My stages of learning to be a socially normal person

Agreed. It's the playbook of social interaction written out. Nothing offensive about that.

Sometimes we find it distasteful to have things we're fully aware of explicitly spelled out. A trite quip here is "nobody wants to see how the sausage is made".

I would take it further and say that the more light we bring to this subject, the less it becomes the exclusive domain of snake oil salesmen and the "sales tips 101" type books, and the more inoculated the general public becomes to manipulation.

100% correct.

Yeah. I wonder why that is - is it because it highlights a conflict between our actions and values? If left unexamined, it's a non-issue, so having it spelled out feels like a problem being created?

I would much rather assume the people I'm interacting with are honest and conveying their real feelings, vs playing some (probably) Machiavellian game with N levels of dishonesty and manipulation from what could easily be a malevolent person at the core. At least that tends to be the assumption when you pick up on a lack of authenticity in this way.

When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator, it's very understandable that you should use an abundance of caution. That's probably an instinct in us at this level.

Of course everyone is at least a little aware that they're putting on a bit of a ruse with their public persona, but that needs to be tethered to some level of authenticity or you'll just be sending out Patrick Bateman vibes.

It may be the first time many people are actively considering these things if they haven't generally felt social struggles / aren't on the spectrum.

A self-help book that took off saying the quiet part out loud is How to Win Friends & Influence People. It predates the 'influencer'.

    > When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator

This statement seems like a paradox. Forgive my "No True Scotsman" example. If the person is such a "master manipulator" what indications do you have? The social normies will miss them, or will think they are the ones making the suggestions/decisions. This is the hallmark of master craft sales people.

Why dontou consider it "manipulation"? Would you consider what goes into you resume, or performance/promotion packet "manipulation"? In every interaction there are spoken and unspoken rules, and those who excel tend to be those who can understand the subtext and express themselves effectively.

It depends, of course. Some people might fill their resume with outright BS, and this would be widely regarded as manipulative.

This strikes me as a glass-half-empty interpretation. Why is the stuff from the blog post necessarily machiavellian and manipulative? I didn't read any of that into that blog post. Rather, it was about how to create win-win situations where the people involved genuinely enjoy each others company. No need for bad intentions here.

Wouldn't you think it is more important what the goal for the other person is? If their goal is to enrich and make both of your lives better, does it matter whether they consicously use social techniques or have natural automatic ability to do so?

It is also autism vs psychopathy. Patrick Bateman is nowhere close to someone autistic trying to learn those socially successful behaviours. Patrick Bateman is a terrible human being not because they are inauthentic, he is a terrible human being because of the acts he did and wanted to do.

I like your description.

I think sometimes this is when we find our way to the middle of two relatively simple drives: "be an orthodox group member/ avoid being a social outcast" and "avoid the discomfort of cognitive dissonance / admitting hypocrisy".

If there aren't immediate consequences for inaction (especially if there ARE costs and/or social consequences for action) were very good at convincing ourselves to ignore it (or tell ourselves we will EVENTUALLY deal with it but just not right now)

Depends how you define outright BS. I bet most people at least cherrypick the best data points amongst thousands of possible, giving a look that doesn't really represent them as a whole. And then they omit some undesirable things. Similar to how people on social media will only post their best moments, giving inaccurate representation of their lives and themselves while overall causing others to feel like they are missing out, etc.

So here is the skill of being able to cherrypick data to give the best representation of yourself as opposed to true average honest overview of oneself. Then the skill of avoiding answering questions you don't want to answer to by answering by talking about what you want to talk about (think politicians).

Same is with real life interactions. Among 1000s of things you could say or do there is always some that are more effective than others in reaching a certain goal, whether it is getting a job, making a sale, convincing someone, making a friend or whatever.

Is it manipulative only if you make up something or if you are able to get people to do what you want by being able to cherrypick the most convincing ideas, arguments, facts etc.

Sometimes doing something explicit that is typically done without thought or plan feels phony and off. This is such a scenario.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

If they have thousands of examples to cherry pick from... That's a signal of experience. So it's not entirely manipulation. If you can pick from your experience and find the best examples and you have several... You have experience.

It really depends on the topic. You can do a lot by cherrypicking and omitting stuff. Simple example, I can talk about all the stock trades where I hit big and leave an impression that I am super good with picking the right stocks, but not talk about my losses. This is super obvious example, but in real life there is infinite nuance to all of it. The stories I choose to tell and stories that I choose to leave out.

But in the context of job interviews.. It applies. But also that applies in trading, if you have a bunch of experience winning or losing, that's useful experience and I want your input on my team. The fact that you cherry picked is built into the evaluation. You have experience. Whether or not you have some innate talent for it is aside. I care about your experience.

Yes in interviews it is expected and people do cherrypick. But the ability to cherrypick can show a lower skilled person in better light compared to a higher skilled person who may not cherrypick as well or tends to not like cherrypicking the best examples since it doesn't feel honest. Sometimes this honesty can work well, sometimes not. Sometimes if honesty doesn't work well it just means the job wouldn't have been a good fit anyway, but other times it is just putting you at a huge disadvantage.

I have a friend who is somehow super good at that, it is fascinating to me. But he can't be bothered to do actual work. He performs extemely well in interviews, gets high paying job, and then stays there for 3 months, gets bored. Of course he doesn't put that on his resume. He doesn't really lie, but he definitely cherrypicks, embellishes etc. I am kind of the opposite of him. I have stayed at the same place for years and am naturally passionate about software eng, but troubled socially. He is very confident and has no shame.

I don't know how to filters those people. But I'd say in general if people have positive things to show... It doesn't mean they don't have negatives. They can be hiding all kinds of negatives... That's hard to test. But if you have several good examples you probably have some experience. I assume you pick the best. Maybe that's problematic. Maybe some hyper-honest people try to pick a mixture that better represents their skills. But I don't know how you balance for that. I want them to represent themselves and sell themselves.

But job applications aren't the same as normal life so this is probably a tangent. In normal life, though, I kinda assume I'm seeing what people want me to see. But if it looks really good it probably means they have good sample of experiences to cherry pick from.

Yeah, I mean it is tough, but I guess my main point is that it is never super clear what is manipulation, what is persuasion, what is bs, what is honest, etc. Many people cherrypick and omit intentionally, consciously, many people subconsciously and naturally. Many will simply remember only the good things about themselves and radiate only that, others are extremely self critical of themselves, and radiate that. Sometimes one works better than the other.

Two different people can have the same achievement and one thinks it is the most awesome and special achievement ever, and embellishes it, the other thinks it is not even worth mentioning or words it completely differently.

E.g. for job interviews when are you considered to be "mentoring" someone? Someone might do few code reviews and claim they have mentored juniors, other one can have 1 on 1s giving valuable career advice, tech advice, but still not think of themself as a mentor.

I agree. I don't know which segment you fall into... But for applications and interviews I would recommend to radiate... Find your best work. Open source or otherwise. And sell yourself.

That doesn't mesh with normal human behavior. It feels weird. But the corporate world and the private social worlds are disconnected. For me at least. So it's weird. Actually ... That's a weird concept.

I guess I recommend having two minds... One with friends and one with the corporate world. And they don't play by the same rules.

Yeah, agreed here. Ideally you want to have friends who you can be authentic with just so you can have actually meaningful discussions about each other lives and thoughts. Corporate and career can be totally different. Early dating can be a mixed bag etc. And of course there are some other social events too, different types of people you may need to navigate around etc.

I don't know if this is a toxic thing to say or not... But I enjoy my tech friends and I value our discussions. But I most value my science nerd friends outside of tech. Like.. I kinda don't want my friends to be peers. Not because of competition or anything like that. But I want them to nerd out to me about things I'm not steeped in. And I want to get to nerd out to them about computer science and the boundaries of philosophy and math and logic. But having a friend group is central.

Embracing the bliss of ignorance.

That's not what I got from the article. Firstly they seem to be saying that they were not seen as phony (hard to judge). Sure they're using tricks, but they were copying tricks off other people! Not all social interaction is genuinely raw.

I thought the article was more about leaning into their own style, becoming more intuitive over time.

...and the more low-trust becomes the society, as if it's not already the case in plenty of places.

It's no coincidence that people always judged and shunned such overt manipulators, as well as tried to downplay the underlying mechanisms of manipulation in general (outside of the sales types, which are often looked upon as slimy and not deserving of trust).

A low-trust society is not fun a place to live in