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People Like You More Than You Know

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#121

Post by tasuki »

compcoffee wrote: post #97
DoreenMichele wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a key detail is he wasn't especially good looking and I complimented him on a physical trait. I've known lots of people over the years who had baggage over X and who made X into some big damn deal where it was impossible to say you liked them without it going weird places. Short men do this a lot and make it impossible to say "Eh, your height doesn't bother me, but I like X about you." Men who see themselves…

> "Short men do this a lot and make it impossible to say "Eh, your height doesn't bother me, but I like X about you." Men who see themselves as ugly do this." Wait, you think telling someone, "Don't worry, your ugliness doesn't bother me. After all, you're friendly!" is a reasonable thing to say someone? That's the exact opposite of making X trait a non-issue.

> "Don't worry, your ugliness doesn't bother me. After all, you're friendly!"

I had someone say pretty much this to me at work. It startled me but for some reason wasn't a problem. I've since noticed many successful, well-liked (rich, famous) people are quite ugly.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#122

Post by thecatspaw »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #120
thecatspaw wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also not take it personally I cant. Malfunction of the executive functions make it pretty hard to relativize it. Initially I am gonna think, wow, thanks, I guess my eyes do suck, and so do I. Usually people would try to think about it again and be able to relativize it "wait, why did he say that? wow, what an asshole thing to say". But I get stuck in that "I guess you're right" feeling. > Go ahead and "take…

I didn't mean you. You don't owe me an apology. I know some things that might help, but I'm leery of posting them because that makes me the one giving unsolicited advice, a thing I'm already guilty of here. Take care.

I'd be happy to hear it.

You too

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#123

Post by glogla »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #59
jacobolus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him. I have seen / heard of many guys getting complimented over the years (including myself a few times), and never heard of one of them turning into a “psycho”, “asshole”, or ”monster”. A couple times I saw a guy get complimented out of the blue and then kind of…

I don't want to get into a lot of details, but I will give one example. I had an affair in my twenties with a man whose life could have been absolutely ruined because of it. He wasn't especially good looking, but he had beautiful blue eyes and I had a thing for blue eyes and told him how much I liked his blue eyes. We were not sleeping together at the time and it wasn't an unreasonable thing to say, given circumstanc…

> I had an affair in my twenties with a man

> No, he absolutely was not in any position whatsoever to say "Oops, sorry. You can move in with me." if his phone call outed me to my husband and resulted in a divorce.

> I'm not exaggerating when I say psycho asshole monster.

I mean, you had affair. You can only have affair between two people who are the kind of people to cheat on their partner. You should expect him to be psycho asshole monster, since you yourself are a cheater as well.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#124

Post by gaius »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #23

These are true stories. I don't wish to come across as bragging. The last day of a job I had for seven years, the director of engineering told me I was the best engineer he ever knew. And he worked for some pretty well known engineering firms. If he had told me that before, I might not have left. A woman came into my office--someone who didn't seem to want to give me the time of day--and the conversation got around t…

At my previous job on my last day there was no one in my reporting line around so I went to the group next door and asked their manager if I could hand in my company BB and credit card to him instead. He was bemused but said OK.

An hour later I get a call, I have to come over there urgently. When I get there, that guy has organised me a leaving party on the fly. There were 30 people, cakes, and a card full of nice messages. Several people made speeches. I was totally blown away, he didn’t need to do that at all. If I had worked for that guy I probably never would have left...

I've had a few girls tell me, after it was too late, that they always had a crush on me.

This started happening to me after I got married.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#125

Post by antonkm »

qubax wrote: post #32

What does that even mean? I'm sure some like me more than I think and some hate me more than I think. But mostly 99% of the people don't care because they have their lives to lead. Are there people I like more than they know. Sure. Are there people I hate more than they know. Absolutely. But really 99.99% of the people don't matter. I don't think about them or them me. Ultimately, you care about your family and frien…

This is a bit out of touch with reality. People generally care a lot of what others think of them.

Personally I can't even grasp as how one can think that 99.99% of people doesn't matter. They most certainly do to me. Why would I not care about "them"? I believe seeing others as a waste of time is probably not doing yourself or anyone else any good.

This isn't to say I base my self-worth on what others believe to be true about me, but staying open to their perception makes it easier for self-growth. I get more input and can evaluate it and see if it's something that I should implement in myself or not.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#126

Post by monadgonad »

watt wrote: post #111
GhostVII wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quite like gits user experience, personally. If you don't like it, there are lots of tools built on top of it that make it easier to use. Not sure what the issue is.

Git could be a showcase of inconsistent and confusing UX. If you like it, and you don't see any issue with it, then you know nothing about good UX.

This is unnecessarily cruel. Design is subjective: someone liking git's UX design doesn't mean they "know nothing", just that they have very different opinions from you.

And please don't respond to this telling me all the ways git's design is bad; I'm not disagreeing with that.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#127

Post by DoreenMichele »

thecatspaw wrote: post #122
DoreenMichele wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean you. You don't owe me an apology. I know some things that might help, but I'm leery of posting them because that makes me the one giving unsolicited advice, a thing I'm already guilty of here. Take care.

I'd be happy to hear it. You too

I have two special needs sons and I've done all kinds of therapy and what not. So kind of randomly:

Nutritional supplements actually have a better track record than drugs for dealing with things like ADHD. If you can pinpoint the things that you need for your brain, you can see real improvement over time.

B vitamins, high quality salt, the right fats and certain minerals, like magnesium and calcium, are likely candidates. Start a journal. Try one and only one new thing at a time to see what it does. Don't buy multi vitamins. Get individual supplements and make sure they are bioavailable.

Mold problems at home, work or anyplace you spend a lot of time can have significant negative impact in mental function. Try to root out moisture issues and mold problems.

Start a private journal and deconstruct what people say to you, how you feel about it and why you feel that way. Most people aren't terribly nice. The veneer of civilized behavior tends to be pretty thin. It may be more them than you. You may find your reactions aren't as irrational as you think they are.

During my divorce, under circumstances where I didn't really care how things played out and a lot of men were chatting me up, I point blank asked men what they thought was attractive about me. This was incredibly eye opening because every one of them had a different answer. So my ideas about what made me attractive -- that it was X or Y specific thing -- were completely busted and it was a fantastic experience. People are attracted for reasons specific to them. It isn't really a case of "I have X trait and that is my main attraction."

So if you ever have an opportunity to participate in a workshop or similar where you can get feedback from a variety of people, you might be surprised what you learn about how the world sees you. It can be a wonderful antidote to the thoughts about yourself that dominate your self image.

Similarly, I did a series of self portraits in therapy and that was eye opening. Most people don't really have a clear idea of what they look like. Their idea of themselves is often something of a caricature that exaggerates specific traits and underplays others.

Best.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#128

Post by grecht »

hyperpallium wrote: post #49
sureaboutthis wrote: post #23

These are true stories. I don't wish to come across as bragging. The last day of a job I had for seven years, the director of engineering told me I was the best engineer he ever knew. And he worked for some pretty well known engineering firms. If he had told me that before, I might not have left. A woman came into my office--someone who didn't seem to want to give me the time of day--and the conversation got around t…

> Well, I was interested in them, too. If you would have just said something sooner, life, for you, would be totally different now.

That's exactly what I thought. What's the harm in just telling them? He makes it sound like it was completely out of his control.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#129

Post by gaius »

coldtea wrote: post #42
theoh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the spirit that got Linus Torvalds where he is now — "Be abrasive, don't pull punches, be a 'git'. People don't care about you, so you can't really hurt them anyway"

> where he is now A celebrated 100x programmer at the top of the software engineering hierarchy, whose work helped span a trillion dollar industry? He might have regretted being so abrasive as of late, but let's not paint things as if he failed to accomplish much because of that. In fact it might have helped solidify a more cautious approach around kernel development and keep possible detractors at bay, in the early…

He might have regretted being so abrasive as of late, but let's not paint things as if he failed to accomplish much because of that.

Like Stack Overflow. They got to where they are though encouraging ruthless curation and moderation via earning points and badges. And having won the Q&A industry, now they want to shed that image.

Re: People Like You More Than You Know

#130

Post by toxik »

grecht wrote: post #128
hyperpallium wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I was interested in them, too. If you would have just said something sooner, life, for you, would be totally different now.

That's exactly what I thought. What's the harm in just telling them? He makes it sound like it was completely out of his control.

I think there are pretty obvious difficulties with telling coworkers you’ve a crush on them.
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