The Logic of Social Interaction

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Has anyone here tried to "game" socializing by thinking about it logically?

Since we live in a material universe which itself is one logical system and since all ideas and concepts are expressions of material interactions on some level and hence can be understood as material factors themselves it makes sense that human social interaction should be systemizable. The only reason we do worse at social interaction than NTs is because they have an instinctual blueprint in their DNA. If we study and systemize social interaction long enough we should be able to outperform them, since most NTs won't even try to understand this logically.

Think of people with Pathological Demand Avoidance. The child is on the spectrum but highly adept at manipulating others, and will do it for fun. I think this could be caused by focusing on understanding human beings and their interactions as a logical system at a very young age. I personally know someone whose behavior I've pieced together and realized he has PDA! He once convinced me to sign up for a free credit card for a store I didn't need. I cancelled it later. You notice a lack of eye contact and a sort of strange affect with him, but he knows how to charm people very well, including getting people to sit around in awe as he tells stories (which I believed at first but have figured out he just makes up). On top of that he mentioned having the same learning disability(which even with repeated questions about what it was was simply named "learning disability" and nothing else) as his brother who I've noticed shows a lot of signs of high-functioning autism. I wouldn't say he has complete social skills, since he doesn't seem to get that people don't like being tricked (then again maybe he just doesn't care) but he gets the "salesman" aspect of social skills to a tee.

One piece of advice he gave me is that any "system" can be gamed. But I don't think he's a sociopath. He has talked about morality and philosophy before and at any rate he doesn't seem to ever trick people into doing things that cause them harm, and has never tried taking advantage of me for my money or anything.

I found that post really well written and interesting. One of the reasons I don't like to think about socializing as a game is that I would feel a bit guilty when someone reacts positively to me. But I suppose as long as you don't upset anyone there's no harm in it.

I don't treat it as a game per sey. I comprehend most of it now, but after living in the dark, you come to enjoy the "freedoms" it gives.

An interesting post but I got hung up on the anecdote about the guy who supposedly has Pathological Demand Avoidance. Aren't such people very passive? I don't see how somebody with that would be able to (or want to) convince you to sign up for an unwanted credit card or hold an audience with captivating stories.

As to the rest, yes, there are social systems at work. There are rules you can learn and follow, if that's what you want to do. the decades old but still relevent book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" by Dale Carnegie describes many of these rules.

I think learning the unspoken rules can help a lot, but there's more than one type of social skill. There are abilities you can learn, like when to say please and thank you, what a raised eyebrow indicates, and so on. But the more instinctual abilities to interpret a social situation are very important. Don't you know people who are very brash and impolite, yet popular and generally well-liked? You can learn all the rules but that doesn't mean you'll be able to connect with people or develop a meaningful understanding of how relationships work.

Humanity is too shallow. I prefer the company of non-humans >_>

Read the book. Its a good read. But I was thinking more on the level of entire theories and equations that can be applied to a variety of social situations.

People are more unpredictable on average than most things but people aren't completely unpredictable. Some things hold relatively constant throughout psychology, and in sociology. I figure if these understandings can be synthesized well enough, especially scientific understandings of the importance of and meaning of body language(maybe considering how these behaviors evolved in the first place) and facial expressions a person could put together the details in the right way to figure out some underlying consistencies and then apply them in most circumstances. Even if it only works most of the time we must remember the same goes for NTs. They read each other better, not perfectly.

Daily, making a sport for my self to help people the best of my ability.

I figured out the Social process in rough lines, filled most of the details in the following time up until now (took me four years too outline!).
- Started by identifying pleasant and unpleasant feelings to certain situations
- Tried to finding the words I felt was most close to those feelings (anger, sadness, exicitment, dreamy, etc.)
- Used practical situations to verify the feelings in situations
- Looked how I could influence the created feelings in myself and others (the moods)
- Moods of people create the Atmosphere in a room, stronger presence means bigger contribution. Unpleasant atmosphere weights heavier then the pleasant and turning the Atmosphere from pleasant to unpleasant is easier then the other way around.
- Finding out that people have at least two layers of feeling: Outer (Social mask) -->{facial features, body language, intonation, clothing, scents, appereance, etc.} and
Inner (Intentions)-->{Lying, teasing, hating, begging, etc.}

Well this is all I found out about it until now, in systematizing (making a logic path) and thus "gaming" Social Interaction from the ground up in it's basic form - being feelings.
I could go on about energy fluctuations (noticing changes in somebodies inner feelings) and how I experience the said Inner feelings physically but that's for another thread - I need to refine the explaination a bit for the big picture.

Well I hope it helps somewhere, I know feelings are a bit problematic for us autistic people in general - but this is as plain as I can give it in the rough picture.

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes

I think it's mostly random, but those who are good at it usually are acting on their instincts. Instinct is an important part of social interaction since it's all done in real-time and you cannot plan for it. Though many people come prepared.

Unless there's some spiritual dimension NTs have tapped into that we can't it should be doable.

I know what you mean about people who are very brash and impolite but still well liked.

Part of it is that there are times when insulting one person can heighten your social status to another person.

The "social" is not a single mind. You can improve your status with one person while hurting it with another. In fact I've come to the conclusion that in order to get ahead socially this is essentially. I don't see any moral problems here, because there truly are some people who deserve to be insulted and at times we all do. It's going to take some work to parse out when this is.

There's also other reasons that people can get away with these things I'm sure. To be honest I would love to be that popular, brash, impolite person. That's my goal, to figure that out. I hate being seen as "nice" but still not getting any respect.

The rules are highly complex. It's not simply "Do X to be liked." Or "Don't do X to be liked." The real rule is "Do/Don't do X to be liked unless you also do Y in which case it will help you unless..."

Being the jerk everybody loves looks like fun. I would get the most pleasure from that if I only could pull it off.

Last edited by DGuru on 10 May 2011, 6:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

Isn't this the concept behind Asimov's Foundation trilogy?

A long time ago I read 'Games people play' by Eric Berne, and tried to consciously use some of those ideas in social interactions. It made a huge difference, and gave me the first hint I had ever had of 'social imagination', of being able to steer an interaction, of having a choice on how you can influence someone.

It was tiring though, like playing chess all the time, with more complicated fluid rules.

It also felt a bit unnatural, and like I was cheating or being somehow dishonest with people because I was deciding upfront that I wanted to affect people and calculating what to do and say to acheive this. A silly attitude really, as people seemed to like me more, and it helped me socially.

It's taken decades for me to realise that it wasn't cheating, it was the only real option for me, and I should have worked harder at it. There is no 'authentic' mode of interaction available to me, at least of the sort that I have always assumed others (NTs) are using.

I've recently been looking at 'Thinking about me thinking about you' by Michelle Garcia Winner, which is giving me some simple but profound insights into how NTs think. It's a revelation for me. I never knew! Yet for most of the past 49 years I thought I was one...

This is something that I am really interested in learning further about...

My thoughts are that if I could categorise everybody I meet, and the setting in which I am meeting them, I could then work off a memorised check list of how to behave in that situation. In theory doing this could put you in a stronger position than everybody else that is just making everything they say and do up as they go along.

I takes a lot of work though. If there were a book that went over this as a course I would be very up for giving it a go.

This is what older people with AS describe - becoming better at socializing over the years. That said, I have seen Temple Grandin in person, and I have seen video of John E Robison, and they are still very easy to recognize as people with AS.

Your right I did start to think that socializing was a game that many aspies never quite master. There can be a lot of "manipulation" done to get what you want. After a while, I was thinking u gotta learn how to work the system. I knew friend who was constantly working the system. He would state when he was fake towards so and so. Give off the impression you wanna give, make people think what you want them to think you. Unfortunetly, that game is one Im only learning how to play. The only manipulation I can do is act dumb/clueless. I can seriously trick my friends into thinking I dont know something. Easy...

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