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The social obligation to be bad at things

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Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#221

Post by kanakka »

nicbou wrote: post #208
munificent wrote: post #76

I think about this all the time . I am simultaneously someone who wants to learn and create a lot of things, likes to share stuff online, and is very self-conscious about failure. So this challenge with facing my own not-goodness-at-things is one of the major emotional themes and challenges of my life. I believe that broadcast social media is the primary reason why this is such a big thing these days. Everyone is so…

I see things a bit differently. Being on the dance floor brings me happiness. Wooing the people on the sidelines brings me nothing at all. I tried to appeal to everyone. It made me miserable and boring. I'd rather market myself to my target demographic.

Wooing/mocking other people do feel good. At least for short term. It makes us ‘feel superior/luckier’ over others. It contributes nothing good to society tho.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#222

Post by NateEag »

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #197
NateEag wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeschooling is a simple, effective way to achieve "classrooms of three people". It is brutally difficult, as you have to sacrifice many of the things you want to do in favor of things your kids want to learn and do, but it is worth every ounce of that sacrifice.

It's also a very costly method that many people cannot afford. Doubly so if it'll impact the long-term career prospects of the parent that spends their time teaching.

Is it?

If one of you stays at home with kids, all the costs of childcare and that partner's potential commute are removed.

Anecdotally, I've met people who homeschooled because they thought it was cheaper than their other options.

If you're in an expensive school district, then you receive little benefit from your relatively high school taxes, but so it goes.

Again anecdotally, one of the poorest persons I've ever personally known pulled her kids out of public school to homeschool them.

I thought she was unqualified (despite my pro-homeschooling bias), but she got them from remedial classes to gifted status in two years, IIRC (when she put them back in school).

Some of my assumptions changed after that.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#223

Post by kanakka »

ngerrity wrote: post #85
leroy_masochist wrote: post #36

> I was at a liberating structures event recently, and one of the people I was working with related an anecdote in which he tried a party game as an ice breaker. Many of those are cringe, but this one sounded fun and inoffensive (it was a sentence continuation game where each person said a word following on from a previous one, in an attempt to construct something that sounded like an aphorism). Most people were relu…

I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to participate in silly games like that all the time, but if you never try to step out of your comfort zone in a public setting, I think you're missing out on an opportunity to grow as a person. You might just have fun doing something you thought was stupid or you thought you would hate.

Basically Bandit algorithm: balancing between exploitation (doing same things that already work) vs exploration (try out new things)

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#224

Post by magicalhippo »

dorkwood wrote: post #50
evmar wrote: post #12

I found that, as a person who (sometimes) creates things, my attitude towards other people who create things has significantly shifted. When I was younger I would just see the fault -- the typos, the narcissism, the pointlessness, the already-been-done-better-by-others -- of people's work. But after trying a bit, it sometimes (for the same reasons the OP talks about) creating anything new ends up being really hard in…

Years ago I can remember seeing an artist on Twitter hitting back against some critics in the comments, saying something like "I didn't ask for your criticism". At the time, I didn't understand why they were posting their work online if they didn't want to be criticized. I thought they needed to get a thicker skin. Now that I've started sharing my own work with others, I completely see where they're coming from. Havi…

> Having someone who makes nothing and shares nothing log on to tell you how you should have done things differently is unwanted and not at all useful.

Just saying the work sucks is unproductive. When giving criticism I try my best to give productive feedback. For example if two colors clash in a way that doesn't work for me, I try to explain what it is about it that makes me feel that way, and maybe come up with some alternatives or variations to further explain what I'm trying to convey. Similar when reviewing text or code etc.

I also try to chose my words so that I don't sound demanding. I'm conveying my point of view, it is up to the receiver to decide what they want to do with it.

In any case I also always end with something positive. If I can't find _anything_ genuinely positive to say, I'll drop the whole thing and not say anything.

Of course in certain settings I have to be more authoritative. For example if I'm mentoring a new programmer on the team who just wrote some really bad code, that code needs to go and I can't skip talking about it. But I still try to follow the above as best as I can.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#225

Post by cranium »

I think it's a social status quo deadlock. People want to appear flawless because any flaw in one domain will affect how they are seen in other domains. It's a signal that says "Look at this person making mistakes, he/she is worst than all these other people that didn't make one!" [1].

Best way to avoid making mistakes ? Not trying.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#226

Post by nicbou »

kanakka wrote: post #221
nicbou wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see things a bit differently. Being on the dance floor brings me happiness. Wooing the people on the sidelines brings me nothing at all. I tried to appeal to everyone. It made me miserable and boring. I'd rather market myself to my target demographic.

Wooing/mocking other people do feel good. At least for short term. It makes us ‘feel superior/luckier’ over others. It contributes nothing good to society tho.

"wooing", not "booing"

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wooing

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#227

Post by mrfusion »

I was at an interview once and the job description said they wanted an expert in sql. So when they asked me to rate my sql skills I felt I should say expert since that’s why I’m there.

Well the “expert” word triggered them and they said “well, if you’re an expert you can answer these obscure questions ...” and obviously I failed it.

This article made me think of that.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#228

Post by gnramires »

kerkeslager wrote: post #42
Osmose wrote: post #30

The point about space and understanding to try new things and not be amazing at them isn't a bad one, but the thing about having 1:1s with your partner that is drawing ridicule isn't the idea of having a scheduled, weekly check-in with your partner; it's that business-talk is intentionally de-personified and using it in a personal context implies a lack of respect for the human you're dealing with. Consider that I ca…

Yes, you're right that business talk is depersonified and implies a lack of respect for the human you're dealing with. And this is an assertion backed up by lots of other business talk--referring to humans as "resources" is probably the worst I hear often. And this assertion is further supported by the frequent, sociopathic behavior of businesses which goes beyond how they communicate. But surely the fact that they a…

There is such a thing as a hacker ethic. To me the core is something like "Try to save the world through math, science, understanding, and making cool things."

The term has much more history than startup culture, although the goals of startups (many YC funded) can be in line with those ideals (if imperfectly).

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#229

Post by the_af »

imtringued wrote: post #203
the_af wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if, after transporting yourself mentally to the time and place, you still consider it artless or worthless? Is this an opinion that one is still allowed to hold, or would it be a faux pas? I mean, I can look at art created thousands of years before "Fountain" and appreciate it, but still consider Fountain snobbery, can't I?

Art is just human expression or communication. A lot of the "lazy" art is seeing with how much you can get away and how little meat there is to the word "art". For centuries artists have tried their best to create the most beautiful artworks possible. This lead to an association of beauty with art. Art must be beautiful. You challenge this idea by making something that is not beautiful but people will still consider…

I realize this is spread across multiple comments of mine now, but I specifically said I acknowledge art and beauty are not required to go hand in hand. I acknowledge some pieces of art challenge established boundaries, and some are grotesque or purposefully repulsive. I just dislike Fountain and similar "found objects" and consider them artless.

Otherwise, if everything is art as long as someone tells me it must be so, the concept of "art" becomes meaningless to me.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#230

Post by leroy_masochist »

AgentMatt wrote: post #190
leroy_masochist wrote: post #36

> I was at a liberating structures event recently, and one of the people I was working with related an anecdote in which he tried a party game as an ice breaker. Many of those are cringe, but this one sounded fun and inoffensive (it was a sentence continuation game where each person said a word following on from a previous one, in an attempt to construct something that sounded like an aphorism). Most people were relu…

I think you are conflating introversion and shyness or a broader uncomfortableness / inexperience with social interactions. Yes, these things can be related. Spending less time socialising will lead to fewer opportunities to learn social skills, and to being less used to interactions with strangers. Things being (perceived as) awkward are in my experience a result of lack of knowing what's appropriate behavior in a g…

> I think you are conflating introversion and shyness or a broader uncomfortableness / inexperience with social interactions.

Respectfully, no. It's not about knowing appropriate behavior, it's about the fact that "getting to know you" type exercises in a large group format often serve, de facto, as a power-grabbing / power-flexing exercise for extroverts who need affirmation and attention for their mind to be at ease.

The world has a natural extrovert-bias as humans gather in groups, e.g., if 10 people who don't know each other show up for a seminar or something, and 2 of them are extroverts and 8 are introverts, the two extroverts will have a loud and spirited conversation that they then try, often successfully, to pull the others into. Some of the introverts will play this game, others will not, but all of them will hate it.

Another example of this would be company offsites where the senior leadership team wants to discuss company culture -- like clockwork, they usually turn into a gabfest where the office manager and senior recruiter suck up all the air time with yap-yap-yap while the dev team zones out and waits for this bullshit to wrap up.

Productive introverts' coping techniques for toxic, needy extroverts seems to me to be a largely ignored topic in business literature -- probably because introverts generally don't like talking about stuff.

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