[etangent]

> a lot of the points felt more like learning how to charm, manipulate, and game social interactions.

A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious about it, we give them a pass. One of the characteristics of autistic-spectrum individuals is that they must make a conscious effort to achieve goals that are achieved unconsciously by most of us. If we prevent such individuals from learning all that rarely-written-down stuff consciously because it seems "distasteful" to us, then we are disadvantaging such individuals socially.

[1shooner]

>A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious about it, we give them a pass. One of the characteristics of autistic-spectrum individuals is that they must make a conscious effort to achieve goals that are achieved unconsciously by most of us.

I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it. Otherwise I think socializing would be excruciatingly boring. I think the distinction is that they had the capacity to learn from interacting with others, and had the confidence to iterate until they became comfortable with their social skills (which to others may appear 'unconscious').

I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.

[makeitdouble]

I read parent's wording of "manipulation" as not in the usual negative connotation, and more as making the other person do something specific.

For instance if you wanted a security guard to help you find your way in a shopping mall, there would be approaches that are more effective than others. For instance making it sound more like you have something important to do and they'd save your day by helping isn't specially abusing the person. They might feel pretty good about helping you, it's still somewhat part of their job so you're not tricking them either.

[underlipton]

>they had the capacity to learn from interacting with others

Or, were allowed to learn it from others.

>and had the confidence to iterate

Or, the safety to iterate.

This seems to be just shifting where socially-successful people received uncommon benefit-of-the-doubt.

[coldtea]

>I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it.

Lots and lots of, if not most, social behaviors are intuited subconsciously.

And that's even if the person has actively studied and learned them (and most are picked up by osmosis, not consciously learned anyway).

>I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.

That's either oblivious to 90% of social interactions out there, or just understands "manipulation" at the con artist or sociopath level.

Even wearing nice clothes to make a better impression is a kind of manipulation. Same for using different manners of speaking and language in different social contexts, and lots of other stuff.

[1shooner]

Yes, I think we have different definitions. Some people make a distinction between social behavior and manipulation that you apparently do not.

If I wear nice clothes and make a good impression on someone, I am creating an outcome we both wanted at the outset. If we are meeting socially, they probably wanted to like me, and I wanted them to like me. That was the shared goal. That is cooperative, not manipulative.

[whstl]

It's very strange that people are ok with people charming others "naturally" (while it's probably because they learned by imitation, often from parents) while "practicing it" is seen as bad and manipulative.

It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.

[YurgenJurgensen]

You say ‘somehow’ like the reasoning isn’t obvious. Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.

[kubanczyk]

> Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.

Nay, artificial physical attractiveness is also a signal of reproductive fitness. It isn't a given. It's the subject's genes that made a brain that was able to design (and to arrange to pay for!) the improved attractiveness.

It's not qualitatively different from brushing hair.

[YurgenJurgensen]

Yes, technically, having spare resources to devote to your own appearance is considered a positive signal, but it is an unreliable one, and often one not as valued by the people making the judgement. If there are many ways to signal wealth, a signal that has some intrinsic downside will lose its value if lots of people are sending the other wealth-signals.

[coldtea]

The reductionist biological explanation might be obvious to you, but in the actual world, the reasoning and the moral condemnation of things like plastic surgery is never explicitly about giving false signals regarding one's reproductive fitness. Reasons "haters" cite are about vanity, narcissism, refusing to look your age, etc.

[bayindirh]

For me, motivation matters. If you want to learn social skills to make your life easier while not harming others, that's perfectly fine, admirable even, but if you learn it to damage others for your own profit, that's immoral.

Same for the motivation of surgeries. You might not be comfortable with yourself, and want to change something, and that's perfectly fine, but again to changing appearance signal something to benefit you and harm others with less effort, it's immoral again.

And, I believe, if you need to change how you behave or look to get acceptance from a circle, this means the circle is toxic and you'll be far happier elsewhere.

[vacuity]

To me, a big factor that I subconsciously evaluate on is the "fakeness" of the appearance itself. Instances where plastic surgery results in the uncanny valley of "should be good but looks too perfect or messes up a critical aspect" disturb me. Plastic surgery isn't as powerful as Photoshop. Maybe that's more on the surgeon, and subjective criterion of attraction (such as mine), but it simply isn't the case that plastic surgery makes someone look good.

[whstl]

I guess that's totally fair. People are hard wired to pattern-match faces, and someone who deviates from the norm will attract attention.

I was more talking about judgement of people who did just to still look normal but better, similarly to the judgement of people who learn "social skills" like the TFA discusses.

[YurgenJurgensen]

That too is pretty obvious from the same perspective: Admitting you only care about someone’s genes is itself considered shallow, so people make up other justifications based on other, more accepted values.

[whstl]

This is a bullshit rationalization for horrible behavior.

The people doing the judging certainly aren't gonna reproduce with 99.99999% of the people being judged, and I'm being extremely generous here.

[K0balt]

While I certainly agree that it is an example of poor judgment and perhaps weak character to be broadly judgy about cosmetic efforts in general, I can understand the theoretical plight of someone who might be taken in by a deceptive person in that regard.

If you steelman the argument you can see the point, but it’s also unreasonable to assume that a person is living the steelman version of life (and being a deceptive person) just because they had a facelift.

OTOH, if you are admiring people’s genetics using their appearance as a proxy, I can see why it might seem like “cheating”

[whstl]

But the problem is not admiring good looks if they're natural, or expecting someone to be truthful, or anything of the sort that might or might not theoretically happen.

The problem is clearly with the bullying. And the assumptions around character. And basically using "changing yourself" as a proxy for hallucinating all sorts of completely unrelated bad characteristics. And the rationalizing around it.

It's the same for behavior: people are fine with the behavior of "naturally charming" people but as soon as someone mentions "learning how to do it" people immediately jump to conclusions and call it manipulative.

[MichaelZuo]

Someone having one consciously developed ulterior motive… does increases the likelihood of them having other consciously developed ulterior motives that might be hidden away?

The linkage isn’t as strong for unconsciously or subconsciously developed ulterior motives. Hence the huge gap in how people behave towards that.

[YurgenJurgensen]

You might think that those people’s opinions don’t matter, but it turns out that ‘lots of other people value me highly’ is in itself a signal.

And yes, it is horrible, but if you want to solve a problem, you must first understand the problem, and ‘some people are just born with Evil in their hearts’ is not a very good sociological model.

[lazide]

Sure, but why would they care? And why do you think it matters?

[whstl]

That's precisely my point. If you're not gonna reproduce with someone, their "reproductive fitness" is none of your business.

Once again this is just a rationalization for horrible behavior.

[lazide]

But this is the neurodivergent ‘just world’ blind spot.

The world isn’t just. People like people with good genetics, because being friendly with the strong gets you benefits more than it gets you costs. Especially if you’re able to influence (or even pathologically manipulate) them.

Most people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.

Also, most attractive people work to be attractive because it’s often mutually beneficial (assuming they can counter manipulate or influence appropriately). Having people attracted to you gives you the ability to use other people’s resources for your benefit.

Most attractive people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.

This is generally kept covert, because like most covert power, it attracts negative attention if brought to conscious awareness - as then it’s perceived as manipulation, not influence, or encourages more jealousy, etc. as it’s not fair.

But life isn’t fair, except where we make it, and making something fair requires power.

And acquiring and maintaining power is fundamentally unfair.

[lmz]

You could argue that they are ruining the value of the signal for everyone.

[Hendrikto]

Playing the hand you were dealt is fine. Pulling an ace out of your sleeve is cheating.

[fruitworks]

Cheating in whose game? We make our own luck.

[blueflow]

You might not play it, but others do play the game and take it rather seriously.

[whstl]

I'm talking about real life, not a card game.

[Hendrikto]

I am sure you are familiar with the concept of a metaphor.

[whstl]

Of course, but just because you can throw a metaphor around doesn't make it true.

There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other. Using a card game to justify the behavior is just a rationalization.

[coldtea]

>There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other.

Apparently there is, which is why this judgement you speak of happens.

It just happens to be a social rule, and you don't like it, but it's a rule nonetheless. Doesn't have to be an official rule, agreed upon, and signed by each participant, or some physical law.

Hence, the card game metaphor has some merit. Like people think you shouldn't cheat in a card game, many people also think you shouldn't cheat with cosmetic surgery.

[lazide]

And yet, it’s how it is.

[Arisaka1]

>It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.

We also tend to hide how hard we work to make our success look natural, but we reveal how hard we work on the extremes of success. For example, if I work hard and take a score of 17 out of 20 in a test people will say "I barely read last evening, phew", but if you're consistently scoring 19-20/20 people may even approach you to learn your studying methods and for tips, because they assume there are important takeaways that they can adopt.

It's my pet peeve with how society recognizes that someone is talented, which is blatantly flawed because all you can do is see what they're capable of doing. Someone may be talented yet unable (or unwilling?) to tap into their talent, but since we recognize talent by the output you can't really tell the existence of talent unless it's at the extremes of success, like the 8 year old who can solve mathematics that are a grade or more above the current grade.

I see talent like a genetic predisposition that can be appropriately cultivated to attain success. It's not much different than my height, because I didn't choose it, yet I can guess that there are men out there who hate the fact that I have their desirable height yet I never hit the gym, cultivate my social skills, or take advantage the fact that I look younger than I am. I am willing to bet everything that I met at least one person who thought of all of these things the first moments they looked at me.

But at least genetic predispositions like height are visible to the naked eye and no one can dispute the differences. When it comes to differences in the brain it's where we ignorantly proclaim that things are obscure therefore they can violate the very facts of observable nature.

In sort, not only I fully agree with you, but I also agree with the obvious double standards in society around it. If I take ADHD medication and that helps with my focus to improve my performance in school or work then I deserve that success as much as someone who naturally had no problems with ADHD. Why is this different for looks (like hair transplants, etc.) is beyond me.

[scandox]

That is a mistake I think. Many 'normal' people who grow up (emotionally) make a conscious effort not to instrumentalize their social interactions even if they do know how to do it. Certainly with friends they aim to be authentic.

I think emulating things that a serious person discards is a step backwards.

[taurath]

My take living as a relatively high functioning autistic (& other things) person and having many neurodivergent friends is that instrumentalizing is more often due to relational failures due to developmental social differences. The underlying of those is most often a hypersensitive (to sight, sound, smells, touch) individual having periods of being overwhelmed by the world around them. Couple that with parents who really don't have either the time, energy, or temperament to connect with such a kid.

This makes trying to figure out social cues difficult. After enough failures to connect, or being picked on to the point of feeling constant betrayal, we go to the safest place we can to try to play out interactions to avoid being hurt: our imagination. We make systems to predict behavior, we take to shallow taxonomies and try them on like tinted sunglasses. We are so masked, so protected, so... hardcore avoidant of the shame we feel just for existing, and we lean on this until we finally figure out that what we went through was really, really hard, and we find again the threads of our things that we never got a chance to develop, and start to grow them from the level they are, not where we pretend they are.

There's a lot of ways away from that, and those who instrumentalize might still be on the pathway upwards. Its hard to know where someone is from.

[underlipton]

I think this is where the high incidence of neurodivergence in the trans community and certain subcultures (furries, roleplaying) comes to fore. Autism is often accompanied by identity conflicts - between what you're labeled as, and how people treat you, and how you feel about yourself - because communication disruptions are common when neurotypes are unaligned, and identity is both the reason for and the means by which much interpersonal communication takes place.

People who don't feel resonance between their label, treatment, and self-concept will question why that is, up to questioning aspects of their identity themselves. Once unmoored from a proscribed identity, people can find the ambiguity uncomfortable and untenable, and may adopt a concrete identity that fits more closely.

That doesn't make the adopted identities any less true, of course. Identity is socially-constructed, so deciding that you feel more comfortable presenting as a woman isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood at birth. Calling yourself a wolf or an orc is probably more extreme, especially in general contexts, but at a convention where you're surrounded by a thousand other people who find it easier to connect when they've thrown on a (literal or figurative) bear sark? Go ham.

In the end, of course, you're just you. All of the labels - even the ones you internalize and externalize - are just ways of trying to communicate, and to make being around you easier for other people, in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you by, because that's what our pattern-matching ape-brains like. The mask is a mask; it's a cover, not a substitute, for the totality of a person's being.

[groestl]

> in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you

Identity is a lookup for a custom zlib dictionary, so communication compresses better! Which means we can pick and choose per communication channel. :) Thanks for that thought!

[taurath]

It heartens me that someone else could make that connection between identity seeking and masking.

[seethedeaduu]

I completely disagree, I find this claim to also be unsupported by the current evidence. Identity is only a part of being trans and often comes much later.

[wedje]

> presenting as a woman

When autism meets sexism.

[coldtea]

The goalposts for "sexism" have moved to the edge of the galaxy if people today think that's sexism.

Parent says that "identity is socially-constructed", they defend trans people, they say it "isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood"

- but the fact they said "presenting" as opposed to "being" a woman is sexism, as if they're some "chauvinist pig"?

That's why we can't have nice things...

[seethedeaduu]

This poster is a well known transphobic troll that makes new accounts every week and implies that trans women are autistic males who "pretend" to be women because of sexism.

That being said, saying presenting instead of being is not ideal indeed.

[wedje]

It is sexism, in that this promotes sexist stereotypes regarding how women should present themselves. There is similar sexism inherent in the concept of "manhood", as well.

[mkagenius]

I(non autistic) would love to be friends with someone like you.

[K0balt]

I think many of the “manipulations” are actually more like dances; both people engage in a consensual proxy display of willingness to cooperate. Any “manipulation” occurs only when one person is unaware that the “dance” exists and mistakes a protocol negotiation for a call to action, or where one person is deceptive and intentionally mis-signals their intentions.

I can see why someone not understanding the “dance” could easily mistake it for “innocent” manipulation… but when it’s basically a scripted give-and-take that serves as a symbolic representation of a persons willingness to cooperate and their advertised intentions, it isn’t really manipulation at all, but rather a type of communication that allows (hazy) inferences about a person’s character and intellect in the guise of insignificant banter.

[computerdork]

Although, I agree that for average people, over instrumentalizing your interactions becomes fake (although, to be honest, most could use a bit more, including myself, to communicate more effectively with those close to us).

Still, agree with others, seems like you're generalizing what is good for the average person is also good for those with personalities that are more at the extremes. Yeah, know a couple of people who just don't understand what people are thinking or feeling, ever. And so they have to learn a system of cues to look for to figure out whether a person is angry or sad or happy... These people need to create systems to make socialization work.

[whstl]

> Many 'normal' people who grow up (emotionally) make a conscious effort not to instrumentalize their social interactions

That's definitely not true if we include "work" as a "social interaction".

[somenameforme]

I wouldn't say just friends either. The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think. If somebody doesn't like me, cool - there's plenty of other people. If they do? Awesome, because they're getting the 'real' me, so it's probably going to be a good relationship.

Basically I think a lot of people's issues with social stuff starts with something analogous to a boy who never asks a girl out for fear that she'll say no. People don't engage in interactions, or try to be overly pleasing, to try to appeal to other people.

But that's never going to lead to a good relationship, because it's fake, and it'll feel exhausting. By contrast when you stop caring, you might be surprised to find people like you even more, it becomes even easier to form "real" relationships, and suddenly social interactions aren't tiring at all.

This becomes even easier after having kids because you're probably not really seeking relations in any meaningful way, so you completely genuinely just don't care. And then paradoxically it becomes so much easier. Well, at least it becomes wisdom you can hand down to your own kids, or random anons online.

[gblargg]

> The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think.

If you do care what other think, you alter your behavior to make them think what you prefer, and it becomes inauthentic on your part and manipulation of others. That's not to say that all things for others are manipulation; if you find out that you don't listen to people well and improve that, they might like being around you more because being heard is an important core part of relating.

[immibis]

> If somebody doesn't like me, cool - there's plenty of other people

And what if no one likes me?

[mrmlz]

You should probably figure out why - unless you are ok with nobody liking you. If _everyone_ finds you annoying or difficult being around, you most like are annoying and difficult to deal with.

How you go about figuring what bugs people is perhaps the hard part.

[K0balt]

You might not be understanding what is annoying to people, or you might understand it quite well and are using that adopted identity as a shield. You can’t lose what you don’t have.

Either way, if you aren’t content with your situation in this regard, I would recommend study, introspection, and perhaps therapy. Dale Carnegie produced some excellent work in this regard, aiming towards win/win interactions. He’s more business oriented, but that context is easy to strip away, and the principles stand on their own.

[majorchord]

I can tell you exactly why people don't like you.

You speak as if you are an expert on everything in the universe at all times. Way too much black-and-white thinking. And many people often strongly disagree with your statements... a great deal of your comments are quite often downvoted and/or flagged.

There is a reason you have been banned from several different platforms now. Disagreeing/arguing with their actions is not how you improve yourself, and you can't explain your way out of it, you have to want to change how you act, and work hard at it. You have to be ok with being wrong. Your weaponization of logic has destroyed your empathy. You are craving validation through technical dominance, but this just further isolates you/alienates others.

I think real intelligence by definition requires empathy and humility, which is typically the opposite of such dogmatism in my opinion. "As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."

The Dunning-Kruger effect also applies to smart people. You don't stop when you are estimating your ability correctly. As you learn more, you gain more awareness of your ignorance and continue being conservative with your self estimates.

Also you seem to like to claim that almost everything is illegal and then not back up your claims with any useful sources, instead telling people to look it up themselves or give vague non-answers like "it's in the German law code". That and most of your comments are just plain negative in general, and I think this ultimately stems from some kind of childhood trauma that you have not dealt with.

[immibis]

Many of your comments are you condescendingly implying other people are stupider than you, and you have a disproportionate number of comments targeting me specifically.

[ses1984]

Isn’t aiming to be authentic a form of “instrumentalizing”?

[K0balt]

Excellent point, especially since most people “aiming to come across as authentic” are anything but.

[Nevermark]

Being authentic, is about understanding oneself, and being able to communicate oneself better to others so they can understand you better too.

When we win, by being a better collaborator with others, it isn't operating in a shallow or selfish sense.

It isn't treating others like instruments for our benefit over theirs. It isn't manipulation.

[ses1984]

We are mincing words.

I don’t think collaboration, altruism, and other pro social traits are exclusive of instrumentalizing.

Whatever word you want to use that encompasses pro social behaviors, let’s use that word if you don’t like instrumentalizing.

[Nevermark]

> We are mincing words.

Good point.

These words are unfortunately loaded. "instrumentalizing" is so close to "instrument" for me to see them as unrelated in meaning. But lots of similar words drift in meaning, or have several interpretations.

I don't have any issue with people doing things for "natural" reasons, vs. realpolitik analytical reasons, when the motive is still benefit-neutral, or benefit-benefit relative to ourselves-others.

[Aurornis]

> A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious about it, we give them a pass.

I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to what’s describe in this blog post.

The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.

The casual mentions of how they tried some conversational trick and got someone into full on sobbing was particularly striking because there was hardly a mention of concern for the other person. The only discussion was about the trick used to elicit the response.

That is what I do not agree is consistent with normal interactions. Most people would feel some degree of guilt or dirtiness, for lack of a better word, if they used some of these tricks to lure random interactions into a false sense of connection and feigned friendship, especially if for no other reason to experiment on the other person.

[phantasmish]

> The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.

It’s typically not done quite so intentionally, but this sounds like most folks’ junior high and high school years. Sometimes also college.

I know I totally changed in those years, and it was mostly by noticing what “worked” and leaning into it.

[whstl]

It is also how a lot of people behave professionally and in their dating life, even later in life.

[ryanjshaw]

I don’t think neurotypical people can ever understand this process but I’ll try to explain what it was like for myself, a neurodiverse person:

- yes, I was consciously trying different ways to fit in

- yes, I felt uncomfortable that it was forced and unnatural

- no, it didn’t occur to me at all this was a deeper issue; I had all kinds of naive explanations: oh I’m not as confident because I because I started school a year earlier than the other guys; girls don’t like me because I’m not as handsome as other guys; I’m not as social because I don’t have an older brother to learn it from, etc.

- over the years, as I got better at what I now know to be “masking”, I just subconsciously embodied the idea that consciously working on every little aspect of social interactions is “normal”

- it took me 30 years to realise, wait a minute, it’s probably not normal that I had to put so much effort into all of this, and got myself a brand new shiny autism diagnosis at 40

[amypetrik8]

the only book worth reading on this topic is "how to appear normal at social events" by Lord Birthday

Like you I was disgusted to see OP's link posted to these hallowed grounds, a bunch of filthie normie jibber jabber waxing poetic about how great it is to have cracked the normie code

[intended]

The “trick” you are referring to, requires you to care about other people in the first place.

As I recall, the section this came up was when they were coaching.

This does feel like another instance of how people have a deep instinctual grasp of social interactions, but a shallow ability to articulate the moving parts in detail.

I think the analogy was “everyone know how to use the flush, but they can’t explain the mechanisms behind it”

[gblargg]

What comes across as creepy about the techniques is that the approach doesn't seem to involve personal consequences; it seems to be sterile, like a game with no negative effects if it goes wrong. Normal people have all sorts of anxiety and potential hurt if they do these things, since they know how they affect others.

Personally I'd prefer that "spectrum" individuals just be themselves. I take it as my own shortcoming if I can't establish a dialog. I like the challenge of interacting with someone who does things very differently. This of course assumes there's a genuine desire to connect. I knew someone who had some techniques like this, and it was weird interacting with him. The techniques put up a barrier and it didn't feel authentic.

Maybe I'm jaded but I see it as a failure of the "normal" person if they can't deal with someone who communicates differently. All their issues just get triggered, not the fault of the spectrum individual, and not their responsibility to overcome. As a practical measure for just dealing with these people, I could see using techniques. But not when you actually want to relate with someone.

[whstl]

This is very strange to me.

As a neurotypical person (I don't think the term "normal" is appropriate) I'm probably doing or did the same things the article is talking about. And I never thought about negative consequences, except when I was extremely anxious.

If anything, people on the spectrum, introvert, or just awkward are probably thinking about the consequences (positive or negative) way more than someone like me.

I also agree with the sibling post. The failure of most (?) neurotypical people to accept people on the spectrum as-is shouldn't be a burden on them. If society can't make them safe, they should do whatever is best for them. "Authenticity" (which is just an illusion anyway) be damned.

[gblargg]

By authenticity I mean being able to speak your thoughts without having to strategize around the other party being unable to handle it like a mature adult.

[ryanjshaw]

> I'd prefer that "spectrum" individuals just be themselves

Society at large teaches them this is not safe and they will be excluded (e.g. no friends, no dates, etc) if they do not adapt.

[lazide]

Or worse, actively targeted by bullies.

[antonvs]

> I like the challenge of interacting with someone who does things very differently.

So this is about you?

[gblargg]

Yes, my whole comment was about me and my experiences. That specific point was that I don't see it as a burden that someone is interacting me differently than most people do.

[Viliam1234]

You sound like a nice person, but the typical reaction is different, so the people on the spectrum spend their entire lives training to protect themselves against that, i.e. masking. It would probably take some time to gain their trust.

[lazyeye]

Recommend this book about how we have evolved to deceive ourselves about our true motives, in order to better deceive others...

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28820444-the-elephant-in...

[zozbot234]

A lot of normal people may routinely act charming and game social interactions, but they generally aren't being "manipulative" in the process. "Manipulation" is really just a polite word for routinely lying and BS'ing people on the off-chance that they are going to be fooled and/or not want to call you out on it.

If you're reasonably socially skilled, you can usually see it coming a mile away and react accordingly, but what gets you in trouble is the not-so-common case where you actually fall for it, since the consequences can be quite bad. None of this is describing ordinary social interaction, tough; these are really two entirely separate topics, and there's little reason to conflate them.

[mcdeltat]

So for the same set of actions, it's fine if you're unaware of the underlying mechanisms, and manipulation if you are aware?

If you dig through the weeds of it you can argue just about everything we do socially is manipulation. We are social because we're social animals and will die without help from other humans (well, particularly thousands of years ago). At the end of the day, we are nice to people to get things from them that we need - food, shelter, knowledge, strength. It's always been like that. But because it makes us feel fuzzy and good, apparently that's not manipulation, that's being nice.

[zozbot234]

You can absolutely be charming towards people and play the "game" of social interaction while being quite aware that this is what you're doing. The point is that this need not involve outright lying or BS at all and that the latter is what such terms as "manipulation" actually imply in a very practical sense; not that it somehow counts against you if you're aware of what's happening at a pure level of social interaction. (In fact, the opposite is generally the case; active social awareness and mindfulness is a big part of what people variously call "EQ", "empathy", "cross-cultural competence", etc.)

[mcdeltat]

Fair point about lying. I agree, outright lying is not ethical and would be more manipulative, I agree. Is the author lying?

[mewpmewp2]

Looking at the definition of manipulation, it occurs to me that manipulation must be a win-lose situation. Otherwise it is persuasion. You could use the same technique, but if it is win win for both it is persuasion, but if you are gaining from their expense it is manipulation. At least according to Wikipedia.

There are also white lies. Are you manipulating children if you are claiming santa exists? Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.

[Nursie]

That seems a little bit of an odd interpretation to me.

Persuasion is honest. "Hey, I think you should do this thing because of reasons a, b, and c, there are some downsides like y and z. It may mean something to me peronally, so I may also to appeal to you to do it for me as a favour. I may even play up how important I think it is."

Manipulation is dishonest. "Hey, I'm going to use an underhanded technique to make you feel like you're missing out on something, or are inadequate, to get you to do this thing. Maybe I'll go overboard on flattery and inflate your ego to achieve my end. I also might lie or omit some of the downsides to give a distorted view of the risks"

Even if it's a win-win situation, it's still manipulation if you're seeking to bypass someone's agency.

> Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.

Yes, certainly, and that's why people often get upset about "little white lies" too. Maybe you are doing a good thing, maybe you're not, but removing agency from someone by keeping the truth from them is always manipulative.

The wiser question may be "is manipulation always wrong?" And I'd argue that if it gets your kids to calm down and go to bed on Christmas Eve, maybe not ...

[atoav]

The difference is authenticity.

If I get sad or angry when a friend tells me a story, this feeling is a expression of my inner state, not a strategic choice I make to get to a certain place. And this inner state usually translates into how people act later. So if I am enraged how my friend was treated I may be inclined to take steps that help them get even, for example.

Manipulation, however, is when I (feeling nothing), pretend to feel a thing with the goal of getting a certain response.

The border between the two is of course not totally clear-cut and people can manipulate themselves into truly feeling things without following through with any actions etc. So a complex topic, but the reason why the manipulation works in the first place is because the feelings people express towards us are more often than not an expression of how they will act towards us as well. If a guy on the street screams at you, your #1 interpretation won't be that he does it to manipulate you, but that that person is experiencing an actual feeling that may convert to physical action pretty soon.

[bad_haircut72]

"we are nice to people to get what we want" is flat out not true. We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level. On a micro level this kind of attitude sometimes/often prevails, we call the people who act like this "jerks", and the people who try to justify it with these kinds of rationale "sociopaths", because to the group as a whole its so incredibly damaging, and to the individuals on the other side of it, insufferable.

[mcdeltat]

> We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level

I.e. biology gets what it wants... We want to survive, mother nature wants us to survive, society wants to survive.

I am absolutely not suggesting that outright jerkish behaviour is acceptable (although to suggest jerks have no social success is probably untrue; plenty of people who are attracted to jerks). I am arguing that if there was no personal advantage whatsoever to being social and nice to people, we wouldn't do it. We'd be lone animals, spread out across the land rather than concentrated in towns and cities. There's a spectrum of selfish behaviour, right? We are somewhere in the middle because it's advantageous to be.

[mewpmewp2]

Both are true. We want to survive and being nice to others increases our likelihood of survival. Wanting to survive is also selected by evolution and wanting to be nice in order to survive in a group setting that increases survival odds too.

[mewpmewp2]

What about intentionally making conscious effort to remember to use people's names when talking to them?

And other similar things that increase someone's odds of being liked or convincing or getting someone to do what they want more likely?

Doing those things is not BSing, not lying, yet people can consciously be doing those to increase the likelihood of getting what they want.

Many people will obviously do it naturally. I personally have to make a conscious effort every time for such things.

Does having to consciously decide to do those things make me a sociopath? I certainly wouldn't bother saying someone's name if I didn't think it mattered for reaching my life goals. Extra same with small talk.

Then what about memorising some funny, self deprecating stories from my life to make people laugh so they would like me more?

Then what about asking questions, keeping up conversation etc, etc, even though I would rather be in my own thoughts doing my own thing?

I do it all consciously and intentionally for my own self benefit. Some to avoid bad things happening to me, some to make good things more likely to happen to me.

If I didn't do those things people might think I am awkward, weird, silent, boring, pass me on for promotion at work, etc.

[chipsrafferty]

Do you really think you're the only person who's heard of that "technique"?

When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.

Names are dumb - we are people, not labels

[sjamaan]

> When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.

Oh man, I always find it so slimy when people do that! I've also noticed it's mostly HR people or sales people who do this, so clearly it's a phony technique they learned somewhere. But I suppose it gets taught because it works, maybe for people who don't pick up on the fact that it's so forced?

[paulmooreparks]

I'm not entirely sure what constitutes "normal" anyway. A frequent tongue-in-cheek topic of conversation between my wife (a counselling psychologist) and me is how we're weird, and everyone else seems to be normal, where "normal" in this thread of conversation usually describes some sort of puzzling behaviour.

[hgomersall]

Each one of us occupies our hallowed space in the rich tapestry of neurodiversity. Only a few people design our social institutions though. "Normal" is looking like those few, and tbh, varies widely. Compare normal at a Cambridge academic department and normal at the local gym and normal at the BBC.

[spicyusername]

That's a pretty cynical take on what "normal" people are doing.

[ndr]

It is weird, but part of the skill is to surf exactly on that line that is normal without crossing it.

Almost all honest signals are about a similar tradeoff.

[pseidemann]

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

[collingreen]

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".

[jamilton]

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?

[collingreen]

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)

[switchbak]

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.

[avhception]

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.

[throwaway2037]

    > 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.

[mewpmewp2]

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.

[ribosometronome]

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.

[skeeter2020]

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

[robocat]

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.

[pixl97]

Embracing the bliss of ignorance.

[etangent]

100% correct.

[ghurtado]

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.

[overfeed]

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.

[zozbot234]

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

[mewpmewp2]

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.

[wybiral]

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.

[DiskoHexyl]

...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

[gausswho]

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

[kragen]

https://dn720004.ca.archive.org/0/items/english-collections-...

[kakacik]

Nah, that's definitely not a norm. By that definition me and a lot of people from where I come from including whole family and friends/classmates would quality as autistic. I know form experience this is baseline for some people and they simply can't work 'naturally' with others but I'd grade them as 1-2 out of 10 in sociopathic spectrum. That is by no means a negative denigration of them just describing their behavior (and struggles) in the best way I can.

Interestingly not current corporate banking work, where this would be true but then this is highly sociopathic environment with dominant culture that doesn't do direct honest feedback generally. But generally finance attracts the worst of the (smart) crowd so thats not in any way a reference of mankind.

So its cultural quite a lot. I presume you meant some rather extreme situation of above by describing it as autistic-spectrum.