Studying Social Behavior, From An 'Alien's' View (NPR)

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Studying Social Behavior, From An 'Alien's' View
by Jon Hamilton

"It takes a smart brain to invent a space ship. But putting one in orbit takes a brain with extraordinary social skills.

"That's because getting from concept to launch pad takes more than technology — it takes thousands of people agreeing on a common goal and working together to accomplish it.

"Humans have succeeded in part because we evolved a brain with an remarkable capacity for this type of complex social interaction."

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Yeah, that's the same great human mind that forty years after achieving space flight still hasn't made it to the surface of the next nearest planet, because they're too busy spending the bulk of their brainpower, resources and social energy making war on their fellow humans.

The woman who wrote that blog posts here. She has a thread about the NPR story in the Autism Discussion area.

Sorry to say this, but there are various social skills out there - ones that bring progress and ones that don't. You can communicate perfectly well using a spoken language, rather than relying on nonverbal cues that do little apart from manipulating your (and everyone else's) emotions. Indeed, those who built the internet and those who first used it as a civilian communications tool were hardly socialites.

To emphasize this: back in high school, I was very eager to initiate, advertise and take part in literary / programming projects, indeed projects of any kind. No one actually joined in, and no one advertised their own, however, because everyone in that high school was focused on parties and sports as forms of social interaction. Gathering to actually do something useful or interesting was never one of their strong social skills.

Sorry to say this, but there are various social skills out there - ones that bring progress and ones that don't. You can communicate perfectly well using a spoken language, rather than relying on nonverbal cues that do little apart from manipulating your (and everyone else's) emotions. Indeed, those who built the internet and those who first used it as a civilian communications tool were hardly socialites.

To emphasize this: back in high school, I was very eager to initiate, advertise and take part in literary / programming projects, indeed projects of any kind. No one actually joined in, and no one advertised their own, however, because everyone in that high school was focused on parties and sports as forms of social interaction. Gathering to actually do something useful or interesting was never one of their strong social skills.

I think it a worthy study. Just because the majority have a disability, it does not make it less of a disability. Some are so misguided they work toward developing this disability, Human Resources, Psychology, thinking that what the majority do must be right, because the majority do it.

Many people in business are reporting that out sourcing and offshoreing were a fad, and a good deal of what was sent out costs more than the old way of doing it in house. Critical services were shipped halfway around the world and while they might speak English, they do not share the same culture.

Changes that used to take a week now take six months, and a collection that took many years to assemble, was easy to ship everywhere, but it is no longer one thing, and the function of parts does not reflect the whole. Putting the parts back together seems impossible.

The core skills of this group action are to attack as a mob, or to run away. The highest skill is to be identified as part of the group. As most effort is expended at this, most effort is wasted to productive labor.

Taking the space ship model, it did take a social action. One Aspie, Werner Von Braun, could design it, could imagine travel to other planets. When word of funding came, others he worked with asked, should we do this? Werner's answer was, "I do not care why he wants it, what he will do with it, if the funding is secure I will build anything he wants." So was born the V2.

Later he built even bigger rockets to carry atomic bombs half way around the world, and finally got to shoot for the Moon. His most notable quote, "If the Universe has an insane asylem, this is it."

There is a general agreement among high performing people that most humans are a waste of space.

Just because a disease has infected 95%, we should still identify and treat it.

P.S.

In the Great Recession, which is just starting, aside from the woe is me stuff, from a business view, reducing headcount increased productivity. They do not put out more per worker, but with less workers, less time is wasted in social actions.

Reducing workers by half reduces social actions by half, and again as the remaining workers want to keep their jobs. Almost two-thirds of what was being paid for was non productive.

The Psychology view of the well adjusted person who was involved with the world around them, and the Human Resources view of a Team Player, that interracts well with others, combined to destroy the American economy.

They knew everything about everyone in the office, and nothing about the business.

I know I get offended easily, but I know what people are like! I can understand others to a certain extent (emotions and feelings), but I just don't understand the bad things of society, such as the obsession with youth (this topic was covered in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a good psychological fantasy in my opinion), racism, and why people just can't accept others. It's kind of mean to call us aliens. We are people with different thoughts and ideas. We have the same feelings as you do. They're just...different.

i have to disagree with the quotes in MrMark's post, it only takes an extraordinary mind to build a space ship, a social mind would just ruin the ship

While social interaction can frequently seem clunky and inefficient, I'd love to see a race of asocial humanoids get to the point where they can develop interplanetary travel capability. All the knowledge a hermit accumulates is lost when he dies. The knowledge of members of a society are collected, written, shared, and taught to others, so that even if the individual dies, the society's knowledge accumulates. It's no coincidence that as printing, literacy, and information technology have advanced, our knowledge in other fields has exploded exponentially.