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

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

#61

Post by swayvil »

thewarrior wrote: post #23
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

It's not. I think you just need to go out more. Social skills are not improved by spending all your time indoor in front of your computer playing with the latest cool new framework, or learning about ML from youtube or grinding leetcode for that next fancy job or playing videogames or watching Netflix. IMHO social skills are easy to pick up, and that's coming from an introvert, you just need to put yourself out there…

I can try to help out with my haphazard guide to social skills that I’ve picked up from my experiences. This is tailored to the biases most nerds have towards social interactions. 1. Stop trying to make sense of everything people do in social situations using logic. There is a deeper logic to most things people do however you are much better off imitating what others do at first. And then observing and taking feedbac…

Excellent list!

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

#63

Post by beowulfey »

There is no trick to it—just like any trait, social skills just come with experience. If you started with maxed out introvert skills but didn’t put anything into charisma it is going to take more work to raise those people skills to a high level than the ones you are already good at.

Basically, just keep at it. Try and make a point to do something social every week, or even day. Eventually you will incorporate those hidden rules based on your experience learning what is good and bad, just like you learned the rules of writing machine learning software, and social interactions will become second nature.

I used to be a tremendous introvert, but in college I was lucky enough to have great friends who introduced me to more social situations than I normally would have experienced, and it helped a ton. These days I would almost say I lean extrovert. It really just takes practice and experience!

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

#64

Post by thrav »

beardyw wrote: post #47

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 e…

For more, read the all time classic: How to Win Friends and Influence People.

The answer is basically: Be genuinely interested in people and they will like you.

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

#65

Post by MathYouF »

I would guess you have a lot more social skills than machine learning skills in an absolute sense, it's just that in a relative sense you're a lot better than the average person at machine learning and a lot worse at socialising, this is because for many humans, socialising is one of the few skills they spend any significant effort in mastering.

The amount of brain mass you have dedicated to socialising is still significantly more than the amount dedicated to ML. The rest of the advice in the thread can help you improve your skill in socialising, but just know that in a world where than skill is very popular and many have been working almost exclusively on it since a young age, you're unlikely to achieve relatively high skill levels compared to others. You should figure out which social goals you even want to achieve first.

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

#66

Post by CornCobs »

Not exactly offering advice to acquire social skills, but I'd like to offer some perspective: I believe that social skills are only the means to an end, not an end in itself. Thinking of it in the same vein as "getting a degree" is probably wrong! Unless you are looking to be some kind of "social coach", you are much more likely to be wanting these skills to get along better with other people. And I think what this entails differs in different social settings! There are plenty of self-absorbed people that get along splendidly.

Again, not offering practical tips, just warning against thinking of social skills as some kind of game to master.

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

#67

Post by ZephyrBlu »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #59
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you just need to put yourself out there as much as possible in as many new situations as possible That's a big "just". It takes a lot of time and effort that you might want to spend elsewhere: https://blog.asmartbear.com/two-big-things.html > so these people are most likely the ones who have spend their prime years mostly indoor in front of a screen working away on code and algos, chasing that top dream job, instea…

>That's a big "just". It takes a lot of time and effort that you might want to spend elsewhere That's true for everything in life as the amount of hours in a day and the amount of days in your life is finite, so it depends on your priorities where you choose to allocate your time and effort. Do you want to chase a top dev career and money? Fine, but don't complain you lock social skills. Do you want to chase social i…

E: your edited in last paragraph is basically what I'm trying to say.

> That's true for everything in life as the amount of hours in a day and the amount of days in our life is finite so it depends on your priorities where you want to allocate your time

This is exactly my point. I think having decent/passable social skills is very beneficial, but I also know that having an active social life is very time consuming. Maybe OP only needs to do this for a short time to build up some skills he can use in future.

I don't think we disagree, I'm trying to point out the same thing you are. That you can't have it all.

> Where did I say that one is better? My point was that prioritizing one thing (SW career) for multiple years has a consequences of leaving you behind in other things (social contacts and experiences)

I felt it was implied that this was a poor choice compared to being more social. I also agree there are no guarantees. Personally, I'm naturally less social and more interested in my personal growth, so I'm not particularly bothered by not socializing a lot. I think it's very dependent on your personality.

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

#68

Post by boublepop »

You propably need to spend a year haphazardly watching YouTube videos and Reading papers on social interactions while applying your learnings in practice before being able to actually compare the two.

It sounds like you think just living will somehow imprint social skills unto you, but this is as silly as thinking that you’d learn machine learning from working 18 years as a cleaning assistant at an ML company.

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

#69

Post by retrac »

Well here's my unconventional take on it. It won't give you many tips but it might comfort a bit.

We were already apex predators before our minds apparently went into overdrive. We were already using tools and hunting in groups better than anything else. The only thing likely to eat us was a lion, and only if desperate. So what were we competing against that applied an evolutionary pressure that selected so strongly for intelligence, theory of mind, etc. in a feedback loop?

The best hypothesis I've encountered is -- other humans. Competing for social status. Competing for mates. Predicting the behaviour and allegiances of your political opponents. Keeping track of kin. Keeping track of networks of "I owe yous". Gossip.

We've evolved to be as inscrutable and perplexing to other humans as possible, while also evolving a toolset to decode other people's intentions and thoughts. An evolutionary arms race, maybe.

tl;dr: Humans are the most complex system other humans encounter and have to understand, by a mile. We all fail at it to varying degrees.

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

#70

Post by mam4 »

Because it only involves 1 part of your being: the thinking mind.

Social skills involves the other parts such as connecting to people, doing / acting on some stuff, speaking, sometimes lying or pushing people away.

As an anecdata I was a total nerd before with 0 social skills and no one wanted to talk to me, but by studying a bit of personal development you can get the basics and understand the subtext of most interactions, which is actually the most important: "what do other people want from the interaction ?".

Now I can know go talk to a lot of people. I can travel alone, go to clubs / bars alone and talk to people and (before i had a gf) pick up chicks by myself, which 90% people wouldn't. It's still draining but because I learnt to have fun with these settings (I found my vibe), the cost of not going is higher than going.

It's possible to improve a lot if you will you can read stuff. I recommend:

- https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-... to know the various ways people speak.

- 48 laws of power (a must)

- The Game by neil strauss (it's more seduction-oriented but it's mostly about someone who was a nerd journalist and became one of the most famous womanizer ever. Super fun to read if you don't wanna take it at 1rst debree)

There are many other if you guys are interested

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