This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

I'm not sure where exactly you heard that statistic, but I probably wouldn't want to trust anything else from that source in the future if I were you. The actual percentage is a lot closer to 50-50. (The Myers-Briggs website was the most reliable looking source I find, and it claims introverts as being 50.7% of the population to extroverts' mere 49.3%)

MBTI these days gets used like astrology for HR people, though ;P

There are a lot of statistics thrown around, somewhere between 20-33% in a lot of discussions I’ve read lately, but I don’t really know that you can narrow it down to a meaningful range; assuming a bellcurve distribution of results along the spectrum (as suggested by that site), any statistic in this spectrum can be made accurate by imposing an arbitrary standard for what constitutes an introvert.

I don’t disagree that many Anglospheric cultures (with exceptions, and certainly some exceptions are made for highly exceptional people) are a bit hostile to introverted styles of doing things, to various degrees. There have been books written about this sort of thing... and, of course, I live that life.

I don’t really mind small talk in appropriate venues, when it’s clear everyone around is in the mood to do it. But in my experience, a lot of people in my mainstream (American) culture are very bad at reading that sort of situation, and for whatever reason it is not generally regarded as rude as it probably should be to interrupt someone trying to think hard or read a book or something. And we have placed noisy machines everywhere, which may well be stressing us to death. Some subcultures I’m in seem to treat that a little better, though (e.g. I don’t think the U.S. would be anywhere near the software powerhouse it is today if American programmers on the whole considered it okay to interrupt each other at just any time in any context—it takes a while to get “in the zone”).

In conclusion, screw you, tree outside my window. Despite being feet away, you somehow don’t block any sun for me, but you DO house cicadas and songbirds.

With regard to social interaction, I do find myself trapped in a cycle of social spheres, where I'll meet people based on some common interest, exhaust my bank of 'look I'm a normal person' small talk (with 100% more interesting but irrelevant facts!), and slowly drift away and apart from them before ceasing to talk altogether.

It's also the fact that the longer I don't talk to someone the harder it is to reconnect but that's outside the scope of the argument - the point being is that despite trying very hard to be extroverted, I have very little small talk. Sometimes I just like being near people, though. Living alone is kind of sad. (and then I remember my ex-roommate. ugh. ever live with someone who thinks publically outing you is funny?)

Anyway I'll stop there

I couldn’t fit it in above, but I received training in the Small Talk skill (most of it forced, like that retail job a few years ago).

But as someone who spends a lot of alone time studying things and current events, I also draw upon an endless stream of baloney that doesn’t run out before my throat does. I can usually turn it into Big Talk without getting into trouble (“and speaking of that, I wish more people knew sign language; certain monastic orders in the Middle Ages had no trouble conducting all routine conversations in complete silence, to say nothing of village sign languages such as the one that used to be prevalent in Martha’s Vineyard” *HINT HINT*); if people aren’t ready to deal with that, I doubt they’d like me in other ways.

I have never really identified with either introversion or extroversion, or rather: I can remember situations when I was introverted and others where I was distinctly extroverted. It's been a trend over time of increased amounts of my time in a state of extroversion, but that's personal experience and I'm not implying that "normal people grow out of being introverts" or some horseshit. I think fundamentally I do crave social interaction (and not just "deep meaningful" stuff) but the change over time is my getting better at successfully acquiring that.

I like parties and I like hanging with friendly folks whose names don't always instantly stick in my head. I like little reminders that everybody's different and has a different background and worldview to me - and sure, it's easier to get to know people if you can string along an initial conversation (E: about a common interest like a video game or a sports team or a musical artist). That kind of thing's super-important to me though because I worry about myself growing to see people around me as scenery to my own life story. Interchangeable snap-fit assembly hobbies or histories. That's not the kind of philosophy I want people around me to take, so I do what I can mentally to cultivate the opposite.

I guess my distinction to you dudes is that I'm not too passionate about anything, which makes me easy to get along with. I don't like things, you probably don't like other things, and provided your personality isn't gross I'm probably still ok with hanging out.

I do like passionate people, though, even if their passions and mine don't mesh for great and lengthy conversation. I'm inordinately fond of that conversation I'll have with one person, once (or sometimes twice) per party, where their inhibitions are down enough that they'll give a damn good try at expressing something that's a little bit beyond them (a curiosity for someone who is pre-emptively averse to saying the wrong thing or sounding foolish), something that I couldn't even attempt to articulate and because of that (to me) is quite profound.

While I'd prefer that I get to have this sort of conversation with a friend, hearing it from someone who up until now was just "scenery" in my perception of the world slaps me about a bit and reminds me that other people aren't scenery.

As someone who had a tight-knit gang of irl friends in New Zealand who's landed out in a rural prefecture of Japan with a whole bunch of people I've had a month (tops) to get to know, I can't afford to be cynical. If I wanted to discuss ecology and systematics and conservation to people, I wouldn't have buggered off overseas to teach English. What I want to do is get people even a smidge more interested in that kind of stuff, because I reckon they're worthwhile things for people to get educated about.

I feel like the conversation's kind of conflated interest with passion, which is something I disagree with. Like, I don't really have any strong passions. Maybe for art? Eh.

I think a lot of people have a bunch of interests that are definitely not apparent. History, science, technology, even from a very casual perspective ("I like iPhones more than androids") you can springboard into sort of related topics ("Maybe because iPhones are more of a luxury good economics economics") that people will find interesting because of their link back to the original topic.

So... that's kind of how my proximity-based-friendships have gotten started. The catalyst was School, mostly, but talking about school all the time is awful. I talked to a lot of people, or observed people in group settings, and without thinking about it kind of sorted people into "people I want to make conversation with" and "people who I don't."

I think a lot of people just really don't care how what they do impacts other human beings. I think most people do not care. Not all the time, but most people. The person irritating you at a bus stop isn't trying to chat you up for your benefit. Their whole world implodes if they go an hour without running their mouth.

I’m just curious, though, how much of the world have you seen? (Or at least taken up a serious study of cultural anthropology?) There are places where this is, by and large, considered not-okay. On the DC Metro, conversation with strangers is practically taboo.

“Culture is best understood not as a system of enforcing conformity, but of organizing diversity.”—someone, paraphrased.

As far as the East (coast) is from the West (coast), the differences between similar places remain yet surprising. Certainly Texas is alien to most Americans?

As much as I enjoy the company of my online friends [really, you guys are wonderful], the lack of physical proximity leaves me keenly aware of the absence of a feature exclusive to in-person socialization: the ability to JUST enjoy someone's company. Friends sitting apart, each involved in their own isolated entertainments, yet glad to be spending idle time together. It is not the uneasy, awkward silence of an inactive IRC, but a quiet suffused with the gentle knowledge that a certain other is present.

I enjoy sitting alone, doing my own thing, sometimes [especially] when other people are around -- but even among my closest friends, there are not very many with whom I can consistently sustain that feeling of needing to do nothing but be present. Oh, there are glimpses of it, to be sure. But all too soon, in the midst of that comfortable feeling, a worry worms its way into your thoughts--What if I'm the only one enjoying this situation? Am I being inconsiderate? Perhaps you were right to worry, and your awkward small-talk is a boon to your companion. Perhaps you have just ended your friend's enjoyment of the silence by breaking it. Perhaps they speak first. In any event, the moment has passed, and you are now Doing Things again, and that's excellent too.

I can't do more than vaguely speculate on the attraction/lust aspect of it, but I can get wanting to keep in your life/stay with whom-so-ever you've managed to establish that level of companionship with, regardless of shared interests or lack thereof.

[Know I'm responding to something a while ago but I intended to talk/rant through to the more current part of conversation when suddenly class time :<]

As much as I enjoy the company of my online friends [really, you guys are wonderful], the lack of physical proximity leaves me keenly aware of the absence of a feature exclusive to in-person socialization: the ability to JUST enjoy someone's company. Friends sitting apart, each involved in their own isolated entertainments, yet glad to be spending idle time together.

I can relate to this, it's the main reason i don't go to IRC as often as i used to. Not because you guys are not "entertaining" enough but because i feel like that kind of interaction doesn't appease my loneliness, which is dumb: Feeling lonely? = Isolate yourself. It also makes me feel like a jerk.

This conversation reminded me of that one time back in the mspaf when we tried to have a fast and slow chat threads*. It got me thinking about what makes me appreciate people and i realized that i don't really share that many interests with some of my closer friends, or at least not ones i'm super passionate about; having meaningful relationships, for me, it's more about interacting with genuine, insightful people - that's what makes me enjoy their company, to know that they're not ashamed to show who they truly are and enjoy the fact that i'm willing to do the same. In fact, i think i don't share many interests with some of you guys but i still enjoy your (online) company because you're all nice and pleasant people. So basically, what i'm trying to say is that i love y'all. xoxo.

*If you don't know what i'm talking about, back when the mspa forums had a general chat thread, a group of new users took over it with fast posting and general white noise. Some people didn't liked this kind of interactions and thus tried to start a slower, more insightful chat thread. In the end none of that worked out and both groups just kind of made their own forums which is why ET exists now i guess.

I like little reminders that everybody's different and has a different background and worldview to me - and sure, it's easier to get to know people if you can string along an initial conversation (E: about a common interest like a video game or a sports team or a musical artist). That kind of thing's super-important to me though because I worry about myself growing to see people around me as scenery to my own life story. Interchangeable snap-fit assembly hobbies or histories. That's not the kind of philosophy I want people around me to take, so I do what I can mentally to cultivate the opposite.

This is pretty much what I was going to say, but more eloquently put.

I dislike making small talk, and I'm hardly an outgoing person, but I personally think there are a lot of other compelling reasons to talk to people besides shared interests. I'm lucky enough to go to a huge university with a good variety of people, and I find talking with people with different backgrounds or interests from myself interesting in itself. Especially since I had virtually none of that growing up.

Plus, being thrown in a dorm with complete strangers my first year sort of forced me to meet people I wouldn't have sought out otherwise. Classes and extracurricular stuff have had a similar effect. The flipside of this, of course, is that a lot of the people I meet are "friends of convienience" to some extent - I probably won't hang out with them after I stop seeing them regularly.

Is this somehow a less valid or more shallow kind of friendship? I don't know. I've thought about this a lot. I share a lot of interests with my few close friends, but that doesn't preclude me from having less meaningful (but still enjoyable) interactions with acquaintances.

Like Schazer, I see myself somewhere between an introvert and extrovert. I dunno. I feel like that dichotomy isn't very helpful in any case.

I think I might actually be an extrovert, or at least an introvert who quite enjoys getting out there socially speaking.* I quite enjoy small talk, really, so long as it spins into an actual conversation rather than "Yeah, yeah" followed by two minutes straight of silence.

But the shitty thing is: I kind of dislike most Big Social Events. Like, I quite enjoy parties and dances and such in theory, but the problem is that they're often very cramped and everyone is wearing different clothes than I am and the music is always too damn loud to hold a conversation what is the purpose of going to a social event if you cannot socialize without yelling I ask you. I just want to go to a dinner party or some shit, mill about and eat snacks and stuff, and if I get truly, horrifyingly bored, scuttle off and read a book or something.

I also have no idea how to turn an acquaintance into a friend, so I'll often reach a place where I talk to someone a bunch in classes or something, maybe walk with them a bit after class ends, but it never really goes anywhere.

* based on the idea of isolation as opposed to social interaction "recharging" you, I guess I'd be an introvert?

Hey guys, have you seen this retrofuturistic talk?



as someone with next to no idea about programming I found it pretty fascinating.

P.S: Who wants to hold a "Dress just like MrGuy" party?

There is no way it’s not an intentional irony. There were probably zero people in that audience who “cut their teeth on” the IBM 650, but if he had given it in 1973 like the title slide was pretending he was, it’d probably be the most remembered obsolete computer there. He’s the guy that made this, and just about every time he gives a talk, it shows up on Hacker News.

Ohh, but they are still being used in the richest of schools. Universities. Professors. *ptoo*

I’d have talked about Engelbart a bit here when he passed away back in July, but the parts I wanted to talk about are too central to a story that I’ve been putting off writing for too long; in other words, I could not in fact convey the message I’d want to give without writing this entire story down, then having had a couple years to ruminate on it, then adding a foreword or something. But I can say this: his ideas concerning Intelligence Augmentation were very influential (albeit misinterpreted in ways) in creating anything good you use in interactive computing technology. If you want to spend a movie’s amount of time watching something that isn’t a movie, the so-called Mother of All Demos (1968) is the techporniest techporn that ever techporned, ever. Engelbart was frequently cited in our lifetimes as the “inventor of the mouse”. That should be a joke, but I’m afraid most of the people who said it meant it seriously. They had no freaking idea.

There's an overhead projection on every single class in my uni

But I've only had a single professor use them, probably because he was still using his transparencies from the 60s.

We also have regular projectors, so the overhead ones are probably only there because nobody cared to take them out OR because the aforementioned professor would be mad.

I haven't gone to classes since last year but at my university several professors used overhead projectors and transparencies. But they were all in engineering so maybe they're just weird.

Ｉwent to one of the top 100 universities in the world for half my degree, and loads of lectures were in older buildings on campus without all the network cables or what have you. My botany classes used them multiple times to quickly illustrate things like flower structure.

Lemme tell you about my high school situation when I get my butt out of bed and get over there. Sure I don't have wi-fi but you couldn't call the place ｄｅｓｔｉｔｕｔｅ.

My 3rd grade teacher was one of those lovely Southern ladies who seems to have discovered the secret of immortality (she’s still alive!), telling us frightening tales of olden days when there was just one phone for the whole neighborhood ooOOOooo. Every once in a while we’d get our worksheets in purple ink. I never asked, but I think she found a resourceful way around just waiting for the copy machine, or waiting for them to fix a jam, anyhow.

Stuff in purple ink from old people is usually from a mimeogrph, which somehow seem to still exist everywhere even though no one's seen one in person. My Spanish department used them for short stories that got passed back when we finished reading them so they could be reused year after year.

Am I missing something

"Yes."

I would be surprised if overhead projectors are still being used in anything but the most destitute of schools.

so, most public schools

i doubt the high school i went to had the funding for more than a handful of the new projectors to be used for specific classes/class projects, and the rest continue to rely on older ones because there's really no reason to get a new machine when the math stays the same, apparently

My high school had some use of overhead projectors, and it's an excellent school in a fairly posh neighborhood. Then again, it had a lot of students, so maybe it was to...

Cut down on spending

Uh...

thats certainly

Making a test run of playing around with English orthography. Since English has such terrible spelling rules, why don't we replace it with even more horrendous sinograms?

Ordinary orthography: An apple sits on the table. It invites hungry mouths to eat it, and eaten it is, by a little boy whose name is Marco.
Special orthography: 一N蘋坐S於一E檯. 其請S餓Y口S TO食其, 而食EN其乃, 以一A小LE男Y誰SE名乃S .MARCO. .

Making a test run of playing around with English orthography. Since English has such terrible spelling rules, why don't we replace it with even more horrendous sinograms?

Ordinary orthography: An apple sits on the table. It invites hungry mouths to eat it, and eaten it is, by a little boy whose name is Marco.
Special orthography: 一N蘋坐S於一E檯. 其請S餓Y口S TO食其, 而食EN其乃, 以一A小LE男Y誰SE名乃S .MARCO. .

Is anyone else confused or am I alone? I looked up the meanings of orthography and sinograms, but I've got no clue as to what's actually happening.