
The peril of talking to normal people - mjirv
http://www.math-chocolate-circus.com/the-peril-of-talking-to-normal-people/
======
ianamartin
I had this experience in undergrad. And I had to stay for several days because
I had no therapist for the staff psychologist to call. Being surrounded by
genuinely crazy people for three days almost made me crazy.

Coming from a music, then music theory, then philosophy, then technology
background, it's an understatement to say that being precise in my language is
extremely important.

Most people just don't care that much about the exact meanings of what the say
or the chain of logical implications implied by certain types of careless
wording.

It's a constant challenge for me to interact with people in a casual social
way, so I mostly just don't.

I probably come across as a pedant in many cases, but that's not my intent. I
just have a hard time intuiting what people mean when it's something other
than what they say.

~~~
gkya
Language is a tool that humans use to interact with each other, if you can't
use it for this very purpose, then you're the problematic one. In written
language the product can be revised and rephrased many times to arrive at a
mostly unambiguous result, but with the spoken language, the product is
produced and consumed contemporaneously and spontaneously. Ambiguity is in the
nature of it: nobody has the mental capability to construct non-context-
dependent, logically-completely-unambiguous sentences in the context of a
casual conversation. You have to learn to differentiate among various
linguistic contexts and registers.

~~~
cname
Why are you calling someone "problematic" for not being neurotypical? Do you
really think that's helpful?

As far as I can tell, the person you're responding to hasn't said anything
offensive nor criticized anyone, so I can't understand why you're responding
with insults and criticism.

And further, it sounds like they understand the situation pretty well, and I
doubt your "explanation" is going to help anyone negotiate social interactions
more easily by "getting with the program" or whatever.

~~~
aninhumer
I think you're overreacting quite substantially here. They used the word
"problematic" once, and you're calling that "responding with insults and
criticism".

Also no one mentioned anything about anyone being non-neurotypical before you.

~~~
gkya
Well, I may have used that word mistakenly. I meant "source of the problem".
If that's an insult, then there are no other in my comments, I do actively
refrain from insulting both online and in person. As for criticism, yes, my
comment is a criticism, and tries to be a constructive one. I spot the
problem, I suggest a solution, I may well be mistaken, but there are no
insults. And I comment on the situation, not ad hominem.

------
noir_lord
Not a mathematician but a programmer and have had similar problems in the
past, I've found that its all to easy to fall into the trap of thinking the
world is black and white and that solutions to peoples problems are similar.

Mostly people don't want you to propose a solution to a problem they just want
someone to listen.

It's a trap because when you really look into it you realise the world isn't
absolute, I think most of us could come up with a better tax system for
example in theory which looks obvious however when you start to look into it
you realise the the real world is messy.

It is a bit like saying WW1 was caused by some archduke getting shot I guess,
a lot of humans like simple answers.

~~~
Laaw
There was a recent podcast (Freakanomics) that went into some depth about this
concept, and it focused on a story about a pencil describing how it gets made,
and the _millions_ of people who are involved.

The moral given in the podcast is to "tread carefully" when attempting to fix
something, because there are often many moving parts which can't immediately
be observed.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/i-pencil/)

~~~
im3w1l
It seems that startup thinking is to say fuck it all of those millions are
probably there for useless purposes or politics or historical reasons or some
other bullshit and me and my friend can come up with something better in 15
minutes.

And sometimes it even works and they get filthily rich.

------
alexashka
The author is a classic case of a smart person who has not quite cracked how
humans work and why and is as a result frustrated.

The psychiatrist did what he/she did to cover their own ass. Those questions
are mandatory procedure and if someone is potentially going to hurt themselves
and you knew and decided 'ah probably not', then it is YOUR fault. Nobody's
going to take that chance.

That's simply knowing how the game works - the same way you're supposed to
pretend you've gotten along with every workplace you've ever been in during an
interview to avoid raising red flags. There are many many more examples of
unspoken social rules you simply have to learn.

Being smart has the advantage of having the capacity to catch up and make up
for traits you naturally aren't good at. An average person does not have that
luxury - if they're born unattractive, they have almost no way to overcome
that as one simple example.

~~~
kpil
I am convinced that 'smart' is something else entirely.

There is an awful lot of brainpower dedicated to skills like walking into a
party where you know noone, meeting with annoyed customers, or even polite
conversation, etc.

~~~
socket0
A lot of people (most people?) seem to have that built into their BIOS. Or at
least the most basic functionality needed to do that. That's not to imply they
all like those situations, just that they don't freeze up and experience the
human equivalent of a BSOD when confronted by one.

~~~
tribune
Some certainly do, but I highly doubt it's "most" people. There's probably a
significant self-selection bias for people who frequently end up in these
situations.

------
douche
Distressingly, this is why you should probably use the same rules talking with
mental health and social service personnel that you would use with the police.
Tell them nothing. Honesty does you no good, and can get you in a world of
hassle.

Works well with doctors as well. Tell them what is wrong with you, so they'll
give you the right treatment without jerking you around and wasting your time.

~~~
noobie
>Tell them what is wrong with you, so they'll give you the right treatment

Yeaaah about that, am I the only one concerned about the state of medicine,
i.e. diagnosis? There always seems to be a myriad of symptoms that are common
between various diseases/conditions. I honestly don't see how to _blindly_
trust doctors.

inb4 edit: I am not saying we shouldn't trust doctors.

~~~
noir_lord
As someone who sees a lot of doctors the ones I really trust are the ones who
say "I don't know" or "I'm not certain but...".

Given that my symptoms matched a host of things and its a 7 to 20 in 100,000
thing that only got caught because a good AE (ER) doc told me to forcefully
request an MRI I've learnt which doctors to trust over time.

Also if you have a rare condition don't expect your average doc to know much
about it even my specialist (first one) wasn't that up on the latest research
(again unsurprising, they are concerned with hundreds of patients, I'm only
concerned with one).

Doctors are generally excellent but they are not omniscient and the good ones
own it.

~~~
geedy
This is a good heuristic for just about _everybody_.

The more people are willing to say "I don't know", the higher the likelihood
that they are saying what they really believe to be true when they don't.

~~~
mnw21cam
Part of the purpose of training for a doctorate (and one of the things that
they will test for in a final viva examination) is to demonstrate the
responsibility to not claim something to be true when you don't have
sufficient evidence. So therefore, people with doctorates should typically say
"I don't know" more often than other people.

------
Houshalter
This reminds of this article, Useless Medical Disclaimers. It's about how
medical disclaimers are useless because they don't include probabilities, but
they can't because most people don't understand probabilities:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/)

>innumeracy being so widespread, no one would dare put numbers on that sheet
of paper. If "amputation" is listed as a consequence with a probability of
0.0001%, patients will run screaming out of the office, crying, "Not my toe! I
don't want to lose my toe!"

~~~
DanBC
See also Gerd Gigerenzer's book "Reckoning with Risk".

[https://plus.maths.org/content/reckoning-
risk](https://plus.maths.org/content/reckoning-risk)

>The probability that one of these women [asymptomatic, aged 40 to 50, from a
particular region, participating in mammography screening] has breast cancer
is 0.8 percent. If a woman has breast cancer, the probability is 90 percent
that she will have a positive mammogram. If a woman does not have breast
cancer, the probability is 7 percent that she will still have a positive
mammogram. Imagine a woman who has a positive mammogram. What is the
probability that she actually has breast cancer?

> Eight out of every 1,000 women have breast cancer. Of these 8 women with
> breast cancer, 7 will have a positive mammogram. Of the remaining 992 women
> who don't have breast cancer, some 70 will still have a positive mammogram.
> Imagine a sample of women who have positive mammograms in screening. How
> many of these women actually have breast cancer?

His point is that it's not just patients who don't know the numbers. Doctors
and nurse, who use these numbers every day, also don't understand them.

~~~
Houshalter
That's a classic problem to introduce Bayes theorem. However the more
interesting fact is 95% of doctors get that question wrong.

~~~
incompatible
Surely doctors would learn to expect the numerous false positives after a
while. Or does the question not really relate to reality?

------
sampo
Feynman gets a psychiatric exam:

[http://physicshead.blogspot.com/2007/09/feynman-gets-
psychia...](http://physicshead.blogspot.com/2007/09/feynman-gets-psychiatric-
exam.html)

~~~
DrScump
The full version:

[http://surelyyouarejokingmrfeynman.blogspot.com/2015/01/uncl...](http://surelyyouarejokingmrfeynman.blogspot.com/2015/01/unclesamdoesntneedyou.html)

~~~
shrikant
(Even though I'm reading this again) what a great read!

------
afarrell
The opposite end of this is why it annoys me when people complain about
politicians being liars. Of course politicians lie: a strong commitment to
truth is very much against social norms and causes people to be bored at best
and angry or creeped-out at worst. Politicians by the nature of their jobs
must conform very strongly to social norms and so have to lie more egregiously
when forced to answer "simple questions" on complex topics by people
(journalists) whose profession incentivized them to create drama.

~~~
afarrell
The right way (to the degree that I've figured things out. Please please pop
in with suggestions on how to approach this in a more ethical way) to handle
the conflict between wanting to tell the truth and wanting to conform to
social norms is to think of it as a UX problem: try to predict what your
listener's mental model will be as a result of hearing something. Given that
mental models are always imperfect reflections of reality, try to determine if
what you say would add or remove flaws in their mental model. If it clears up
some flaws and adds others, make a guess at which ones are going to be
impactful and which ones aren't.

This has the failure mode that you tell someone what you think is an
inconsequential lie, and it turns out to hurt them. Unfortunately, it turns
out that it is usually better to err on the side of lying than on the side of
being pedantic.

Gauge people's receptiveness to truth-seeking as you get to know them.
Actively seek out people whom you can trust to have the patience to listen to
more true explanations. If you can do that, you can build for yourself the
privilege of lying less severely.

------
proc0
OH FFS. This person is pedantic at best, if not dumb. How can you call
yourself academic and then proceed to completely mis-communicate with people.
When the therapist asks, "Are you absolutely sure you're not going to hurt
yourself later today?", she's asking it within a certain __context __. The
therapist is obviously excluding out of the ordinary incidents that may
happen. Apparently the author is completely missing the context because she 's
either a pedantic nerd, a foreigner still learning English, or just dumb, not
because she's in her "academic" circle.

~~~
SilasX
If you haven't been "trained" on what a psychiatrist's context is, how can you
be expected to know what they "obviously" meant? I would think that it's the
opposite: to the extent that the psychiatrist is unable to clarify their
questions to arbitrary precision, spell out implications, etc, then s/he is
the one with insufficient mastery to be taking on such a role (not that it
matters in our "fake it till you make it" world).

~~~
NamTaf
Saying 'if you are then I am obliged to have you taken to a psych ward' is
incredibly threatening to people who need that supervision and can drive them
to lie. This is why they ask the way they do.

~~~
SilasX
I meant clarifying what being "absolutely sure you're not going to kill
yourself" means as a mental state, not what it would imply for their later
treatment of you.

------
shmageggy
Unfortunately, Dr. Safe Side was just doing her job. Therapists are often
explicitly instructed to do this check and to err on the side of ambulance, of
course for liability and legal reasons. Which is IMO ridiculous; what better
way could there be to make someone who is having suicidal thoughts feel more
alientated and stressed.

------
nsxwolf
This is really "The peril of talking to psychiatrists" and it's a trap normal
people fall into also. Life is full of little spring loaded legal traps like
this.

~~~
cname
As someone else in this thread noted, this also includes police and other
authority figures, but it can also include family and friends.

~~~
Normal_gaussian
> can also include family and friends.

This is, unfortunately, very true. Once a few people have decided there is a
problem there is often very little you can do about it, confirmation bias will
set in and external influences often err on the side of "caution" \- do not
contradict the current widespread opinion.

------
__david__
This reminds me a lot of the chapter in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman"
where he enlists in the military and walks away with a 4f exemption. Same
precision and honesty in his answers and the same misinterpretation by the
doctor.

You can find it online, the chapter is titled "Uncle Sam Doesn't Need You!"

------
executesorder66
> she would laugh at our jokes, use words like “trivial”, “modulo” and
> “orthogonal” in casual conversation, and even get their meaning right. She
> became, for all non-work purposes, a mathematician.

Is trivial not a word normal people use in conversation? Many people I know
who are not Mathematicians or even in the STEM fields use this word in casual
conversation. And even the ones that don't use it at least know what it means.

\-------

>“Is anyone else concerned about your child’s hearing?” I was about to check
“No” when Pink objected: “How would we know that no-one is? We can’t read
everyone’s minds.”

So it looks like the author can actually think in a way that is not 100%
logically correct. So answering “How could I be sure?” to “Are you absolutely
sure that you will not hurt yourself today?” is obviously a bad idea, and was
not a result of the author only being able to think and respond in a 100%
logical way. She totally brought this on herself.

~~~
grayclhn
Most normal people don't use "trivial" to mean "probably not impossible."

------
mightybyte
I've noticed a similar thing about myself when I'm making plans with friends.
They'll say, "Are you coming to XYZ event tomorrow?" I've noticed that I very
rarely answer with "Yes" or a common equivalent even when I fully intend to
go. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, "How could I possibly know whether I
will be there tomorrow." I could die, be involved in an accident, or my
transportation could be severely delayed. I usually respond with something
like "Probably" or "I'll definitely try to make it". It doesn't have the
dramatic impact that this story did, but it echoes the same way of thinking.

~~~
Falkon1313
One that I notice is "Where should we go to dinner tonight?" Which naturally
begins as SELECT * FROM All_Restaurants, too big of a result set, so I have to
start adding filters. 'Too far away' is a nebulous variable, and 'likely to
have a long wait time' is a guess at best. By the time I narrow it down to a
reasonable subset, we have long since eaten cereal for dinner, she's gone to
bed, and all the restaurants are closed. Not a fun experience for either of
us. I try to mix it up with just randomly saying "Hey, let's go try this new
place that we've know nothing about!"

------
chillingeffect
I relate totally, but

Just a thought: why is the doctor considered the "normal" one? Just because
they're in the majority?

It's certainly possible that the majority is a temporary abberation. Even Homo
Sapiens could be considered an abnormal mammal with a pesky, self-defeating,
super-sized pre-frontal cortex.

------
PakG1
This story and the comments here really strike home to me. I too am used to
talking in very precise language and when I choose words to say, I choose them
with carefully thought-out intent. However, this all happens naturally and
very fast in my brain, so it doesn't look to other people like I'm thinking
carefully about what I'm saying.

I am now a manager of people. I have discovered that I suck at it. I have
discovered that it's because so-called normal people don't talk precisely.
They rely on emotions, interpreting the unsaid, and so on, especially in Asia
where I am currently located.

I've had a ton of these communication issues with friends, family, co-workers,
etc, at various points in my life. I've learned to adjust for other people,
and some people have learned to adjust for me. But wow, does it take effort
from both sides. If only one side is willing to make an effort to achieve
understanding, my experience is that it usually doesn't resolve fully.

One story still rings for me. My family had a condo that we were renting out
to people. The tenant moved out, so we were looking for a new tenant. I
suggested Craigslist, but my father also wanted to put an ad in the local
newspaper website's Classified section. I can't remember the exact cost, but
it was ~$200 to put up the ad for a certain amount of time. What the heck. No
Dad, let's not do that. Try Craigslist first, see whether you can get a tenant
that way that would satisfy you.

Mom hears us arguing, she asks what's going on. I say that Dad wants to pay
the newspaper for an ad on their website to find a new tenant. Mom says,
"Well, if it's to find a new tenant, why not? Even if it's $300, that's a
great idea!" At that point, I threw up my hands and said OK, whatever.

A little while later, Mom receives the credit card bill. She freaks out over
this ~$200 charge, why did we pay so much for whatever this thing is? I blew
up because she's the one who had said it was OK to pay over $300 if necessary.
She was so confused and said, "But that was just an expression! I didn't mean
actually pay over $300!" We had a long talk about how to communicate.

And now as a people manager, I discover that I must have this type of
conversation every day. It was much easier when I didn't have to deal with
ambiguity directly. Before, I could just wash away the ambiguity with detailed
requirements documents, contracts, project schedules, knowledge bases, and the
like. I am finding that I suck at talking with people. It was much easier when
I was a project/program manager or a developer.

It's odd because I was great at talking with people when they're simply my
client. I can provide amazing customer service, especially for difficult
customers. The dynamic is completely different as a people manager. I think in
my previous situations, I was driving the conversation to dig out problem
details regarding technical stuff and working towards solutions with others.
Much more black and white. Whereas currently, I'm trying to dig out problem
details regarding feelings and personality disputes. So not black and white.

~~~
pascalmahe
I have the same general experience with my wife: we've learned to communicate
and it's a skill that needs to be practiced on both sides. Otherwise,
especially if we're tired or emotionally worn out, we each speak "clearly" but
the other doesn't understand. Now we know that I must ask for clarification
(even when there doesn't seem to need one) and she mustn't think I'm making
fun of her or deliberately wasting her time. If we don't, we end up fighting
because "all the clothes can go in the dryer" actually means I should still
check.

------
tn13
This is also classic case of a society which does not trust individuals or let
them mind their own business but needlessly interferes int their lives in the
name of protecting them.

------
suneilp
I'd say this story is the peril of talking to people who prefer to err on the
safe side. Feel free to read deeply into that.

