Let me tell you a bit about myself.
Depending on which psychiatrist you ask, I either have some variation on Asperger's, Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, or something else on the autism spectrum. (Part) of what that means is that interpersonal skills do not come naturally to me, if they come at all. Everything from figuring out all those unwritten social rules to understanding other people's intentions. (Look up "Theory of Mind" on Wikipedia. Mine really sucks.) I was bullied a lot in grade school, got in a lot of fights, to the point where I dropped out halfway through 6th grade. Somewhere along the line I contracted clinical depression.
Why did I have so many problems? I was unaware of how basic socializing works. See, sometimes when people were "making fun of me" they were just kidding around, and because I was ignorant of how such kidding around works, I would take it personally. Alternatively, I would good naturedly tease somebody, but somehow fubar the delivery and actually offend them, and they would respond in kind
Either of the two scenarios would cause me to react as if I was legitimately being persecuted. Since my social skills were so bad, my reaction would actually offend people who otherwise wouldn't care, and attract the kind of bullies who enjoy provoking such a reaction. Which resulted in more teasing, which resulted in me responding poorly, which resulted in legitimate bullying, etc, and it ended up in me getting into a number of fights, much suspension, depression, and eventually quitting school. (At sixth grade. Yeesh.)
Now I am a relatively "well-adjusted"
college student. I'm making starting to make friends and talk to people and stuff. What happened? How did I go from sixth grade terrorist-child (I'm not making this up, I was suspended for over a month when a guidance councilor thought I had made a knife threat) to a more emotionally stable college student?
Drugs helped, but mostly it was a change in my model of reality. Instead of assuming that people are out to get me or intentionally being mean, I assume the other direction and assume they're just kidding around. Since I have no fucking idea what goes on in other people's heads, I assume that they are reasonable people like me, and that if we disagree it must mean that they started with different assumptions than me.
Obviously this map does not fit very much territory – a lot of the time (for example, when dealing with obviously unreasonable people or with people who really do want to beat me up) it would lead me terribly astray. Which is the second point I learned: what to do when the only map you've got is horribly wrong. The first step is to identify when the map stops matching the territory. A quick test to figure out whether someone is behaving reasonably or not is to check if they're making the same point over and over again in a discussion. A reasonable person will notice that that approach isn't working after the second or third try. Emotional investment in a topic is another big hint – it means that they will interpret disagreement as a personal attack.
The tactic for dealing with your map not matching the territory is pretty obvious if you take the map territory literally: what do you do if you're faced with a potentially dangerous wilderness with no map? Either you don't go in there, or you're a particularly curious and generous bastard you go in with wilderness survival tools and cartography materials. Translated into real life, this means if I find my self disagreeing with an unreasonable conversation, I just leave. If I see a thread full of pointed personal attacks I don't touch it with a ten foot pole.
Now, this thread is entitled 'ATTN DARUKO: An Impartial Analysis of the "Discordian Voters" Thread.' My model predicts that as reasonable people who think like me you will understand my point and not force me to make this any more painfully obvious than it already is.
Depending on which psychiatrist you ask, I either have some variation on Asperger's, Non-Verbal Learning Disorder, or something else on the autism spectrum. (Part) of what that means is that interpersonal skills do not come naturally to me, if they come at all. Everything from figuring out all those unwritten social rules to understanding other people's intentions. (Look up "Theory of Mind" on Wikipedia. Mine really sucks.) I was bullied a lot in grade school, got in a lot of fights, to the point where I dropped out halfway through 6th grade. Somewhere along the line I contracted clinical depression.
Why did I have so many problems? I was unaware of how basic socializing works. See, sometimes when people were "making fun of me" they were just kidding around, and because I was ignorant of how such kidding around works, I would take it personally. Alternatively, I would good naturedly tease somebody, but somehow fubar the delivery and actually offend them, and they would respond in kind
Either of the two scenarios would cause me to react as if I was legitimately being persecuted. Since my social skills were so bad, my reaction would actually offend people who otherwise wouldn't care, and attract the kind of bullies who enjoy provoking such a reaction. Which resulted in more teasing, which resulted in me responding poorly, which resulted in legitimate bullying, etc, and it ended up in me getting into a number of fights, much suspension, depression, and eventually quitting school. (At sixth grade. Yeesh.)
Now I am a relatively "well-adjusted"
college student. I'm making starting to make friends and talk to people and stuff. What happened? How did I go from sixth grade terrorist-child (I'm not making this up, I was suspended for over a month when a guidance councilor thought I had made a knife threat) to a more emotionally stable college student?Drugs helped, but mostly it was a change in my model of reality. Instead of assuming that people are out to get me or intentionally being mean, I assume the other direction and assume they're just kidding around. Since I have no fucking idea what goes on in other people's heads, I assume that they are reasonable people like me, and that if we disagree it must mean that they started with different assumptions than me.
Obviously this map does not fit very much territory – a lot of the time (for example, when dealing with obviously unreasonable people or with people who really do want to beat me up) it would lead me terribly astray. Which is the second point I learned: what to do when the only map you've got is horribly wrong. The first step is to identify when the map stops matching the territory. A quick test to figure out whether someone is behaving reasonably or not is to check if they're making the same point over and over again in a discussion. A reasonable person will notice that that approach isn't working after the second or third try. Emotional investment in a topic is another big hint – it means that they will interpret disagreement as a personal attack.
The tactic for dealing with your map not matching the territory is pretty obvious if you take the map territory literally: what do you do if you're faced with a potentially dangerous wilderness with no map? Either you don't go in there, or you're a particularly curious and generous bastard you go in with wilderness survival tools and cartography materials. Translated into real life, this means if I find my self disagreeing with an unreasonable conversation, I just leave. If I see a thread full of pointed personal attacks I don't touch it with a ten foot pole.
Now, this thread is entitled 'ATTN DARUKO: An Impartial Analysis of the "Discordian Voters" Thread.' My model predicts that as reasonable people who think like me you will understand my point and not force me to make this any more painfully obvious than it already is.