Why 'intelligent conversation' is taboo

Post Reply New Topic

Hum, sorry tech, but shouldn't that go into the Social & making friends section? I mean...What's it gotta do with Love and Dating? <.<

He mentioned why, earlier.

However, something I've come to learn ... non-dating social aptitude transitions directly over to dating social aptitude. Personally, I feel like L&D and Social & Friends might as well be the same forum.

1) It'll get much better analysis here.
2) When you have this problem you can still have friends - but at least as a guy, you'll be single for certain (unless you're dating another all-out autie) - it hits the relationship world a lot harder. It pretty much wipes the floor with your outward virility, women will see you as a geek too lost in his own world to actually understand real threats or ever in his life provide for her, ie. its social suicide, and women will actually have less respect for you even on the non-dating level. Women come up as utter gender roll failures to guys as well if they do this for not going with what the NT level of requisite for female sex appeal happens to be (when then means the guy doesn't have the sexual pull or urge to protect or even be involved).

Sorry about the double-post there. I have no idea how it happened. Ooops!! !

You are an American, I presume? There's your answer.

Intellectualism in this country is not the norm. We are rejected, sneered at, shunned, bullied in school and called nerds. Americans are uncomfortable around the intellectuals because it shows them that they aren't the smart unique snowflakes they've been lead to think they are.

And yet... and yet... we are the ones who gave them the light bulb, the microchip, the airplane, the Internet, cell phone, great works of art and literature. All the while they have profited from our intellectualism and kept us down as second class citizens.

Go find a Jimmy Carter (intellectual) vs. Ronald Reagan (good ole cowboy) presidential debate video. It has got to be somewhere on the Internet. Carter crushed Reagan with rational and logical arguments. Reagan "won" the debate anyway, because the audience connected with him more.

Why doesn't the same rule apply to shallow conversation? There have been a zillion times when I have felt left out, but the group didn't change tack to include me. I'm sure most others here have also been in that same situation.

Instead of wondering what you have to do to 'dumb down', why not ask what you have to do to get the others to 'wise up'.



Well, there's a strong argument that people were happier and more content before all that stuff was invented. Maybe you're also the ones who gave us the atom bomb, biological warfare, McDonalds, mass advertising, radiation, GM food, Zyklon B, napalm, muzak, truly abysmal works of art and literature etc etc.

They can't wise up.

The parents brought them up to be perfect clones of themselves.

They spent the public school days, not learning, but trying to fit in with the cool kids.

They spent the college days, not learning, but partying and having sex and getting drunk.

They got their first real job, not because they were able, but because they knew someone who knew someone who could get them hired.

To get them to wise up, they'd need to be born all over again and raised in a completely different environment.

Stupid truly is forever. People, once they hit mid-20s, are complete and done. They don't change.

There's a lot of inertia in society. Everyone's the same - carbon copy of everyone else. So change is slow to come.

Intellectuals and free thinkers are rare. We can't affect change, except verrrrrry slowly over decades or even centuries, by making speeches and writing books, which will hopefully make someone somewhere stop and question their existence and their priorities. It's always been this way.

I totally understand what you're saying here. I think a lot of us aspies develop the habit of showing our intelligence (not intelligence itself) as a way of proving that we are not worthless just because we are socially awkward. It becomes the only way we know how to show value. The problem is, those who have the same type of intelligence see it as a challenge, and those whose interests are elsewhere simply don't care. I myself feel challenged sometimes when others try to compete with my intelligence, though I enjoy quite much hearing people's deeply intellectual thoughts about things I don't think about often. Unfortunately, "normal" people rarely are this way.

I agree that people don't want to hear comments that contradict their established views, particularly in areas like politics and religion. I see less why this would apply to something like discussing art theory or science, as relatively few people have strong pre-formed opinions on those things. Though I do think ease of processing has a lot to do with it. The average person's brain is FAR more geared to input-output relative to deep reasoning than the typical autistic brain. This causes "shallower" thought, which is not necessarily "stupider" under all circumstances. It's just much more useful for thinking a little about a lot of things than a lot about a few things. So while I might see one cool shadow on a wall or pattern on someone's shirt and deeply analyze it, the person next to me might notice the facial expressions of fifteen different people, the subtleties of how they interact, and at the same time be able to make a comment about a football game from the night before.

And often, the thing that bursts OUR bubbles the most is the very idea that showing value is more complex than just blowing everyone away by how talented you are at one thing. It takes a lot of effort to constantly keep track of where we stand and how we fit in, so it's easier to just throw a bunch of complex thoughts out there and let the others chew on them like a raw steak for a while.

Yeah, I remember reading a book that had a lot to say on this - I can't remember which one it was. The concept brought forward was horizontal vs. vertical structure. People who are more vertical have a great deal of depth, have the makings to be great leaders in times of trouble, but in peace time they have very little social achievement and if anything are next to invisible to other people (they gave the example of Ulysses S. Grant) where as there are the people with horizontal intelligence which, like you said, don't go into a lot of depth but dabble in everything - these are the people who take the lead in times of prosperity.

That being the case that could cover the 'accessibility' issue regarding the over-objectivity of certain types of topics or conceptual drill-down (ie. my fish drawing example).

I can't believe it...I agree with biostructure! It had to happen sometime. Really important observations.

I have heard this theory before and would say it applies to me. When I was an engineer if something got really f!@#$% up I was the guy that you called. When things were going smoothly I really had nothing to say. Because it is so easy for us to hyper-focus on one thing we can take the lead and solve a crisis. Once that crisis has passed and been resolved there is just no place for us. Ulysses S. Grant is a perfect example, he was absolutely hated by the rest of the military brass but he knew how to win battles. After the war he became one of the worst presidents ever.