Ask HN: Why is machine learning easier to learn than basic social skills?

The idea of there being unwritten rules or, how I usually phrase it, "I didn't get the memo" is one of the symptoms of being on the autism spectrum, as is more of an affinity with tech than people.

And that's absolutely fine. Don't try and play their game, just be in the moment and let things wash over you. Accept you don't understand people, they aren't a thing to figure out and pick apart.

Trying to min/max human interaction is more for sales, marketing and management people, and those come across as absolute psychopaths. And I'm confident you see right through their schtick, because you are more observant than a lot of people - whether you realize it or not.

But yeah. Read up on things like introversion and autism to help you with personal acceptance, this will reduce the anxiety you may feel when interacting with other people because you understand yourself - and by extension, others - better.

As for basic communication skills, there's plenty of guides out there but it'll be things like "Listen instead of waiting for your turn to speak" (and realize there may be others who are waiting for their turn to speak without being as aware of it).

There's no panacea or This One Trick though. Social skills are a much broader, more complicated, and informal area of expertise than ML or other 'hard' skills are.

> A year of haphazardly watching YouTube videos and reading papers and I learned enough to start contributing to real research. But 18 years of human interaction and I'm still missing out on social skills apparently. It's like everyone else has a degree in all these unwritten rules that I'm just supposed to know

Did you watched youtube videos about manners and interpersonal communication? Or read books or advice columns or reddit subs about the same thing? You did not learned machine learning through pure osmosis and watching the machine calculate. You read papers and theory.

Some social skills are easy to pick up by observing, if you have talent. But others have to be actively learned.

It's not hard, it's just not what you're talented towards and what you absorbed as a child.

You can absolutely learn it, just like a people person can learn machine learning: Slower, methodically and with lots of repetition. And IMHO it's generally worth it even if you won't ever be a master. Nerds with social skills do have a superpower there.

I'm 39 now and I'd say by now I'm reasonably competent even though I'm a bit on the spectrum like most of us.

Here are the resources that taught me 80% of the basics taken together:

- How to win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)

- When I say no, I feel guilty

- Never eat alone (Keith Ferrazzi)

- Conversation Tactics (Patrick King)

- https://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html But by far the most important point for me was stop binge reading and actually put the books down every chapter, actually try the idea out before I came back for the next chapter.

Just showing up is half the battle. You'll get decent in no time, I started out almost a decade later ;-)

In my experience the key to social interaction is the ability and willingness to focus on how the other person might feel about what is happening right now. Or to put it another way, putting yourself in the other person's shoes.

To be an expert is to even listen to your own words as you say them and make a judgement about what others are hearing. It helps to have an encyclopedia like memory of the circumstances and events in the lives of those you interact with. And, to understand what it must be like to be, say, a frail old lady.

Sounds impossible? You are probably right. Most of us struggle with those things. Some have it naturally. For some reason women tend to be better than men.

Can you learn it? Yes, but like learning chess, you won't be a grand master. Just get out amongst people and practice.

As a start, people love to feel better about themselves. Look for opportunities to build them up. If people say something stupid, say nothing if you can't say something kind. If you leave a conversation having made someone else feel better, count that as a win.

Hope that helps.

As for me, I have had chronic fatigue for about 5 years. Before that I communicated pretty well. Since then I find the mental exercise required exhausts me, which is how I have become so conscious of it.

Nice backdoor brag.. "ooo I'm so smart I'm socially inapt"..

Perhaps watch The Big Bang Theory a bit less? Think you have a bad role model there.