Post

i definitely feel less weird now than i did when i was a kid but would be lying if i didn't have a sense that i am uhhh unusual

that said the manner in which i am unusual is largely just a matter of how my temperament cashes out like there is a small number of things that lots of people seem to put up with that i don't tolerate and a few things i can tolerate that most people wouldn't; that's probably the best way to put it

also i submit that "weird 'gifted' kid" is kind of a social script; it's how you interface to the normies like you use a word that's too big or something and it makes them feel uncomfortable so you lean into some kind of clown act so they don't feel as threatened; ie "weird" is quasi-performative

like in retrospect the only genuine material way in which i was 'weird' as a kid was that i liked learning and understanding things and at the margin preferred doing that to winning sportsball trophies and popularity contests and frankly *i* found it weird that other people didn't as well

like if i was gonna make a pronouncement about Most People™ it's that they dngaf about understanding things and just want an outcome or a scapegoat so you may not "realize you're weird" as much as realize that being "weird" is an equilibrium state that enables you to get through life to some extent

see I thought this as a kid and it's sort of true to some extent, but I also realized eventually that a bunch of shit that was easy for me was really hard for most people and vice versa. so it wasn't necessarily that they didn't care, but that it was hard, and maybe they gave up at some point.

I think being incurious as an adult is often a coping strategy for some combo of difficulties learning stuff that they were told was important or being punished for curiosity as a kid.

but also yes, there is a very real element of performance to the endearingly awkward but smart nerd persona. it disarms people and lets them feel like they can predict you, without stepping on too many important social graces, or requiring too much attention to social grace.

bc in my case it's enough work to maintain a comprehensive facade that it detracts from my energy to do other things and would break down under certain kinds of pressure or illness. so I economize and am thus legibly and harmlessly weird.

and the alternative, being completely transparent about your capabilities, reads as "space alien" in a lot of rooms, and that dynamic isn't a real fun one.

sure and i wanna be clear Most People™ here is a caricature on my part also trauma around being discouraged for being curious is a plausible candidate also also agree conditioning is a thing, like the equivalent of being all "what do you mean you can't bench press a car??"

and yeah, I figured you were not entirely serious wrt Most People

i generally treat traits one attributes to Most People™ in line with how cipolla defined σ, the fraction of the population that is stupid: harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic...

yeah this sort of categorization bugs me in large part bc it tends to lead to the reader to put themselves in the better categories or to despair that they are not, when often it is useful to consider (and true!) that everyone, including oneself, can be a stupid motherfucker at least sometimes.

because if you think you can't be, it is all too easy to talk yourself into some very advanced stupidity if you are very clever, and get a bit stuck there.

right but that's the joke, σ may as well be everybody

it's like a satirical paper from the 80s with some degree of infamy; if you go through it he's like "σ does not correlate with any other observable trait and is always higher than you anticipate it to be"

(which i interpret to be equivalent to saying "anybody could be a member of σ at least some of the time")

yeah I think a lot of people will not read it like that, satire or not, based on too much time in the company of post-rationalists.