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Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

Keeping track of a thousand subtle signals is a "basic" social skill?

that's a huge problem with this too. you can say there are two camps, flirting (warranted or unwarranted can be ignored) and "hitting on". i'm sure some can argue it's a subtle vs not so subtle difference

you're asking socially awkward + nervous + scared guys to 1. go out of their comfort zone and smoothly create inorganically an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, and 2. sprinkle in something that is considered flirtatious but not too strong that it falls under the category of "hitting on"

Yes, “basic” means fundamental, not simple. And for a sexually reproducing species reading the social cues of the opposite sex is indeed of fundamental importance, modulo outright barbarism.

so you're saying it's basically evolution that if you don't know how to fundamentally pick up on flirting cues, you'll end up https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=incel

They didn't say subtle, or that you had to track the entirety of the hypothetical 1000.

I said subtle because I am not inexperienced in this area and these "signals" absolutely are subtle/ambiguous a decent portion of the time. And clearly you do need to track all 1000, otherwise how would you know if someone is trying to "signal interest or a lack thereof"? If I'm not paying attention to that one signal and they use it, then I'm missing the signal.

Indeed, I didn't say subtle because I thought it was so obvious it went without saying. My bad.

Now why these social cues are so often subtle or ambiguous is itself an interesting question. It's not one I have any good answers to though. In this area, as in most, I'm a phenomenologist and not a theorist. Needless to say the phenomenology I've developed precludes telling a woman I'm interested in about the phenomenology I've developed. Except of course when I think she might find it attractive. Human social interactions are marvelously complex. Frankly my inclination to start navel gazing has set me back once or twice.

If you want to learn it, just practice. It will take time. It will probably be worth it.

BTW, I’m not talking about PUA stuff here. Rather, I would think of it as practising the art of conversation, and cultivating a curiousness about other people.

> If you want to learn it, just practice. It will take time. It will probably be worth it.

A skill that you need to practice with dedication and that "takes time" to learn still doesn't sound basic.

As someone that has participated in lots of flirting, conversation, and curiousness about other people, I can say confidently that being curious and being good at conversation are not sufficient to navigate flirtatious behavior successfully, unless you're using "art of conversation" as a huge umbrella term which includes charisma / etc. If you are doing that, then I'll note that probably the majority of people on Earth have not mastered the art of conversation (or even cultivated it much) by such a broad definition.

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