Talking to strangers can make us smarter? • Hacker News Board

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#91

Post by mikro2nd » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #85

I loved the understated humour of: "Some social scientists believe teaching kids that literally everyone in the world they hadn't met is dangerous may have been actively harmful." Harms take many guises. Mutual distrust drives people to mediate and avoid others through technology as a psychological shield. That breeds bad technology which divides and dehumanises, and feeds the loop. Here on HN some people have argued…

> stops casual interaction

... and the often hilarious scene that ensues when you don't share a common language. Some of my best memories are made of things like this.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#92

Post by slowmovintarget » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

torstenvl wrote: post #54

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #7

Sadly, I grew up in the era of 'Stranger Danger' (this may be a uniquely UK thing, I'm not sure) which advocated entirely the opposite and, imo, discouraged an entire generation from interacting with those they didn't already know.

Safetyism is a broad cultural trend in the West, theorized to stem in part from the rise of sensationalist reporting on television in the 70s-80s. The result is that the average parent is more likely not to leave even a younger teenager unsupervised than to address more mundane but realistic dangers like ensuring CO detectors have good batteries or using car seats and booster seats until somewhere between age 9 and a…

Danger from people you don't know has a much broader cultural context, though.

For some of my relatives in China, even making eye contact with strangers is unthinkable. You don't look at strangers, you don't say "hi" to them, nothing.

Growing up, walking past someone on the street, nodding, and smiling, even if I didn't know them, was normal. As population density goes up, that kind of policy becomes less workable, though. People try to insulate themselves from being psychologically overwhelmed from the sheer number of other people right there so they practice ignoring them.

That's not true everywhere. In good neighborhoods in the newer stretches of Bengalaru (Bangalore), for example, it doesn't quite work that way. People talk. They figure out how to solve problems together, they move on. Your network is your wealth.

My wife would probably have a heart attack in that atmosphere, though.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#93

Post by andrewfromx » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

I posted an app idea for this a few months ago to the subreddit "Startup_Ideas" and reading over the text now, it's definitely not perfect yet:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Startup_Ideas/comments/wxokww/mobil...

But surely there is some "QR City" app that could help make these talks with new people, easier, more frequent, socially normalized, and gamified! I'm kind of shocked still in 2022 when trying to get someone's contact info we do that dance of speaking digits, typing them in and txt'ing or calling to transfer our number vs. a QR scan.

"Picture a world where strangers are not as scary. People are not as isolated and alone. Instead of asking for someone's phone number, you just hold open your IRL Present app. It has a distinctive branding border around the QR so people know what it is when someone puts their phone out with that showing. Even shy people can just open their app and show a QR without saying a word."

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#94

Post by INeedMoreRam » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

alexmolas wrote: post #27

I read an article that showed that talking regularly to strangers and exposing yourself to "uncomfortable" situations can help you to reduce your "uncomfortability" levels, ie: you can learn to be comfortable in any situation by repeated exposition to uncomfortable situations.

Exposure therapy.

It’s a tool to treat general anxiety disorders too.

You become gradually desensitized to what used to give you anxiety by deliberately putting yourself in anxiety causing situations.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#95

Post by INeedMoreRam » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

boomerango wrote: post #20

As a transplant from the Midwest to the North East, anecdotally, this matches my experience. Even after many years and friends, I still feel an outsider here. My wife and I often lament it. There is no sense of community to speak of, just thousands of ships passing in the dark.

Do you think you’ll eventually return to the Midwest because of the NE coldness?

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#96

Post by midislack » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

I'm going to answer "no." It's how you can answer all headline 'questions.'

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#97

Post by erie » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

calme_toi wrote: post #60

I feel like the city life makes us talk less to strangers. Living in London, I cannot really remember when was the last time I talk to a stranger except asking/being asked for directions. Back when I was living in a small town outside Amsterdam called Abcoude, I had much more conversations with strangers even I don’t speak Dutch at all. Learnt from them that it’s the only place in the world with name starts with abc…

I was in a cable car with my wife in a Russian resorts area, Sochi, and a 'senior old couple entered sitting opposite to us. I immediately started a conversation with my 20 phrases I have learnt asking him where he was from. He snapped and started shouting at me in that small space.I understood that he was telling me it was me who should have said where I was from as I look foreign. I knew I screwed up by not starting with a polite Russian pozhaluysta. Still that did not stop me from interacting with Russians who are normally very easy going and open to strangers in a naive way sometimes. Ironically, I belong to the ethnic people what were in that region and were killed by the Russians.

Sochi Was the Site of a Horrific Ethnic Cleansing https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/150-years-ago-Sochi-w...

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#98

Post by nixpulvis » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #85

I loved the understated humour of: "Some social scientists believe teaching kids that literally everyone in the world they hadn't met is dangerous may have been actively harmful." Harms take many guises. Mutual distrust drives people to mediate and avoid others through technology as a psychological shield. That breeds bad technology which divides and dehumanises, and feeds the loop. Here on HN some people have argued…

Yes!

I think people are so afraid to be wrong or give bad advice since it's all to easy to be disproven (you said the street was X but it's actually Y, never-mind the fact that X runs parallel to Y and is just one block away) that they would rather remain silent. We used to learn better by being OK to be slightly wrong, then taking no offense when offered a gentle correction.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#99

Post by origin_path » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

leobg wrote: post #2

Apparently what is meant is talking to strangers face to face, i.e. Twitter/HN doesn’t count. > "I like humanity as a whole more because I talk to strangers." Anyone here have any anecdotes where you had that same experience? What are some good ways and places you have found to get into conversations with strangers?

I used to go regularly to meetups in my local town that were specifically about meeting strangers. They would usually be advertised as for people 'new in town' but in reality a lot of people went there just to hang out even if they'd lived there for years. Because the events were about nothing in particular, you had to learn how to make smalltalk and then how to nicely escalate it to more interesting conversations. Obviously it wasn't truly random strangers because people self-selected by going, but there was a steady supply of truly new people who just wanted to meet others and make friends. Met lots of people that way, made some great friendships and even business connections.

Will echo jemmyw about flights. Obviously you don't want to be the annoying seat neighbour, but usually if someone wants to chat they'll make that clear fairly fast. I had some great and interesting conversations with people on planes. Even got numbers from a couple of girls :)

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#100

Post by origin_path » Sun, Oct 30, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #33

annyeonghada wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can something not be gendered, for once?

Why? There is a natural power imbalance between men and women. If you find it tiresome then you're getting a sense of how tiring it can be to be a woman in public.

No post body was provided.