Comment by abraxasz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abraxasz | Hacker News Reader

I like the article, a lot. But I have some reserve with the advice given.

In my experience, many people would actually be glad to hangout with someone weird if he gives them some time to get used to it, and take it easy on the weirdness at first. I consider myself weird (my weirdness is that I mostly don't give a shit about conventional thinking and politically correct things. I just love a good argument, to the point where I would provoke people I barely know into arguments about politics, religion, whatever), and I have to be extra-careful with what I say and do, otherwise people freak out. Sometimes I slip and people think I'm crazy. But I'm getting better know, and I have a group of friend with which I can be myself. I provoke them playfully and they understand that it's just the way I am. And I'm grateful that they do.

Someone quoted Alain de Boutton in the thread: "Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them". That's exactly right, but intimacy is not something you get immediately, for free. It's something you have to build, it takes time, and sometimes it doesn't work. Most of all, it takes compromises: people will accept you as you are when they realize that you're interesting and that you care about them.

Now why should weird people go out of their way to befriend other people? Well you have to be pragmatic here, and think about what you really want. Friendship is an amazing thing, and is available to anyone, weird or not, and doesn't require you to change who you are. It just requires you to be patient and take it step by step. Is it being hypocritical? Pretending you're normal when you really aren't? Not if it's temporary. Think of it as a way to create a first contact, before working your way to a real connection, where both parties can act natural. That's what social interactions are about, that's what all this highschool BS is about, and that's why I think it's a bad idea to home school your kids.

EDIT: An example of my weirdness in action: I often mess up with girls I really like just because I can't help saying outrageous things just to spark a good old argument. Damn.

>I just love a good argument, to the point where I would provoke people I barely know into arguments about politics, religion, whatever.

This right here is the problem with "embrace your weirdness!" posts. You're not being weird or unique, you're just ignoring social cues and deliberately making people uncomfortable.

If your weirdness is that you're super into physics or anime or whatever then that's great, but if your weirdness is that you think you're above learning how to properly socialize with other people then it's not on other people to accept you for it.

Agree. If you've ever seen Curb your Enthusiasm Larry David demonstrates this perfectly. He just always pushes it too far. Being weird is actually totally acceptable if you are confident and respond to basic social cues.

Yep, no need to be a dick about it. You never get anything worthwhile out of people that way anyway. That's my take, anyway. Here's what the real Larry David says about the Larry David he plays on TV:

TV Larry is blunt and brutally honest, thriving on confrontational situations, whereas the real Larry avoids them like the plague. He has said before he wishes he was like the character on screen. So, I ask, what stops him? “Somebody would beat me up every day. You can’t be that honest and function in society. These confrontations frighten me so I avoid them and save it up for the show. It’s a little bit of a fantasy.”

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f9b4936c-7a53-11e1-9c77-00144...

Concerns for personal safety aside, whatever purposes such confrontations could serve, stimulation is not among them. Hostility and defensiveness are not educational for either party.

Provoking people is never good. I'm a little 'weird' too and I too have to watch what I say and do. I've given a good deal of thought to this 'weirdness' and have my own conclusions about true normal which partly align with this article.

Now, some things people do, say and are actually are a bit odd and perhaps not good. We need to change. Labelling one's self as weird isn't a pass to do whatever the hell you want. I've learnt that. If we excuse ourselves we then have to allow others to excuse themselves resulting in wonderfully horrible circles of selfishness, everywhere. Everyone needs to improve—to see what's bad and change for, again, there are things that simply are bad. The good things, improve them too.

The selfish relativity of the modern island is a sham that's going to collapse on the heads of those followers soon enough. We people seek to understand others, that is when things change. Unfortunately, like how Asimov wrote in his Foundation novels that there only really ever was one person who understood this (Hari Seldon), it doesn't happen often.

I was talking with a friend, a girl, in the car after we did some shopping and I made an effort to open the door for her. She said that someone had once said to her to never bother with someone who didn't do that and that person was quite vehement in his advice. I suggested perhaps not to disregard that person forever but perhaps to view it as a wonderful opportunity to teach and help someone.

I'm with you right up to that part about not homeschooling your kids (homeschool dad here). But I'll let it go since I think you may just be trying to provoke an argument. :)

(Unless you've homeschooled, I don't think you have any idea how much social interaction homeschool kids can get; we don't just sit at home all day.)

Edit: I see comments below on homeschooling and from homeschoolers. Our kids get a ton of social interaction outside the home: homeschool co-ops/events/park days with other homeschoolers, language lessons, sports (karate, soccer, equestrian), music lessons, girlscouts/boyscouts, university outreach programs, town provided activities (acting, choir, pottery, etc), temple, playing with all the neighborhood kids, and that's just off the top of my head.

My kids are 9 and 11 right now and are way more comfortable socially, and better at it, than I (public school) ever was.

Ultimately I think a lot of it has to do with the kids and the parents. We chose to homeschool our kids because we think we can do a better job with their education, but it certainly hasn't hindered them socially.

I was home schooled, and I believe it did hinder me socially. What you say about social interaction outside the home is true, but it's still not all that much.

One of the most well-adjusted 'kids' I ever met was 18, starting college, and came from a home-school environment. I, on the other hand, went to 'normal' school and was a fairly typical 'weirdo'. By the end of high school I had no friends left at the school and couldn't wait to join the navy and get the hell out of there. It was the navy that finally got the social akwardness out of me, not school. If anything, high school seemed to make it worse - the longer I was away, the better I got.

Different things work for different people. Some people work very well under a homeschooled routine. Others do not. Do not tie your kid to one or the other for the sake of your ideology - go with what works for them. Experiment if need be.

I went to a well respected magnet school for high school, so we had a lot of HS freshmen that were previously home-schooled. Then I majored in Physics in college, so we had a lot of college freshmen that were previously home-schooled.

I came to the conclusion that while there is a strong correlation between home-schooled kids and poor socialization, it's almost certainly not as causal as most people assume. All the "really weird kids" that were homeschooled had equally weird parents, so there is a good likelyhood they would have had issues even being in public school.

That being said, it did seem clear (and obvious in retrospect) that what homeschooling does is allow the parents to have a much larger influence on their kids up to an older age. The typical late-elementry aged kid will have picked up a lot of behavior and habits from their peers, wheras the homeschooled kid of similar age will have done so to a much lesser extent. However, that influence seems to expire aproximately 4-8 weeks after the kid leaves the homeschool environment so I don't think it's a big deal in the long-term

There could also a be a self-selection bias.

Kids who like to socialize might resist homeschooling even if their parents wanted it, because they want to be at school with their friends. On the other hand, "weird" kids might beg their parents to be homeschooled because school is so painful for them. So it would be too simplistic to say that homeschooling causes poor socialization. It could very well be the other way around, too.

There are also pretty strong influences on parents choosing to homeschool, which filters down the parents as well (and who the parents are has a huge impact on what the child's experience will be).

Obviously the parents who homeschool because they want to keep extreme control of their children's lives & ideas (like hyper-religious parents who don't want their children taught evolution, or getting ideas that a woman might want to do something other than marry & have children) won't be giving their children a good experience.

But the biggest thing that strikes me is that parents who themselves are succeeding in engaging the world at any kind of scale -- in making rich & fulfilling lives of their own -- will find it extremely hard to be responsible for so much of their kid's time.

Whereas the parents who would find it easiest are basically those who are already at home and have lots of spare time -- but what example does that give? And worse... if the parent's way to do something meaningful in the world is to raise a child who will do something meaningful (i.e., pass the buck, really), those expectations can put a huge strain on the child.

The great part (or the problem) is that it depends on the parents. And on the kids.

I was homeschooled for a bit, but it got to be too much for my mother (there were six of us kids at the time), so we went to public school. I needed the socialization. Even though I spent the majority of my time in public schools, I still didn't get that part quite right.

My kid brother (7 of 8) was home schooled later in life. Highly social. Smart too. But because his secondary education was primarily influenced by our mother, he's academically weak in the same subject she is. ... particularly math and science. The six oldest of us disagreed with their decision to home school through high school (we'd all been h/s-ed at some point in elementary and gone to a public high school).

Bottom line is, it depends. It may be the right decision for some.

Unfortunately, we often encounter too many examples of those that it wasn't the best solution for their circumstances. The ones who get it right often don't advertise their origin, be they "normal" or "brilliant." So, societally, we're left with a negative bias.

Being combative, antagonistic and argumentative doesn't make you weird. It makes you a bully.

I've met quite a few people who enjoy arguing about something far more than discussing favorite sports teams, or comparative benefits of different restaurant chains (eww!!), or the color of someone's socks (no, I'm not inventing this), or whatever their kids are doing in school. Of course you would want to stay away from idiots, but say OWS vs. libertarianism, or whether AAPL is a good investment, or pretty much anything else, is so much more fun to discuss with someone who disagrees.

Life would have been more interesting had this attitude been more common (interesting for people like us of course, for some others, probably supremely annoying).

There is a vast difference between liking to have interesting and energetic discussions or debates about something you care and/or are interested in and provoking someone for the sake of having an argument.

Provoking someone for the sake of having an argument is a passive-aggressive way for insecure people to get their rocks off by either winning an argument or simply upsetting someone. It may not be hitting someone, but it is bullying.

As someone who used to do it when I was much younger, it simply isn't a good trait to have.

argument for the sake of argument is fun. Even better if it is about something we don't care about.

but yes, provoking someone who does not want to have an argument usually only leads to mutual frustration, so it is indeed a pretty stupid thing to do.

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