over whether certain teaching procedures and certain ways of practicing / developing conversational skills can be effective, namely those that frame the issue in more of a rules based / procedural style. I don't think anyone is claiming that you can simply learn these rules or procedures and you're done - apply them and be an instant master conversationalist. The claim is merely that these can be an effective means for people who have failed to develop these skills by the 'normal' means to become more competent conversationalists. I don't have much direct experience in this area and it appears you don't either so perhaps we should let the discussion rest at this point. I'm still more inclined to believe the reports of people who claim that they have observed these techniques working successfully than the dismissals from people who think they can't possibly work but settling the issue would require further evidence that I don't think either of us can provide.
2SilasBarta
I must confess, I don't find your advice helpful either. * Whether or not there is a "procedure" for conversation, there a good ways to do it, and bad ways to do it. People can certainly handle it naturally, but that doesn't tell anything to the non-naturals about how to do it. If you actually find it to be procedureless, this means you're already a natural and only have Level 1 understanding, and so are unable to articulate where other's shortcomings are so that they can bridge the gap to reach your skill. See HughRistik's great article and in particular this comment about how much of your own knowledge you can be unaware of if you've never been without it. * "Try, try again" is insufficient to improve. You can try forever without improvement if you can't recognize what you were doing right, and what you weren't. This information doesn't spontaneously unfold from your DNA as a result of being in social situations. And (see below), I have indeed tried again and again and again (edit: sentence wasn't completed in original comment). * I've already done exactly what you suggest, going out, and drinking, and benefitting form the lower inhibitions to talking that come with alcohol. I've done this quite a bit, but I've never seen any of the skill carry over to when I'm not intoxicated. Furthermore, I've pretended to be an extrovert, but it really makes no difference from the inside or on the outside: it doesn't automagically allow me to make conversation where I otherwise wouldn't. * Whatever problems I might have, fear of failure is not among them. It is, at most, fear of that failure cascading into very damaging personal consequences. And given my personal experience, these fears are extremely well-grounded. Nevertheless, I quite often go out to socialize and join groups, actively participate in them, and -- suprise surprise -- I do fail to form relationships or improve social skills, and I fail quite often, to the point where it's no longer a big deal. I hate
1jimrandomh
The choice of setting matters a great deal, and a bar is comparatively difficult. As an introvert who had a similar issue starting conversations myself (though I think to a lesser degree), I've found a setting which is much easier: dances, specifically Contra dance but probably any style which has a norm of changing partner after each dance. In that setting, you're repeatedly forced to initiate conversations with women, on a hard deadline, or else you'll have to sit out; but those conversations are short, follow extremely predictable paths, and have no bad outcomes (rejections normally come from a standard list of status-neutral answers). There will typically also be breaks and an afterparty for longer conversations, but if your goal is just to get over difficulty in approaching people and initiating conversations, those are optional.
1ChristianKl
'Do you want to dance?' Isn't much of a conversation. You can even ask keep the whole process entirely nonverbal by making eye contact and asking for the hand of the girl by offering your own hand. Loud music also makes it harder to have a good conversation.
2jimrandomh
This varies by dance style and local custom, but in contra, there are a few minutes of silence for setup and pairing between songs during which there is no music to talk over, and smalltalk is expected.
4JoshuaZ
I'm not sure this is perfect advice. For one thing, speaking as a person who enjoys conversation, it can often be deeply uncomfortable when a random stranger tries to start a conversation. I made accidental eye-contact with someone on the subway today and then had to have a conversation about the weather which interrupted mildly productive thoughts. I agree that in the contexts of school and work this sort of thing might be acceptable. One has to think about the fact that the very worst that happens is that the person indicates they don't want to talk. One thing I do use as a conversation starter is if someone is holding a book that I've read (in which case I'll comment) or a book I have not read (in which case I'll inquire about it).

Hey, not to sound intimidating or anything, but it's a sad fact that while Michael Vassar and I have gigantic webs of precomputed original ideas, we can also generate original ideas in real time.

Sort-of. I can generate original ideas in real time IF by real time you mean 'thinking about my ideas when I'm speaking and half thinking half listening when the other person is speaking". That's not the best conversational dynamic though. It's better when I actually allow/create pauses between listening to the other person and thinking (the opposite dynamic from my more common mode of interrupting the other person). If my thoughts are a few seconds ahead of my words much of the time when I'm talking I'm more likely to be able to spare enough attention to notice the other person's feelings. Likewise, if I'm fully listening to them I'm more likely to catch nuances and deepen my understanding faster. Also, my thoughts are partially transparent. If I'm not fully listening the person is likely to get that impression, not feel understood, make less effort to understand me, and waste conversational time by repetition in order to ensure that they are understood.

A gigantic web of precomputed ideas also has a bigger border area where you can generate new ideas with relatively lightweight combination and modification of the existing ones.

3Eliezer Yudkowsky
That's definitely going on.
-12SamAdams

I've heard of a similar strategy once discussed as part of pickup, I believe - I can only pull up a vague memory right now, but the thought was something along the lines of this. If a woman says she "just moved away from her family in San Francisco to have more freedom," each word of that can be a hook into an interesting conversation. What was moving like? What's her family like? Why did she want to move away from them? What's it like in San Francisco and how is it different here? What kind of freedom was she looking for? etc.

I've been working on using that type of conversation as well to avoid awkward pauses and keep interesting conversations going.

Writing out a list of topics and connections is good but it's only one part of a conversation. You should also consider various reasons for having a conversation. For instance: passing the time, relieving anxiety, developing a relationship, maintaining a relationship, exchanging information, keeping updated on important information, debating a substantive point, getting someone to relax before asking them for something, being polite, making someone feel welcome, resolving a conflict. And when people have different goals for a conversation, it can be unc... (read more)

My advice, if you want to become a good conversationalist, is just to crank up the amount of time you spend having conversations. If you are really serious, you could consciously review conversations after the fact, to try to find patterns and see where you could have improved.

What's the link between visiting fellows and the weather?

My advice, if you want to become a good conversationalist, is just to crank up the amount of time you spend having conversations.

I can think of three people I know for whom that does not work. Not because they do not think they have opportunities for conversations, not even because they have opportunities but do not take advantage of them, but because they do, and put a great deal of effort into it, and yet I can see that it is not working for them. They are getting little in return for their efforts, because they are all doing it wrong, each in their own way. Whatever they need to be doing instead, having more conversations isn't it.

Advice is good if it works for the person it is addressed to. It is bad if it does not. General advice like "talk to people more" cannot be expected to generally work any more than an appendectomy will work for every case of abdominal pain. An appendectomy will work only for someone whose problem is a diseased appendix.

8thepokeduck
That is good advice. A friend of mine video taped his conversations with people. (By which I mean, there was a video recording of some event, and he left it on following, to capture his social interactions.) In this way, he was able to see not just things he said, but also gauge people's reactions to his body language. He said it was difficult to watch at first, but had a huge benefit to his social skills.
6Lonnen
Video taping may not be the preferred way to go about it, but there is something to be said for reflection. While you are unlikely to get better without practice, merely sinking time into conversation won't necessarily help, and may harm you. Without analyzing your attempts, even if it's only a brief list of what went well and what didn't, you may be practicing and learning bad habits. 100 ungraded math problems doesn't make you better at math, and 100 uncoached squats may injure you. Take a few moments after conversations to assess at least what went well and what didn't. If you have access to an honest friend, you can do even better. Converse with a third party (your friend can participate or merely be near enough to observe) and run a sort of post-conversation analysis later. Treat it like any other skill you're serious about learning. I've seen this help more than one struggling introvert.
7SilasBarta
Good idea. Also, if you're suffering from malnutrition due to poverty, just crank up the amount of cake you eat. If you are really serious, hire a dietician to figure out what you're missing in your nutritional needs. The people that aren't good at conversation are the ones that don't have easy opportunities to increase the number of conversations.
3Vive-ut-Vivas
I don't think that's true. Who doesn't have easy opportunities to increase their number of conversations, other than a total shut-in? People are everywhere, and therefore, so are potential conversations. You might not have the most interesting conversation with the guy standing behind you in line at the bank, but the only way to get better at conversation is practice, like the OP said.
2SilasBarta
Starting a conversation with a completely random stranger generally takes skill to begin with. Potentially creeping out 20 people in a row is not an acceptable risk -- unless you'd like to bear it for me? Also, others who have posted on the topic [1] said that if I'm at a low skill level at this, I shouldn't practice on people in captive situations, like being in line at the bank. Which of you should I believe? [1] can't find the link right now, and I can't even mention one of the people's names
7CronoDAS
I think I've come up with a reasonable algorithm for determining if a stranger is open to conversation. (Mostly tested on females in New Jersey.) I developed it out of desperation, because, for a while now, if I didn't talk to strangers, I wouldn't be talking to anyone in person except my immediate family. The algorithm: * Smile and make eye contact. * If eye contact is not returned within a reasonable period of time, find someone else. If eye contact is returned, wave. * If the stranger waves back or shows some other noticeable positive reaction, go ahead and introduce yourself. The key seems to be the eye contact; as far as I can tell, if someone is willing to make eye contact with you, they're usually willing to talk with you, and making eye contact seems to be inoffensive in most situations. You'll probably get some false negatives, but false positives tend to be worse than false negatives and the false positive rate seems to be almost zero; you usually don't creep people out by deciding to leave them alone. Also, fan conventions (anime, gaming, etc.) are great places to find people willing to socialize with strangers. And take a camera; people often wear elaborate costumes at these events, and complimenting someone's cosplay outfit has been a good conversation opener for me. (This is me at Otakon 2009.) I've also had some luck talking to fellow customers at bookstores; you know a few really good books you can recommend, right?
6Blueberry
Not everyone will agree with me on this, and I know this is controversial. But I have the firm belief that no one becomes good at conversation, dating, or any social skill without the equivalent of "creeping out 20[0] people in a row": it's just that most people make most of their big social mistakes when they're very young (just like most people's middle or high school experiments with romance or sex end up being total disasters). If you're not willing to creep out 200 or so people in a row, you'll never learn. The "avoid captive situations" comment is not particularly helpful for someone trying to learn social skills. In fact, I'd say it's harmful, because the concern about making people feel uncomfortable is a big part of social anxiety, and social anxiety is what prevents people from developing social skills.
4SilasBarta
Okay, who were your first 200? Please list 50 of the incidents when the venue supervisor asked you to leave or modify your behavior.
2Blueberry
Why are you asking that? I'm missing your point.

Not wishing to speak for Silas, but it looks to me like this. You believe that:

I have the firm belief that no one becomes good at conversation, dating, or any social skill without the equivalent of "creeping out 20[0] people in a row"

If you believe that you are not good at conversation, then you are speculating without practical experience. If you believe you are good at conversation, then by your account you must have gone through your 200 people. Silas is challenging you to share your experience of doing so -- I presume as a check on whether you really believe it, or merely believe that you believe it.

Creeping out 200 people in a row is like suggesting you can't learn to ride a bicycle without breaking a few bones. It's way excessive. Even creeping out 20 people in a row (Silas' figure, which you chose to amend upwards, which argues against this being idle hyperbole) is an absurdity. By the time you're creeping someone out, you're already way off course.

4Blueberry
You're correct that if you go up to a random person 200 times and start talking, you will probably not creep out all 200. I was exaggerating, which is why I said "the equivalent of" creeping 200 people out: my point was that everyone needs to make lots of awkward mistakes to learn social skills, and that you need to be willing to do so. Silas stated that this wasn't an acceptable risk, and I amended his figure upward to indicate that you have to be willing to deal with even worse outcomes than he was fearing, even if they're unlikely to occur, and that learning conversational skills can be difficult and involve a lot of rejection. I'm not going to list all my mistakes, but I have certainly made more than 200 awkward comments to people, experienced more than 200 rejections, made people feel uncomfortable more than 200 times, and so forth (though not in a row, admittedly). It doesn't make you "way off course"; it's the only way to learn.
1SilasBarta
It looks like we're referring to different things by the term "[equivalent of] creeping people out". I agree you will have to make mistakes and get rejections. But I was referring to a specific context for the "creeping out". Specifically, the problem at hand was that of how to get good at starting conversations with random strangers. The strategy being recommended was one that dismissed the downside of creeping out random strangers (which is often associated with the venue supervisor -- boss, proprietor, conductor, bouncer, whatever -- telling you to stop or leave). My comment was that, no, doing things that disruptive and creepy, that often, in that short of a period, is not an acceptable risk, and not what you should suggest anyone should do if that's the risk. (And RichardKennaway confirmed that enduring that kind of social ostracism is way excessive for the skill being learned, so I'm not alone in this assessment.) You, in turn, were taking "creeping out" to refer to relatively minor goofs in a context where the consequences are much less severe, where you've already done significant deft social navigation around that group, and where those who see the error have good reason to be much more understanding of the goof. While I agree that rejections, mistakes, etc. are to be expected and are part of life, you were equating very different kinds of rejections, and -- like most sociality advisors here -- assuming away the problem of having passed a certain social barrier. In any case, those are far different kinds of failures than "becoming the creepy guy at the bookstore" or having people get the bouncer to talk to you because of conversational goofs (which has happened to me, so this isn't idle speculation). You have an inaccurate picture of what you were expecting me to go through, so your advice, though relevant for other social skills, was not applicable here, and comes across as -- like Richard noted -- shrugging off the possibility of breaking bones to le
0Blueberry
I'm not dismissing it. I'm saying that may be the price that you have to pay in order to develop these skills. If you're not willing to pay it, I think it would be very difficult to learn (though there are ways of reducing the risk: CronoDAS suggests looking for eye contact first, which might help). If you know what these disruptive creepy things are, just don't do them. If you don't know what they are (and how to identify them on the fly), you need to learn, and that may involve making big mistakes. How else will you learn? If you don't think it's an acceptable risk, fine, but I think developing the skills is worth the risk. If you routinely, inadvertently, creep people out during social interactions, you have two options: avoid people forever and become a hermit, or practice talking to people and learn how to fix the problem, and it's better to practice on strangers you never have to see again. I don't think I am assuming away the problem, and I think I do understand what you mean. It may be tougher for you than for most people, for a variety of reasons. In order to get past this barrier and develop social skills, I am recommending the specific strategy of going to different places (bookstores, coffeeshops, bars, parks, the grocery store) and starting up friendly conversations with lots of people. You can do this right now. I understand that you may get kicked out of these venues. I understand that everyone may think you're creepy. I understand that this type of rejection is painful. Do it anyway. If you get kicked out of one place, try another. How else are you going to get past this barrier?
-1SilasBarta
I don't think you do understand. I live in