[alphazard]

First let's address the framing of your question. You asked about emotional intelligence. Theories of multiple intelligences are not universally accepted or well replicated findings in psychometrics.

You should expect that generally intelligent people will also be good at dealing with people. The idea that smart people are often lopsided or lack "people skills" is not supported by psychometric data.

The next thing to understand is that most people do not want to engage with reality any more than they absolutely have to. Most people, most of the time, are choosing what they say in order to positively manipulate someone's emotional state and cultivate a stronger relationship. People care more about being happy than the truth.

The HN community is a bubble of radical truth seeking. This is objectively useful in most professional contexts. Part of the "culture fit" test at a high performing company will be a check for blunt honesty and truth seeking. No "yes men".

But it's not the way to win the social game that you will play in most interactions throughout your life, and you just have to accept that. You are not optimizing for giving someone an uncomfortable truth, you are optimizing for making them happy. Making them like the way they feel when you are around.

[rramadass]

Very well said!

"Emotional Intelligence" is just a marketing term for awareness of other people's emotional needs/thoughts/behaviour/etc. and modulating one's interactions accordingly.

The trick is to do it effectively without allowing oneself to be manipulated/becoming a doormat/hurting the other person's ego.

The books Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations by Kerry Patterson et al. are useful in this regard.

[naijaboiler]

Correct. It's really understanding that people are fundamentally different and span the spectrum. E.g. To some people feelings matter more than truth, to others it's sorta reversed, and all spectrums in between. Most importantly, you need to understand yourself and how you tend to come across. We all have things we find easy to do (gives us energy) and things that drain us. And its different for everybody. If i had to boil emotional intelligence down to 1 pithy aphorism, it would be this. "Ditch the golden rule". Don't treat others as you wish to be treated. Treat others as they wish to be treated.

[rramadass]

Right. One key thing to keep in mind is that we all have an intrinsic nature/personality and no amount of study/training can change this at a fundamental level. Thus we need to be very aware of our strengths and weaknesses, take into account environment/circumstances and act accordingly.

[rl3]

>The HN community is a bubble of radical truth seeking.

To think some call us an echo chamber.

[alphazard]

I'm concerned that this comment and a sibling are interpreting what I said to mean "HN users know the truth and other people haven't caught up yet". That's not what I mean.

On a continuum with preferring the truth on one end, and preferring good vibes on the other: communities like HN and Less Wrong are very far on the preferring the truth end. Much more so than the general population, which prefers good vibes. I called this difference "radical", and I think that's apt.

You can see this in practice. Someone forcing an unpleasant truth on someone else is much more acceptable on HN, than in cocktail party conversation, or in the line at the grocery store, or even on reddit.

It's a statement about the kind of discussion that is welcomed/encouraged, not the beliefs of the median HN user.

[rl3]

I understood what you meant in your original comment and mostly agree.

The sentence in isolation was too funny to pass up though. To your credit, you never said there was any guarantee HN would arrive at the truth.

[sshine]

Truth bears repeating

… repeatedly in a chamber is just a circumstance.

[binary132]

Help, I’m trapped in an echo factory factory