One heuristic for spotting when you might be wrong is that you hold a very uncommon belief.
It COULD be that you are correct and the world is crazy, but its far more likely that you are the one who is missing something. It's always worth stopping to double check when this happens.
Perhaps more importantly, if you do happen to be right when everyone else is wrong its important to determine your goals.
Is it more important to be right, or to be happy? If the answer is the latter then its sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social. Nobody likes to be told they're wrong, so is "correctness" worth more than that person's feelings? Very oten it is not.
> sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social
There's almost no time when it's better to try to convince somebody they're wrong. It won't help you, and it won't work anyway, so it won't help them either.
Sure if you're somebody's doctor, and even then you have to pick your battles.
I believe you, but in my own experience I've met more people who say this than who mean this.
Usually it's situational. People might genuinely like to be wrong when the novelty is fun or useful, for example in lab work or in low stakes classwork. However, they despise it with politics, their job, or anything else that might have actual consequences in their lives.
I think I can speak for most people with niche subjects of interest when I say that the commonly held beliefs on said niche subject tend to be pretty bad.
the thing with uncommon beliefs is not that they are likely wrong. but that digging in your heels is surely going to fail, regardless of who is actually right.
so your suggested response is the right approach, but it doesn't end there. you can try find a common belief and build up your argument from there. peoples opinions can be changed if you take the time to learn how their opinions are formed and present them with the opportunity to consider alternative ideas. ideally in such a way that they discover the truth on their own.
a key component is that unity enables change. it is better to be wrong but united, than right and divided. if we are united (and thus stay friends) then we can learn from being wrong and change direction. if we are divided then changing direction is difficult.
I think there are also different definitions of "digging in your heels".
What most people do is just whine and repeat themselves because they don't understand all the ways they're being misunderstood. They lack self-awareness because they lack sufficient experience hearing and digesting the arguments from the other sides. This is a missed opportunity.
What people should do instead is leverage their self-awareness once they have the spotlight and "magically know" which concerns to address when they are given that brief window of rebuttal. It's hard to get attention, so they must strike when the iron is hot. It takes a lot of experience, and most never get to that level. Repetition signals to everyone else they don't really know what they're talking about.
The majority of the audience may actually be on your side agreeing with you, but they won't stick their neck out for the truth if they know they're less informed and less experienced than you, yet even you still failed. They have no chance to do any better, so they just shut the fuck up. Everyone languishes. Your point is noted, but not winning. All you did was paint a target on your back for the next time you say anything. People would rather be winning than right. Agreeing with you once doesn't mean they side with you.
>One heuristic for spotting when you might be wrong is that you hold a very uncommon belief.
this is only the case in a 'wisdom of the crowd' world where people hold uncorrelated, authentic, self-formed opinions. If you're in a world of mass opinion and mania where ideas spread virally it ceases to be an indicator. In that environment its not truth that determined popularity of a belief, but how transmittable they are. In a world where gigantic companies produce sociality being anti-social in the most literal sense is a very real survival and truth-finding strategy.
And of course it's more important to be right than happy. Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism. If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
As Cormac McCarthy said in his last book: “You would give up your dreams in order to escape your nightmares and I would not. I think it's a bad bargain.”
> If you're in a world of mass opinion and mania where ideas spread virally it ceases to be an indicator.
Not really. It continues to be an indicator, just a less reliable one. As I said, it's one heuristic. It increases your probability of being right more than it decreases it, but it isn't an absolute rule.
Fundamentally, science itself relies on this heuristic to some extent. The idea that an experiment be reproducible is essentially the idea that the majority of testers should agree on observed reality. You just have to be careful not to conflate opinion with observed fact, or to treat it as more than a heuristic evaluator.
> Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism.
Not at all.
You do not need to be correct to be happy, and there is no correlation at all between your ability to correctly understand the world and your capacity (or worthiness) to experience joy or to help others experience it. You are allowed to be wrong and happy, or apathetic and happy, or ignorant and happy, or even nihilistic and happy.
> If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
There's more than one type of happiness. The kind you describe is hedonic. The other type is referred to as Eudamonic, and it comes from connection, service, and a sense of purpose.
You'll never get to experience the second type if other people don't want to be around you because you've decided that your own narrow perspective is the One True Perspective (TM).
Don't get me wrong, I reject post-modernity and the horrifying idea that there is no objective truth. I just also reject the idea that any of us are valid arbiters of that truth, or that we must know the truth before being allowed to experience happiness.
Nobody said you can't. They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society.
Your position seems to imply support for society-level submission to religious dogma. There's no point ignoring actual examples of all these ideas.
Hold an "uncommon belief"? According to you, it's a sign you're wrong. "the world isn't crazy, it's you who's missing something"... and you even say "let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social."
I don't think you meant to express support for strict religious rule and population submission, but that's how I'm reading it.
Your argument supports those who seek submission from the population. You don't require objective truth to play a role in happiness. You have found value in submission that serves to neutralise dissent. Dissent when coming from the few, isn't worth your time. Peg those few dissenters as "probably wrong" and call it a day.
A lot of folks seem to be interpreting my heuristic is if it were a hard and fast rule here. Thats not what a heuristic is.
A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows for quick decisions based on "most likely" outcomes. Its a statistical tool.
In my case I said it should be enough of an indicator for you to double check your work, not that you were automatically wrong. I stand by that.
That said, you're getting into epistemology now, and its important to differentiate between the observed facts and the biased interpetation of them.
I mentioned before that reproducibility in this way is important to science, and the reason it works with science is that we decouple the observation from the interpetation.
When most people observe that 2+2=4 and you get 5 it is likely that you're wrong. You should invest the time to double check your work.
If 50% of the world then tortures that observation through convoluted and error filled reasoning until they can interpret it to mean magic sky daddy wants you to let the priest touch your special no-no place you should ignore them.
Observed reality being in agreement is a much more reliable heuristic than agreement of interpretation, which is often filled with bias.
> They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society...
Happiness is an emotion. Imagine if I'd claimed society should only be allowed to feel lust on Tuesdays. This is no different. You are allowed to feel however you'd like to feel whenever you'd like to feel it.
Making up arbitrary rules about when you're "allowed " or "deserve" to feel good will make you miserable, and you don't have the right to tell the rest of us we have to abide by your misery making emotion rules.
You might consider asking yourself where this idea that you must meet specific prerequisites before being allowed to feel specific feelings came from, and then seriously considering whether it has merit, or if it even actually works.
Are you also restricting when you're "allowed" to feel negative emotions? How does that work? Are you really able to just... not be sad if you dont deserve it? Do you always feel happy when you DO deserve it?
I think the Protestant ethos is soo deeply embedded in you that you might not even know its there.
I’m going to ignore the whole socially-agreeable aspect.
Take a thousand subjects. I’m going to be wrong about 990 of them. Because I know just enough about it to think I might have a clue.
You could probably read up on something for five hours and have a better opinion on it than most people that you meet.
How many things are just passively received opinion? And what kind of signal is that? Oh no, all the Jacks and Jones disagree with me.
On the other hand there are some cases where you can go down some dark rabbit hole and gain false knowledge and education. Maybe studying political science or something.
> Is it more important to be right, or to be happy?
Im going out on a limb here, but I'd say intelligent people will tell you - without a doubt - being right. Because being happy is a perception and always a transitive state. There's nothing holding you from being both right and happy.
> Nobody likes to be told they're wrong
Thats actually a southern european way of looking at things; Its a cultural trace that varies a lot by region. Pointing flaws in plans is actually something I saw as worthy of an appraisal in Germany.
Also, I always tell people when I think they are wrong. I no longer insist or argue, just point out what lead me to the conclusion; you don't want to be in the blast radius of a deaf manager, an incompetent colleague or a delusional partner. Win-win.
Ever heard of tribalism and echo chambers? Wrongness being a function of number of dissidents is a terrible heuristic, in contrast to determining the lies and falsehood based on the soundness of the argument or logic.
Also, when a population group is large enough (e.g. entire world), it's quite likely a crazily-held belief is shared by other people, or people who would at least nod in agreement.
As someone who identifies as autistic, after particularly notable social encounters, I describe them, best I can, to ChatGPT, and damned if the thing doesn't explain why people reacted the way they did so I can do better next time.
As someone who identifies as autistic, I learned to smile and just listen. I’ll ask questions and try and put my little anecdotes in but for the most part I just let other people talk. Works reasonably well. I usually run afoul when the situation is serious and I show up with my smile.
Instructions unclear. I don't usually smile at puppies, I point them out to my wife. She does the smiling for us. What if she isn't there? Who will do the smiling?
I don't know about you, but things that make me happy and things that automatically make me bare my teeth at them are not the same things. Deal with it.
As someone who is not autistic, just tends towards very socially awkward, this is what I do as well. Active listening is a skill I developed by accident out of not having much to contribute to most conversations. As time went on, I saw that most people appreciate just being heard and worked on it more deliberately.
It's not all puppies and rainbows of course, because some people can't hold a conversation without being led through it by the hand, which is exhausting. And others think everyone else is always so fascinated with what they have to say that they never stop for you to get a word in edgewise.
But, active listening accounts for the majority of my social skills, for better or worse.
I think that’s how everyone learns. Making mistakes and figuring out why that turned out poorly. Some are more innately good at it than others. I’m not particularly but I can learn from mistakes
A lot of people assume everyone else has it worked out.
But people mostly don't have it all worked out.
There are specific demographics who do.
Some are naturally gifted at social interactions and/or grew up in environments which taught them how to socialise effectively.
Others are charming narcissists - likeable, high status, attractive on the outside, monsters on the inside. They can appear effortless because they don't care about anything except presenting an image, so they get get very skilled at it.
Most everyone else has some social anxiety or frustration and makes more or less obvious social mistakes at least occasionally.
Yeah. In the past I assumed that some people just sometimes randomly behave aggressively towards me for no good reason. But usually the reason is probably that I was unintentionally rude or strange with some sort of nonverbal communication or similar.
This list is actually just narcissism combined with low self-esteem.
For younger introverts, none of this behavior is necessarily anti-social if the group all shares these same traits. The moment a member of that group has any higher self-esteem than the rest, they will either see that individual as "cool" or as a threat (or both).
To be truly anti-social is to either completely isolate yourself, or be unrelentingly and unreasonably hostile in all interactions. This list is neither. It's just passive aggressive and a lot of ego.
I think the most important part of being antisocial is the ulterior motive for their hostility and refusal to situate themselves in an equitable or respectful social framework, which is invariably benefit to oneself. The type of benefit that an anti-social person seeks out is probably not like the usual suspects, though.
I think this rather describes someone with a cognitive bias which can be cured rather than someone truly anti social (I know someone who I believe is anti social but they tick off a lot more boxes than this. There is an overlap for sure in what you described BUT its a lot more complex than this)
This seems to be a very peculiar and adversarial interpretation of anti-social. I am relatively anti-social and consider this a bit of a character flaw, but would generally say that I do not assume the worst in others and am relatively introspective. It just doesn't come naturally to me, but that does not mean that I think less of others.
Psychopaths are calculated, charming, and organized, often blending seamlessly into society. Whereas sociopaths tend to be erratic, impulsive, and prone to outbursts and aggressive and reckless behavior.
Psychopaths, I would say, are "quite good" at attracting people, by knowing exactly what to say. Sociopaths may sometimes attract people unintentionally, just by virtue of their impulsive personalities sometimes causing them to be "fun" to be around.
In both cases though, people who know them well tend to be repelled by their lack of regard for the needs and feelings of others.
The other day someone described themselves to me as an 'empath' which was odd, because in the context of the discussion it was invalidating to hear. And ironic considering they hadn't forseen how I would take it.
Some people have ultimate confidence in their social judgements and the true sign of empathy is a kind of meta-empathy that allows you to consider truly alternative understandings of the world i.e. empathy for empathy.
That's not empathy, though. The word "empathy" has been co-opted to mean "understanding someone else's point of view," but that's not what empathy is. Empathy is feeling others' feelings. I'm actually empathetic in that I sometimes experience an emotional response (limbic) similar to an intense emotional response I witness others having, especially if they're a person close to me. This is very different than making a conscious attempt (prefrontal cortex) at intellectual understanding of someone's emotions.
I'm not so sure I agree - well maybe I do, I meant literally feeling in my statement not merely understanding. e.g. I eat meat - but I can literally feel the cringing sadness and disgust of a vegan if I imagine their perspective, even if I disagree.
I don't think it's been co-opted? Mirroring the emotions of another person you're actively observing doesn't give you insight into why they're feeling that way. It's just mirroring, but its an excellent starting point for learning. To have empathy, for people you're not actively observing, or for future states of people you are observing, you have to be able to model them first, and then mirror the emotions that the model predicts, which can then update the model. This loop is empathy, its both "experiencing other's emotions" and "the ability to understand and predict".
Ultimately, there are no absolute personality traits. Someone might align to specific attributes, but they are not without fault and can still easily put their foot in their mouth on occasion.
An introspective, empathetic, thoughtful person might still accidentally say something that an external observer might perceive as having been said without thought or consideration to the feelings of others.
The above is not meant to be contradictory to your point, just a consideration to the general faults all humans hold.
Almost every every person I've met that describes themselves as empath tends to rank rather low on empathy, under my own judgement at least.
One explanation I have for this is that precisely because empathy is a more rare experience for them, it becomes a more remarkable one, perhaps even overwhelming at times. This leads them to believe that they experience it more than or more intensely than others, when on the contrary the rest of the world is simply more habituated to it and integrate it more gracefully in their ordinary experience.
The other interpretation is that it requires certain level of narcissism or egotism to describe oneself in such flattering terms.
Or ultimately, as the Spanish proverb says: dime de que presumes y te diré de que careces.
Probably some degree of all of this is true in most cases.
Yeah, it's just narcissism. Spiritual bypassing. The people who have really figured it out feel no need to tell others, and simply live quiet, decent lives.
Classic. How is it the case that every self-styled "empath" never is? I just don't know. Probably never will. I just don't have enough empathy to puzzle this one out.
I am autistic and asocial fits more than anti-social because I am not actually doing any "anti" behavior, just trying to avoid the beurocratic small talk and general conformist interactions
I.e. the things that make people become friends and feel safe around each other.
As a fellow autistic person we should not be avoiding small talk, we should be learning how to better connect with those around us since we need more time and work to do so.
It’s easy to use a diagnosis as an excuse not to connect. But it’s a lame excuse. It is much more interesting to understand what tools we need to gain to connect with the world. Sometimes I need to be an anthropologist. Sometimes I need to be a crime scene investigator. Usually I just need to listen better.
When I was in a wheelchair I had to use ramps instead of the stairs. But that didn’t stop me from going to the movies
i am not autistic, but i hate smalltalk too. i can't bear it. it takes all the fun out of talking to people and i feel like it's a waste of time. not sure where i am going with this argument other than maybe saying that it's ok not to like smalltalk.
maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels meaningless.
i "solved" the problem by moving to a country with a different native language and culture. this raises the barrier to communicate and it seems to have an effect of curbing smalltalk.
while in a wheelchair, how comfortable were you asking for help? that would be the biggest challenge for me.
As someone who used to feel like they were bad at small talk, maybe this resonates with you.
I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports.
Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plane ride last weekend with an absolute stranger. We talked about the differences in our family dynamics, what cities we find it easier and harder to make friends in, the current state of our relationships and what we wanted out of them. All of that was “small talk” because we were just passing the time with someone we will never meet again. But the subjects were not small.
A side effect of feeling comfortable talking about things that matter to you is that it gives you a lot more motivation to be curious and interested in things that matter to other people as well. Even better, if you share with people more deeply about how you are feeling, they will be able to help you in ways that you didn’t even realize were possible
This is what I suggest too, what a good way of putting it!
Some people have very funny ways at looking at the most mundane context in my mind. It would be a shame if I didnt spend time sharing my funny head in ways that can't be captured in a record!
my experience was different. yes, i get that sharing my thoughts sometimes doesn't feel safe, and when i was younger i did have that experience too. but i had and have no interest in popular sports, so that topic is poison for me. i have absolutely nothing to contribute. if someone wants to talk about sports i am thinking, why are they wasting their life? any other topic would be better than that. and talking about weather? well, got a window? open it!
but those topics you shared on the plane, well that's not small talk to me. i totally would have enjoyed being part of that conversation. as i get older, i can speak from experience. i can talk about my feelings that i have and had, because now i understand them. and, as a bonus effect, as you get older people treat you with more respect, which makes talking about any topic easier.
so i am bad at talking about banal, to me meaningless topics, and while it is getting easier, i don't actually have any interest in engaging in those topics because they not only feel like a waste of time, they are a waste of my time that i want to spend more meaningfully, like reading a book.
> when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self
This speaks to me quite a bit, particularly around unfalsifiable topics I'll have with friends/family, such as theology. If we define hope as the idea they'll change their mind and agree with me, seems not much one can do but retreat into themself, right? I suppose I can sympathize with their sentiment before I retreat into myself, but taking this bullet point at face value I'm unsure how to make this a pro-social experience :/
It’s possible to be social with people who hold opinions you disagree with. Being social and recognizing or even celebrating our shared humanity does not require having the same opinions and ideas as the other person.
yes, but that means that hope is not lost yet. for me, all hope is lost when people stop listening if i said something they disagree with, even if i follow up with something they do agree with (which is usually my tactic in this case, find common ground, and then expand from there). to be social with people who disagree requires both sides to want to continue the conversation. both sides need to believe that having the same opinions is not required. if they don't want to continue then i can try as i might, but at that point hope is lost.
You can also simply chose not to talk about controversial topics where you suspect such deep disagreements might lie.
In my experience the only way to really connect across those divides is to first have a long history, months or years, of productive and positive social interaction. But you don’t get control how others think and feel, even if by some theoretical measure, your position is “right”. So even under the best of circumstances you just have to accept and resist that others think differently.
(If you're an atheist) You shouldn't debate theology with religious people. The whole idea of religion is that they 'believe' despite their experiences, facts, reasoning and logic. There's literally nothing to gain from using logic and reasoning to debate religious people.
edit: also the article is sarcastic. You shouldn't retreat into yourself just because you cannot agree on something. Talk about something else.
How can there be nothing to gain, when discussions around the subject helped convince me about atheism? I was born catholic and my family is catholic. If no one talked about it, I'd probably still be going to mass every sunday.
I'm not personally sure that's a supernatural event, but if I'd had my eyes deteriorating for years, undergone multiple failed surgeries to stave off blindness, become fully blind, had doctors tell me I was irrepairably blind, and lived without eyesight for years, then had it come back within two days of praying to a Catholic saint for healing...
To me that doesn't follow logically. What if instead of praying to some saint, they found their lucky underwear that they lost when they were a child, and wore that for the first time again? Would that proof that the lucky underwear was somehow instrumental in fixing their eyes?
Apparently the body was able to heal her own eyes, and it would have happened if she prayed to the saint or not.
> Would that proof that the lucky underwear was somehow instrumental in fixing their eyes?
No, obviously not, as there's no reason to believe the underwear are sentient.
Rapidly getting what you ask for, when experts have generally agreed it's impossible, would be very striking.
> Apparently the body was able to heal her own eyes
There's no more evidence for that claim than there is for the claim that a saint did it.
Indeed, the fact that medical personnel say "This does not happen" is arguably evidence against the "it was a natural coincidence" interpretation.
I don't mean to suggest that anyone experiencing such a healing should or would necessarily become religious.
I'm just saying that personally, given my other life experiences this far, I probably would ratchet my probability of there being some unnatural power capable of intervening in the universe from ~55% to 90%, if I experienced sudden, dramatic healing of incurable blindness promptly after praying for it.
And, returning to my original point, there are people out there who asked for something vanishingly rare to the point that some experts label it impossible, then get it quite rapidly after praying for it.
That's a fairly reasonable reason to believe in a personal God of some sort, even if it's not the only plausible explanation.
You need to question whether you really need to have the conversation in those terms. A conversation about religion/theology is not like a conversation about physics or math. If you insist on applying scientific rigor to matters of faith, you are and will remain fully confused.
I bet if you observe your own mind for long enough, you'll find some part of your life which requires you to have faith too. Use that to understand your friends and family better. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with them about religion, ask them about their faith (not their religion). You will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how they navigate the world.
If you can have that conversation, go ahead and ask them about their religious beliefs, withholding judgement unless/until they say something morally objectionable. You can think of their religion like any other mythology, and you get to play sociologist for a while. There's a fascinating variety of responses people give to even fundamental questions - e.g. "what is god?".
This open approach is not only much easier for everyone, it's also more useful in the long term. My neighbor has an interesting mashup of beliefs that includes a decent chunk of Christianity. She sometimes has bad anxiety, and unfortunately she can't afford treatment for it. I've helped her out of panic attacks using two methods: 1 - I've given her a clonazepam tablet and 2 - I've quoted scripture to her (e.g. "behold the lilies of the field"). Both methods work, and the latter tends to work faster.
It's different if the person is using their religion as a cover for engaging in or supporting something morally evil. That's a trickier conversation and often one not really worth having, depending on your relationship and how comfortable/willing you are to attempt to correct them.
Theology is quite predictable rigid scientific field, something like law. You just have to define which set of rules you are using (catholic orthodox, shia islam...) There are thousands of books with notes, precedents... going back thousands years. Thousands branches...
Calling theology "unfalsiable" is ignorant. Like saying math is unfalsiable, because there are multiple geometries and nobody understands it anyway.
How about the old fashioned freezing with a face contorted in fear like your being held at knife point unable to think of anything to say and just waiting to be able to leave? When you get asked a question, fumble over your words and say something stupid. Later on, you can reflexively watch the memory played over and over again so you're even worse the next time. If you see anyone you met during the encounter afterwards, you can just panic and try to hide your face and escape.
That's a lot easier and comes off more natural IMO.
If any one single interaction makes you have such a response, that might be a reason to see someone. I wish for everyone to be able to move through the social world with grace and ease.
Put less kindly: there’s nothing so special about you that being yourself around a new person should cause such a panic. Even if they take an instant dislike to you, that should be something you can take in stride
What does "being yourself" even mean? Obviously not "acting the exact same way you act when alone", since this would be impossible/weird/rude/illegal but also not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
I don’t mean like being “authentic” or whatever that means. In this conversation “being yourself” means literally you existing in that moment in your body.
I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario
For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too
I don’t think most people can do this 100% of the time. I actually think if you can do this 100% of the time you’re probably a zen master.
I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)
This is baffling to hear dude, I literally canvas with 1000s of people before. All these people have no issues interacting with complete strangers in hostile areas withe ease. The amount of people doing this is in the tens of millions, from all walks of life too.
Definitely check out a therapist because this type of thinking isn't only toxic to yourself but it's not how the world really works.
You can blame million years of evolution for your bad life or you can change it right now living in the present moment. It’s fine if you don’t do it right now because later at a future present moment you can still make the choice to be happy. It might take some work but it will never be because of something that happened in the past. It will be something that you do right now. There are no exceptions or escape hatches
These cliches are just annoying to read at this point, everyone has heard this stuff a million times and yet...millions still suffer. If I'm being honest it just comes across as yet another form of bullying when socially well adjusted people say stuff like this to people worse off than them.
I can agree with you while still agreeing with parent poster that it's basically "git gud"-tier bullying.
Very very few orators can successfully pull off "just fix your problems bro" as anything beyond a generic kick in the pants for the people presently predispositioned to be motivated by one.
I regularly bully my close friends into being better people. It just so happens that I fell down the staircase of life much earlier than a lot of people do. I had to do most of my “midlife crisis” thinking in my early 20s because most of my family died and I had to come out as gay without any support.
Now that I’m in my 30s I have the joy of helping my friends along on this journey called life. Sometimes people just need a gentle nudge up the staircase. Sometimes they need to be carried against their will
I agree it can feel frustrating and inactionable but it's not bullying, it's a thoughtful well-meaning response. Actually if it makes you feel bad it's a signal it may be worth contemplating more.
That approach doesn't work for everyone. Everything you say could be correct, but if the person thinks their feelings are not being listened to, there is a chance they still won't take your advice.
One of my therapists said it was normal in her circle for people not to get onto someone's case if they're mentally unwell and have chores piling up, because it makes sense they don't have as much effort to give to all aspects of life. At the time I didn't understand this statement, because up until then my only contacts were people who, although they didn't go as far as "bullying" me into compliance, had told me in effect that how I felt about my life was irrelevant to whether or not I was fulfilling every single one of my adult responsibilities. What ultimately worked for me wasn't those contacts who said there were no excuses, but my therapist who decided not to frame my decisions in terms of "excuses".
For me this kind of thing hurts because:
1. There's not any room for compassion or slack. I'm not talking about people who take advantage of others' goodwill. Even if you try to help with this "no excuses" mentality, the other person could start to worry if the next inadvertent slip-up or setback counts as an "excuse" they'll be looked down upon for. This kind of thought will linger and reduce the effectiveness of the intervention.
2. Your feelings aren't listened to, or if they are it's only at a level superficial enough to obtain compliance. This is bad enough on its own. What might not be obvious is if the person has had a life marked by repeated instances of their feelings being shut down or not listened to, especially in childhood, this approach only backfires that much harder. These are emotional patterns that have been established in critical periods/over a long period of time that are being relieved at a much higher intensity than the average population. And most importantly, you can't know for sure if something like this applies until you get to know the person better, which is why a lot of one-off prescriptive advice towards strangers is ineffective.
3. The advice-giver is often successful/came out of hardship themselves, so by being looked down upon as irresponsible it gives the impression that you're being excluded from the in-group of mentally well/recovered people. Avoiding exclusion from a group is one of the biggest sources of strife today, as modern politics and social media indicate. And being mentally stable is often one of the most important groups to be included in for people who know they're depressed, so it hurts even more.
That’s all excuses. I’m not saying it’s right to bully someone who’s in the depths of depression. But the depression isn’t gonna fix itself and it certainly won’t fix itself because of something that happened in the past
i don't know what it takes to get out of depression, but "it isn't going to fix itself" doesn't contradict that the depressed person can't get out of it on their own. it's like telling someone stuck in a hole to stop whining because they are not going to get out of the hole as long as they do nothing. that's true, but they are also not in a position to see a way out, or may simply not be able to get out without help.
as i said, i don't know what it takes, but i do think that compassion, patience, and recognition of efforts and absence of any hint of blame by others are part of it.
"being yourself" means choosing to believe that the you that is true is competent and capable of growth while the awkwardness is a temporary barrier between that is not reflective of your true nature.
That phrase is simply inaccurate. Your "self" needs to care less about opinions of others, and it should not be scared of making mistakes. "Be yourself" is typically parsed as "do not try to be someone other, do not try to be like movie actor".
> not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.
Know thyself. The first step in being your better self. This pithy piece of advice has been repeatedly given throughout history no doubt predating its being chiseled onto the Temple of Apollo around 2500 years ago. Humanity probably has no better advice. Although "Never trust a fart" is a close second.
You know the meme that goes: "Be yourself. No, not like that."
It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections.
"Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.
The kind of reaction described by the GP is probably trained by a lifetime of bad experiences. One can end up going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down in order to have some semblance of a normal conversation, and inevitably that over-thinking just makes it worse. Ask leading questions, smile, listen careful, don't interrupt - you know, all that sort of thing that comes more naturally to some than to others.
> going into every interaction thinking about which parts of oneself to dial down
what if (a) I hate leading questions, (b) by default only smile when bad/tragic things happen (eg "train crash leaves 100 dead and maimed"), (c) I'm quite bad at listening bc if you don't say interesting things often/densely enough my mind adhd-s away, and (d) interrupting is second-nature to me?
...advice may be good, but for some of us it's like 99% of ourselves that we need to dial down in order to carry on a successful interaction - it works, but takes a hell lot of energy
Yes, you and I are making the same point :-) There's lots of useful advice out there about how to be a better conversationalist but it's exhausting for those of us who have to constantly think about it, and disheartening when we get it wrong despite all the effort.
You seem to have a lot of limiting thoughts about yourself. Other people do those kinds of things but just don’t mind and don’t think that they are a bother to others.
You’re allowed to be weird. Weird people make the best conversation because you don’t know where they’re gonna go
Of course, the majority is always right and we should yield to it right away /s
Also this document is basically just how I act, or how I would still act if I was less self-aware; some combination of the two.
I suspect the author may have written this partly as a self-critique.
It COULD be that you are correct and the world is crazy, but its far more likely that you are the one who is missing something. It's always worth stopping to double check when this happens.
Perhaps more importantly, if you do happen to be right when everyone else is wrong its important to determine your goals.
Is it more important to be right, or to be happy? If the answer is the latter then its sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social. Nobody likes to be told they're wrong, so is "correctness" worth more than that person's feelings? Very oten it is not.
There's almost no time when it's better to try to convince somebody they're wrong. It won't help you, and it won't work anyway, so it won't help them either.
Sure if you're somebody's doctor, and even then you have to pick your battles.
I like to be told I'm wrong. While it is true that I am a nobody it means I'm about to learn something.
I believe you, but in my own experience I've met more people who say this than who mean this.
Usually it's situational. People might genuinely like to be wrong when the novelty is fun or useful, for example in lab work or in low stakes classwork. However, they despise it with politics, their job, or anything else that might have actual consequences in their lives.
so your suggested response is the right approach, but it doesn't end there. you can try find a common belief and build up your argument from there. peoples opinions can be changed if you take the time to learn how their opinions are formed and present them with the opportunity to consider alternative ideas. ideally in such a way that they discover the truth on their own.
a key component is that unity enables change. it is better to be wrong but united, than right and divided. if we are united (and thus stay friends) then we can learn from being wrong and change direction. if we are divided then changing direction is difficult.
What most people do is just whine and repeat themselves because they don't understand all the ways they're being misunderstood. They lack self-awareness because they lack sufficient experience hearing and digesting the arguments from the other sides. This is a missed opportunity.
What people should do instead is leverage their self-awareness once they have the spotlight and "magically know" which concerns to address when they are given that brief window of rebuttal. It's hard to get attention, so they must strike when the iron is hot. It takes a lot of experience, and most never get to that level. Repetition signals to everyone else they don't really know what they're talking about.
The majority of the audience may actually be on your side agreeing with you, but they won't stick their neck out for the truth if they know they're less informed and less experienced than you, yet even you still failed. They have no chance to do any better, so they just shut the fuck up. Everyone languishes. Your point is noted, but not winning. All you did was paint a target on your back for the next time you say anything. People would rather be winning than right. Agreeing with you once doesn't mean they side with you.
this is only the case in a 'wisdom of the crowd' world where people hold uncorrelated, authentic, self-formed opinions. If you're in a world of mass opinion and mania where ideas spread virally it ceases to be an indicator. In that environment its not truth that determined popularity of a belief, but how transmittable they are. In a world where gigantic companies produce sociality being anti-social in the most literal sense is a very real survival and truth-finding strategy.
And of course it's more important to be right than happy. Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism. If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
As Cormac McCarthy said in his last book: “You would give up your dreams in order to escape your nightmares and I would not. I think it's a bad bargain.”
Not really. It continues to be an indicator, just a less reliable one. As I said, it's one heuristic. It increases your probability of being right more than it decreases it, but it isn't an absolute rule.
Fundamentally, science itself relies on this heuristic to some extent. The idea that an experiment be reproducible is essentially the idea that the majority of testers should agree on observed reality. You just have to be careful not to conflate opinion with observed fact, or to treat it as more than a heuristic evaluator.
> Happiness decoupled from truth is nihilism.
Not at all.
You do not need to be correct to be happy, and there is no correlation at all between your ability to correctly understand the world and your capacity (or worthiness) to experience joy or to help others experience it. You are allowed to be wrong and happy, or apathetic and happy, or ignorant and happy, or even nihilistic and happy.
> If that's the goal start doing heroin at ten in the morning and retreat into the VR world of your choice.
There's more than one type of happiness. The kind you describe is hedonic. The other type is referred to as Eudamonic, and it comes from connection, service, and a sense of purpose.
You'll never get to experience the second type if other people don't want to be around you because you've decided that your own narrow perspective is the One True Perspective (TM).
Don't get me wrong, I reject post-modernity and the horrifying idea that there is no objective truth. I just also reject the idea that any of us are valid arbiters of that truth, or that we must know the truth before being allowed to experience happiness.
Nobody said you can't. They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society.
Your position seems to imply support for society-level submission to religious dogma. There's no point ignoring actual examples of all these ideas.
Hold an "uncommon belief"? According to you, it's a sign you're wrong. "the world isn't crazy, it's you who's missing something"... and you even say "let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social."
I don't think you meant to express support for strict religious rule and population submission, but that's how I'm reading it.
Your argument supports those who seek submission from the population. You don't require objective truth to play a role in happiness. You have found value in submission that serves to neutralise dissent. Dissent when coming from the few, isn't worth your time. Peg those few dissenters as "probably wrong" and call it a day.
A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows for quick decisions based on "most likely" outcomes. Its a statistical tool.
In my case I said it should be enough of an indicator for you to double check your work, not that you were automatically wrong. I stand by that.
That said, you're getting into epistemology now, and its important to differentiate between the observed facts and the biased interpetation of them.
I mentioned before that reproducibility in this way is important to science, and the reason it works with science is that we decouple the observation from the interpetation.
When most people observe that 2+2=4 and you get 5 it is likely that you're wrong. You should invest the time to double check your work.
If 50% of the world then tortures that observation through convoluted and error filled reasoning until they can interpret it to mean magic sky daddy wants you to let the priest touch your special no-no place you should ignore them.
Observed reality being in agreement is a much more reliable heuristic than agreement of interpretation, which is often filled with bias.
> They said the happiness is "decoupled from truth", which isn't ideal if we care about objective health of a society...
Happiness is an emotion. Imagine if I'd claimed society should only be allowed to feel lust on Tuesdays. This is no different. You are allowed to feel however you'd like to feel whenever you'd like to feel it.
Making up arbitrary rules about when you're "allowed " or "deserve" to feel good will make you miserable, and you don't have the right to tell the rest of us we have to abide by your misery making emotion rules.
You might consider asking yourself where this idea that you must meet specific prerequisites before being allowed to feel specific feelings came from, and then seriously considering whether it has merit, or if it even actually works.
Are you also restricting when you're "allowed" to feel negative emotions? How does that work? Are you really able to just... not be sad if you dont deserve it? Do you always feel happy when you DO deserve it?
I think the Protestant ethos is soo deeply embedded in you that you might not even know its there.
Take a thousand subjects. I’m going to be wrong about 990 of them. Because I know just enough about it to think I might have a clue.
You could probably read up on something for five hours and have a better opinion on it than most people that you meet.
How many things are just passively received opinion? And what kind of signal is that? Oh no, all the Jacks and Jones disagree with me.
On the other hand there are some cases where you can go down some dark rabbit hole and gain false knowledge and education. Maybe studying political science or something.
Im going out on a limb here, but I'd say intelligent people will tell you - without a doubt - being right. Because being happy is a perception and always a transitive state. There's nothing holding you from being both right and happy.
> Nobody likes to be told they're wrong
Thats actually a southern european way of looking at things; Its a cultural trace that varies a lot by region. Pointing flaws in plans is actually something I saw as worthy of an appraisal in Germany.
Also, I always tell people when I think they are wrong. I no longer insist or argue, just point out what lead me to the conclusion; you don't want to be in the blast radius of a deaf manager, an incompetent colleague or a delusional partner. Win-win.
Also, when a population group is large enough (e.g. entire world), it's quite likely a crazily-held belief is shared by other people, or people who would at least nod in agreement.
However, I would suggest considering if the ‘making fun’ is in casual conversation or truly adversary.
In casual conversation of someone making jest about your lack of speaking, just smile and say you are having a good time listening and hanging out.
If they are actually making fun of you, never associate with those people again, they suck
Sigh
It's not all puppies and rainbows of course, because some people can't hold a conversation without being led through it by the hand, which is exhausting. And others think everyone else is always so fascinated with what they have to say that they never stop for you to get a word in edgewise.
But, active listening accounts for the majority of my social skills, for better or worse.
And I'm probably less autistic than the average HNer.
But people mostly don't have it all worked out.
There are specific demographics who do.
Some are naturally gifted at social interactions and/or grew up in environments which taught them how to socialise effectively.
Others are charming narcissists - likeable, high status, attractive on the outside, monsters on the inside. They can appear effortless because they don't care about anything except presenting an image, so they get get very skilled at it.
Most everyone else has some social anxiety or frustration and makes more or less obvious social mistakes at least occasionally.
For younger introverts, none of this behavior is necessarily anti-social if the group all shares these same traits. The moment a member of that group has any higher self-esteem than the rest, they will either see that individual as "cool" or as a threat (or both).
To be truly anti-social is to either completely isolate yourself, or be unrelentingly and unreasonably hostile in all interactions. This list is neither. It's just passive aggressive and a lot of ego.
It’s curious how many people do this. Especially if you try to address their deeply-held beliefs, they’ll just start talking about something else.
Asocial = avoids people, quiet, misses social cues. i.e. doesn’t attract people
Antisocial = cruel, obnoxious, remorseless. i.e. actively repels people
Psychopaths, I would say, are "quite good" at attracting people, by knowing exactly what to say. Sociopaths may sometimes attract people unintentionally, just by virtue of their impulsive personalities sometimes causing them to be "fun" to be around.
In both cases though, people who know them well tend to be repelled by their lack of regard for the needs and feelings of others.
Some people have ultimate confidence in their social judgements and the true sign of empathy is a kind of meta-empathy that allows you to consider truly alternative understandings of the world i.e. empathy for empathy.
An introspective, empathetic, thoughtful person might still accidentally say something that an external observer might perceive as having been said without thought or consideration to the feelings of others.
The above is not meant to be contradictory to your point, just a consideration to the general faults all humans hold.
One explanation I have for this is that precisely because empathy is a more rare experience for them, it becomes a more remarkable one, perhaps even overwhelming at times. This leads them to believe that they experience it more than or more intensely than others, when on the contrary the rest of the world is simply more habituated to it and integrate it more gracefully in their ordinary experience.
The other interpretation is that it requires certain level of narcissism or egotism to describe oneself in such flattering terms.
Or ultimately, as the Spanish proverb says: dime de que presumes y te diré de que careces.
Probably some degree of all of this is true in most cases.
It’s easy to use a diagnosis as an excuse not to connect. But it’s a lame excuse. It is much more interesting to understand what tools we need to gain to connect with the world. Sometimes I need to be an anthropologist. Sometimes I need to be a crime scene investigator. Usually I just need to listen better.
When I was in a wheelchair I had to use ramps instead of the stairs. But that didn’t stop me from going to the movies
maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels meaningless.
i "solved" the problem by moving to a country with a different native language and culture. this raises the barrier to communicate and it seems to have an effect of curbing smalltalk.
while in a wheelchair, how comfortable were you asking for help? that would be the biggest challenge for me.
I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports.
Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plane ride last weekend with an absolute stranger. We talked about the differences in our family dynamics, what cities we find it easier and harder to make friends in, the current state of our relationships and what we wanted out of them. All of that was “small talk” because we were just passing the time with someone we will never meet again. But the subjects were not small.
A side effect of feeling comfortable talking about things that matter to you is that it gives you a lot more motivation to be curious and interested in things that matter to other people as well. Even better, if you share with people more deeply about how you are feeling, they will be able to help you in ways that you didn’t even realize were possible
Some people have very funny ways at looking at the most mundane context in my mind. It would be a shame if I didnt spend time sharing my funny head in ways that can't be captured in a record!
but those topics you shared on the plane, well that's not small talk to me. i totally would have enjoyed being part of that conversation. as i get older, i can speak from experience. i can talk about my feelings that i have and had, because now i understand them. and, as a bonus effect, as you get older people treat you with more respect, which makes talking about any topic easier.
so i am bad at talking about banal, to me meaningless topics, and while it is getting easier, i don't actually have any interest in engaging in those topics because they not only feel like a waste of time, they are a waste of my time that i want to spend more meaningfully, like reading a book.
I can't talk most of the time, that does stop me from having a conversation yes.
Processing Sensory information takes priority over social circuits in my brain, physically.
So I am unapologetically autistic and no I don't have to break my brain to try to fit in.
If people find my disabilities upsetting thats stereotype ableism and yes it happens often
This speaks to me quite a bit, particularly around unfalsifiable topics I'll have with friends/family, such as theology. If we define hope as the idea they'll change their mind and agree with me, seems not much one can do but retreat into themself, right? I suppose I can sympathize with their sentiment before I retreat into myself, but taking this bullet point at face value I'm unsure how to make this a pro-social experience :/
In my experience the only way to really connect across those divides is to first have a long history, months or years, of productive and positive social interaction. But you don’t get control how others think and feel, even if by some theoretical measure, your position is “right”. So even under the best of circumstances you just have to accept and resist that others think differently.
edit: also the article is sarcastic. You shouldn't retreat into yourself just because you cannot agree on something. Talk about something else.
See the (very rare, statistically) experiencers of spontaneous remissions the Catholic Church declares miraculous healings, such as Dafne Gutierrez:
https://catholic-miracles.com/miracle/charbel-makhlouf-dafne...
I'm not personally sure that's a supernatural event, but if I'd had my eyes deteriorating for years, undergone multiple failed surgeries to stave off blindness, become fully blind, had doctors tell me I was irrepairably blind, and lived without eyesight for years, then had it come back within two days of praying to a Catholic saint for healing...
Well, I doubt I'd still be agnostic after that.
To me that doesn't follow logically. What if instead of praying to some saint, they found their lucky underwear that they lost when they were a child, and wore that for the first time again? Would that proof that the lucky underwear was somehow instrumental in fixing their eyes?
Apparently the body was able to heal her own eyes, and it would have happened if she prayed to the saint or not.
No, obviously not, as there's no reason to believe the underwear are sentient.
Rapidly getting what you ask for, when experts have generally agreed it's impossible, would be very striking.
> Apparently the body was able to heal her own eyes
There's no more evidence for that claim than there is for the claim that a saint did it.
Indeed, the fact that medical personnel say "This does not happen" is arguably evidence against the "it was a natural coincidence" interpretation.
I don't mean to suggest that anyone experiencing such a healing should or would necessarily become religious.
I'm just saying that personally, given my other life experiences this far, I probably would ratchet my probability of there being some unnatural power capable of intervening in the universe from ~55% to 90%, if I experienced sudden, dramatic healing of incurable blindness promptly after praying for it.
And, returning to my original point, there are people out there who asked for something vanishingly rare to the point that some experts label it impossible, then get it quite rapidly after praying for it.
That's a fairly reasonable reason to believe in a personal God of some sort, even if it's not the only plausible explanation.
I bet if you observe your own mind for long enough, you'll find some part of your life which requires you to have faith too. Use that to understand your friends and family better. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with them about religion, ask them about their faith (not their religion). You will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how they navigate the world.
If you can have that conversation, go ahead and ask them about their religious beliefs, withholding judgement unless/until they say something morally objectionable. You can think of their religion like any other mythology, and you get to play sociologist for a while. There's a fascinating variety of responses people give to even fundamental questions - e.g. "what is god?".
This open approach is not only much easier for everyone, it's also more useful in the long term. My neighbor has an interesting mashup of beliefs that includes a decent chunk of Christianity. She sometimes has bad anxiety, and unfortunately she can't afford treatment for it. I've helped her out of panic attacks using two methods: 1 - I've given her a clonazepam tablet and 2 - I've quoted scripture to her (e.g. "behold the lilies of the field"). Both methods work, and the latter tends to work faster.
It's different if the person is using their religion as a cover for engaging in or supporting something morally evil. That's a trickier conversation and often one not really worth having, depending on your relationship and how comfortable/willing you are to attempt to correct them.
Calling theology "unfalsiable" is ignorant. Like saying math is unfalsiable, because there are multiple geometries and nobody understands it anyway.
That's a lot easier and comes off more natural IMO.
Put less kindly: there’s nothing so special about you that being yourself around a new person should cause such a panic. Even if they take an instant dislike to you, that should be something you can take in stride
I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario
For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too
I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)
Definitely check out a therapist because this type of thinking isn't only toxic to yourself but it's not how the world really works.
You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this?
Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No
Very very few orators can successfully pull off "just fix your problems bro" as anything beyond a generic kick in the pants for the people presently predispositioned to be motivated by one.
Now that I’m in my 30s I have the joy of helping my friends along on this journey called life. Sometimes people just need a gentle nudge up the staircase. Sometimes they need to be carried against their will
It's like your friends wanna party raid but they keep going in with incomplete builds
I only got so much patience before I find a new guild
One of my therapists said it was normal in her circle for people not to get onto someone's case if they're mentally unwell and have chores piling up, because it makes sense they don't have as much effort to give to all aspects of life. At the time I didn't understand this statement, because up until then my only contacts were people who, although they didn't go as far as "bullying" me into compliance, had told me in effect that how I felt about my life was irrelevant to whether or not I was fulfilling every single one of my adult responsibilities. What ultimately worked for me wasn't those contacts who said there were no excuses, but my therapist who decided not to frame my decisions in terms of "excuses".
For me this kind of thing hurts because:
1. There's not any room for compassion or slack. I'm not talking about people who take advantage of others' goodwill. Even if you try to help with this "no excuses" mentality, the other person could start to worry if the next inadvertent slip-up or setback counts as an "excuse" they'll be looked down upon for. This kind of thought will linger and reduce the effectiveness of the intervention.
2. Your feelings aren't listened to, or if they are it's only at a level superficial enough to obtain compliance. This is bad enough on its own. What might not be obvious is if the person has had a life marked by repeated instances of their feelings being shut down or not listened to, especially in childhood, this approach only backfires that much harder. These are emotional patterns that have been established in critical periods/over a long period of time that are being relieved at a much higher intensity than the average population. And most importantly, you can't know for sure if something like this applies until you get to know the person better, which is why a lot of one-off prescriptive advice towards strangers is ineffective.
3. The advice-giver is often successful/came out of hardship themselves, so by being looked down upon as irresponsible it gives the impression that you're being excluded from the in-group of mentally well/recovered people. Avoiding exclusion from a group is one of the biggest sources of strife today, as modern politics and social media indicate. And being mentally stable is often one of the most important groups to be included in for people who know they're depressed, so it hurts even more.
All of this is integral to me working with my current therapist, so I don't see what it has to do with depression not fixing itself.
as i said, i don't know what it takes, but i do think that compassion, patience, and recognition of efforts and absence of any hint of blame by others are part of it.
> not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.
It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections.
"Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.
what if (a) I hate leading questions, (b) by default only smile when bad/tragic things happen (eg "train crash leaves 100 dead and maimed"), (c) I'm quite bad at listening bc if you don't say interesting things often/densely enough my mind adhd-s away, and (d) interrupting is second-nature to me?
...advice may be good, but for some of us it's like 99% of ourselves that we need to dial down in order to carry on a successful interaction - it works, but takes a hell lot of energy
You’re allowed to be weird. Weird people make the best conversation because you don’t know where they’re gonna go