[jakecrouch]

> But having good social skills confers life-long benefits. So, don't write them off. Get good at making a good first impression, being funny (if possible... this author still working on it...), speaking publicly.

I would be careful with this point. Young people who don't have great social skills already tend to feel that they are somehow missing out on something important. But those who have good social skills in our culture will have a hard time forming new and unique ideas, and will often get talked into believing big, fundamental ideas that are wrong or crazy. I'd compare it to being a smoker in the 1960s. In exchange for being cooler, you suffer irreducible risk, that is made more dangerous by the fact that few people realize it's there. Until our culture changes, it's probably better to encourage people to learn about human nature than about "social skills".

[hluska]

> But those who have good social skills in our culture will have a hard time forming new and unique ideas, and will often get talked into believing big, fundamental ideas that are wrong or crazy. I'd compare it to being a smoker in the 1960s.

I can assure you that having good social skills is absolutely nothing like being a smoker in the 1960s. And, there is no absolute relationship between having good social skills and getting talked into believing crazy ideas.

I have absolutely no idea where you get those ideas, but they are completely and demonstrably wrong.

[fiveoak]

I don't really think there are any negative effects to having good social skills. If anything, being able to effectively communicate with others probably helps with coming up with new/unique ideas. Very few great ideas are created in a vacuum. But, I do agree it's important that people don't feel afraid to be an independent thinker, and it's easy to fall into the trap of forced conformity in order to feel more socially accepted.. but I don't think that is really necessarily a product of having good social skills.