A conversation I’ve had with several people is: do you want to be right or do you want to get shit done? I dabbled in management for a bit, and spending time figuring out how different people communicated, how to hear and speak to them, and what their motivations were meant I could build a team out of anyone. Same here - yes, it’s all an ape dance, but we’re all apes, and if you know the dance moves, it’s a whole lot easier to move through the tribe.
I want to be right, but I need to get shit done. I take part in the social dance to the minimum degree that gives me what I need. Regarding the rest of my time, I spend it looking for people with whom I can be right. That feels way more pleasant than the social dance.
One thing I’d say about this is that other people will have perspectives that you do not that can help you be more right if you can hear it from them. You’ve got one life, one set of experiences, one brain, and the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else. Leverage other people - even if they’re not “right”, they can help you be less wrong.
That's true but it's just difficult to find people whose perspectives are valuable. At some point I decided to be more approachable in order to have more friends. While the skills I gained from that are useful, I also discovered that most people are just not worth my time and energy.
Having said that, I absolutely love the moments when I'm talking to someone and the other person tells me something that is indeed valuable. That's why I do put effort into maintaining friendships with people who aren't NPCs.
It’s a mistake to consider other people as something other than autonomous agents in their own lives - it’s popular to conceive of other people as somehow not making decisions; frequently this indicates they’re making decisions by different criteria and using different information than you. This is what I mean about perspectives you don’t have access to - I won’t say there aren’t people who fundamentally are not making real decisions in their lives, but that’s fairly rare, and if someone’s making choices that don’t make sense to you, there’s often a reason you don’t see. Again, you may make different choices than them, but actually truly understanding why they make the choices that they do - to the degree that you can understand and describe to someone else their worldview, constraints, and goals - improves your understanding of the world and your ability to accurately model, predict, and explain it.
> Showering more than once a week has no health benefits
> I want to be right
Ok, well, this is only right if you don't benefit from others not being viscerally disgusted by being near you. This is almost never actually the case for anyone. Social benefit is also a health benefit.
