I'm a few years out of grad school, working at a tech company, and single. I came from an academic background where talking about interesting ideas and concepts was the norm. I had a pretty uncommon career path into tech and I'm not some coder.
My experience is that when you're in my position, it's getting harder and harder (with age) to find people who are interested in talking about ideas, entertaining the curiosities in life without some agenda/getting offended by the controversial ones, talking about possibilities and concepts (rather than objects). Like having conversations on advanced mode with people who are similar.
Often times at parties, when I get bored, I think of a quote, "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events/things. Small minds discuss wine."
It's getting more and more common that I find people just wanting to talk about wine. Or the equivalent. Stuff that's completely forgettable after you leave the party. I mean that stuff is fine, and there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then?
Or if I do meet people who are intellectually interesting, how to get more connected or where to take it after a chance meeting and pleasant chat?
That said, what do I have to offer at this stage of my life either, to a stranger? I'm unmarried, so I don't have kids or the mortgage to talk about. I'm not a CEO or someone powerful. Also I'm single -- what are people supposed do with that? Don't have a lot of great reasons for anyone to want to go out of their way to spend more time with me after even an interesting 30 min conversation, without some other excuse.
We're not all living close together in shared housing to make intellectually stimulating conversations natural and prolonged. People have their lives to lead, not sit around talking about theoretical ideas. To contact the few people I've found who are interesting would be... how? "Would you like to schedule a get-together again for a conversation date?"
It's not going to get easier either. Probably in a few years I'll be the really odd guy. Eh, it's a life choice I've made, I realize that too -- to be more interested in ideas and experiences than say... people.
I figure I'd better find some interesting hobbies to make up for the lack of intellectual stimulation. But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom? So, sometimes I think of changing jobs just to see more of the world and gather experiences to be able to have more intellectually stimulating conversations. Learn about VC? Hear about more companies? Where/how?
Yeah, it's a bit of a problem sometimes to ponder.
That's what I miss about college. A friend of mine at Caltech would regularly have chicken wing night at his apartment a few steps from campus. All were invited, and as his chicken wings were to die for, it would be well attended.
The owner of the apartment building, an older fellow, would also come by. He'd just sit quietly in a corner, munching on chicken wings. After a few times of this, I asked him, why are you coming here hanging out with people 30 years younger? Don't you find us boring?
He said no, no. This is fascinating! Nowhere else have I encountered people who talk about the things you guys do. I just marvel at it!
> "Would you like to schedule a get-together again for a conversation date?"
Sounds pretty good - try it! The person you were talking to may feel exactly the same way.
And interesting hobbies? Definitely yes. Try getting into playing an instrument for example. If you like it, it will keep you busy the rest of your life if you want.
> But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom?
If I get to feeling like this, I like to think about my 2 cats. I love having them, they obviously love being around me, because they are within sight most of the time. But what is their purpose for existence? Do we all need a purpose for existence, or is the fact that we do exist good enough? Speaking of pets, that's another great thing to try out. Having something else living with you takes you out of your head.
We are human beings, not human doings. If you feel like doing something, great. If not, just ... be.
I think most people in this thread misunderstood the meaning behind the post (or maybe I did). This isn't about one's superiority, it's about the fact that there aren't enough people interested in talking about ideas.
People here said that someone like that would get bored if others picked the wrong topics. I don't think so. Even when I don't have a direct interest in a topic, I'm always open to learning more. But as you said, and I think this is what the article meant, many people do not have the habit of intellectual discussion. Yes, they are able to communicate, but their interests are shallow.
There was an argument here about how there's no difference between citing Plato and knowing everything about Manchester United (I think this is what MU meant). It depends. If you are only citing Plato because this is what you were taught, then there is no difference. It's a big difference if you cite Plato when you're trying to figure out why something is the way it is and you find out he had similar interests and ideas about it. The key isn't the imitation itself, but the reason why it's done. Otherwise, it's just another cargo cult.
I don't know if it's laziness of mind, cheap dopamine or something else, but it's rare to meet someone with real interests, one who's passionate about struggling with ideas, playing with them, discussing them.
I'm no big sports fan. And if a bunch of friends start talking about the whatever last second play in yesterday's game or the player stats, trades, etc. I'm pretty tuned out. I will never remember the people or players and what they did in that game that seemed so amazing to others.
But if one person starts talking about how the business of a sports franchise works, who makes money and who doesn't, the operating costs of a team, and the dynamics between owners and players, I'm all ears.
Maybe I just want to understand how the more complicated things work. It's not that interesting to talk about how he slid into home and nearly got tagged out.
There can be a reasonable level of nuance and detail in many sports (if not most sports conversations!)
But most people don’t care about the why’s or the how’s on or off the field, and mainly just want to brag about their team (or complain if their team is bad.)
I'm also a few years out of grad school and weird in a few ways in STEM circles.
I wonder how much of this is age related and how much of it is that people just have less mental room for intellectual endeavors than they used to? I was raised by what I would consider 'engaged citizens': Neither of my parents had college degrees or 'fancy' jobs (my dad's white collar semi-professional accounting gig was the top of the line for my family), and they followed ideas. We discussed news articles, stuff in science magazines and online, etc. One topic my dad (60s) and I keep returning to is that the world requires way more of his brain power than it did 30 years ago.
It's less and less feasible to maintain an interest in ideas if you aren't folded into a profession or career that lets you combine your interest with your work.
Take the difference in single versus dual income households, for example. I have lots of time for ideas because I've got someone doing the household chores. (And likewise, my sister has a lot of time for HER hobbies because I'm breadwinning for us). Now throw that on top of the pile with everybody outside of tech feeling like their employment is precarious, inflation, the pandemic, and general social instability, and I wouldn't be shocked if people just don't have the bandwidth.
I just got out of legally enforced poverty in 2019 and the difference not being in survival mode made to my ability to have intellectual interests and conversations is IMMENSE.
> That said, what do I have to offer at this stage of my life either, to a stranger? I'm unmarried, so I don't have kids or the mortgage to talk about. I'm not a CEO or someone powerful. Also I'm single -- what are people supposed do with that?
Uh, you're single? That's amazing! The world is your oyster! If you think you're boring now, just wait until you're a cleaning, feeding, peek-a-booing family machine.
But why waste time discussing politics, climate change, etc. when we can't change anything anyway?
Isn't it better to discuss wine and food and holidays and enjoy the little time we have together? Isn't that actually the most intelligent thing to do?
Wine itself is worthy of deep intellectual discussion, relating to a huge breadth of specialized knowledge: chemistry, biology, social sciences, logistics, engineering, agriculture and so on.
And sure, discussing wine can be posturing. It can also serve as a simple topic to establish social connection for people who are otherwise not entirely comfortable.
From there you can ask questions about what people care about, what they are afraid of, what they love, what they would do in a world without wine, experienced they have had or how they would act in a difficult hypothetical situation.
Ideas, experiences and people don’t have to be entirely discrete things.
One way to increase the number of conversations like this is to say yes to other people’s line of thought. I learned about “yes, and” in an improv class. Have fun with the idea, build it, explore it… try not to shoot it down or debate it. It’s fun to hang out with people who riff on an idea.
You absolutely set a date for intellectual conversation, and foster a network of relationships with just intellectual people. I have a whole host of friends who I basically only see for this. I wouldn't hesitate to invite them to a party to chat about wine either though. The reality is intellectual ideation as an activity uses your mouth and you make word sounds but is not a typical human activity that just comes up in conversation unless you force it. It's like wanting to always drive around in an formula 1 car or use a fighter jet to get the groceries.
As a soon-to-be PhD, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I think this is one of the major hidden costs of grad school: the tendency to constantly overintellectualize stuff, and a reduced empathic capacity for the lay person.
Most people are implantation people, not academics, so that’s what you’ll usually meet. Speaking from the point of view of implementation, it’s hard to engage with academics who want to discuss objectively impossible flights of fancy. But it can be really neat to find the intersection of academic interests that are borderline implementable.
Some would call it narrow mindedness, some would call it focus.
If you miss shared housing, why did you move out of it ? I've tried living alone in my early college days, that was probably a good experience (even though made me kind of waste a few years), I don't think that I would ever do that again...
At least you have some conversations on HN with others. Let's hope the replies are not just created by AI :) Conferences are nice times to meet and discuss with like-minded, pity Covid took that away (virtual doesn't work as well)
> "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events/things. Small minds discuss wine."
To counter with a more famous quote: "in vino veritas."
A conversation's quality is the product of each participant's contributions, so perhaps there are ways you can enliven or guide the conversation to improve the experience for everyone. (Chances are you aren't the only person secretly thinking it's dull.)
> there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then?
Next you can use those shared topics to move beyond the what to the why, from facts to opinions, and from those to deep truths about ourselves and our world.
"Oh cool you liked Batman v Superman? I couldn't see past the explosions, what did you like about it that I must've missed?"
"Well the way the villain pitted the two heroes against each other reminded me of how when I was younger…"
or
"Well the scene where Superman gets nuked in orbit but then revives from the sun made me wonder about how radiation…"
One should be genuinely curious as well as kind, because unlike sharing facts, sharing opinions or questions inherently creates vulnerability. You might've been getting at this, but in today's political powder keg, (fear of) visceral reactions to unorthodox opinions, facts, and even word choice impose significant barriers to reaching that next level of intimacy where you can share feelings and half-formed opinions. Still, it's not impossible to create that environment quickly, it just takes skill and the understanding that sometimes the immediate conditions just aren't right.
> sometimes I think of changing jobs just to see more of the world and gather experiences to be able to have more intellectually stimulating conversations. Learn about VC? Hear about more companies?
Not to write off an entire profession, but I doubt venture capitalists can hold a candle to journalists when it comes to interesting experiences or conversations. I had far more interesting stories to tell when I worked in retail than when I worked in tech. Perhaps status is getting conflated with "having good conversations at parties" a little bit here.
I took a ten year break from reading books. Instead I programmed, read blog posts, followed the news, and had a few good talks with friends here and there.
When I started reading again my world caught on fire. A good book is vastly, unimaginably better than doom scrolling, and the wealth of ideas and history and inspiration that starts to accumulate as you read more is life changing. For example, I learned how to properly build habits, how my childhood in a cult came about and what other people who left have done to come to terms with it, and endless interesting facts about lifelong hobbies and interests. Reading is great.
Reading the right books is great. 95% of published books are garbage (much like 95% of TV). I've read an awful lot of books, and finally realized that very few books are worth the time to read.
I have started to find a perverse pleasure in reading bad books. At least this is why I tell myself when I am wringing reading out of something awful I've bought.
"Oh my god, they're not going to do predictable thing __X__ are they? Bwahaha"
"Hahahaha, this dialog is completely unbelievable"
"Welp, that unwinds all the interesting things happening in that character's arc."
A couple things that laughter can't even redeem:
- Incessant deus ex machina. The prose can be good, the dialog believable, the world interesting, and the characters likable... but if all the problems just get waved away in some random unpredictable way, that's infuriating.
- Even worse: when a POV character has an ace up their sleeve the entire time that could have been played at any point to avoid all the conflict, and the only reason why we're in suspense is that POV character didn't share that with us.
I’ve done the same but with TV! My all time favorite TV show is “The 100”. It’s incredibly dumb and has so many plot holes it’s honestly amazing. However it never gets boring! Really would recommend it if you like that kind of stuff.
Same, but my genre has become terrible historical romance. I get many groans of enjoyment from the terrible similes (no, you can't compare what she's experiencing to that; it wasn't invented for another 150 years), the inaccuracies, and being able to plot the whole thing within the first 10 pages mostly accurately.
The problem with books is that, while there are a lot of good books with good content, 5% of it is good content while 95% is filler material to get the book to a certain amount of pages in order to sell it.
I read a ton and this is my #1 complaint about nonfiction (and sometimes fiction too). I’ve read two books recently that broke this pattern (replacing guilt by Nate Soared, and hell yeah or no by Derek Sivers). It was a huge breath of fresh air, to not find myself skimming over the 32nd time the author feels the need to restate the premise of the book in only slightly different terms. Most authors just don’t have 200 pages of insight into whatever they’re writing about; I’m not sure why exactly they all feel the need to write 200-300 pages anyway.
I’m not sure where the disconnect lies, between the people that view this as a huge problem with nonfiction and the rest. I don’t think it’s book selection, because I’ll often read a book where I felt the last half was 90% rehashing, and in the reviews no one else will mention that the author ran out of interesting things to say halfway through.
I find this true for some of the recent horde of nonfiction books with names like “numb: the astounding new science of how your leg falls asleep”. Their topic is usually fascinating, but the content is full of random stories, speculation, and drawn out conclusions.
If you ask me at different times I'll give different answers, but some are just on top:
War of the Worlds, Lord of the Rings, The Mote in God's Eye, Replay, Earth Abides, 20000 Leagues Under The Sea, 2001, Nothing Like It In The World, Reach For The Sky, Winnie The Pooh, The Last of the Mohicans, The Hunt for Red October, With the Old Breed, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman, Moby Dick, Shogun, Romeo and Juliet
I agree! I'm a voracious reader but I am very put off by books that I find to be, to borrow the phrase, "garbage." I spend a lot of time curating my reading list, as a result, and I'm always on the lookout for solid recommendations.
Hey there. I'm not sure where I'd start, to be honest. My wife and I recently had our 3rd child. As a result, I've been opting for easier reading material over the last ~4 months. I don't really maintain reading lists, or lists of reading recommendations. But, I do endorse the books that I read and enjoy.
Here are the books I've read in the last 4 months, not in order:
* Frank Herbert - Dune
* J.R.R. Tolkein - The LotR trilogy + The Silmarillion
* Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot
* Stephen King (short story) - Jerusalem's Lot
* Stephen King (short story) - The Night Flier
* Stephen King (short story) - The Children of the Corn
* Stephen King - The Stand (uncut version)
* Stanisław Lem - The Cyberiad
* John Whyndham - The Day of The Triffids
* Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
* Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep
Okay, so... Dune was a re-read ahead of the film release. LotR was a re-read that was provoked by some conversations I had with a group of friends (who form a loose book and movie club) after we discussed the Dune film and books / universe.
Lots of comparisons were being drawn to LotR (both the books and the film adaptations) and I wanted to confirm that my memory of Tolkein's prowess and effectiveness as a writer were accurate (they were).
I had never read Stephen King before this year and I found that I quite liked him. I started with 'Salem's Lot and Jerusalem's Lot because of the TV series Chapelwaite (an adaptation of Jerusalem's Lot -- I am a fan of horror film and television) which I want to watch.
I really liked King, so I pushed a little deeper. I'll come back to him later this year.
The books that remain are Sci-Fi books that I had either had on my own backlog (Roadside Picnic and A Fire Upon the Deep) or were recommendations that I saw in HN comments (The Cyberiad and The Day of the Triffids).
edit/ There were probably between 4 and 6 books that I started, read a few chapters of, and put down in this time frame, too, FWIW.
This is unfortunately true. It's hard to find the books that will shake your world, apart of the obvious ones like the classic Russian authors.
There are plenty of "if you like book x you'll also like y" recommendation sites out there but so far I have had zero success with their findings.
I expect you already have some books you’ve been ‘noticing’. They might get recommended a lot on Hacker News - Atomic Habits, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, A Thousand Brains, that sort of thing. Time to learn what all the fuss is about!
A habit I’ve picked up is to follow the deaths of famous authors (the NYT will feature one on regularly on their home page). When that happens, I like to read about their life and oeuvre and pick up one of their most famous books, which is usually both very interesting and worthwhile.
You can also just go to Barnes and Noble and wander around. Find the genre you like, poke around, and you’ll probably recognize some of the titles or authors, which is often a good sign.
If you have some favorite authors, look up their lesser known books! The fact that you liked their other work is a good sign.
Over time, you will develop a long list of books on your list so you can start getting more selective. Check the Goodreads reviews. Try to understand how this book fits into the bigger picture and whether it or the subject seem significant to you.
Honestly, it’s hard to go wrong early on. Imagine you were just being exposed to film/tv for the first time and you ask for recommendations. ‘I dunno, Breaking Bad? The Godfather? Titanic?’ Even though there’s a lot of trash out there, the best books, like the best movies, are easy to find and there are tons of rankings and compilations.
Develop questions you want to answer and then find the books that will help you to do so. If you have an active interest in a book you'll get a lot more out of it.
Don't just read books because they have a good reputation in general.
That's a great idea, but still, You should remember that You do not even know all questions You can ask, thus reading books that has reputation can broaden horizon in ways that You can't event imagine (or alternatively You can try to build computer that will find the question).
Business oriented: try your hand at any of the best books on x, by forbes. Google the list "forbes list of best books". Its prob circa 2010ish. They put books on leadership (annapurna, great read), entrepreneurship, product (beijing jeep), etc etc. Some really solid stuff
Pulitzer lists: Just go on wikipedia anf look at winners by year. For example, controversial but interesting : guns germs and steel.
Reco engines: I think i used tastekid a loog time ago. Type in a book, it would give you recommendations on books you might like. With advances in ML, I'm sure there are tons of engines doing the same now
A few news orgs in my area have a jury going which every month selects ten non-fiction books. I regularly buy one off of that list. It's in German though. While some of the books are originally English, they only provide the translated title and the list is of limited use if you don't read German.
One thing I found out a few days ago was that I was extremely easy to be distracted when learning from computer resources (pdf, online videos).
I wish I could revert to my university learning style (late 1990s~early 2000s) which has zero internet and we had to figure out things from books even for experimental classes (e.g. back then no one had the luxury to have one's own electronics lab for introductory electronics classes, so we had to cherish the time in lan sections and read books for questions we couldn't solve in lab). It was a bit like learning programming in 60/70s -- you submit a program to mainframe and get the result next morning.
Ah but how do you know if a book is good until you’ve read it? I’m an avid reader and I’ve yet to run out of new books to read, going on 25 years of reading novels at this point.
Same way that you won’t know whether drugs are really that bad unless you’ve personally tried them, which doesn’t mean you must try them. You build a taste for books, skim through it, read reviews from people you trust... I suppose everyone has their own way of measuring a book before diving into it, and one can of course quit in the middle of it should one make the wrong decision.
Bad analogy. The entire premise of that hypothetical situation with trying drugs is that the potential risk of trying the bad ones is high (potentially your health or life).
In contrast, what’s the price of reading a book and realizing it is awful? Literally nothing except the time you spent reading it. Hardly life-ruining.
If your problem is just the metaphor, just replace it with someone's momma's cooking that everyone raves about. You can taste a bit of it and you don't have to eat the whole thing, neither do you have to try it. The point stands. And honestly the concern is rather petty.
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy does all of those and is worth a read. Mostly you want to read each story template roughly once, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is pretty unique and touches on a lot of story templates so is efficient.
> Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
The second paragraph back there does start "Together, this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by...", but IMO the Hitchhiker's Guide doesn't really fit the proposed pattern very well: There's a lot more to it than just the bland stock phrases.
But I do think that simple stories are also worth a read if you haven't read those kinds yet. There is a reason for kids to read simple stories, if you didn't read them before it might be worth to read them even as an adult to fill a hole. So basically if it looks like you have already read the story then there is no need to read it again.
Btw, I didn't downvote you, I never up/downvote people. I do like responding to downvoted people though.
I put down at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the books that I start. I have very limited time to read (3 kids under 3 years, etc.). I won't spend that resource doing something that I am not enjoying. How do you do it?
That’s interesting! I have interests in history and fiction as well so the surface area probably feels much larger to me. I’m also a slow reader — sadly, though my siblings can read hundreds of pages an hour, I’m more like ‘hours per hundred page.’
I had opposite experience. I attempted to start reading fiction again multiple times. Most books were boring. That includes classics - they were much less great then I remembered. It includes also pure "for fun" books.
Some did interested me, but they were rare. When I have to try 15 books to find 1 I like, it becomes frustrating and expensive.
There's a lot of talk about good books, but I do think when I was younger I challenged myself more by reading difficult books at the edge of my reading abilities. That stuff was rewarding but also exhausting. These days I'm exhausted by plenty of other stuff so easy books are more satisfying.
Smoothly ditching a party they don't feel stimulated by is not the worst strategy in the world. But some people I know have the skill of finding a subject of conversation with practically everyone they meet at a party. One of them has literally talked to British Royalty, yet seemed to have no difficulty holding a conversation with a man with limited education, some substance abuse issues, and assorted other difficulties in life.
It seems to me that this is a valuable skill to aspire to. And if at first glance nobody at the party seems to have anything in common with you — maybe that's all the more of an opportunity to hear about views and experiences outside one's usual circles?
The ability to speak to anyone doesn’t necessarily mean that you never feel lonely at parties. Good conversation is a two way street after all, and if you can’t find someone to challenge or interest you, then you can talk to people all night and not really get anything out of it. I think we all know that feeling, even those who aren’t as “gifted” socially as others.
I don’t think the solution is what the author does though. I mean, If you really can’t find someone interesting to engage with at any party or social event… I mean it’s a cliche to say this, but maybe it’s you?
> The ability to speak to anyone doesn’t necessarily mean that you never feel lonely at parties
The ability to extract valuable entertainment or information from all conversations is, though. I am no expert in this, and I have actively fled from conversations that started to center on someone's hobby horse without much escape or diversion, but I know people who can enter a conversation on anything and, even just by asking smart questions, emerge better from them.
You can still feel lonely while asking those questions and keeping other party engaged. Because it is one way discussion. You are saying things to engage and fun the other person. But you yourself is not getting connected nor feeling like you are engaged or expressing yourself.
I mean, it can be fun and enjoyable, but it does not help loneliness, no more then business meeting.
> It seems to me that this is a valuable skill to aspire to.
It's simple actually, the techniques in winning friends and influencing people is a good place to start. Most people love talking about themselves and their interests. In reality, for anyone seeking relationships and real connections, "tricking" people to talk about what they want is empty, hallow, and disappointing. It will almost never be reciprocated.
The banality of everyday Life is soul-crushing leading to ennui. I think it is in large part due to our consumerist/distraction-filled society (itself a product of Technology) and catering to the lowest common denominator in everything.
Questions plaguing me:
- Why do i need to conform to social mores?
- Why must i accommodate myself to "popular culture"?
- Why don't people stop what they are doing, take a step back and ask themselves "Where are We and How did We get Here"?
- What have we "Gained" and What have we "Lost"?
- What exactly has "Progressed" and what "Regressed"?
- Why don't people want to face "Reality" but are willing to live in any "Fantasy" of their making/subscribing?
- Is this all there is to my Life?
- How do i cope with the utter meaninglessness of it all?
My answer is to shut myself away from Society and live within my Head, alone and lonely. But Books provide a coping mechanism by getting me out of my Head and providing me new experiences through that of the author.
Social mores are a chesterton's fence - they exist for a reason. That may be a terrible reason, but there is _some_ reason. Identify the reason and then reject it, but until you identify the reason you can't form a meaningful response.
Social Mores/Popular Culture all exist to bind oneself to a "Group Identity". The problem with today's hyper-connected society is that it has become so pervasive that it is impossible to escape it completely. You have to learn to live both within and apart from it.
You grouped all social mores into a single reason and provided a criticism at the same time. That suggests you have entirely failed to consider them deeply; we did not gain our social mores in one fell swoop.
I don't think even the social mores of breaking bread or offering your guests food and water came from the same place.
- Why do i need to conform to social mores?
- Why must i accommodate myself to "popular culture"
My response to this is because people who conform to social mores and have at least a little accomodation to popular culture are more interesting and relatable people. People who don't are grating and can be very difficult to live with and be around.
Being able to relate to and get along with others makes life a whole lot more fulfilling.
What you point out is a coping mechanism and not the answer to the questions themselves. The questions are about the dichotomy between the need for Individual Identity vs. the need for Group Identity.
A rather flippant and presumptuous comment (i am already middle aged :-).
As Krishnamurti said; "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
The point is not that the questions are special/unique; it is that they are fundamental, perennial and plague everybody (the "me" is just a placeholder). The tragedy of existence is that there can be no settled answer to them and each of us have to find out for himself or subscribe to somebody else's answer.
But then again as Camus said; "Beginning to Think is beginning to be undermined".
Your start with realizing something is not quite right but unable to place your finger on it, begin asking questions each of which only reveals the rest of the layers of the onion and before you know it are starting to suffer from cognitive dissonance. You then abandon looking for answers and start to focus on learning to cope with the non-answers and getting on with your Life.
Create an alternative, lead the way, show that there's a different kind of life out there that can exist. No-one else will do it for you.
Actually, there are a lot of people who do that, but they are not the majority. They are these people you probably look up to; they are these people who have said: "Ok, enough is enough. I gotta try this, I gotta face my fears, and just take the leap of faith, because it's the only viable way for me to live my life fully". Anyone who tries to do things a bit differently has to be able to stand alone, I would think, but not in isolation, but as a negation to whatever they are trying to fight against.
Right. My comment in the context of this thread was to shine some light on the causes of "Intellectual Loneliness". It is not as some people have argued here, a desire to show off one's intellectual superiority nor self-aggrandizement nor lack of social skills etc. etc. Instead it is the consciousness of these unresolved questions which gives rise to the dissonant mental state.
You don't really need to conform, nobody is forcing you. You will just get different things out of conforming or not.
I live like a complete stranger where I am, I spend 99.9% of my time alone. Read alone, eat alone, walk alone, sleep alone.
Most of my life is about coding, reading and walking long distances accros countries. And I am pretty happy about my life right now.
I get to have a life where I make almost no compromise, I live so cheaply that I don't really even need to work anymore.
But then you are missing out on having kids, spending time with friends, family, having stability, a dog, a hobby you can pursue, chitchat, routine, etc.
Again, nobody is forcing you to anything, it seems like you just need to take a few days just by yourself, facing your own thought and exploring what you really want to do.
The thing I find stupid in this article, is that the author goes to a party and leave early because he does not like partying.
Well, I don't either. But I have learnt that I don't a long time ago. So I don't go to parties. I don't need to make up excuses about why I am leaving.
Yes of course! Great essay (i had known of it earlier as "The Last Man") and i do subscribe to some of its viewpoints. For anybody who wants a quick overview of the main points the wikipedia page does a great job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Messiah
This is the opposite of intelligence. Intelligent people find a lot of things interesting and love learning.
An intelligent person will find any profession or hobby interesting, and thus everyone is interesting.
Saying everyone is a bore is a hallmark of a lack of intelligence. You are basically saying “I only have a very narrow set of topics I find interesting. I’m so void of intellectual curiosity, I’m not interesting in expanding my mind or knowledge into other topics.”
> Intelligent people find a lot of things interesting and love learning.
No, I think being interested in things is a completely different dimension from intelligence. You can be average in intelligence and extremely high in being interested. Or you can be high in intelligence and very depressed, then you don't have interest in anything.
I think many intelligent people are prone to depression, and it may manifest itself in this fashion. It is not as simple as rationalizing your way out of it. Nothing here indicates they don't love learning.
We all have field of knowledge that we interest, and something we don't. I think it's more about the lacking of people to talk and share the same interest as your aka the same "tribe", than the amount of curiosity.
Trust me, people who don't keen on learning won't write a blog post like this. Overthinking, overanalyzing and full of self-doubt is the sign of intelligence. :)
I know someone who has social anxiety that drives them from social events, but also makes it difficult for them to do small talk. So instead, they read. A lot. Literature, science, philosophy, gardening... That's where the next problem comes in. They find some fascinating fact and think "this is so interesting, next time I'm tongue tied, I'll remember to mention it!". That's when they realise that most people want to talk about what they ate for breakfast, who won the sports event, what their 6 year old said to teacher, whether some famous person is an asshole or not. Not a lot of people want to get down into the belly of a complex subject, debate the finer points of some issue. And that's fine, but my friend just can't do that type of conversation for more than a minute or two before going completely blank and then making some excuse for moving on.
Worse, there are people who take offence at intellectual conversation. Anything from mild annoyance ("huh? What are you talking about?") to outright insult ("Oh, somebody swallowed a dictionary" / "You think you're so smart")
As someone else pointed out, you can go online and try to find like minded people, but that can be so toxic. And not just the wider internet, but specialist groups that have a lot in common. Why, a knitting group ended up front page on the internet a while back because they tore each other apart in the middle of some purity spiral.
> That's when they realise that most people want to talk about what they ate for breakfast…
This is said pejoratively, but people want to talk about these things because it allows for a two-sided conversation, rather than a unasked-for lecture from someone who’s read ten Wikipedia pages on the topic.
> Not a lot of people want to get down into the belly of a complex subject
My experience is the opposite. People love to do this, when 1) they know something about the topic AND 2) you are genuinely interested in their thoughts.
The “sports event” probably has more complexity and depth than you expect. Why not (literally) meet people where they are?
So I'll answer this from my own perspective as someone with zero social anxiety: I won't meet someone "where they are" if where they are is "Did you see the game last night?". Because they can and will have that same boring conversation with 5 people today. The difference is, I can say "What game? Oh, no, I don't follow sports at all .." but then continue talking about other stuff, and nobody feels awkward. The problem with social anxiety is that it's extremely difficult to just shoot the shit, and when you're trying to be the other end of an intensely boring conversation, for the sake of conversation, you end up looking at yourself from the third person, judging how badly you're feigning interest and failing at being human being. Which is why you store up interesting things for the next conversation, and the process just repeats itself.
As someone who cares 0 for sports, and I was in a conversation with that person, assuming the context lends itself to more than just smalltalk, i would ask any of the:
- ice hockey? i don't know much about ice hockey, what are the rules / what makes team X so good
- do you play sports yourself? what do you like?
- what made you get into watching sports / how often / with whom?
Either you get a sports nerd that can talk at length about games and rules and training and teams and athletes, which is fascinating in a very nerdy way. Or you get someone who plays X with their kid, or has a small dad softball team, at which point you can ask what the other dads do, get a glimpse of a social network outside of your horizon. Or you can get into someone's love of sport and what situations it helped them overcome in their life.
I've had the "did you watch the game last night" conversation at airport bars and I learned so about other people from them. Knowing that people I would at first file under "loud schmuck with a basketball shirt" turns into someone who's been training every day trying to keep prison and addiction at bay is immensely intellectually enriching .
Why do you think that just because you don't have much experience with a topic, that you can't find ways to ask questions to learn more and enjoy that conversation?
It's one kind of soul crushing to realise that the thing you find so fascinating is not something random others can or want to engage with.
It's quite another to find out later you've been ridiculed to others for trying to discuss it at all. :D
Before the internet this kind of "nerd bashing" was just the standard way of the world and you would probably grow a thicker skin without realising it.
Life became a bit more colourful and interesting when we could connect with people all over the world. It really was a seismic shift for a lot of people.
I used to feel like the OP in my teens and early twenties, and then put conscious effort into learning how to listen and talk to people. As I grow older, I am able to find deep intellectual stimulation talking to almost anybody, the prerequisite being that there is some kind of quieter spot at the party itself to allow for conversation.
The "trick" I use to get to that point is to always steer the conversation so that I can learn something new with the next question I am asking, and let the conversation flow from there. Even with people who don't have any deep intellectual pursuits, don't read books, they have lived, come from somewhere, have family, kids, have experiences you didn't have, all of which are surely deep enough to keep your interest for 15 minutes.
It's hard to give much more input without knowing the kind of parties the author is attending in the first place. Living in a bigger US city, almost every event I've been going to (which I'm going to call "parties for nerds"), I feel like the ruffian while people discussing science, art, politics, and I can have a grand time just sitting there and not interacting at all, just taking it in.
And it might totally be the case that the author just doesn't like being around people, but framing it through the lense of intellect is missing out on the richness of people out there.
This hits pretty close to home. Some of the best conversations in my life have been with humanities grad students who are smart and still deeply interested in their subject, but I lost touch with those kind of people. It seems harder to converse about engineering topics though working together on problems kind of hits the same spot.
I think the problem is mental diet. Even though many engineers have a history of interest in humanities, our mental diet doesn’t situate us for regular conversations about it. Or not being in a class together, we’re not all thinking about the same things. We might read the same books but with months or years between so hard to talk about.
This is funny. Yes, some engineers (and I’m an engineer, so it’s fair game) seem only comfortable talking about engineering. You can try to go outside the zone but things only pick up when you get back to DevOps. My best friend is a studio artist (but his parents were engineers).
Leaving a party early because of "intellectual loneliness" is like giving up on dating because you feel that potential dates <insert made-up reason for them not liking you>.
I feel there's just a low likelihood that in any single encounter, that the person is going to be interested in going where you're going. That could be conversations, dating and similar.
Putting your stuff on Twitter is going to get the engagement you're looking for because you have a higher hit rate when you have thousands of viewers. When dating, you probably won't get that specific person to talk to you, but among a large pool, you'll likely find someone who reaches "good enough" territory.
Doing parties right is just improv. Go in with a "yes, and..." style of conversation. If you're learning something, it's about doing better at the improv. Otherwise, just have fun and play.
This, to me, sounds like someone who just doesn’t like the challenge of creating their own narrative. Of course it can be easier to just get lost in books and lectures: those are narratives that are ready made and pre-packaged. It’s much more work to walk into a situation and define your own. But it makes you a much more interesting person.
This is how I've come to cope with social situations too. Life got a lot more interesting when I decided to be interested in trying to learn something from everyone I talk to.
> the war I wage every night when I get a second rush of energy from mind-altering books
Two things I've experienced with this. First is that there seems to be a half-life on this activity. One day one may ask themselves, what tangible benefit have I gained from all these germs of wisdom and information I've gleaned over the years? Second is that invariably, outside of "hard" disciplines, there's nearly always a counter argument or viewpoint that can be equally compelling.
So for myself, the way two decades of intellectual curiosity manifests is the conversations I have with my kids. They generally think I'm a bore, but sometimes I relate something that seems to give them a spark.
To your first point: the sheer pleasure of knowing seems to be the benefit. I feel that it would be difficult to find an answer that suffices more than that does.
To the point about there always being a counterpoint to anything—I’ve come to use that as a justification for how nothing we do, believe, or want is objectively necessary, and what truly matters more is whether we can all get each other to agree on a certain goal to then objectively judge our actions against. It seems to me that that agreement on goal or purpose for our actions is at the core of why people disagree on pretty much any issue.
I think part of it is building understanding of aspects of art/science/history/literature that you find interesting. If you have, say, a deep understanding of the events and context of WWII (a very ambitious goal), it might not have a big outward effect on your life, but it’s very satisfying and opens the door to more fulfilling ways to engage with the subject —- in this case, say, building a collection, or going to a war museum, or meeting other people who are into this.
I’m not saying that existentially it counts for anything but there are usually rewards to learning deeply about any worthwhile subject.
This reads like a very childish piece, something I would have written at 16 when nobody in my little province town would read the same hard books I liked, or listened to the same intellectually stimulating music as me.
People are different and from that difference comes knowledge.
What OP is missing is the interesting different point of views he missed from leaving all of those parties early.
I’m honestly a bit surprised about how this piece got so high on here. I guess that caters to a lot of our inevitable self-entitlement as an online community
I'm facing this. Though without the parties and such.
It seems to go with getting older. My two best friends for intellectual conversation passed away in 2021. Just one such friend is left. TBD how that'll go. Two people can't make for the richness of intellectual conversation that three or four can. And the ghosts of the two who are gone could cast long shadows over the remaining two of us getting together much.
> Two people can't make for the richness of intellectual conversation that three or four can.
Hailing frequency open. (o:
I have found that four or more participants brings verve and more perspectives to the subject. Deeply engaging discussion is far more enjoyable (to me/to some) than tiresome chatter, quips, memes, and n-depth packed nonsense spewed for the sake of content-creation.
The anti-culture of consumer fetishism and media monetisation serves a completely different purpose.
Some of you are clearly going to the wrong parties.
“The best parties are a wild mixture of people. Take some actresses, a bearded painter, your visiting friends from Brussels, a politician, a hairdresser, and then toss them all together. It’s especially important to have all age groups. Of course I wouldn’t want to have hippies come crawling in with unwashed feet, but all the younger people I know are bright and attractive and have something to say and they dress like human beings. Another important party secret is I always add a splash of vodka to everything. Nobody knows and everyone ends up having a wonderful time.” - Joan Crawford
Man, I miss those parties sometimes. I also don't miss the 3am night bus home, already hung over, with the creeping realisation that I spent all night spouting bullshit and may have accidentally committed to joining an extremist political party and/or cult. So, swings and roundabouts
I talk to my kid about this. He's only turning 10 this year but he has solidly intellectual interests. His problem is all the little classmates are into football, and he isn't.
I've told him he simply needs to wait for his friends to grow up. When I was his age, it was not apparent which of my classmates was going to interested in nerd stuff either. It's a thing to wait for, and you're lucky to find one or two other people who are actually into things.
I had a lot of friends growing up, but only a small group who were into the same interests.
Here's the thing though. If your interests are intellectual, you can turn almost anything in that direction. You don't know it yet when you're a child, but just about every interesting thing in the world can be viewed with an intellectual lens.
For instance football and sports in general. The variety of data is so large that people who manage sports teams analyse numbers to decide who the put on the field and how to play them. I have a friend who uses this kind of data to make money, despite him having zero interest in those sports. Sports data talk is also something that makes your input to discussions a bit less tired than the usual tropes people put out.
Business is another one of those topics where being a bit analytical and opening your eyes creates interesting conversations.
Finally, if people just don't want to think, they want to feel. Everyone has an emotional life and often at parties that's what they want to exercise. Get used to talking about ordinary things about life. Family, work, relationships. This is just surface scratching in many ways. You kinda need someone's bio to get an idea of what they care about, so get used to giving your own spiel and listening to others.
> Writing on the Internet is the best way to solve intellectual loneliness because sharing ideas in public turns you into a magnet for like-minded people.
I imagine most people who try writing on the internet don't acquire any audience at all.
I actually found that paragraph rather strange. My experience of writing is the exact opposite: the world as it stands is an internet shouting match among lost souls, and I write precisely because while I have my own thoughts, I want to run away from all the shouting, and I refuse to dignify it by participating in it.
I didn't see that as suggesting an audience. To me it sounds more like online friends who know enough about some of the same interests I have to engage in meaty discussion.
"Intellectual loneliness is a challenge that many people feel, but nobody talks about."
From my experience I've found that to be true throughout my life. One of my best ways of learning is to be in discussion or debate with others but in practice it's just so hard to achieve in practice. Both here on HN and elsewhere I often try to engage others in debate but to little or no avail, as discussion is often over before it's hardly begun and everyone's moved on to another topic.
For whatever reason, these days very few seem to want to expend the effort to get involved in long debates or intellectual arguments and I think that this is a terrible shame as we all need to hone our thoughts and ideas by bouncing them off others - and they don't necessarily form immediately. Weeks may pass by the time we reformulate our thoughts in response to someone's idea or proposition and by then it's often impossible to respond at all let alone in any adequate way.
Nothing typifies this problem more than the comments to most websites - and posts to HN are no exception. Irrespective of the importance or relevance of a subject or topic, it's all but discussed out and dead after 24 hours, and then after a week or two site moderators inevitably kill any further discussion by stopping new posts.
To me, closing further discussion on subjects is the antithesis of what the internet should be all about. Why closing ongoing discussion on websites is such a common practice has always been a mystery to me. (You'd think those running websites would want and welcome ongoing discussion but seemingly not.)
In many ways the internet has made intellectual loneliness even more acute, whilst it's provided us with a fecundity of information and ideas upon which we may ponder it's never really been good at letting us gain full intellectual enjoyment from those ideas through ongoing participation. Whilst we may participate in superficial ways through Twitter etc. we're still lonely. For many, short term shallow participation isn't a substitute for ongoing intellectual stimulation and fulfillment.
I'd also like to see a platform where discussions/debate can meaningfully continue beyond a day or two, but the problem inherent in long discussions is the format results in terrible signal/noise ratio if you let it run for too long.
Think of traditional forum threads with hundreds of pages.
Closing discussions after some time is just a practical matter. When posts are organized by chronology, or even by vote count, discussion cannot scale beyond a few hundred posts without becoming very hard to navigate.
Look at the incentive a new participant has when choosing whether to post in a new or an old thread. A post added deep down a reply chain, or at page 100 of a forum will have very little visibility, it'll be lost in the noise compared to a post in a fresh thread.
I think the way discussion platforms organize information is far from perfect, and noise/visibility/organization is really what puts a practical limit on ongoing discussions.
There's little in what you say that I can disagree with. In fact, most of the difficulties were obvious to me before my post but I concentrated my comments on the higher issues rather than being concerned with the more mundane practical problems that you've rightly mentioned.
As I see it, there are several levels to dealing with the 'messy' posts issue (topics where there are large numbers of replies). In essence, these 'levels' are more different classes of problem and they require different (more specific) solutions.
First, there's the 'uncompleted reply' problem. This where one intends to reply and for various reasons the poster is unable to do so. Reasons may include the cutoff
As happenstance would have it, somehow I accidentally posted this part of my next post whilst still editing it. The fact that I cannot remove this error because of inane web policies illustrates the arcane nature of most forum software. (note: HN is not alone in this regard, it's typical of most.)
The relevant issue here is that the time of this post there is no other post in reply to this error and thus I ought to be able to remove it without disturbing any other part of the forum per se — ah but alas it's not possible as I've already exceeded some arbitrary time limit even though it has absolutely no relevance in this instance.
Instead of just looking at the front page, they're supposed to use the search feature before (necro)posting - most forum FAQs have this front and center.
Many forums forbid reviving old threads, or proactively lock them after a few months.
Searching is great when you have a common question (and when the search feature is vaguely usable!), but empirically it doesn't seem to work very well for anything broader than FAQ type content. Few people use search to navigate forums, and when you do the results aren't great.
They forbid reviving old threads for wrong reasons (in both senses of this phrase : see again : netiquette).
A forum that would prevent continuing previous discussions wouldn't be a forum any more, just another useless waste of time social media (ok, HN isn't too bad, but it's due to the very high quality of the posting here).
It is indeed annoying when the search feature doesn't have something so basic as multiple word search ("in quotes"). But in those cases it can be supplemented by third party search engines (query : "site:").
FAQs, by definition, don't need to be searched (well, except Ctrl+F I guess, but you know what I mean).
Learning to use search is just basic web proficiency that everybody has to learn. And it does work very well in the case of forums, if I had a nickel every time I found some priceless information about an obscure problem in a web forum...
"A forum that would prevent continuing previous discussions wouldn't be a forum any more, just another useless waste of time social media (ok, HN isn't too bad, but it's due to the very high quality of the posting here)."
Agreed. By observation and logic what you say has to be true. What's so stupid and absurd about this situation is that it's so wasteful of ideas and human effort. If there was some way of measuring the efficiency of forums then we'd find that it'd be very close to zero.
If ideas are lost or lose promenance because previous discussions are halted then we cannot easily build on them. That's why we see so much stuff unnessarily duplicated across the web. Not only do posters waste time and effort through either not having seen an earlier identical post (it having already been lost in internet noise) or that they repost elsewhere to try to continue the previously lost thread.
The trouble with reposting is that not all of the important or the most relevant posts from the previously closed forum will make it into any new one.
Again, this wastes the time of both posters and those who'd benefit from reading the posts. In effect, the whole damn forum edifice has to be one of the most waseful and inefficient mechanisms humans have ever devised.
As I've already said in another longwinded post much of the blame falls on the designers of forum software, which when looked at from a global perspective in what it's trying to achieve then we find that it's essentially utter shit. That's to say it's not fit for purpose, and given the evidence one cannot objectively or honesty come to any other reasonable conclusion. It's also hard to figure out why we haven't seen much more of a serious debate over the serious limitations of forums and forum software.
What's happened with forums is that we reached a hiatus some decades ago when it comes to thinking about about how posters' information should be presented; it seems that developers then put any further improvements in the too-hard basket and there's been essentially no further development since then (likely because they can't see much of a buck in it for the effort it'd involve).
We need to rethink forums in terms of information - subject, topic etc., and in much better ways of building on earlier information without losing the historical narrative whilst simultaneously not diminishing posters' efforts. When it comes to posters, it's important that the hierarchical order of their posts be maintained if for no other reason than to show their resonses - their progression in thinking etc. - for this too is both valuable and important information.
As I see it, to accomplish even modest improvements in forum presentation then we ought to be rethinking the problem in radically difficult ways such as reformulating forum software in terms of a relational database structure which over time would be supplemented by AI - AI's purpose being to keep the most important and relevant posts as the most accessible, i.e.: the most easy and quick to find.
Surely, I'm not alone in thinking this way as it's so damn obvious.
You're right about HN. There's an enormous myriad of valuable information in the many thousands of HN's posts and it's a terrible shame that so much of this information has just gotten lost in internet noise by virtue of the way stories age (and that's just the beginning of the matter). Moreover, it's made worse by the fact that anyone searching for information that happens to be inside forum posts will find it difficult to do so given that search engines will have deranked the results by virtue that said information is already wallowing within the internet noise.
It's pretty terrible that one usually has great difficulty in just finding a HN story after it's aged several days. I've often wasted inordinate amounts of time trying to locate HN stories after I've failed to either save or bookmark them first time round.
Solving this ought to be a no-brainer for the HN team.
It seems to me that both HN's story listings and its forums are far too valuable to leave as they are. We users of HN's valuable service need to find ways in which we can make it even more valuable, useful and user-friendly.
There's little in what you say that I can disagree with. In fact, most of the difficulties were obvious to me before my post but I concentrated my comments on the higher issues rather than being concerned with the more mundane practical problems that you've rightly mentioned. It seems to me that we need to have solid objectives about what we actually what to achieve before we can clear away the unacceptable dross that plagues the web.
As I see it, there are several levels to dealing with the 'messy' posts issue (topics where there are large numbers of replies). In essence, these 'levels' represent different classes of problem and thus they require different (more specific) solutions.
1. First, there's the 'uncompleted reply' problem. This is where one intends to reply to an existing post and for various reasons one is unable to do so. Reasons may include the website's cut-off time for posts being exceeded or that the poster hasn't had time to reply to a post for various reasons. As I see it, this is a bigger problem than missing an initial post to a story because it can leave existing arguments in a specific thread to remain open and or be incomplete.
On more than one occasion on HN I've said I'd get back to someone on a matter and missed the timeout deadline for various reasons. This unfinished action leaves that thread incomplete in that there is no logical outcome or conclusion in respect of the earlier commentary. The problem is exacerbated if the person to whom I'm replying has made new comment that requires a definite reply. Also, the absence of any reply from me is liable to make me look like an unreliable correspondent in the eyes of that person for seemingly ignoring him when in fact matters were outside my control. This may not seem important but I believe such etiquette is actually important, especially so if the previous poster has gone to the trouble of posting information that actually needs a reply.
There are some simple solutions to this: a website can have a definite cut-off time, say 14 days, for new post to a story, but it could have a longer time for those who've already posted a comment and who later want to reply to someone who has already posted to his or her comment/post.
2. The Correcting of Errors and Typos Problem. For me, there's little worse than to revisit and reread one my posts several days after I've posted it only to find some glaringly stupid mistake that makes a nonsense of what I've written and that I can no longer correct it due to an inane website policy that stops latter editing. Mistakes such as the inclusion of wrong or inappropriate words easily happen when one misses, say, a wrong auto-correction entry. Similarly, with other minor errors such as the wrong use of 'its' and 'it's', the same goes for possessives (the correct use of which I actually do understand but it doesn't stop me from mistyping them on occasions).
As everyone in book publishing knows you cannot publish a book without an editor by virtue of the fact that we're all blind to many of our own mistakes, thus we simply cannot pick up certain errors no matter how many times we may proofread them. These days, through necessity, it's not possible to have someone sitting at our side correcting our errors whilst we type. That said, the problem of blindly missing our own mistakes hasn't gone away. In effect, even after 30-plus years, NO website has found satisfactory ways of accommodating/correcting typos after posting.
What web designers are effectively saying to us is that they are 30 years or more behind the times and they could give a damn if they never caught up. Right, there's no incentive from web designers or makers of web standards to bring web publishing standards in line and level with normal book publishing—well that's the view from their perceptive and of course we poor hapless users have never have counted for much anyway. Frankly, it's an unmitigated disgrace, it's yet another instance of the unprofessional nature of the software industry - if you want actual proof then read this: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247573088_Software'... (despite this article being nearly 28 years old, almost nothing has changed to change its findings).
There are many ways around this problem and they don't involve rocket science. There's the limited editing approach as well as the ability to edit certain words on an ongoing basis, especially so those involving the apostrophe as well as words such as 'them', 'then', 'whose', 'who's' and so on.
I fully acknowledge that changing the wording or meaning of text no matter how small and insignificant the change after someone has already posted to or commented on said text is completely unacceptable and should never happen. Here too there are some easy solutions: if text is altered after a post has been made then it's dead easy to flag that post with say a dagger '†' whereupon clicking on said dagger would reveal the original text that the poster actually replied to. Moreover, many variations along these lines come to mind.
Again, the real problem is that both those who run websites and who write the code for website comments don't actually give a damn about such niceties. Nor do they actually care about the fact that their laziness and ineptitude is contributing to the ever-increasing number of errors that we see appearing across the web not to mention the increasing general sloppiness of the web per se.
Nor do they care or worry that their rotten workmanship is further contributing to increased web information entropy—or, as is more likely, they don't actually understand what increasing information entropy actually means. There are many things wrong with the web and we would be well served if those who actually ran the web set higher standards through example. Applying higher standards to accuracy and presentation is an easy point from which to begin.
3. I could not agree more with the fact that extended 'run-on' results in terrible signal/noise ratios. But again, little or nothing has been done to ameliorate this problem over the same 30-plus years. Moreover, the matter is made worse by websites allowing posters to reply to the first poster in order that their response appear high up in the posting hierarchy. This problem could be fixed in an instant if the typical tree structure that's used in most posts were modified to both better reflect the actual subject matter of the post as well reflect a more accurate relative temporal position in the posting list (both metadata from posts along with temporal data should be used to ensure that posts appear within the hierarchy in the correct and most relevant order). For this to happen it's likely that each thread in reply to any given post may have to split to accurately reflect both its metadata status as well as its temporal position relative to all other posts.
I know that's a badly worded explanation but it'll have to for the moment. Again, I also need to point out that there has been precious little development in the way forums have been displayed over the last 30-plus years. Whether it's phpBB,WordPress, MyBB or whatever, none of them do a sufficiently satisfactory job that would ensure that 'discussions and debate can meaningfully continue beyond a day or two'. The fact that none of these forum programs has either the means or wherewithal in this regard simply means that those who have programmed them have failed dismally in achieving a workable solution.
I repeat that the web is in an unholy mess: if we follow exiting example then we see that it inevitably leads upwards from the lowest common denominator and not as it ought from the highest of standards and from the moist excellent of ergonomic design downwards. I am strongly of the belief that for the web to improve significantly from its current ratbag existence then excellence should always begin at the top. Standards of excellence could start by websites actually agreeing on something as seemingly trivial as reaching an agreement on unified forum timeout procedures.
>As I see it, this is a bigger problem than missing an initial post to a story because it can leave existing arguments in a specific thread to remain open and or be incomplete.
I can see your point of view, however I'd expect the problem to naturally resolve itself if people where provided with the incentive to do so. As you've pointed out, these limitations are here almost always because of website policies. I am more interested in starting with the reason these policies exist in the first place, than starting with their removal. While I dislike these policies and the reason they exist, I would be cautious and not simply assume they're entirely inane.
What we have is a proverbial Chesterton's fence that had to be explicitly added to the software, and that has become widespread among forum/discussion platforms.
The more interesting problem to me here is finding a way of structuring online conversation so that people will find it natural to enrich an existing discussion without suffering from noise. The reason it is more important is that threads are mostly not abandoned because of cut-off time or hardcoded limits, mostly people leave when a thread falls out of view and becomes hard to find again.
The problem we really have is a problem of noise, organization, and visibility of information.
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Let's look at another adjacent domain for a minute. There exist websites serving structured, user-contributed, long-lived information that people continue building upon for years, and not hours.
When people use software like Mediawiki, contributors have no trouble finding the right page to lookup information in or to add content to. This shows that a website can scale to very large amounts of information without a big duplication problem, and without needing to limit the lifetime of user-generated content to a few days.
If we contrast this to forums, the same topics are discussed again and again, month after month, but each individual contribution to a thread is lost after a few days because of the structure of discussion forums.
Unfortunately, while traditional wikis are great for building articles, they do not make for appreciably better forum software.
I believe there must be a way to solve the problems of long-lived discussions in forum software, by taking inspiration from how other sort of platforms manage to scale to vast amounts of information without excessive noise, duplication, or time limits.
But this has to be a more fundamental change than just adjusting the limits.
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>The Correcting of Errors and Typos Problem
I'm unsure how important this is. I see typos as an annoyance, that almost always a sufficiently interested reader will be able to correct on the fly. Language is very much redundant, so that people can omit a "not" in a sentence and a reader still guess that the writer meant for a negation to be in there.
A post so compact that a typo confuses the meaning entirely occurs occasionally, but it is rare, and empirically I've rarely seen a conversations being materially impacted by a typo. Except perhaps for people who insist on reacting to the noise more than they react to the information.
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I'll also note that even when talking about more substantial errors than typos, this isn't a fundamental or universal problem.
The problem of people editing old posts to change their meaning is well-known, I think, but also rarely matters very much. The only times I've seen that done, it was being played for laughs. A deceptive person would be caught very quickly (be it by archives, screenshots, or other witnesses), and the problem solves itself.
Popular forum Reddit, for instance, happily allows me to edit a month old post. Hacker News has more stringent limits. There is a tradeoff there, and it is sometimes annoying to see a limit being more conservative than it needs to be, but I don't see a fundamentally hard problem being held back by a lack of innovation there.
>Nor do they care or worry that their rotten workmanship is further contributing to increased web information entropy
I agree that ability to edit a post feels very nice, but I think the emphasis you put on this is excessive compared to the harm it does.
To be convinced that this problem is as important as you make it out to be, I'd want to be shown that it substantially affects the quality of discussions, first.
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>I could not agree more with the fact that extended 'run-on' results in terrible signal/noise ratios. But again, little or nothing has been done to ameliorate this problem over the same 30-plus years.
Right, and this is really THE problem I think is most important. I think we've had some slow improvements, in the form of going from flat discussions (traditional forums) to increasingly threaded discussions, and sorting of comments by votes.
A Hacker News or Reddit thread can accommodate a thousand comments without becoming impossible to navigate, where a 30 year old forum may have a hundred page, resulting in no visibility for anything but the first and last posts, no ability to have multiple discussions in parallel, and all the other obvious problems that directly result from the structure of the software.
I do think we've done a small amount of progress, but it has been excruciatingly slow, and there is room for a much better system that scales to higher amounts of information, and allows people to naturally build upon previous work, without artificial limitations becoming necessary.
> This problem could be fixed in an instant if the typical tree structure that's used in most posts were modified to both better reflect the actual subject matter of the post as well reflect a more accurate relative temporal position in the posting list (both metadata from posts along with temporal data should be used to ensure that posts appear within the hierarchy in the correct and most relevant order).
Right, I agree with this sentiment completely. I think more metadata is a way of addressing this, or at least some more interesting sorting method than letting people arbitrarily gain visibility by responding in the right place. Metadata may be a solution, but the best sort of metadata doesn't require adding many annotations to each post (or people will simply not bother). It should be there structurally.
Visibility (and sorting) are very important to the quality of a discussion, because that directly determines whether relevant or low quality posts will be seen and replied to. That seems obvious, but when software is a chronology (like a traditional forum) or even a tree of threads sorted only by votes and time (like HN), I think there is room for improvement.
>I know that's a badly worded explanation but it'll have to for the moment.
It would certainly be appreciated if you have something more detailed in mind, and if you find the time to elaborate. I'm interested.
>none of them do a sufficiently satisfactory job that would ensure that 'discussions and debate can meaningfully continue beyond a day or two'.
I agree with that, despite what I've said above about some relative level of progress having been achieved. Discussion software should be able to scale in terms of amount of information, and in terms of time. These two properties are only somewhat correlated.
>The fact that none of these forum programs has either the means or wherewithal in this regard simply means that those who have programmed them have failed dismally in achieving a workable solution.
This suggests that crafting a better solution would not be challenging to you. I'm not sure I know exactly what the better solution is, but I agree that we can do better, I'd like to see more people thinking about this, and I think this goes far beyond determining the optimal value for forum timeout limits. It's the structure that needs to evolve faster than it has.
The impact of all of this is not a trivial thing. There are a few billions of eyeballs on the internet, and the quality of discourse directly affects public opinion. If we organized information better, we would create tremendous value.
In some sense, Google understood the importance of this. Wikipedia succeeded in its particular niche. Much of the rest of the world does not seems to care very much about organizing information.
In my experience, people like this are dilettantes, who actually have a very shallow understanding of these "ideas" that they're so in love with. They confuse _having heard_ of Obscure Subject with _understanding_ Obscure Subject. If you happen to have a deeper understanding of Obscure Subject and try to engage them in conversation about it, it goes nowhere.
I come to HN because of the wide variety of in-depth content. Not everything I read is related to tech, and some articles I can’t fully understand, but that doesn’t make them less interesting. I believe everyone has interesting stories to be told, but they may not come up often in conversation. As others have mentioned, people use small talk because both sides can contribute to the conversation.
It’s one thing to want to discuss all these interesting things you’ve read, it’s another to expect everyone to be interested in the same things as you and turn away from them.
While I can resonate with the author's sentiment, his thoughts on the matter seem callow and slim. What he calls 'intellectual loneliness' smells simply of a craving for socializing with like-minded ones. Whether intellectual or not. Our (author, HN demographic) idea of fulfilling discourse might tend to gravitate toward the intellectual, but whether the convo revolves around intellectual or philistine ideas, I think that feeling of loneliness or alienation is shared and common to all unable to engage with like-minded denizens.
Props to the author for making excuses to leave early. I’m more likely to drink in excess and resort to indifference, abandon all intellectual drive, and feel like a normal human for a night.
I didn’t mean to come off as pretentious. In fact on HN i often feel inadequate! I’m not lonely at all - I’ve built a huge support community over the years and have friends all over the world.
I don’t think I’m beyond everyone’s mental capacity, but I’m certainly beyond most people in terms of curiosity and fascination for subjects beyond general conversation. I’ve gotten better at driving conversation to deeper places, and surrounding myself with people who enjoy doing the same. But it’s often easier at social events to drink and stop caring.
Well it wasn’t dr house doing it, it was one of his patients. Some super smart guy just constantly drunk all of the time to handle living with his normal wife.
> Intellectual loneliness is a challenge that many people feel, but nobody talks about. It’s built on a paradox where you feel alive when you’re learning on the Internet but soul-crushed when you try to talk about those same ideas with friends and family.
The author doesn't say, but it would be very illuminating to know, what happens when the author meets with the authors of the books and internet works they admire so much? Do they hit it off instantly? Or does the whole thing feel disappointing in the end?
Also, I don't see the "paradox" in preferring the Internet. It's part of a pattern when you zoom out a bit.
It’s far more likely that the OP is lacking in social skills. People are not two dimensional, and people who are who you find at most parties. Conversations in a social setting have a certain protocol to them. They start out with small talk, that’s how you learn someone’s mannerisms, personality, flow, etc. without having to actually concentrate on the details of what you’re talking about. You read their subtle cues to learn how to interact with them.
Not everyone is matched appropriately and I find it takes a lot of effort, especially emotional effort to connect with someone you don’t know for the first time, at a party where there are a lot of distractions. Have you ever noticed people who glide effortlessly from person to person, and who are able to talk to anyone? Seek those people out and study how they interact with other humans.
Having good social skills is just as important as being well read, maybe even more so. A good book can be entertaining but it only takes a chance encounter to meet a life long friend, form a beneficial relationship, or meet a romantic partner. Part of me wonders if the OP were to meet one of the authors of the books he reads at a party, would he be able to interact with them? Probably not, and that’s my point exactly.
You’re going to go to a lot of parties in life, if you give up on them you are depriving yourself of valuable life experience. It has nothing to do with books or how smart you are.
> It’s far more likely that the OP is lacking in social skills.
I disagree, I've only read two posts by this individual (both posted on HN) and have never heard of him prior, and both times he came off as having a superiority complex.
Both his postings have the same basic message - "I'm too smart for normal people. People who disagree are obviously too stupid to understand how smart I am".
FWIW, the smartest and highest-IQ people I have known have had no problem relating to us normal people. This individual might be one of the smartest people in the world (I've no idea what his achievements are and I don't care enough to look it up[1]), but in his writings he comes of as someone of normal intelligence who wishes to portray themselves as someone of significant intelligence.
The only question I have is, why is this person's self-written ego-massages being posted to HN? Both the blogs posted here have been mostly self-congratulatory paeans to his imagined mental and intellectual superiority.
[1] Maybe someone else can tell us all what this person is famous for.
A more charitable possibility is that the author is depressed.
I’ve had the misfortune of battling with depression several times in my life and one of the less discussed features of the disorder is self-pity. It can make depressed people pretty unpleasant to be around which reinforces the lonely experience of the disorder.
This article definitely resonates with me in that way. Feeling alone even in a room full of people who like you, for example.
If that’s what the author is experiencing, writing articles like this is probably a coping mechanism, however, the content being less than flattering is why therapists generally tell us to journal (private) rather than blog (public). :-)
Many of the smartest and most high IQ people are perfectly capable of relating to normal people without making it obvious how bored they are.
Small-talk and chit chat aren't hard. Nor are smiling and nodding, appearing interested, asking following questions, and making the occasional joke or funny observation. None of this is rocket science.
But there's a catch: the effort is all one way.
It's like normalising conversations about sport or TV. "But I'm not interested in sport or TV" becomes an unacceptable view because "most people" are. So you should definitely pretend to find the latest reality show as interesting as the most recent ball game because otherwise you "have no social skills."
Some people are able to do this.
But it's a forced choice, and people who are not interested in sport or TV should be allowed to prefer something different.
A conversation is a two-way street. Why do people initiate smalltalk about sports or TV? Because this is a common ground where the most people can contribute. So you start there and maybe together you steer towards more specific subjects where both parties have an interest. So if people initiate a conversation about these subjects with you, that should they are making an effort.
If you don't follow sports or tv, then you contribute another starting point for smalltalk.
People who want to skip smalltalk and jump directly to the "intellectually stimulating" subjects are typically the kind of people who just want to hear themselves talk about their favorite subject and don't care about other people except as an audience. In other words, bores.
But being a bore has nothing to do with IQ.
Of course there are also bores who are only able to talk about sports or tv. But if you think most people are only interested in these two subject, you probably confusing the starting point of smalltalk with the entire conversation.
> It's like normalising conversations about sport or TV. "But I'm not interested in sport or TV" becomes an unacceptable view because "most people" are. So you should definitely pretend to find the latest reality show as interesting as the most recent ball game because otherwise you "have no social skills."
I mean, it depends. I'm considered pretty socially adept (I can be an asshole, but usually it's due to other character flaws like selfishness and impatience rather than poor social skills), and I don't like sports or most TV shows. (I watched fewer than 5 TV shows or movies in 2021).
In my experience, with small talk it's about finding a common connection. People bring up stupid things (like the weather, TV, sportsballs) in order to find a point of connection. If you don't like the things the other person likes (sports/TV), then just saying "I don't like X" without offering a follow up shuts down the conversation. Socially it signals "I do not want to connect, leave me be."
I like to follow up with "Oh, X isn't my thing, but it sounds pretty cool, especially the INSERT THING THEY MENTIONED. That's kind of like Y (thing I like); have you seen that? Are they similar?" You can affirm people's interest in things without faking an interest yourself.
That being said, most chaos apes are not consciously aware of why they're doing things.
Where it gets difficult is that it really SHOULDN'T be one way, but when the majority of your interests are things that most people don't understand, they can't ask you questions and use your interests to connect to you like they would for most people.
The rhythm of a conversation doesn't dictate that you have the same interests, but it does dictate that you ask each other questions to find common ground. If one person doesn't understand the other well enough to ask the right questions, things get lopsided, which is where I think a lot of geeks struggle, especially as the experience differential compounds over time as we have fewer proper give-and-take conversations with peers growing up.
I think it's valuable to at least have some extremely basic knowledge of these topics, to allow you to barely follow along when someone brings up sportsball or TV shows. You don't need to know specifically whether or not the Eagles played basketball with the Phillies last night or what the score was, but you should know at the very least that the sentence doesn't make sense. Don't fight these topics, don't constantly try to change the conversation into something [likely only] you are interested in. And definitely don't disparage the topic, convey your irritation, or just sit there looking bored. Just kind of be a neutral observer when you're not into the topic. I used to be that insufferable "Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television"[1]. It's cringe and it's not going to get you anywhere socially.
Agree with not disparaging, but disagree with having to know about the topics. Then again, that may be a sex based difference (assuming you're male): Women might be allowed more leeway about not knowing things, particularly when it comes to things like sports.
Admitting you don't know is fine, as long as you don't insinuate that you don't know because their interests are beneath you. There are lots of things I don't know, it doesn't mean those things are unimportant.
Yes, the problem with sports (in some circumstances) is that people will think less of you for not knowing some ground-level information. On most topics (the news, TV), people are more excited to explain the basics to you, at least in my experience. If people have to explain the rules of basketball to you, they're likely to think you're an idiot.
I hate sports, and don’t really follow them. I do research standings and stuff before going out because I want to know if someone brings it up, if they’re an “underdog” kinda person or just loyal to a team. Most sports people will quickly discover that I only have surface-level knowledge though, but I ask questions and people seem super happy to tell me how things work. In fact, most of what I know about pro-sports comes from what people tell me at parties.
Conversations with multiple people will flow between things in which you’re interested and things in which you are not. It’s a learned skill to remain in the conversation, even if it is just as an active listener.
“If you’re bored, you’re not paying attention.” There is always something interesting going on, even if it is not the content of the conversation itself.
Development of these skills, and related conversational skills, can be an intellectual exercise more interesting than many books.
> But it's a forced choice, and people who are not interested in sport or TV should be allowed to prefer something different.
And they aren't allowed to? I'm interested in neither sport nor TV and yet I have no problem being normal and being accepted as normal.
The dichotomy presented by the author and yourself[1] is a false one as there are many other explanations.
If the author has trouble relating to people he considers "beneath" him, that's purely a failing on his part. Other people, like me, are having no trouble even with a display of disinterest in sport or TV.
All the smart people I have ever met never had the trouble that the author had. Based on his two blog posts, it's hard to imagine that the author really is smarter than average.
[1] "If you don't like the things stupid people like you aren't comfortable with them" and "If you aren't comfortable with the things that stupid people like, then you must be smart")
Whether he is smart or not is almost irrelevant: we are all human and share the human experience, smart or not. If you can’t relate to other humans even though we all share the same experience, you’re not trying or you need training.
Books like “How To Win Friends and Influence People” might be for him. To some, the principles in that book are natural and obvious. Others, like this guy, might find it a learning experience.
The key message throughout that book is that you have to be sincere in your interest. You can fake interest in what someone wants to talk about, but it takes time away from perusing genuine interests. Sometimes you can fake it until a genuine interest takes hold, but I think people who don't gel with most pop culture would be there if they were going to.
I think that one way to deal with uninteresting topics (in this case, shows / sports you don't find valuable to watch) is being able to shift topics. I find this a bit magical sometimes - shuffling through the topics until one of them fits the bill and results in a long discussion.
Of course, this is easier to do in one-on-one setting, and when the whole group wants to spend an hour unrelentingly chatting about shows (when you don't watch any) it's a bit daunting to shift their attention to something else. In such situations I tend to find anything I can relate to and introduce the topic. This could be how their description of a show brings another old one I actually had watched, or maybe chat about how many shows they go through daily, do they find their TV good, how many subscriptions do they have to maintain.
Anything goes, in my opinion; heck, even throwing the "I don't watch shows" works (as long as you don't make it sound arrogant / condescending).
There is a distinction to be drawn between talking to someone about something you don't care about and stuff you both find interesting. Smart people should have no shortage of topics to talk about with 'normal people', in my opinion.
> But it's a forced choice, and people who are not interested in sport or TV should be allowed to prefer something different.
Exactly. Why not allow philosophy, or history, organic farming, game theory, theology, Austrian economics or other subjects as preferred party conversation topics? Why does society privilege TV shows and sports?
Have you been to a party? Of course they’re “allowed.” They’re just not popular. Most people dislike reading anything school-like but watch tons of TV.
They are allowed and used. They are just less frequent. Because even with your examples, someone interested in history of Nazi Germany does not have much to talk about with someone who just read about medieval monks lifestyle. And neither of them have common topic with someone who wants to discuss Austrian economics.
So, the three of them will discuss game of thrones.
> So you should definitely pretend to find the latest reality show as interesting as the most recent ball game because otherwise you "have no social skills."
This is not true. You are actually fine saying "I had not seen it" or "I did not liked it". People who are not interested in sport navigate these conversations without pretending. If you bluff, you will come across as weird, because you will say something clearly wrong.
> It's like normalising conversations about sport or TV. "But I'm not interested in sport or TV" becomes an unacceptable view because "most people" are.
as someone who only watches the "popular" sports from the sidelines, this one bites me quite often in social situations, actually.
same goes with popular Netflix shows or mind-numbing "reality" tv and which celebrity is dating which other celebrity.
> > It’s far more likely that the OP is lacking in social skills.
> I disagree, I've only read two posts by this individual (both posted on HN) and have never heard of him prior, and both times he came off as having a superiority complex.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a great book, but when you meet a real-life Ignatius Reilly, they’re much less amusing than the fictional version.
> It’s far more likely that the OP is lacking in social skills.
> Part of me wonders if the OP were to meet one of the authors of the books he reads at a party, would he be able to interact with them? Probably not
> You’re going to go to a lot of parties in life, if you give up on them
Why do you have this incessant need to make assumptions about the author and generalize?
You're also placing tremendous importance on socializing and parties. This is not something that's of importance or even relevance for many intellectuals and introverts. Most parties consist of unrewarding, mundane chit-chat, easily forgotten. Going to parties in the hopes of finding a new "life long friend" or "beneficial relationship" is like playing the lottery.
Also, if you're going to place that much importance on parties, you need to define what kind of parties, then we can address those discretely. Company events? Parties with friends? Relatives? Conferences? Burning man?
I consider myself to be an intellectual and naturally introverted. I, like the OP, had at one point in my life written parties off (really any free-form social interaction where there wasn’t some topic, purpose or structure). I thought I was too important for small talk, it “bored me” and I enjoyed doing other things so why bother? Why subject myself to something I don’t enjoy? It seems so reasonable and logical on the surface.
Then something changed for me, I went to a party and actually tried to talk to people. I approached it like the challenge of learning a new skill or technology. If you appear “bored” in a conversation people pick up on it quickly — they too are likely going through the same set of emotions. The challenge is to keep a conversation going long enough and authentically enough to develop a comfort with the other person, once you do that you can talk freely and people “open up”. They will tell you things that are actually interesting and small talk will be no more. When this occurs, it’s (at least for me) the exact same feeling as getting into a good book, hours can pass without you knowing it.
When I hear someone complain about hating small talk, it’s a sign of their own naivety and the irony is that the thing they most crave —- meaningful, intelligent human interaction is possible with virtually anyone and right there in front of them the entire time. Why go home and read a book when you have a person with a life’s worth of experiences and stories right there in front of you?
The older you get the more you realize that the opportunity for social interactions like these decreases over time. There’s a finite number of them for everyone, they are not some unlimited quantity or resource and for most people the number is quite a bit smaller than the time you have (and will have) alone for intellectual pursuits.
> Then something changed for me, I went to a party and actually tried to talk to people. I approached it like the challenge of learning a new skill or technology.
This is pretty inspiring/challenging.
> Why go home and read a book when you have a person with a life’s worth of experiences and stories right there in front of you?
It's easier .. but then, I don't complain about being socially inept either
I must say I want to give you some support! One could start to think about the audience on HN when one sees this thread where so many people are disagreeing with you, when you are so obviously right.
Just like you say, that it is much more likely, that the author is missing social skills, one could now make a similarly baseless claim: "Most likely you have over time become less sharp and less of an intellectual, so that you now accept the useless small talk and accept wasting time." Just to give you in impression of how it might feel, what you wrote about the author. So lets just stop assuming things about the author.
Out of some people, you will not get any original ideas, interesting thoughts. It is you, who needs to push them towards any interesting topic and even then they might derail it into unimportance or uninteresting ways. Yes, a person is in front of you, with a whole life experience, but there are questions to be considered, when comparing to a book:
(1) Is that person in front of you able to communicate and share any meaningful information from that whole life of experiences? Have they thought about stuff in depth before, so that they can share some quintessence in the short time, that you talk with them, before the conversation walks on to more lighthearted topics with the next person at the table?
(2) In a meaningful book, the author has firstly recognized, that there is something meaningful to write about, something to share. This might not be the case for a random person at a party. The person at the party might not even know, that anything they experienced is worth sharing or what those things are.
(3) Hopefully a good book will be written with carefully chosen words, that most precisely convey the ideas, that they author had. It is very difficult to achieve anything close to that in some small talk.
(4) Who is willing to lend you their ear and talk for prolonged duration on a party, when there are probably many other people around? That already is some precondition, which might not be fulfilled at any random party.
Maybe I’m young but I genuinely feel like I’ve never met someone I couldn’t learn from even if they cannot communicate their life experience in a way I would consider intelligent. Undereducated people have their own speech and their own communication style, and a lifetime of struggle that I haven’t had in talking that I would greatly enjoy learning about.
Often times books are only written by people that are highly educated, middle to upper class if not rich, literate, and considered acceptable by the publishing machine. Also, people who publish books are largely white (and the publishing machine is also largely white). This limits your ability to appreciate and learn from the incarcerated, the working class and below, single mothers, people with addiction, lower class immigrants, and the disabled.
This line of discussion seems like elitism and close mindedness to me, but again, I might just be so young (I’m not yet 30) that I don’t have enough life experience to know what it’s like to go to a party and find no one with anything interesting to say.
> Most parties consist of unrewarding, mundane chit-chat, easily forgotten.
You can choose the parties you go to, choose the people you talk to at those parties, and in those conversations, you're an equal participant. Finding meaningful, deep conversation with strangers at parties is possible. It does require some skill and patience, and it requires you "submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known," as the quote goes.
By that I mean that you can talk about the things you care about in a conversation, and you run the risk that other people will judge you poorly for it. It takes some personal fortitude to put yourself out there.
> Going to parties in the hopes of finding a new "life long friend" or "beneficial relationship" is like playing the lottery.
Either I keep winning the lottery, or there's something at play here besides luck.
This is a skill you can learn. It's a skill with tacit knowledge requiring real-world practice in order to develop it. There are also entire books, blog posts, etc. written on it, if you care.
It's intellectually lazy to casually dismiss things... like going to parties, sports, reading fiction, watching movies... you don't have to like parties, you don't have to be good at parties, but that doesn't mean that they're sour grapes.
This assumes it is a skill one has to learn. This assumes there is value in learning this for everybody as well as an overarching value that makes this skill universally worthwhile learning.
> It's a skill with tacit knowledge requiring real-world practice in order to develop it.
I agree wholeheartedly. Like every skill one needs to practice, make mistakes, learn and become better over time. If one decides that learning this has value in/adds value to one's life.
> if you care
Again assuming that one needs to care.
This is quite condescending. This sounds like coming from an enlightened position with the need to show the truth of your ways to the lowlies.
> It's intellectually lazy to casually dismiss things
QED
Nice as hominem here. You are not arguing, you are attacking. There is no additional signal towards a shared understanding. You are fighting from an entrenched position you are trying to proof to be the truth for everybody.
> you don't have to be good at parties, but that doesn't mean that they're sour grapes.
If one doesn't find value in parties, socializing and the likes, why do others feel the need to argue that they are wrong? Why do you feel the need to attack and state universally that parties are good and OP is wrong?
I think there are people who gain value from different forms of socializing. And that is good for them. And there are people who don't. And don't need to, to be of value to themselves and society.
Why can't we not accommodate them and understand that they don't gain value from that? Why should we argue for these people to learn that skill. Can't one respect that and interact with these people on their turf? In their chosen way?
You’re definitely responding to a lot of things that I didn’t say… a bit too much for me to respond point by point. Let me just summarize by saying that I intend no criticism of people who don’t like parties, but these dismissals of parties as mostly “unrewarding, mundane chit-chat, easily forgotten” seems to stem from sour grapes more than anything else.
> Either I keep winning the lottery, or there's something at play here besides luck.
Really? You have found several life-long friends at parties? How old are you? What's your definition of 'friend' in this case? How good of a friend are we talking?
Most of your friends and acquaintances are not relationships formed at educational institutions or workplaces?
First, you have to be at least 40+ to even begin deeming a relationship "life-long", even then it's somewhat hyperbole. Very few of my friends have even struck up 1 such relationship from such events. I think it's rare. Purely anecdotal of course, looking at the people in my own life and that of my friends'.
> This is a skill you can learn. It's a skill with tacit knowledge requiring real-world practice in order to develop it. There are also entire books, blog posts, etc. written on it, if you care.
Wait, let me get this right. What exactly are you saying is a skill one can learn? Meeting life-long friends at parties? Are you talking about manipulation? Exploitation? "How to win friends and influence people?"
Bullshit like presenting not your true self, but a likable facade in order to please other people and meet social expectations?
Yes, I have found life-long friends at parties. Good enough to bare your soul, discuss intimate problems.
> Wait, let me get this right. What exactly are you saying is a skill one can learn? Meeting life-long friends at parties? Are you talking about manipulation? Exploitation? "How to win friends and influence people?"
That took a dark turn.
The skill is the ability to have worthwhile conversations with new people. That’s all. I don’t know what you put under the umbrella of “manipulation”, but if you look at the book “How to win friends and influence people”, you’ll see that the advice is pretty simple stuff like “listen to people”, “remember people’s names”, or “be sincere”.
This stuff sounds all so basic and obvious when it’s written down, but if you observe people in the wild, you’ll see people who are good at talking with others, and people who make obvious mistakes, like talking about themselves too much, belittling people, or being fake. If you are good at the surface-level skills, people will get more comfortable around you and talk more honestly about more sensitive topics. The conversations get more interesting and from there you can develop the seeds of friendship.
I think the argument is not specifically about parties. OP and this comment's GP are both talking about parties because it's an easy way to frame a confrontation with strangers.
I personally agree with the gp that "I'd rather read a book than go to a party" indicates room for improvement in social skills. So does "parties are only small talk". A skilled communicator can transition from small talk to more complex/interesting topics when talking with a stranger.
Most books are about people, right? How do you suspect the authors came up with all the interesting characters? You can find interesting characters in real life too, it just takes a different skillset from reading.
Neither I nor the GP (I think) are trying to say that poor social skills is an insult to character. Socializing is genuinely tiring for some people. That doesn't mean you can't practice and get better at it.
> That doesn't mean you can't practice and get better at it.
The underlying assumption, if used as an argument, instead of a filler phrase, is, that there is value in sozializing for everybody. But is this so?
I would challenge the underlying assumption and state (without proof, but who needs proof in a philosophical debate) that the world was made better by a lot of people and progress was created by a lot of people who were not good at socializing.
Take people like Marie Curie who actively went against the social norms when collecting her second Nobel Price in person. At this time media had made her something of a persona non grata and the Nobel Committee explicitly asked her not to come in person as to not taint the reputation of the Price with her being there.
Or take Prof. Donald E. Knuth's take on email [1]. He doesn't want to be social. He needs to be anti-social for him to do his work.
or take Luhmann who wasn't known to be very socially likeble and who stated that words like 'truth' needed to be redefined (scientifically) and was hard to follow in discussions because one needed to know how he had redifend terms one was used to.
But these redefinitions actually provided clarity and precision once understood. They were just not socially usable.
> Socializing is genuinely tiring for some people. That doesn't mean you can't practice and get better at it.
In my early 20s I forced myself to hit up clubs, raves, house parties etc and I never lost the feeling of being on edge, not knowing what to say and so on. Now since the beginning of COVID I have regressed to what I was like in my teens (socially) so that tells me that all of the practice was for nothing and against my underlying nature.
I suspect many people out there are like me, and socializing is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole for them: an unpleasant and ultimately futile experience.
I might suggest that there are multiple kinds of parties. Clubs, raves, and house parties are vastly different from a whiskey tasting party, and are vastly different from a book club or a craft club, which are also different from groups to go hiking/biking or sports playing.
>so that tells me that all of the practice was for nothing and against my underlying nature
I've been through what I think is a similar cycle before and feel I can relate a little to this feeling ; I've tried to look at it as more of an unseen muscle group.
Although we can look at ourselves and say we've definitely lost 'socialising muscle mass' for a lack of a better word, I think the ease in which we can regain our muscle mass gets easier with each cycle.
I also like to think of it, like a balloon that represents our boundaries as a person and although our territorial boundary might shrink when we're isolated (deflate) with each stretching of our boundary it becomes easier to fill again?
When you put it like that, it does seem a little silly..
I think really it's less about "preferring a book to a party" and more about the OP's claims that socializing == "Mindless conversations about the news that regurgitate the same tired storylines."
If the reason you prefer a book to a party is that you are ultra intelligent and other people are mindless, then maybe it's poor social skills. If your reason for preferring a book is that you have a fulfilling social life already and just want to enjoy the book, then have at it.
> I think the argument is not specifically about parties. OP and this comment's GP are both talking about parties because it's an easy way to frame a confrontation with strangers.
Might be a framing device, yes.
> I personally agree with the gp that "I'd rather read a book than go to a party" indicates room for improvement in social skills.
I think that's reaching again. That might just be a personal preference, "I enjoy reading more than socializing." Is this not a valid opinion to have? One can also occasionally do both (not at the same time) but still prefer one over the other if given the choice.
> A skilled communicator can transition from small talk to more complex/interesting topics when talking with a stranger.
The author's problem wasn't that he couldn't engage in conversations about "complex" or interesting topics, it was particularly about the topics that were of interest to him. No matter your communication skills, you won't be able to strike up a meaningful conversation with just anyone on HAIFA constructions and their properties.
> Most books are about people, right? How do you suspect the authors came up with all the interesting characters? You can find interesting characters in real life too, it just takes a different skillset from reading.
Not sure how you came to the conclusion that uninteresting topics at parties equal uninteresting characters, either way, I think this is way outside the scope of the discussion. Neither OP nor the person you're replying to (me) has even hinted at this.
> Neither I nor the GP (I think) are trying to say that poor social skills is an insult to character.
I'm not so sure about that. GP practically called lack of social skills a deficiency and he wrote about hardly anything but character.
> That doesn't mean you can't practice and get better at it.
Again, outside the scope of the discussion, at least as a response to my comments and the author's article.
But, I will respond all the same, because it irks me. First, it's a truism. Second, it feels like your premise is that one should be good at it? Should everyone strive to be better at socializing?
I think no. Those who enjoy socializing should keep their skills sharp and probably work to improve them; because to them, the act of socializing is a rewarding one.
If you do not innately enjoy it, it's highly unlikely you ever will, and why should you even strive to want this? For what purpose? No, if you do not enjoy socializing, spend as little time on it as possible. Spend time on what's rewarding to you.
If staying at home reading books is it, then that's absolutely fine.
Unfortunately, there is this inane pressure in society to be sociable, appealing, and likable. To be such a person, to be liked in the office at that level, or at parties, or worse, in social media, is even equated with success.
None of my "heroes" are or were likable. They were difficult people who obsessed about their work, it took nearly all their time, in some cases the sacrifices were huge, family time, the family itself, and even procreation was sometimes sacrificed, but damn, these people laid the foundation for modern civilization and technology.
This is what all of humanity should strive for. Valuable contributions. Do you know how all those people made those contributions?
By spending inordinate amounts of time by themselves. Absorbed.
No, it’s not far more likely. The author didn’t say he had trouble socializing with people. He just said he found the conversations with majority of them intellectually shallow, so there’s no strong urge to stay around those people, even though they’re friends.
It may vary from person to person, but yeah. I’m in the same boat, I can socialize, but prefer not to, because that feels plain and boring. I have so many questions which almost nobody around thinks of, sometimes these are far off their comprehension (not in an intellectual sense, but in a deep curiosity related one). Complexity is my thing.
I thought that maybe it is just my way to escape socializing which I can’t really handle, sort of a replacement. I worked with my CBT doctor for a year(!) and even he came to conclusion that… it is not. You, HN, popsci and books and articles are my best intellectual friends, and that’s why I spend most of my free time in the internet and not with my friends or colleagues which I naturally have no genuine interest in. It’s hard to socialize when everything is boring and second-order af.
Edit: sometimes I think about how they feel. I really tried to find out if they maybe feel like always a little drunk or high on weed, because some people always act just like I am in these states. It would be interesting to experience some magical mind-hardware swapping to check if it’s true. Maybe I just lack natural alcohol levels in my blood or something like that, or is it a completely different experience. No chance to know for sure.
> that’s why I spend most of my free time in the internet
A friendly tip, spend less time "on the internet" and more time deep-diving into a narrow topic that interests you, do R&D, create. I find that many who spend much time "on the internet" simply consume and never create.
Einstein would perhaps have achieved nothing if he had the Internet, he was too curious, would perhaps have wasted all his time jumping from rabbit hole to rabbit hole. Unless, he chose to focus on his research, and kept web browsing to a minimum.
The Internet should be used more like a research tool than a time-killing device. It doesn't matter the topic of the articles you read, no matter the complexity and technical depth of the information you consume if you never do anything with it. If it never amounts to anything.
Even writing this comment, I can feel the waste of time it is, or any other comment. I recognize it for what it is, and try to spend very little time on such activities.
Checking my recent comment history, I can see that fortunately I seem to have it under control, with two weeks time between my days of commenting.
A good tip, and I try hard to find a balance. I raise this question once in a while to myself. But some areas like modern physics or biology or medicine are inaccessible to me to create because I’m not smart enough in “calculate” part of it. Instead I put free time efforts in my main area, human-oriented programming, hoping something meaningful will come out. Not even for money in there.
Even writing this comment, I can feel the waste of time it is, or any other comment
Seeing people now who got drunk and went walk instead of reading and having on-topic conversations “back then”, I don’t think you are wasting your time. I prefer not to be them, even if it would make me happier. Thanks for your time!
> Even writing this comment, I can feel the waste of time it is
Commenting somewhere like HN may feel like a time waste...but I like to believe many of us are drawn to it because we can somehow feel it's not. Your comment here connected with me enough that several thoughts crystalized in my mind. I could appreciate that that may not be super important or rewarding to you, but it IS valuable to me.
Additionally, there is a long tail during which an internet comment can become useful -- as long as the comment is up. It's hard to say for any given comment when it will last provide value for someone.
In a world of intellectual loneliness that could approach starvation, a given comment may be a drop of water in the desert to someone very important and we'd never know.
Any advice for someone whose primary intellectual interest is how people socialize online? Because damn it's hard not to get pulled into the communities I like observing...
Did you ever play as a kid? If you had kids, how would you play with them? Do you play with pets? Is all of the above boring?
I think I would take being bored in social settings as a creative challenge. I love the play element of social interactions. It's an improv. Think of taking a hot potato and passing it back and forth as you and the partner continue some line, which could seem almost pointless outside of that context. It's the activity which I enjoy, not the content.
Maybe it helps that I'm generally quick witted when I'm talking to people, and I love every opportunity to exercise it. Cracking jokes is a great way to get people out of "serious" mode.
As I said in another comment, deep conversation is like dating. It's unlikely that any given person is going to be interested in whatever it is that you're looking for right at that time. It works better when you have a large pool of people, because you get a higher hit rate. That's why the author of the article likes writing online in front of a big audience.
I took a medication that tanked my intellectual abilities once and it was TERRIBLE. I was in graduate school at the time and I actually got 'stuck' on something for the first time in the sense that I had a project and needed to accomplish something but couldn't think of how to do so. (As opposed to my usual, which is knowing what I'd need to do but feeling no motivation to do it...)
It was very unpleasant. If the feeling is anything like what most people feel when they're thrown into a conversation over their level, then I don't blame them for hating it. I'm sure discussing color theory with aliens with more cones than humans would hurt my brain; that's probably what my interests are like to most people.
You're basically asking for a short story from Jorge Bucay. Let me deepl it for you:
Joroska had always been interested in puzzles. From an early age, he had loved solving crossword puzzles and brainteasers, deciphering cipher writing, exploring mazes, and unraveling every mystery that had presented itself to him.
With varying degrees of success, he had devoted much of his life and brain power to solving problems that others had devised. Of course, he was not omniscient, he had always come across puzzles that were too complicated even for him.
If he found himself faced with one, Joroska had a certain ritual: he would look at it for a long time and finally determine with an expert eye whether it was indeed an unsolvable problem.
If it was, Joroska would take a deep breath and set about solving it. But immediately a period of frustration began, and Joroska only became more engrossed in the puzzle analysis.
The questions seemed unsolvable, dead ends appeared, some symbols led astray, unknown terms and unforeseeable complications got in his way.
Some time ago, Joroska had discovered that he needed a certain sense of achievement in life. Was that the reason why the puzzles no longer gave him such pleasure?
Already after the first attempt, he was usually overcome by a deadly boredom, and he let the matter rest, mocking somewhere in the back of his mind the idiotic creator of such tasks, who would surely be overwhelmed even with their solution.
From the fact that even the easy cases quickly bored him, he concluded that puzzles were always tailored to fit their puzzle solvers and only they knew the right level of difficulty for themselves.
Ideally, he thought, everyone tailors his own puzzle to his own body. But he immediately realized that this would mean that the puzzle would lose its mystery, because of course every inventor also knew the tailor-made solution to the problem.
A little out of playfulness and a little guided by the idea of helping people who, like him, enjoyed guessing, he began to invent problems, word games, number puzzles, logical brainteasers and abstract questions of all kinds.
But his masterpiece was the invention of a labyrinth.
One quiet sunny day he began to raise walls in one of the rooms of his huge apartment, and stone by stone he built a huge labyrinth on a natural scale.
The years passed. He spread his puzzles among friends, in professional journals and in one or another daily newspaper. The labyrinth, however, he kept under lock and key: it grew and grew inside his house, constantly changing.
Joroska made it more and more complicated each time, almost imperceptibly adding more and more aberrations.
This work developed into a life task. Not a day went by without Joroska adding some brick, bricking up an exit or extending a curve to make the course more difficult.
After a good twenty years, the labyrinth took up the entire room and had already imperceptibly extended to the rest of the house.
To get from the bedroom to the bathroom, one had to go eight steps straight ahead, turn left and after six more steps turn right again, then climb down three steps, five steps straight ahead again, turn right again, jump over an obstacle, and then one stood in front of the door.
To get to the terrace, one had to swing over the left wall, crawl a few meters and climb a rope ladder to the top floor.
The whole house gradually turned into a maze on a scale of one to one.
At first, he was very proud of his work. He amused himself by wandering through the various corridors that kept leading him astray, even though he himself had designed them, because it had simply become impossible to keep all the paths in mind.
It was a labyrinth tailored to him.
Tailor-made just for him.
At some point Jorosko began to invite people to his home, to his labyrinth. But even those who had initially been burning for it began to get bored within a very short time, as he himself did with unfamiliar puzzles.
Joroska offered to give tours of the house, but often a mood of departure set in very soon. The visitors usually agreed: "You can't live like this!"
At some point, Joroska grew tired of his eternal loneliness and moved to a house without mazes, where he could easily receive guests.
However, as soon as he met someone who seemed a bit bright, he showed them his true home. Just like the pilot in the Little Prince with his giant boa open or closed, Joroska opened his labyrinth to those worthy of such a revelation.
But Joroska never found anyone who would have been willing to live there with him.
That is because the OP is void of intellectual curiosity. The conversations are shallow because he is not asking interesting questions about their life, career, ambitions, and goals.
Sure, the wording is harsh. But of course you can be friends with someone who is not particularly intellectually gifted. Maybe they’re just a good person, funny, gifted with emotional intelligence, etc.
Eh, maybe? A lot of people usually find that one good friend or life partner that they spend most of their time with. If you don’t find those important connections, socializing will inevitably become a lonely experience. Groups have always been a disappointment.
I suppose it’s antisocial, but trying to get your dose of social from groups constantly is extremely exhausting in the long run. Way too much posturing all around, and often just observing the dynamics of groups is, again, exhausting.
Just recently I saw hierarchical dynamic where everyone was sucking up to one person. Whatever, i mean, I can accommodate a few of that human bullshit from time to time, but color me antisocial for just wanting to not do that regularly. Socializing is demoralizing at times.
This doesn't encompass the issue the author is describing. There's an axis of personality that looks something like "intellectual curiosity", which exists independently of social skills, and isn't filled simply by having social contact with arbitrary people. It's no different from the many other axes along which people find their personalities compatible with each other.
The challenge with this framing is that you can be too narrow-minded about it, deciding that you can deduce what someone has to contribute based on your first impression of them. In my experience, the tendency towards curiosity exists independently of class, education level, and even intelligence (though the correlation is stronger here). But once you get past the smalltalk phase that you describe, it's a pretty easy quality to suss out.
It's a very real, very significant gap in one's social life if you are on one end of this axis and none of your friends are. I found myself incidentally in this position a few years ago, and taking steps to consciously shape my social environment and focus on seeking out more intellectually-curious friends was very worth it.
I won't conclude that the OP is lacking in social skills, because it seems to be weird that being articulate and lacking in social skills can coexist. Being a good writer means you have to write in the view of your readers and be very considerate. And I think those are the same social skills. Self-centered person can't be a good writer.
I can resonate to this article. I feel lonely and at the same time, I have been pruning my direct circle. As I grow older, my circle gets smaller, because I found most connections are not nutritious. Many of my colleagues seem to only care about two topics, 1. the (micro) housing market. 2. how to send their kids to the Ive league. There is no talking about innovation, creativity, ideas. The topics don't have to be about tech, music, finance, art are all good. My point is, I think being an interesting person, one has to be curious and has some spiritual pursue above the life itself. Unfortunately most people (in my life) seem to be the same industrial products being manufactured on a same conveying belt.
> Part of me wonders if the OP were to meet one of the authors of the books he reads at a party, would he be able to interact with them? Probably not, and that’s my point exactly.
Come on. They already wrote what they had in mind. Why would you want to talk to them?
Sometimes it's not even worth reading their second book because it is about the same thing.
OP would probably wished his acquaintances were available in the book form because he could then skim the boring parts which in case of some people would be the whole thing.
And then there's this saying of specifically not meeting your heroes.
> A good book can be entertaining but it only takes a chance encounter to meet a life long friend, form a beneficial relationship, or meet a romantic partner.
That doesn't alleviate the fact that beneficial relationships and romantic partners can be intellectually unfullfilling.
The guy is going to parties. He just quits bit earlier than everyone else.
Most of us meet people really for one and only one reason. For social primate natural pleasure of physical interaction. Some people crave it more, some crave other things more. It's ok. No need to judge one way or the other.
> You’re going to go to a lot of parties in life, if you give up on them you are depriving yourself of valuable life experience.
True, but parchute jumping is also a valuable life expeirience yet it's not everybody's cup of tea. Same with interacting with people.
> It has nothing to do with books or how smart you are.
That's correct. However you have limited time in a day and people who get more kick out of the ideas than people have to make choices.
I think I have the social skills to glide effortlessly from person to person but I still identify with a lot of points the OP mentioned. I prefer being with people but I sometimes feel so alone when I want to talk about ideas and tech. I wish I had the motivation to write more about these ideas and then I'd need to know where to find people who want to read (I guess here on HN but that also doesn't come easy). I'd gladly give up on these stupid parties with loud music and these annoying small talk social norms and just meet up with people and code or brainstorm. I try my best looking for Hackathons, boardgame nights and recently I rediscovered EA meetings(effective altruism). I'm not a genius, which is probably why I'm not flooded with interest from other people but I'm enthusiastic about ideas and tech and I'm struggling with being alone in that aspect in my day to day life.
This is exactly how I've been feeling recently. I'm not entirely unsociable, but I'm happiest when pursuing my interests. From time to time, I find one or two people with a similar level of knowledge to mine to talk to, but no long term friends of this kind. Sharing stuff on Hacker News is an option, sure, but there's a limit to the amount of trust you can afford here, and a blog post isn't the most expedient way to explore complicated ideas.
I hadn't thought of joining EA meetings. It might be a good social/organizational exercise for me to try to start one in my town if there isn't one going already.
As an engineer who has primarily been focused on technical skills the last 15 years, I can attest that having good social skills would get you further in 5 years than I have in the past 15.
Burgess Meredith is a bookworm and is bothered by everyone (including his wife) interrupting his reading. After a nuclear detonation, he seems to be the only one who survived because he was hiding in a basement, reading, during the explosions. After discovering the devastation and his aloneness, he is about to kill himself when he notices the ruins of the Public Library.
This is his best possible outcome: lifetimes of books to read and no one to interrupt him while doing it. He is overwhelmed with joy.
If I have to pretend to be someone I'm not to have a social life, I'd rather not. Fortunately, there are plenty of people I get on with fine opening with stuff I actually find interesting, and they collect into large social groups and gatherings where you can find your people and be authentic.
The trick is to build a social network that's compatible with who you are and not try to live up to a standard set by those socialites who are able to talk to anyone at any party. I have excellent social skills. I've done that. I can do that. It got boring fast.
Fully agree here. Social interactions take a lot of work and have to be tended too. Like they say friendships are like trees, who need constant watering and taking care of.
This is a pretty awful comparison to draw. Outside of select few conditions, pretty much everyone has the ability to hone their social skills if they want to.
It's like anything else, it requires practice and some people require more 'active' practice and mindfulness for success, while others will find it comes more naturally to them.
The author of this blog post sounds like someone with a superiority complex fueled by bad social skills that make him resent people for his inability to connect with or be interested in _them_, which is why he constructs the excuse that the people around him are simply 'not intelligent' or can't handle the big serious topics he wants to discuss all the time. I mean if he's so smart and wants to sit around discussing ideas why doesn't he just find people that have that in common? No instead the people around him are simply inadequate and he is forced to retreat into solitude. I'm sorry but that is a ridiculous outlook to have in life.
Perhaps that's because you value that social interaction. I am a social butterfly. My partner has Asperger's, and despises social situations. But is also a teacher and enjoys discussing and sharing their specialised area. However much I would like my partner to come to the pub and do small talk it is agony for them. People are all different.
I specifically said I don't think it applies to people with actual actual disabilities like Aspergers. Perfectly capable nerds just hide behind their intellectualism to avoid self improvement. You don't need to be a social butterfly to cultivate emotional intelligence.
> It’s far more likely that the OP is lacking in social skills.
Ugh... I'm sure you mean well, but I doubt anyone can analyze someone's real-world behavior based on a few paragraphs.
This form of psychoanalysis is something the smartypants on HN do a lot, and it should be considered more offensive than it usually is. I have been called antisocial, autistic, sociopathic, you name it; while I am certainly imperfect, it is very rude to run to these conclusions based on a person's isolated opinion they were willing to make themselves vulnerable over.
Some people just don't get stimulated by conventional social settings. I consider myself a student of human behavior and have tried improving my social skills over the years (to varying levels of success), but in the end I really don't care very much about sportsball, the weather, the Netflix show of the hour, learning the names of a dozen people I will never see again, what Tina said to David, the recipe for the dish someone brought to the party. This isn't to say I don't care on any level, but I can only take so much of it because I am way more stimulated by ideas and my own imagination.
This isn't something I have much choice in, and there comes a point where I will not apologize for it. Sure, you don't want to never go to any parties, but not all parties are worth the time. If I know I'm not right for a particular party, I'll just leave and give a polite reason. No sense in me dragging it down for others. If I was at a nerd party, I wouldn't expect Chad Thunderrock to hang around for the sake of it.
Asperger syndrome? Sheldon Cooper? A typical software developer before he hits 30 and learns more about normies and how to pretend a little better? I have no problem in recognizing myself in his post for example. I'm surprised more people on this forum cannot relate to it. To expect people with such a psychological profile to be able to just "acquire more social skills" is naive. We are not born that way and to a large extent this is how we self-selected into working with computers in the first place.
I feel the same too. I feel my direct circle is too small. There are a lot of interesting people out there.
I was thinking about creating a platform similar to clubhouse, but asynchronous .
So like an audio version hackernews.
why audio based? because producing audio content/conversation is easier than writing/blogging? And being asynchronous makes topic mining and content based recommendation possible.
We use Marco Polo as a closed group thing, so content mining and recommendations aren't really relevant to our use case. Turning it into an open social media platform seems like it would basically be TikTok with different content.
As for liking it... I've always preferred text over audio or video, but some members of the group are much more likely to participate this way, so it's a compromise.
Just connecting people wouldn't be enough, you need some context to help them turn these individual relationships into a real peer group, something to give people the confidence to engage fully and not just perform or consume
I am hugely excited and energised by discussions of how we can make artificial intelligence safer and more reliable; how we can ground our symbolic requirements both in real-world phenomena and also in the sub-symbolic representations learned by the massively over-parameterised machine learning tools that are currently in vogue; and I am fascinated by how we can use synthetic data and domain randomisation to bridge those divides and achieve that symbol grounding.
Even in technical communities, it's hard to find people who are as engaged, excited and energised by those topics as I am. In 'everyday' life, people either disengage and switch off immediately, or react in a (presumably defensive) mocking and derisive manner.
It's only by spreading our net further, by reaching out to a global community of academics, scientists, engineers and founders that we can build ourselves a more sympathetic and engaged social network, and that we can fully satiate both our social and our intellectual needs.
"But when evening comes I return home and go into my library. At the door I take off my muddy everyday clothes. I dress myself as though I were about to appear before a royal court as a Florentine envoy. Then decently attired I enter the antique courts of the great men of antiquity. They receive me with friendship; from them I derive the nourishment which alone is mine and for which I was born. Without false shame I talk with them and ask them the causes of their actions, and their humanity is so great they answer me. For four long and happy hours I lose myself in them. I forget all my troubles; I am not afraid of poverty or death. I transform myself entirely in their likeness".
Niccolo Machiavelli, Lettere (ed. by G. Lesca (Florence, 1929) pp. 88-90.
This famous passage was written during Machiavelli's banishment from Florence. During the day Machiavelli trapped birds, visited the local inn occasionally and gambled with the locals.
David Perell has many brothers in his self-imposed exile.
What pops in my head is what is the point of all the self-indulgent reading and learning if it just dies with you inside your head when you pass away? It’s just masturbation. I see both sides of the answer, as I too love solitude. Probably best to share it with others and teach others so it can make the human race better. But that sweet reverie of being alone!
I'm pretty introvert and parties bore me. But the brightest thoughts and ideas, and the biggest intellectual challenges happen through conversations. It just takes time and effort (and less focus on ego) to go into deeper conversations with people and not feel "intellectually lonely"
Some may go to a party to "hook up." Some may go to a party to score some drugs. Some may go to a party to network. The author of the article goes to the party to have intellectual conversations. The author didn't get his intellectual conversations, but he could have wrote the same article about coming up dry in scoring some drugs.
I feel the author is missing an opportunity to practice creative adaptation in these parties. Don't go into the party with a specific frame. Instead, try on different frames as you speak with different people. Maybe create frames which you have never attempted. Or just wing it and see how it turns out.
If you make it about any one thing, you'll be disappointed, but you'll also miss an opportunity to make that moment of life interesting rather than a disappointment by going in with a more fluid presence.
I've changed my mind on this idea. Being surrounded by very intelligent people (or, similar ones to myself) has never made me feel any less lonely than would other people. I think our expectations qua relating to others are out of step with reality, and I also think we're mistakenly attributing some of these feelings to there being too few like-minded people. Ultimately I've come to find that little differences make others interesting and fun to be around.
Notwithstanding that people have different social needs, realistically, meeting them is not the hard part, provided you aren't withdrawing from engagement. I meet most of my social needs just by having a romantic partner, and I was profoundly lonely on and off for over a decade.
There are other factors at work in my view. When we're in a bad spot it is difficult to parse and make sense of what is wrong. We view the world through the lens of our emotions and feeling depressed doesn't seem practically distinguishable than feeling lonely. This is a vulnerable state because we can get stuck in loops informed by cognitive distortions, by untruths. A matter-of-fact approach to improving wellness -- a foundation of CBT principles, healthy regimen (including sunlight and D3) and diet -- I think quells these pangs enough to allow more mental clarity in working through it. In my case, a better foundation as described did most of the work, but I subsequently resolved to kick a porn addiction (can lead to lower baseline levels of dopamine, which makes you unmotivated), and find a bit more meaning in projects and work, rather than allocating as much time to social media / consumption.
All of which to say, particularly if you are single, it's important to get out there and talk to people, but don't expect that to be a silver bullet for dealing with that sense of loneliness and lack of meaning. At the least it can offer moral support, but in those cases when other people aren't making you feel better, I expect that a lack of social contact isn't the problem to fix (or, not the only one).
First of all, I would like to focus on the post/idea itself but not the author. Accusing an idea is less sound because of one's judgement of the author makes little sense to me.
A lot of the comments on this thread talks about "social skills", "learning from people", etc. But reading books itself is a way of communicating with people over space and time. If you focus on the efficiency and ROI, reading classic books will probably inspire you more than talking to a random person at a party.
The OP's complaint about "mindless conversations about the news" seems justified in my opinion. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a good book on the topic. Don't Look Up is also a good movie on the topic.
Focusing on efficiency and ROI in this context is just kinda gross. As if other people are some resource to be extracted and consumed; as if life is some function to be gradient-descended to achieve some maxima. Would you rather have a glass of <your favorite drink> by the fire with <your favorite intellectual> or would you rather sit alone and read their book at home?
You are right. I am not saying relationships are less important. I do believe relationships are more important to most. “Focusing on ROI” is just a presumption for the next statement. One also doesn’t have to focus on relationships all the time.
I think he's getting at something important. I started writing for the same reason basically. But wish there was a way to network my writings with other people's writings.
Maybe I just need to build a social media following (probably on Twitter)?
I miss the community of bloggers in the old days... there was these groups of people often cross-referencing and reacting to each other in the form of essays. No particular hierarchy, just an amorphous conversation
Yeah, I prefer the discussions via essay format as well. Instead of the quick meme reactions. I guess it's good for comedy and being edgy, but not really for high quality ideas. I vaguely recall seeing a Show HN of a discovery tool for personal blogs, but don't think it really took off. Sad to see.
The 'quick exiting the party' approach works if you are of this kind and alone. If your spouse/family is different, it complicates things. The trick I have found helpful is to 'fake' enjoying the small conversations or force myself to take occasional breaks from feeling the need for intellectual stimulation and allow myself to indulge in the group. This also has worked positively by preventing being outcasted. It has been a win-win for all of us. As I age, I am tired to find the right group instead has settled for 1-2 like minded people whom I can converse on complex topics.
Wow the hot takes on this are terrible, the OP is basically describing the difference between scripted and unscripted and unrelated discussion. Scripted is obviously more refined, e.g. a book, unscripted and unrelated e.g. casual discussion can be less engaging and is a different experience. Different people like different stuff, we don’t have to all love the same stuff. And we especially don’t need to hit out at the OP because y'all think you're superior to them cause y'all love socialising geez
In a social gathering,
the most common shared interest between us is what dictates the discussions. So larger the group, lamer/dumber the discussions are going to be unless it's a forum where like-minded people gather. I personally think 3-4 is the right group size to have any meaningful discussions. I'm not an introvert nor an extrovert and I do agree with OP however I've found that adding some parts of such non intellectual social meetings in life helps our mental state as well.
Why is Perell so popular in techie-ish circles? His writing is a cross between the New Yorker and undergrad essays, and reminds me of oratory - it feels substantial and meaningful but peel back the surface and there's little behind it.
He has a course that outside SV is hard to afford (the time-unlimited writing one is over 10% of the annual take-home pay of a senior software engineer in the UK), a massive twitter and mailing list following - and what else that makes his output so popular?
I get what he means and a part of me is like this at well. However, I do like partying (both drunk and sober), here is why:
- Dancing a lot means I am working out
- It allows me to play a bit with my identity to people (you know jump up and down out of excitement instead of a normal handshake)
- In fact, it allows for play (I sometimes bring a scarve to parties and play rope jump with it or limbo dancing)
- I get to study/observe drunk people and drunk group dynamics from a distance or as a part of it (by being drunk myself)
- I get to meet people and hear their perspective. Emotionally that means I feel like I am walking a few steps in their shoes
- In rare cases, I can have a deep intellectual conversation with people but there are better venues for meeting people in order to have intellectual conversations
Partying and network events and the like is simply not for everyone and that’s okay. I hope the author has a few friends where he can have amazing conversations with
I have the opposite experience around other programmers. They always have some new code idea and I'm always lost.
They'll be telling me about some algorithm they used in a weekend project and I'll just be thinking "Doesn't Excel already do that" or "I'm not a systems programmer, nobody writes their own sorting algorithm in JS"
And then they never do much other than code, so conversation topics are usually depressing politics, code, or more code, but the code doesn't feel like code, it feels like philosophy in machine readable form.
Sometimes I think I'd enjoy a real dedicated web dev job, just to be on a full team of people who focused on UIs and features and best practices, instead of toy apps and computer science I don't understand, and an endless quest to simplify down to the stone age.
The biggest change that someone like this needs to make is to simply take an interest in what other people are doing.
Yes, a lot of people simply vegetate in front of media. Sure, avoid them.
However, when you find someone who does something be interested in what they do. Even if you think it's boring as hell, if they find it interesting, engage them on it. First, you will be surprised how often you find out that it isn't as boring or straightforward as you thought. Second, the topic will eventually turn to something else that you will probably find far more interesting.
Finally, you will get a reputation as someone interesting to engage with. And that opens the doors to even more interesting people because they people standing around thinking "man the people at this party are boring" will want to engage with you.
This is not intellectual, but spiritual loneliness.
There's a book about learning how to draw "with the right brain". The main idea is that you learn how to see. It quotes one of pupils who said that once he learned that he realized that there were no people who were not beautiful.
Counterpoint: OP sucks at talking about the ideas that interest them, which is why all their attempts at conversation about those ideas are unsatisfying. They prefer monologue to dialogue, but it's not a failing in how dialogue works, or their interlocutors.
I think the author needs to spend time with people they actually like to be around. That's the key of enjoying social gatherings. Obv what these people like to talk about would correlate with how much they enjoy being around them, but it's not the only factor.
It doesn't sound like he has "intellectual loneliness". Instead, it sounds like he's unopen to the ideas or interests of others and has a very narrow set of interests.
It is both possible to be a great intellectual AND have an ability to appreciate the company of others.
The world isn't full of just interesting ideas but also events and people too. It sounds like he's unable to expand beyond "intellectualism" as the only worthwhile thing to do. That's fine if that's his choice...but there's a certain smugness he carries with that attitude.
My man needs to discover his tribe. If you can't be "surrounded by ideas" and "get a second rush of energy from mind-altering [conversation], and have to decide between following a rabbit hole until 3 am or going to sleep so I can be well-rested the next day" at a party when that's what floats your boat, you need to be going to different parties.
Source: Most of the parties I go to are full of my own weird passionate curious kind of people and that 3am rabbit hole is where most of those end up. Good at going to bed early, we are not.
Sounds like the author is INTP personality type, if you believe in that classification system. I personally have the same problem. Luckily I am ENTP, which means I quite enjoy a good party with shallow conversations. It also stimulates diffuse thinking, so often a brilliant idea kicks in out of nowhere at 2am. Also the party lets me forget for a while that feeling of intellectual loneliness that’s otherwise ubiquitous.
There’s a saying that small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas. It’s very true.
I read this and wondered who this fascinating person must be, what terribly interesting subjects they must be interested in, and was disappointed to discover it’s just ordinary business stuff.
The solution is to be good teacher and learner - there's so many fascinating interests these days and things i don't know about. And I want to share things from my niche too.
Sounds like OP does like company as long as it's interesting. Parties are not where you'll find that. Seek out the places that attract book lovers and idea people. Go to conferences and conventions. Find the people there who are hoping to find people like you. A real-life conversation with a passionate and well-read person is utterly unlike online interaction. Travel as much as you can afford to find these people, and come up with glorious plans for world domination together!
Nothing wrong with loving learning, but I can't help but think "You need better friends". Personally I was in the best space in my university years, plenty of intelligent people around, almost all of them more knowledgeable than myself in many areas, so never a boring conversation if you can get people talking. And part of learning is testing your ideas and understanding with others, after all.
I used to feel like OP, but over time I have found that I'm not actually bored by some kind of intellectual loneliness. What actually happens is that our brains are excited by different things. I spend most of my time solving software problems for a living and playing difficult videogames. It doesn't mean I'm smarter than someone who'd rather be hanging out at some party, it just means our brains crave different inputs.
"I have a confession to make: I leave most parties early because I’d rather read a book."
It sounds a bit cliche, in Mexico we call it "mamador".
By other side, the point that he mentions about feeling more connected with an internet audience is one of the main advantages of internet... Infinite leverage and the possibility to find or even create an audience. But, social skills are important too so is a skill that we have to develop.
His whole website looks fake to me, as in it's actually run by a corporation to market their product.
Not unlike those affiliate "blogs" using stock photography and inspirational bs quotes to create the impression of a person running them.
All in all, the term "intellectual" wouldn't have been my first choice in describing the content I see on there.
My solution to that problem is to have friends with which I love to spend time. Either due to their very different background, to the brilliance of their mind or to their deep kindness and love for all things around them.
Getting there did take work, a friendship has to be cultivated and nourrished, but it is worth it.
"It’s built on a paradox where you feel alive when you’re learning on the Internet but soul-crushed when you try to talk about those same ideas with friends and family"
Sounds like this person needs better friends with whom they can have good conversations? This is not that deep...
from this thread and the far-too-many-hours I've spent on Reddit - obviously these feeling are not uncommon, but the tone in which this stuff is presented always reeks of unearned superiority
like I think its great that people like OP have enjoyment and passion for "intellectual pursuits", but most other people don't. you have an interest, and like most other interests, people aren't going to share your interest because they have their own, different interests. so don't be surprised when you try to pivot the conversation, people don't want to talk about
like it sucks you can't share your interest with those close to you, that's a problem most everyone has, but when it's on the topic of "intellectual pursuits" or whatever
- articles like this it always read as "I'm smart, everyone else is dumb, woe is me"
that may not be what people like OP are intending - but the problem is others just have different passions and priorities than you and are turned off when you want to discuss only what interests you. I'm certain most could have such a conversation with someone like OP, but why would they when their tone smells like "smarter than tho" because they want to talk about esoteric philosophy or abstract ideas at a college party
if one want to get rid of this "loneliness" you either need to find a community of like-minded others (see the internet) or introduce conversation topics in a more mutually interesting manner instead of wishing for others to meet you where you are
I write this as someone who has been on both sides of the conversation
I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually.
That was hard to swallow. I think the next hard to swallow realization was that I’m not a very good person. I’m not mean to anyone, but I invest very little in actually doing good. I know I should, I have the resources to do it, but I’m still so self absorbed. I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month.
I used to think I was a pretty nice guy until I realized how terrible I am at changing my behaviour to help other people. In all practicality I’m kind of an asshole. I’ll do better.
I went through similar realizations and have had another:
- My intellect is isolating me, but it's not my fault and it also is not the fault of people around me. Not any more than it is either my fault or the average person's fault that I need a stepstool in my kitchen since it's not designed for me. (I'm quite short). Being very intelligent is like being very tall in that it's falling to one side of the distribution curve and human society/life is going to be designed for the average person. As shitty a measure as IQ is, having a 140 IQ is kind of like being 7 and a half feet tall: Nothing is wrong with you, but good luck.
Basically, that my intellect is isolating not because I am superior to the other apes, but because any personal characteristic that puts me on one end of the bell curve when it comes to experiences is going to be isolating. I also feel very isolated due to my homosexuality and my MS, and in some similar ways: They all involve experiences that influence me in foundational ways that most people cannot understand and never will.
Thank you for this - I like your perspective on what I said a lot. That’s a genuinely useful insight. It’s not particularly negative or positive, but very sensible.
I thought I'd drop it in because I did have the 'oh my god, other people aren't the problem, I'm just an arrogant asshole!' moment in my 20s, but assuming my intellect was a non-factor in my ability to connect with others had its own problems. I corrected too far in the other direction ("stop thinking you're special/smarter than everyone else, that's just your arrogance talking") and it made me depressed because when I disagreed with most people around me/wanted different things, I assumed it was because I was the problem (as opposed to others).
It turns out none of us are a problem. We're just different.
I'm arrogant beyond belief and a self-absorbed asshole. I'm absolutely comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations in my personal life where this has been massively advantageous for my own psychology.
By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists. I don't see people not using the knowledge that Isaac Newton shared with us, because he was a horrible person...
I honestly think that if he saw a shrink and worked on "his issues" (by today's standards) he would have lobotomized himself.
Nietzsche had a good intuition about people that optimize for full manifestation of the self in reality, but was kind of naive what qualities these people would exhibit. It is the entire package, not only the "good parts" (by today's standards)
>I'm arrogant beyond belief and a self-absorbed asshole. I'm absolutely comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations in my personal life where this has been massively advantageous for my own psychology.
I'm a thief. I'm comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations where this was advantageous to me.
>By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists.
Nah, this is just the standard /r/iamverysmart drivel: you basically are so superior to everyone else that any interaction with the inferior masses leaves you so annoyed that you have to lash out like an asshole. Probably popularised by depictions of the """genius"" like Sheldon on Big Bang Theory, Zuck on Social Network, or that Steve Jobs flick.
In reality unless you truly are massively wealthy or influential nobody will stand for your bullshit. The most competent and intelligent people I've found are also nearly always the most humble and the best communicators.
Newton died with no friends, he was celibate his whole life, and he never travelled farther than about 100 miles from where he was born. He was rightly recognized for his contribution to math in his 20s, but by the time he was in his 30s he'd removed himself from the scientific community and spent all his time studying alchemy and the bible.
You believe that it was necessary for him to be a dick in the pursuit of genius; I think the outcome of his "full manifestation of the self" meant that society benefited from 10 years of his singular effort and then lost out on the next 50 years because no one would work with him, and his peers actually laughed at him for his (entirely wrong) approach to the theory of what light is. Boyle and Hooke accused him of stealing their ideas on optics.
The fact Newton was an asshole, and people let him be an asshole, robbed us all of 80% of what he might have achieved if he'd been a bit nicer.
You're saying that if he was not the asshole that he was, he would have achieved more. I'm saying that if he pretended not to be the asshole that he was, he would have achieved nothing.
You cannot go against your own nature. It requires too much energy and does not work, it lobotomizes you.
You might be right. You might not. We have no way to know. Back in Newton's day a person could make huge leaps alone. Today I think there are few people who can make breakthroughs on their own now, or even do great work without collaborating. Maybe being an asshole was OK 400 years ago but it isn't now.
Also, suggesting it's OK to emulate Newton when you're not a genius is likely to have a worse outcome.
If you're really convinced that there's a "true" version of yourself, you should read the 70s cult classic "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart. While not exactly earth-shattering prose, and while also following a general plot arc of increasingly graphic and violent sexuality, in the right setting it can be a deep reminder that there is not a single version of you. You make choices, sometimes arbitrary, sometimes circumstantial, sometimes due to other people, and those choices can illuminate entirely different aspects of who you are.
- People should emulate you. (Think about how fundamental the change from emulating to non-emulating is for all their talking/reading/thinking patterns. I don't see how else can you reboot your personality short of emulating someone.)
Kids come with different personalities right out of the box, ask anyone with more than one kid. You've bought into some liberal propaganda that people are fully malleable objects. We are not. It is a combination between nature and nurture. I personally believe it is significantly more "nature" in this case.
There are certain aspects of your personality, like "arrogance", that the society might find unacceptable. That doesn't mean that they are bad for you or that you can change them.
People are pretty malleable though, is the thing. We like to think otherwise because it’s cognitively simple to think people (and ourselves) are static objects as identities that don’t change over time. In fact, people are very dynamic and change dramatically over time in response to their environment, self-inflicted or not. It can be anything from sudden trauma causing drastic personality changes, puberty, or rigorous work at changing one’s maladaptive thinking patterns.
Of course they are bad: you will be shunned by peers, you will have stunted communication skills. Interpersonal relations and communication is a critical skill for any endeavor where you don't work alone (I've no idea what is it that you do).
> By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists.
I don't know if there is any data/research on being successful or valuable requiring an arrogant narcissistic personality. I believe it doesn't. If anything, such people became successful despite having such difficult personalities.
The "difficult" in difficult personality is not for themselves, it is for everyone else.
It is not necessity for being successful or valuable, but it is undeniable that people like that exist throughout history.
At the most fundamental level: It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities like "arrogant" that are of no possible value.
Societies need to believe certain things to function. You cannot have a society where each individual is like Isaac Newton. I'm sure that if you asked the people that were knew him, they would say that "one is more than enough..."
>It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities (like "arrogant") that are of no possible value
Isn't arrogant and narcissist describing two completely different things? Narcissism is social. You can be an arrogant asshole and become and hermit. A narcissist wouldn't choose to be a hermit, because that person feeds off interactions with others.
My problem with the idea of being "arrogant and a self-absorbed asshole" is that it smells like identity. Taking on strong identity can be a problem, as we see with identity politics. I feel a better path through life is to keep identity small and be more creative on being adaptive.
As I said in another comment, the author is going into the party in a frame of "seeking intellectual conversation." Another person at the party may have attended in the frame of "seeking a hook-up." Both may have been similarly disappointed. A better approach is to be be creative and adaptable. We have forgot how to play.
I feel that having a default frame would be problem for me. Being adaptable is just more fun. Being arrogant may be effective in certain situations, but a problem for others. One of my favorite playgrounds is the British pub cultural thing of "taking the piss." That's where someone you're talking to at the bar just starts ripping into you. I LOVE that, and I usually surprise them at being better at it than they are. An arrogant frame in this situation would leave you wide open.
Newton wasted a lot of time on pursuits such as alchemy and mapping out the geography of hell. Not to mention surely some of his contemporaries would have came across many of his discoveries- the much better socially-adjusted Leibniz did, after all.
Not going out of your way to help people doesn't make you an asshole.
> I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month.
These things are normal, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
But you are right that going through life thinking you are some lonely, tortured genius is not healthy and is a recipe for being a true asshole.
Not helping others when you are able doesn't make me an asshole; it makes me self centered. Yes, it is quite normal, but I disagree with your next clause: we should think harder about it and not dismiss it so easily.
I've pitched this one before, as it is a short book (pdf, or audiobook) and is one of the most impactful things I've read in a long time. It was Peter Singer's book, The Life You Can Save [1]
The book methodically and non-judgmentally addresses many objections and false beliefs people have about charity [2] and effective altruism. In a nutshell: ideally we'd have enough resources that everyone had everything they need, but we don't. There is a strong instinct to care more about people who are similar to you or live near you than for others, but we shouldn't. That is, the suffering of a person you will never meet is just as real as the suffering of someone you are friends with. Because we have limited resources to help others, the resources we do have should be focused on those who are worst off.
[2] For instance, many people moan about how much of the federal budget is spent/wasted on foreign aid. When asked to guess how much of the budget is spent, people (in the US) commonly guess 10-20%. When asked what they thing would be more appropriate, they commonly say 5-10%. The reality is it is well under 1%.
To play a devil’s advocate (I don’t think I’m right, it’s just the next obvious thought), the life you save produces another two, and after few steps you still can’t. Animal charities, and I feel sorry for this comparison, in areas without controlled population tend to overwhelm themselves to the point where the charity dilutes into conditions indistinguishable from natural.
You may say, well, then help fixing the root cause. That’s right, but you have to find true one and fix it, and both is hard. Much easier to calm yourself by a donation to people who you prefer to believe to understand more.
One point is that when people have secure lives, the birth rate plummets. When your only capital is children, you make more children. By meeting the needs of the worst off, they have fewer children, not more.
I'm sure there were other points made, but I don't want to attempt to restate those from my shaky memory of what I read more than a year ago.
These realizations are easier to swallow (or spit back out) when you ask people directly, or recall when they said so or otherwise. The “not goodness” that you describe is likely a sort of self-eating during yet another crysis.
I know I should
This is a great opening to self-analysis. Whence do you know it? What’s the goal? What if you did something “good” whatever it means to you, what then? Imagine it, what’s different? Walking this graph of questioning every term may discover the true source of your unease, which may be completely unrelated to “being good”.
I’ve contemplated these questions a fair amount and I suspect the answers are approximately these:
I know I should do better for other people because a) my success in life has depended on others to a large degree and b) I’m not doing much to help others succeed
I know I worry about my own security because I grew up quite poor and I struggle to imagine that things will still be secure tomorrow, or even by half way through the day
If I could overcome that I would likely feel more at ease and be better off for it. At the same time, I’d likely enjoy helping others with resources like time, wealth, and energy which I felt more secure to offer. I immensely enjoy opportunities to help others when I do allow myself to do it, and I believe I would continue to enjoy it if I did it more
Some of this is hypothetical, but I figured I’d outline my thinking so it seems less like I’m beating myself up for no reason. You’re right - without questioning or exploring the thoughts, I’d likely be pursuing the wrong thing or for the wrong reasons. I think several lines of questioning are how I got here though.
Having said that, I’m certain “being good” will never mean a singular thing and as I make efforts to enact change, more questions and more answers will put me on a different track. Absolutely.
For what it’s worth, a major source of the question and desire to do good or to be a better person came from reading and researching stoic philosophy. I don’t adhere to it or love all of it, but I do love the notion of living in accordance with nature. As a social animal, what are my duties to those around me? In all practicality, what is the best thing I can do for the people I have duties towards? As a dad, a friend, a neighbour. Something about that framing really resonates with me. Upon reading it years ago and letting it incubate, I came to realize I am fairly poor at fulfilling my duties.
> Upon reading it years ago and letting it incubate, I came to realize I am fairly poor at fulfilling my duties.
I disagree, because I think you're not taking into account at what stage you are. You're realizing it would be better if ... , that's great. Nourish that, water that seed. Don't judge the sappling as if it was a big tree.
You're not either a good guy or an asshole. There is a lot inbetween. Sometimes good people make mistakes, but I don't think it's good to instantly label them as assholes.
I agree. I think the problem with me is that I’m very aware of how I can be better and why I should be, but I’m failing to make it happen. My main blocker is typically myself; what I think I need, what I want, generally protecting my self interest to an unnecessary degree.
In my defence I think I’ve gotten better about it over time and have taken real steps to do better. It still bothers me quite a bit sometimes. I know I should do better.
"I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually."
Everyone is self-absorbed to some extent; it's an evolutionary trait that helps with our survival. Some will be self-absorbed in a narcissistic sense, others, as you've mentioned, with their security and position. Then there are those who are so completely self-absorbed with their ideas and interests—interests that have become so integral to and inseparable from their thinking that the way they think has shaped their identities. In essence, ideas have shaped and remolded their personalities in ways that let them think and dream of little else other than their principal interests.
I would suggest that if we examined the behaviors and inner personalities of many if not most of history's great illustrious thinkers such as famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and many others who we now revere and respect—then there's little doubt that we'd find many of them would easily be classified as self-absorbed assholes. Moreover, the term self-absorbed asshole would automatically apply to many by virtue of their very nature—and it would still apply irrespective of whether their interests are noteworthy or important and or whether their work actually possesses any real value or utility or not. Simply, one can be a self-absorbed asshole no matter what the intrinsic value of one's work is.
For instance, take Isaac Newton, who from various accounts was a rather nasty man and that's likely putting it mildly. Then there are true self-absorbed bastards like Fritz Haber the German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Haber–Bosch process to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen that led to the large-scale production of fertilizers, this process has benefited many millions of people worldwide over the past century. Despite Haber's important discovery he nevertheless remains a self-absorbed asshole with his stripes as rotten as ever—just by virtue of the fact that he's also the Father of chemical warfare having overseen the 'weaponisation' of chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. Haber's virtuous discovery doesn't mitigate him in any way as from various accounts he was a truly nasty person.
Then there's Einstein. Can you imagine Einstein arriving at the patent office in Berne fresh off the very tram that he'd already envisioned as central to his thought experiment in relativity—only to confront his co-workers with those very ideas? I've no idea whether Einstein did so or not [he likely had more sense not to] but it's easy to imagine that he did and that his co-workers quickly offered excuses then exited his presence in great haste.
The fact is, one has to be self-absorbed in one's thoughts if one is to achieve anything worthwhile. Whilst there are notable exceptions, I'd respectfully suggest that for most people that it's not possible to integrate thought into concepts and cohesive ideas without being obsessively involved with them.
How one presents or hides this self-obsession to others in the outside world that is perhaps the main or most important issue. Being adept at handling one's obsessions in the presence of others and in social settings is a worthwhile trait, that's if you possess what it takes to do so. Unfortunately, not everyone does and the ones who don't are likely to end up with the 'asshole' moniker.
(For my own part, when I'm self-absorbed with a problem it's best others not be around me as they'll likely be ignored. At least nowadays I've some cognizance of my problem: for the women in my life have repeatedly pointed out that being male means I've only the limited capacity to think about one matter at a time. I now understand this.)
There are of course a few in the genius class who can be both totally self-absorbed in whatever interests them and who simultaneously seemingly run normal lives without any additional effort, it's as if they've two independent brains running in parallel. Names that spring immediately to mind are the likes of Mozart and Leonard Euler but there are many more. There are stories of Euler—likely the most prodigious and prolific mathematician in history—being totally absorbed and doing mathematics whilst his rowdy kids surrounded him, it seems that nothing ever distracted him). If I recall correctly, all up Euler had 13 kids. How he also managed to have ever had sufficient time for doing great mathematics remains one of the great imponderables.
Finally, we need to mention and separate out how great minds interact with one another when on matters of common interest. Such individuals often have obsessive interests that are so heightened that their psyches exclude them from considering almost everything else. It's not only a specific common interest that binds them but also it's the minutiae of detail within that interest, it's key—it's the very 'spice' of such interest. One can imagine being a fly on the wall in the heady day of the early 1900s listening to conversations between the likes of Einstein, Hilbert, Lorentz, Poincaré, Minkowski and others. That said, the fact that pockets self-absorbed assholes — assholes of such high and outstanding caliber occur with such rarity that they can be ignored for all practical purposes.
I agree. There was a TIL thread on Reddit a few years ago about how smarter people are usually more depressed -- low and behold everyone in the comments was lamenting over how cursed they were to carry the burden of their intellect. No one really pointed out that if you were on one of the most popular websites on the planet in a default subreddit, chances were you were pretty average with average intelligence.
We fetishize intelligence too much as a society and too many don't understand what it really is and how it can differ. It's nice to imagine a world where we valued empathy as much as intelligence.
> if you were on one of the most popular websites on the planet in a default subreddit, chances were you were pretty average with average intelligence.
This isn't true. If you have a very popular website and take the most common threads people might read on it, then you will likely have at least a few hundred thousand people viewing it. If 1% of the smartest 2% comments you would have a maybe a hundred comments from people who would qualify for mensa if the viewers were random people, basically flooding the comment section.
The reason this works is that people will flock to threads that is about something relating to them. People who do well on IQ tests will flock to threads about intelligence etc.
People don't have to care about IQ tests to know that they got a good score on one and therefore consider themselves smart. You can see them in almost every thread about IQ tests "I got IQ score 1X0 and I think that IQ is stupid and doesn't matter!".
Anyway, being smart without an education is pretty worthless as you say, but there is a lot of such people out there. Being uneducated doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, it just means that they didn't utilize their intelligence in life. I'm not sure why you would try to say that they aren't intelligent just because they lack education. If a study found that intelligent people face more boredom or whatever, then it is almost surely that the study was a correlation between IQ and some questionnaire result, so whatever score someone got on an IQ test is very relevant for the topic.
And if you are educated, you have an even wider gap with your average person.
Education starts with school and parenting, when school is averaging to the lowest students and parents are busy with their own work, what is left to your "high IQ kid"?
School would just provide a less-than-average knowledge, parents won't guide, and you get an uneducated kid surrounded by "idiots".
As a parent, you provide guidance to your kids, high IQ or not, you still get a large gap with their peers. Yesterday, we were drugging kids with TV, today, with tiktok and the likes.
The Dunning Kruger effect study found that there is a strong correlation between confidence and skill, it just isn't perfect and it is much more wrong for low skill than high skill.
People tend to think they're closer to the middle than they are. A useful thing you can do for people on topics where you have more expertise and perspective is draw them away from the middle. Let people know if they are especially good or bad at what they're doing. Try to be gentle about it.
I'm probably going to get downvoted for being elitist, but here goes...
On the flip side, I have found a startling amount of people genuinely don't have many passions / interests. Skills and talents, sure. But passions - no.
Or I guess if eating foods like cereal and McDoland's counts as a food passion, or watching TV, or working a job you don't actually enjoy - if these count as passions - then I suppose everyone does have interests.
I'm just not inclined to think people are really that passionate about these things - and instead, it's just what they do. Sure - anybody who spends 10 hours a day laying bricks - they're obviously infinitely more skilled in that and related things than someone who doesn't. But a lot of people simply exchange their time for money, and don't particularly love what they do. Most of us HN-ers do, and we forget how rare that is.
I think some of us on here forget how close we have it to a life of leisure compared to the average person (ESPECIALLY globally). I know a lot of people that pretty much have no time for anything besides work and family.
And I hope that all people like this LOVE at least their work or their family. But in reality, I know A LOT of people trapped in a life where they genuinely dislike both. And that's pretty much their whole life.
> On the flip side, I have found a startling amount of people genuinely don't really have many passions / interests.
That'd describe Perell well. He doesn't have many passions/interest. He's bowing out of one interest to flee back into his singular comfort zone of unchallenged isolation, where no one "tests" his chops and he can fly on the wings of his self perception to whatever height he desires.
He shuns every passion/interest that does not align with his narrow view of which passions and interests make a person "intellectual". He's the kind of guy who will use his superior training as "guy who writes things on the Internet" to start arguing medicine with me, and then leave the party because few people share his interests and he just can't contribute to theirs. Because we're not as intellectual than him.
... in his narrowly defined niche of what makes a person intellectual.
Hint: being able to cite Plato does not make you in any way, shape, or form, more "intellectual" than the guy at the end of the bar who knows every Man U soccer game score, who scored, against whom, in which game, at what game time, using which strategy.
Having consumed a 500 page book does not make you more intellectual than having consumed 500 episodes of Coronation Street. Consumption, in general, is a low hanging fruit, intellectually. Your love for Doctor Who doesn't make you smarter than someone's fanning over Rihanna.
Intellectuals are rarely lonely. Because true intellectuals see value in information, no matter the sender or matter. Restrictive topic selection is pretty much the definition of anti-intellectualism, in my opinion.
> Hint: being able to cite Plato does not make you in any way, shape, or form, more "intellectual" than the guy at the end of the bar who knows every Man U soccer game score, who scored, against whom, in which game, at what game time, using which strategy.
> Having consumed a 500 page book does not make you more intellectual than having consumed 500 episodes of Coronation Street. Consumption, in general, is a low hanging fruit, intellectually. Your love for Doctor Who doesn't make you smarter than someone's fanning over Rihanna.
> Intellectuals are rarely lonely. Because true intellectuals see value in information, no matter the sender or matter. Restrictive topic selection is pretty much the definition of anti-intellectualism, in my opinion.
Big red flag anytime anyone prefixes something with "true." First you stubbornly deny what an intellectual is, then you redefine its meaning to suit your narrative, with your "true intellectual."
I mean yes, you have described literally the rhetorical techniques they are using to communicate their idea. Would you give them the green flag if they framed it more humbly "I meekly propose my opinion, that if one wants to better define intellect they could consider.. "
> On the flip side, I have found a startling amount of people genuinely don't really have many passions / interests.
Every single time I dig deep to search for someone's passion, I find at least one, and often multiple. In general, I find way more than I initially expected when I was a teenager.
I have also found many people don't think it's socially acceptable to talk about their passion in many situations. This makes it hard to discover these passions when you have only casual interaction with people.
So what if people do not have a "passion"? Is that so wrong?
I think we need to be careful about setting unrealistic expectations for what is normal/desirable (you use the term "elitist" as if having a passion for something is only reserved for the social/economic elite). This echos back to job adverts looking for engineers with "passion" etc.
I would argue that a singular "passion" might actually be a negative trait as it can have a negative impact on other parts of your life (as illustrated by TFA). I'd certainly not want to work with or hang around with person from TFA as they sound like a prick (not much to judge them on I agree, but there you go)
It is 100% ok to just live your life. Interested by something different every few days/weeks/months/years? That is totally ok. Maybe you just like to live your life and enjoy leisure activities? That is totally ok too. Too busy for anything apart from work and family? Totally fine.
I’ve found if you inquire with genuine interest, many metaphorical brick layers have a lot to say about laying bricks, and can get quite impassioned about it. There’s often a lot more depth there than you see at first. (Presumably, most people aren’t genuinely interested enough, so the brick layer doesn’t usually get into it)
The give-away that it's all self inflected melodrama is *he's going to the party*. If you want to go, go. If you don't want to go, don't go. If you want to go for a little bit, do that. And if for some reason you need to lie with an excuse versus saying "I've had a wonderful time, I'm going to head home.", then do that too! *But* do not try to speak from this tortured soul, zero agency, prisoner of parties that go on slightly longer than you'd like perspective on the same website that you present yourself as master of your domain. Sheesh.
I would say the issue isn't so much "interests" as it is what one finds stimulating. Most people are content to discuss the surface-level, but moving up the intellectual curve, the conversation needs to be deeper in order to be satisfying.
Another problem being that most people cannot handle disagreement. If you want to discuss an idea that often leads to disagreement. True intellectuals relish an opposing viewpoint, whereas the vast majority of people wonder why you're being an asshole. The fact that most people cannot handle respectful disagreement in search of a deeper understanding is a problem they have, but a burden placed on others.
And of course most people who would call themselves "intellectual" are actually in the latter category.
The big clue is that you could swap out books/reading/learning for videogames/watching/playing/learning or TikToks/watching/making, or LEGO/building/designing, or any other hobby and the article and the experience wouldn’t change at all.
The distinction between the author and others is not the intellectual pursuit, but the dislike of parties. My bias is to think they’re attending parties with the wrong people, or of bad design (yes, design/engineering is something that social gatherings benefit from).
I like a good party plenty, but I’ve slipped away to read books, and I don’t consider myself to be a voracious reader of books.
Parties are also a little over-hyped, even a social construct, I would say (writing it down it actually sounds tautological).
On my country's local sub-reddit someone was asking people older than him how did they spend New Year's Eve parties in the past, which reminded me of the New Year's Days I used to spend with my grandparents in the countryside, in a village close to the Carpathians. There were no New Year's Eve parties in that village, or in the villages surrounding it, for that matter, young, unmarried, people would usually congregate on Saturday's evenings for a "village party" so that the boys would find girls to marry and that was pretty much it, once you were married and especially once you had kids of course that parties were not a thing anymore for you (why would have gone there? you were already married).
A little on the conspiracy-oriented side I would say that modern parties have been presented to us as the way we now know them ("you have to be there! you have to be seen as a likeable person! you have to talk and make conversation! you have to small almost at all times!") out of consumerist reasons, I would even that most of this whole "modern socialising thing" is backed-up by consumerist reasons.
People in the past did celebrated with friends and family, but it also involved drinking and music and general partying. Kids were generally present until they were sent to sleep.
There were taverns and pubs where people went to drink and be noisy too.
That is what I got from my grandparents and parents. And when I read memoirs (from wwii and such), people mentioned very party like a activities too.
I think it depends on the region. I can see what you’re saying to be a thing in Western Europe, especially the UK, where because of the earlier industrialization there would be more occasions to socialize outside of the family and you would have been expected to socialize outside the family a little more compared to the only-agricultural past.
Also, the tavern can only be a thing in a society that has cash/money, which also makes me think that a place like Western Europe would have the upper hand on this. Even going in the second part of the 20th century my grandparents’ village was trying to avoid money/cash as much as possible, work-days were often-times paid in other work-days, so to speak, i.e. “I help you out with that hay thing for three days you help me out in return with two days carring wood out of the forrest” or something like that.
Big parties did indeed also happen at weddings and after burials, the latter ones are called “parastas” and I think it has been directly taken from the antique Greco-Roman tradition.
Parties, basically by definition, require excess. It's no shock that people without an abundance of resources didn't throw big parties. In contrast, pretty much every cultural moment where people had large surpluses threw parties: China with drinking and gambling games, India has a whole slew of holidays involving general excess and merriment such as Holi, Diwali, Nowruz has been celebrated by a variety of middle eastern cultures for millennia.
Not to mention weddings, coming-of-age celebrations, and funerals/wakes, which date back well into prehistory.
No, it was not West. It is in post communist block. Industrialized only later then west.
Every village big enough to have church has also tavern. Usually close to each other. People drunk a lot, actually. They were poor a lot, but alcoholism was a thing and big social issue.
Paying in work or work for work was a think exactly as you described.
If anything, current western norms are significantly less social. People visit each other less often. You don't have drinking and talking till late while kids run around never at all. Especially as you get older. The way we live forces us isolate in middle age and lonely in old age.
I can’t share a whole lot, mainly because I don’t know much myself. In the pre-COVID days, before I stopped going to parties, then blew up my life and moved to another city (thus not having a social network to attend parties with) there were many things to consider when hosting:
- who to invite (complicated by melt/flakiness) - involves making predictions about how people will behave and interact with each other
- how many to invite
- when to start
- when to end and how to end
- what beverages, snacks, food to include; how such things will be prepared and delivered in sequence
- drug and alcohol (also a drug) choices
- what music to play
- lighting and furniture arrangement; use of space generally
- desired outcomes; things to watch for; connections to encourage or discourage
- props, toys, games, and other objects (I suppose food and snacks are partially a subset)
- compartmentalization and breakaway spaces
An example of a party that the author would likely enjoy would be an informal book club gathering with a mixer before or after, or perhaps a showing of a film adaptation with discussion for interested participants after, while less interested people can break off to play board games. Or perhaps board games would be stimulating enough, there are a broad range of kinds, and they can drastically change the feel/experience of an evening.
I suppose “engineering” implies a formal discipline. I think that actually is a profession, I just know nothing about it. But design thinking can be applied by anyone to anything, and I do try to be intentional and/or am slightly neurotic about hosting.
I understand how opinions like the one OP expressed can be interpreted as arrogant by many people. And you're probably right in saying that many of those Reddit comments reek arrogance.
But to bring a different lens to the topic: to me, articles like this are about protesting the way social interactions are designed and blindly followed by many people, not signaling superiority.
So I don't read OP as "I'm better than anybody else", but as "There must be a better way of interacting with others and sharing interests. I dislike the current way".
The article resonated with me because I think the concept of "parties" is overhyped. I've done a lot in my life and yes, there's a good side to them. But there's also plenty of BS going on: power dynamics, shallow conversations, etc.
The problem is, parties are a sort of a sacred dogma to the vast majority of people. Friends and aquitances will often tease/insult you you for not going to them, or for going and not staying late enough.
I don't understand why the hype. Why are parties the "ultimate and only" way to have fun and interact socially for some people? There are dozens of other ways to interact with people.
For example, I rather have one to one catch-ups with friends because when you get small talk out of the way you can deep-dive into topics. Because of that, I'm an anti-social outcast for many people. "The weird guy that doesn't go to parties".
I think that's what the article is on about: societal pressure to individuals so they interact in a certain way and bend to stablished norms, when such norms are not enjoyable for such individuals.
You don't have to be intelectually superior to be bored with people and not getting intelectual stimulation from them. In place of intelectual bookworm you might imagine teenager whose at the same time desperately lonely and bored out of his mind when he people try to talk to him.
The thing is some people have trouble finding people close to their niche. The solution is search better and/or widen your niche.
The funny part is that everyone needs to start from scratch as a user in most all communities now. They also have to rebuild the entire fort with every new community that starts, it's a lot of wasted work time (without any sort of reward, except for the platform). They could very well be a scholar of science, but if they're enrolling a new account, unless they're buddies with the founders, it's very hard to endure the years it takes to build karma (or to achieve rank in whatever silly merit system that a new community has) on top of enduring arguments with imbeciles, fakers, and being called a "noob" by your unwitting colleagues until you earn credit enough to get permabanned for a comment you made on a meme or on some other part of the site because the mods didn't like the format of your post title.
There has got to be a better way of doing this... Too much "king of the hill" and "payola" mentality on communities that call themselves "fair and credible" these days, and the time/creator investment loss is huge if you consider time invested to achieve any level of credibility and/or voice on social sites.
I have found that my own (personal and business) web sites are usually the best place to post content, my opinions, and maintain user accounts I don't want to lose, and where I can build a far better/more reliable audience than I could ever do on social media and other community sites for over the past 5 years really.
I hope that type of individual web site culture and related indexing comes back. An app or web site that enables seamless integration of personally owned web sites into it in a socially integrated manner would be a much better long-term solution/idea for all social communities in my opinion. I'd develop something like that myself, but would need tons more funding and human resources beyond what I'm working with currently (of course).
Does this happen? On what communities? Where does anyone pay attention to “credibility”? For me all forums are a string of comments. And there’s really only two forums to me, Reddit and Hacker News.
Neither of these I would call "forums", but rather social media, because, for instance, they dramatically reduce the moderation work and fostering of a community. For instance : no need to have to police the proper use of necroposting (which sometimes is the proper thing to do instead of starting yet another copycat thread that will rehash the exact same points - a forum isn't a chat !), when necroposting has been disallowed in software !
To me it revolves around the introvert vs extrovert stuff. With myself as the model, it's not that I don't enjoy speaking to people, it's that I don't enjoy small talk. Give me a heady subject that is interesting and I will jump in with both feet. Rehashing the weather drains me.
Small talk is a protocol for simultaneously discovering the social capabilities and topics of interest of the conversation participants.
Just as a computer that doesn't support HTTPS is functional yet un-networkable, so too can a person choose not to support the small talk protocol (or to offer only obsolete versions) thereby forcing the other participants to degrade or refuse the connection.
Everyone has things they're deeply interested in. If you want deep conversation you just have to muster curiosity about what they're into (and not fail the social capabilities portion of the protocol). Rarely you'll get really lucky and the person will share one of your niche interests, but it's an unreasonable expectation so don't make it your goal.
I'll explicitly highlight "appropriateness" as part of those social capabilities: participants balk at philosophizing in dance clubs or slasher flicks at funerals or topics that exclude or are obviously uninteresting to others in a multiparty conversation (since 3+ participants is common at parties).
Practicing the protocol makes it less draining (assuming that's what's actually draining you).
I will add - many people have intellectual hobbies or read books. Just not exact same intellectual hobbies, because there are hundreds of those. And not the same books. So, that does not constitue common point to talk about.
"always"? On one side Reddit is known for its armchair experts to the point of being a cliche'.
Yet anti-intellectualism is widespread in many environments. The idea that people should only engage in gossip and idle conversations in a college party is a good example.
Hmm, I used to have a lot of discussions like that in high school because there was a whole group of like minded people, but after that such discussions just didn’t really happen any more in my circle of friends.
I sort of miss it, but I’m also happy with the conversations I have now, so meh?
It is really sad though that at a college party, i.e. a party of people pursuing higher education, it's hard to find people interested in discussing intellectual matters. Probably unimaginable 100 years ago (although I wasn't there and can't say for sure.
I'm in college atm, I go to parties precisely to get away from discussing "intellectual matters". it's fine to sometimes have a break from the thing you do all dah
+1 - replace "read a book" or "surrounded by ideas" with "work on a car engine" and "surrounded by oil and grease" and it would be no different. Let's call it "mechanical loneliness".
TL;Dr - some people like to read books, some people like to do other things.
And yes, watching certain professors (not YouTubers) makes one's heart run faster.
I remember prof. Brian Harvey 2008 course (Scheme based) of old MIT courser by Eric Grimsin. Or Systematic approach by Gregor Kiczales, or Dan Grossman's "Programming languages" course.
And then you stumble upon another node_modules shit...
It was bugging me why I knew it was a famous novel when I hadn't read it in or out of school. When I woke up, I remembered - in my freshman psychology class many years ago, we were given a choice of literature to do a presentation on, and one of them (which I did not choose) was Siddhartha, also by Hermann Hesse. And the professor talked about Steppenwolf.
If I'm on HN, you can assume I'm exhausted, running a fever or otherwise too impaired by my incurable medical condition to be trying to work. I always appreciate it when people are kind in their interpretation of my efforts to engage to distract myself from the misery that is my life.
This feels like it belongs on /r/iamverysmart. I hate to break it to you: you are not nearly as smart as you think you are.
You can't talk to a single person at the party who has an interesting world-view, experience, or education? Isn't that the heart of creating characters? Empathy and experience?
It's fine to not enjoy socializing but acting like it is because you are too creative and smart for everyone else is delusional.
When I go to parties I talk to people about ethics and philosophy and creating music and creativity and cooking, and I trade stories from my past and make jokes.
Acting like watching a lecture on YouTube or reading your thousandths book is somehow superior to talking to living breathing humans because "ideas" is bizarre.
You can do both. Read a lot of books and also socialize.
> I hate to break it to you: you are not nearly as smart as you think you are.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten more used to the opposite idea:
Relative to other people (which is implicitly the metric we are using here), you are really smart.
Why do I think that? Because of the data.
The data is pretty solid that, whenever you survey the population, the level of intellectual sophistication is extremely low.
So low that many of the words I'm using in this comment would not be understandable to a significant chunk of the population. So low that, while knowing how to do a wordy math problem is table stakes on HN, knowing how to solve (x+5)*3=21 places you in the 'elite' of the general population.
It's got nothing to do with how we feel about it. It's just a fact that, when we look at the problems that 50% of the population cannot solve, the bar is shockingly low.
So based on that, yeah: the people who are reading this, who know how to write a 'for' loop on a computer, who read way above a 6th grade level, who could say 'yes I know what an imaginary number is', are really smart.
Solving the equation is not intelligence, it’s education. There’s a huge difference. You are not smart because you can solve the equation. Someone showed you how to solve it.
In my late 20s I moved from a relatively uneducated city to one with 5 universities and an intense intellectual culture. I went from being intellectually alone to being super stimulated and connected with people intellectually. So while I appreciate your point of view, sometimes you ARE just living in an intellectual waste land.
I basically agree with this, but honestly there’s actually a big snob factor as well.
Some of the best post-age-forty conversations I’ve had came out of me asking someone, “what do you find hard in that job?”
The more hands on the better. And these things - these kinds of discussions - aren’t generally available on YouTube lectures or whatever. In person you can get people to drop the facade or the spin and just talk.
I wonder how old the author is. I had a phase like this in my early twenties that grew out of eventually. I realized there’s a certain kind of wisdom hidden in people that you can’t find in books, if you just ask the right questions. If you find that every party you’re going to is full of boring people then maybe it‘s you not them.
The OP is ONLY interested in a subset of topics he feels is interesting. This is the opposite of intelligent. A hallmark of intelligent people is to find fascination with everything. I recently went to a party where I met a guy who worked in a chicken processing plant. I know nothing about processing chicken. I literally spent an hour talking to him about his job. (By the way, he works way harder and takes way more garbage than us white collar guys).
This comes across as very defensive and reactionary. I didn't draw any of those conclusions from that reading. I don't think op is necessarily proud of not being able to relate to people, much the opposite in fact. Rather, you seem quite proud of your social abilities and the riches you have mined from these social interactions. Good for you. I think op's point is that he can't derive the same rich experiences from these interactions. No need to attack him.
Intellectual as an adjective, relating to the intellect. Without any claim to degree of intellect. So as opposed to emotional, physical, or spiritual loneliness. This is a loneliness of the mind, intellect.
I see it as a product of specialization. So many of us put so many hours of our life into things that few other people can understand or relate to. It's not that these other people aren't smart enough to understand what we do. It's simply a matter of hours of attention dedicated to a specific topic. Think of it like branches on a tree. The tree of collective human knowledge keeps growing and consequently, individual knowledge becomes more disparate.
It took me a few minutes of browsing this guy’s blog to determine what sort of “intellectual” this guy is, and I can’t say in surprised to find it on HN.
My experience is that when you're in my position, it's getting harder and harder (with age) to find people who are interested in talking about ideas, entertaining the curiosities in life without some agenda/getting offended by the controversial ones, talking about possibilities and concepts (rather than objects). Like having conversations on advanced mode with people who are similar.
Often times at parties, when I get bored, I think of a quote, "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events/things. Small minds discuss wine."
It's getting more and more common that I find people just wanting to talk about wine. Or the equivalent. Stuff that's completely forgettable after you leave the party. I mean that stuff is fine, and there's nothing wrong with talking about good food you've had, some articles you've read, movies seen, etc. too. And to be funny and engaging while talking about it. It just feels like... after you're done talking about that, what then?
Or if I do meet people who are intellectually interesting, how to get more connected or where to take it after a chance meeting and pleasant chat?
That said, what do I have to offer at this stage of my life either, to a stranger? I'm unmarried, so I don't have kids or the mortgage to talk about. I'm not a CEO or someone powerful. Also I'm single -- what are people supposed do with that? Don't have a lot of great reasons for anyone to want to go out of their way to spend more time with me after even an interesting 30 min conversation, without some other excuse.
We're not all living close together in shared housing to make intellectually stimulating conversations natural and prolonged. People have their lives to lead, not sit around talking about theoretical ideas. To contact the few people I've found who are interesting would be... how? "Would you like to schedule a get-together again for a conversation date?"
It's not going to get easier either. Probably in a few years I'll be the really odd guy. Eh, it's a life choice I've made, I realize that too -- to be more interested in ideas and experiences than say... people.
I figure I'd better find some interesting hobbies to make up for the lack of intellectual stimulation. But deeper, what am I working towards? For whom? So, sometimes I think of changing jobs just to see more of the world and gather experiences to be able to have more intellectually stimulating conversations. Learn about VC? Hear about more companies? Where/how?
Yeah, it's a bit of a problem sometimes to ponder.