I did use "I can probably make this person’s day better by introducing myself." in the past . It was a useful training wheel but ultimately I had to drop it because it was too self-denying for my taste.
As for "I wonder what will happen": It seemed to me like a great goal in theory but in practice I couldn't pull this off really. It was activating my analytical thinking too much whereas in social context a playful vibe and intentions are much better, I find.
To add to that: I find that what works best for me is "I want to honestly represent what kind of person I'm being in this moment." If I turn out awkward that's ok, because sometimes I am indeed awkward. If I'm approaching someone with no excuse, I'm honestly manifesting that I want to talk to her.
i'm enjoying these questions a lot; it's making me rethink my writing/reading process since i've been getting bored lately but these piqued the interest of my problem solving brain
what's your process for stumbling into / asking good Qs?
i wonder if there's an IFS-related or Kohutian reading here where League/MOBA teams mirror self-structure more than other team-based games
i've noticed that the most consistently toxic teammates in video games tend to be the ones with the most critical self-talk; certain games just seem to bring that out more
the AI thing seems to be a status thing. if you lose against AI you have an out; if you lose against your peers there's an implicit zero-sum exchange of "status ELO"
"Why are some impossible-to-control outcomes stressful to engineer and others aren’t?"
just thinking out loud here, but i think there's a crucial difference between the two examples you gave, and that's the *distance between X and Y, if Y = your "self"*
for example, if we make the 2 goal statements parallel, it becomes a bit more clear:
1. “make this person feel welcome at my meetup”
2. "make this person feel welcome in my presence // around me" (which roughly == make this person like me)
w/r/t to your core issues, the difference pokes out a bit more:
- the ability to read minds (is the same, nonzero but low)
- the ability to reliably engineer internal states in others (is the same, actually possible though; think of how a stand-up comedian can workshop a set until reliably gets laughs. not easy but doable)
- the potential for failure to reflect poorly on me as a person
^ the third core issue is then obviously the big difference. "my meetup," even if it reflects on ME, reflects significantly less on me than "my presence," "around me," etc. therefore the distance makes a big difference here. (i'm reminded of the ACT meditation thing where you imagine your thoughts in a parade. they're still in your head but at a slight remove, which makes all the diff).
if we add another example, say you're introducing your girlfriend to someone, your goal might be "make this person feel welcome around my girlfriend," you could see how the level of anxiety/stress might land somewhere between "my meetup" and "my presence/me"
then the order would be:
1. “make this person feel welcome at my meetup”
1a. "make this person feel welcome around my girlfriend"
2. "make this person feel welcome in my presence"
and to reduce the pressure even more, we could imagine a scenario where your friend is hosting a meetup, and your goal is "make this person feel welcome at my friend's meetup." this is a situation i personally MUCH prefer to hosting my own meetups, and seem to do much better at.
and you'd get:
0. "make this person feel welcome at my friend's meetup"
1. “make this person feel welcome at my meetup”
1a. "make this person feel welcome around my girlfriend"
2. "make this person feel welcome in my presence"
...where you can see the correlation between increasing stress/decreasing Distance To Core Identity as you go down the list.
but as another side note, if you're known as The Meetup Guy and have an identity built around that, it's possible that meetup > girlfriend, or if you're really caught up in idealism around romantic relationships, girlfriend > self, etc.
I see. Yeah, that's a higher bar than what I was thinking, which was that maybe this could work at getting someone to go into social situations whereas before they couldn't? I suspect feeling no social anxiety is a VERY high bar, my understand is that most everyone feels at least some.
it is a fairly high bar, yes; the specific metacognitive skill involved is a bit tricky to teach and learn which is why i expect many initial failures here
Yeah, I'm not sure about the metacognitive skill. In the end, if you fear making social errors, you will have social anxiety, as there is no way to get the social error rate to 0. And social skills do depend on having some model of social situations and other people, otherwise socially oblivious autists would do great at this stuff.
I did use "I can probably make this person’s day better by introducing myself." in the past . It was a useful training wheel but ultimately I had to drop it because it was too self-denying for my taste.
As for "I wonder what will happen": It seemed to me like a great goal in theory but in practice I couldn't pull this off really. It was activating my analytical thinking too much whereas in social context a playful vibe and intentions are much better, I find.
To add to that: I find that what works best for me is "I want to honestly represent what kind of person I'm being in this moment." If I turn out awkward that's ok, because sometimes I am indeed awkward. If I'm approaching someone with no excuse, I'm honestly manifesting that I want to talk to her.
I kinda hinted at this in https://unforcedseductions.substack.com/p/trying-to-control-what-impression and I'm now writing a post that will elaborate on this a bit more.
i'm enjoying these questions a lot; it's making me rethink my writing/reading process since i've been getting bored lately but these piqued the interest of my problem solving brain
what's your process for stumbling into / asking good Qs?
I could see the league thing being b/c people take it less personally when not being beaten by another person.
The weird thing is that most of the heat in League is directed at *your own* teammates
The teammates are... making them look bad? maybe?
i wonder if there's an IFS-related or Kohutian reading here where League/MOBA teams mirror self-structure more than other team-based games
i've noticed that the most consistently toxic teammates in video games tend to be the ones with the most critical self-talk; certain games just seem to bring that out more
the AI thing seems to be a status thing. if you lose against AI you have an out; if you lose against your peers there's an implicit zero-sum exchange of "status ELO"
"Why are some impossible-to-control outcomes stressful to engineer and others aren’t?"
just thinking out loud here, but i think there's a crucial difference between the two examples you gave, and that's the *distance between X and Y, if Y = your "self"*
for example, if we make the 2 goal statements parallel, it becomes a bit more clear:
1. “make this person feel welcome at my meetup”
2. "make this person feel welcome in my presence // around me" (which roughly == make this person like me)
w/r/t to your core issues, the difference pokes out a bit more:
- the ability to read minds (is the same, nonzero but low)
- the ability to reliably engineer internal states in others (is the same, actually possible though; think of how a stand-up comedian can workshop a set until reliably gets laughs. not easy but doable)
- the potential for failure to reflect poorly on me as a person
^ the third core issue is then obviously the big difference. "my meetup," even if it reflects on ME, reflects significantly less on me than "my presence," "around me," etc. therefore the distance makes a big difference here. (i'm reminded of the ACT meditation thing where you imagine your thoughts in a parade. they're still in your head but at a slight remove, which makes all the diff).
if we add another example, say you're introducing your girlfriend to someone, your goal might be "make this person feel welcome around my girlfriend," you could see how the level of anxiety/stress might land somewhere between "my meetup" and "my presence/me"
then the order would be:
1. “make this person feel welcome at my meetup”
1a. "make this person feel welcome around my girlfriend"
2. "make this person feel welcome in my presence"
and to reduce the pressure even more, we could imagine a scenario where your friend is hosting a meetup, and your goal is "make this person feel welcome at my friend's meetup." this is a situation i personally MUCH prefer to hosting my own meetups, and seem to do much better at.
and you'd get:
0. "make this person feel welcome at my friend's meetup"
1. “make this person feel welcome at my meetup”
1a. "make this person feel welcome around my girlfriend"
2. "make this person feel welcome in my presence"
...where you can see the correlation between increasing stress/decreasing Distance To Core Identity as you go down the list.
but as another side note, if you're known as The Meetup Guy and have an identity built around that, it's possible that meetup > girlfriend, or if you're really caught up in idealism around romantic relationships, girlfriend > self, etc.
anyway thx for listening to my ted talk
Regarding your point 1, what counts as success and what counts as failure with your protocol? I think I'm not quite following here.
Cessation of social anxiety
I see. Yeah, that's a higher bar than what I was thinking, which was that maybe this could work at getting someone to go into social situations whereas before they couldn't? I suspect feeling no social anxiety is a VERY high bar, my understand is that most everyone feels at least some.
it is a fairly high bar, yes; the specific metacognitive skill involved is a bit tricky to teach and learn which is why i expect many initial failures here
Yeah, I'm not sure about the metacognitive skill. In the end, if you fear making social errors, you will have social anxiety, as there is no way to get the social error rate to 0. And social skills do depend on having some model of social situations and other people, otherwise socially oblivious autists would do great at this stuff.