My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

The idea that most people who are doing professional public speaking are reliable narrators is a bit quaint. There is a lot of room for framing that you have to allow for story telling. If you think that all story telling is about reliable narration, you're going to have a tough time being successful at it or interacting with others who are.

One hazard of being a programmer is that sitting alone in a room alone with a computer for 10 years can turn you into a weird dude.

Lately I have taken steps to re-learn how to be social. I am doing a lot of social dances, like Salsa, Swing, Bachata. I think partner dance is good training for body language. Also good training for presence, as when you really start dancing, you stop thinking; conversely when are thinking too much you will stiffen up and choke. There are a surprising number of PHDs and other very cerebral people in my local dance scene.

One thing I have learned is that being good at dancing and being fun to dance with are orthogonal. You can be technically quite bad and people will still want to dance with you if you have good eye contact, smile, laugh at your mistakes, tell little jokes, complements, etc.

Conversely there are some people that are really technically good but not that much fun to dance with because they grimace and look away and don't match your energy.

Of course the best is when you find a partner that is both fun and technically good, and this is what I ascribe to become.

The downside of dances is that I don't get a lot of practice at talking, I guess this is something you could learn to do at bars but I don't drink and so have not found really good place to practice a lot of talking.

I try to get the guys from my jujitsu gym to come dance, these are big bad dudes who could really mess you up in fight, but they are all scared to dance with the girls. You will be scared your first few times for sure. Personally, I tend to be nervous in direct proportion to the beauty of my partner, which can be a problem because women that dance tend to be above average in that respect.

Most dances have a 1 hour lesson at the beginning and then social dance after. The lesson part is easy, you just follow the instructions and the teacher will have you rotate partners so you get to meet most of the girls. I tell my guy friends, just come for the lesson part and then if you get too nervous you can sneak out early.

He's just like me, for real

I read that book and I think it's terrible.

Though the "God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence" was funny and I can relate...

but otherwise, I wouldn't want to live in a society where people are secretly hating you but "speaking ill of no man" a.k.a. "not criticizing."

I liked the book Winning by Jack Welch more, which advocates for "candor," and is essentially the opposite of How to Win Friends.

Manipulation vs influence is about intent and degree of peoples ability to reject it.

If someone is influencing (actually) other folks can take it or leave it, and someone is willing to own it - because it’s something they actually believe.

Manipulation is non optional, and if rejected causes attacks of various forms because people are doing it not because they believe it/it will help the ‘target’, but because they are trying to extract something or control the target.

It’s the difference between ‘follow me if you’d like’ and ‘do what I want you to do or else’.