do you think freewill truly exists?
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Is or is not talking about how your days went considered small talk? I literally don't know now. I'd say it's small talk.
Small talk is a way to gauge someone's mood before going for the bigger discussions
If a colleague asks me "Hi, how're you doing?" it's small talk and I'll respond something like "Oh you know, the usual." If my partner asks me "Hi, how was your day?" it's a genuine question and I will respond "That fucking dickhead at work that always plays nice and personable came around with another set of "urgent" requests and no fucking clue what he's actually asking for, whether it's possible or why I told him last week it isn't."
The difference is in how serious I take the question.
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Oh I get it, I understand better than most, it's why I make a pest of myself in these posts about the benefits of just talking to people.
It's fine if you don't like talking to strangers or making eye contact if you're fine with your present social life. I am usually ragging on people about this because we're also having some pretty serious issues with loneliness right now. And you don't get from lonely to less-lonely by avoiding the things that make you uncomfortable.
I was non-verbal for a period as a child, deeply introverted, only recently diagnosed as on the spectrum though, particularly because when I was a child there was no real understanding of autism, so when taken to a doctor they just X-rayed my brain. I learned to adapt/mask but it took a long time for me to push through social discomfort and I also thought myself like many of the people in these posts who seem absolutely spiteful against people who try to strike up conversations with strangers. Again, it's understandable if talking is uncomfortable for people, particularly if they are on the spectrum or have trauma, but we need to understand that social avoidance is an obstacle to overcome, not an identity to cherish.
Pushing through discomfort talking to people and actively making an effort to be open, to go ahead and babble nonsense, to stop being afraid of bothering people with my own autistic spiels or niche bullshit, I actually started to "get it" and understand how the game is played and from there only had strings of successes both personally and professionally. Meteoric at times.
It still took some effort, but took me until middle-age to unlock this skill-tree to even start trying to work on it, and I strongly feel like I could have had a much, much better life if I made that effort sooner, and if even one other person reading this sighs and says "Okay I'll try speaking up at the next meeting" then I've done some good because I know their lives will improve if they stick to it.
It's great that it worked out for you, and I'm happy for you, but we don't need to force everyone to fit the same mould.
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"How do you feel about being to blame for your problems and relationship difficulties?"
"Um... >:-("
"See, you never like it when I ask about your feelings!"
I just went with forgoing my own self care and losing my sense of self in pursuit of meeting her ever changing expectations instead of acknowledging if come to define myself be the relationship. Not sure which is better..
Not to worry though, the papers are in the mail!
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I feel like you wrote another six paragraphs about all the reasons why she asked your wife that specific question before deleting it all... I feel that feels.
I never was good at being subtle.
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got a neighbor can't control his motor mouth. last time he came to my door i said 'what the fuck do you want' and closed/locked the door. not too bright. he yelled through the door, 'I only want to talk'. hahaha fuck off
Tough one. I'd probably end up being the person who just kept politely listening while trying to shut down the conversation amicably like "well anyway" and "I must get cooking dinner now" and "my plants need moisturising" or something.
Neighbours are extremely high on the list of people I want to avoid pissing off, because a neighbour with a grudge against you could be an absolute nightmare (especially when you live in a townhouse and share walls)
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Nice try, but I have the ability to say no to this.
The ability to question free will, means you have free will.
It was an example why this quote of your's is obviously wrong.
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Nope. Free will is an illusion that we have because we live in a world that's too complex to predict. We are a product of our circumstance.
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That sounds great, actually
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"Lovely weather today, isn't it?"
"Yeah, makes me feel like picnics,"
is expressing feelings to each other, affirming a shared worldview in which sunny weather is good, and affirming the value of each others' feelings and potential plans.
Just because the real meaning is hidden, doesn't negate the value.
That's fair. Sometimes I can be a bit grumpy with randos.
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One of the best relationships I ever had.
We still don't talk sometimes
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Silence isn't a crime you know...it's actually pretty great.
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I feel like this is no different practically speaking than just saying its behavior is random, but anthropomorphizing it for some reason.
The reason is trying to work towards a model which could actually solve the hard problem, something which the physicalism prevalent in science has failed at completely. Consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, and it needs to be taken seriously, any model which doesn't include it is either inacurrate or incomplete. Yes, a single particle might act randomly, but that might not hold for a more complex entangled system, especially an orchestrated one inside a living being.
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It's great that it worked out for you, and I'm happy for you, but we don't need to force everyone to fit the same mould.
I really think that a huge issue we've been having since the dawn of the internet is the perplexing effect that seems to impact a large portion of the population, where when they see someone suggest something, they take it as "being forced" and I cannot understand it. I can only assume that we grew up in very different environments and a lot of people aren't really aware of their own agency.
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Most people who "hate small talk" in posts like this have either very specific ideas in their mind of what it means, such as annoying coworkers who talk about quilting or baseball loudly in the next cubicle, or are deeply sour, lonely, cynical shits who think they're god's gift to intellectualism and have never had a girlfriend in their life so they can't imagine what people talk about casually in private, and think that being in a relationship with someone needs to be like, always planning a heist over a map of the city sewer system or talking about geopolitics or lecturing their imaginary waifu about science facts.
I occasionally lecture my 3DPD wife about science facts and she hates it. She'll say things like "what?" And "I was just asking what we should do for dinner"
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No I think not. But the feeling of freewill do exist and seems universal. So if we have a fact based approach, it does not change much.
I think there it a lot of proof that freewill is at least very weak compare to social determinism. -
I occasionally lecture my 3DPD wife about science facts and she hates it. She'll say things like "what?" And "I was just asking what we should do for dinner"
You're married to a droid??
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I really think that a huge issue we've been having since the dawn of the internet is the perplexing effect that seems to impact a large portion of the population, where when they see someone suggest something, they take it as "being forced" and I cannot understand it. I can only assume that we grew up in very different environments and a lot of people aren't really aware of their own agency.
Ah my bad, I thought you were complaining about people not wanting to engage in small talk, and I thought you were suggesting that people should just suck it up and talk about the weather even if they don't want to. I'm a bad communicator, and I sometimes misread stuff like that.
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Ah my bad, I thought you were complaining about people not wanting to engage in small talk, and I thought you were suggesting that people should just suck it up and talk about the weather even if they don't want to. I'm a bad communicator, and I sometimes misread stuff like that.
wrote last edited by [email protected]my suggestion is that if you're lacking in social contact, or even if you just want to open up more opportunities in either social life or professional, don't "suck it up" and pretend, but learn to understand and appreciate how socializing works by engaging in it like a game, learning what's actually happening in "small talk" and how to make people feel comfortable with you and gain emotional intelligence and empathy; qualities that most people look for in friends and romantic partners.
This is a severely neglected field of understanding for a lot of younger men right now and I don't think we should be making whole communities that provide validation for people avoiding the discomfort and instead we should treat it like exercise and diet. We don't exercise and diet because it feels good, we do it because the results are worthwhile. We tell people struggling with it "Just stick with it, it gets easier" and we treat that like good advice.
And again, it wouldn't be such an issue if there wasn't such a massive problem right now with social isolation. It's a message of public health, not social conformity. If you're happy as things are, nobody is forcing you to do anything, but if you battle depressive episodes or are lacking in relationships, if you don't feel like you have people to talk to, if you've never had someone give you comfort and support and you would like that, well the good news is you can have that. You can have people in your actual, real life who care about you, which can then open up more opportunities. But it takes exercise.
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You think you're doing that. But are you? Or are things happening below the threshold of your consciousness, and your conscious brain thinks that it's the one running the show? Consciousness would be like the toddler with the toy steering wheel that thinks it's driving the car.
Am I indeed? But at least, if I can observe a difference between hands off the steering wheel and hands on, with the car swerving accordingly, then something seems to be going on. Perhaps the adult is moving the toddlers hands too; or perhaps the toddler truly has agency.
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The ability to question free will, means you have free will.
It was an example why this quote of your's is obviously wrong.
It's not a very good one since I'm not an AI
