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2026-06-16

Which conversations do I actually seem to enjoy?

Disclaimer

• personal
• target audience - strictly myself
• A lot of the claims below are backed by empirical data from my own life. - This is important

Main

• I would clearly be a significantly less angry and neurotic person if I talked to people more often. However, I also seem increasingly choosy about which conversations I actually like, a lot of conversations tend to bore me terribly nowadays.
• I like conversations with women more than men.
  • Even outside of a romantic context. Actually, maybe especially outside of a romantic context. I think I would have better female friends if I had an OFF switch for the part of my brain that wants to have sex with them, unfortunately no such switch exists. Like, a lot of women fall into the category of a) I like listening to them talk about their problems and b) part of me wants to have sex with them and c) I am not that excited about getting into a relationship with them (as in like, I respect how their mind works but not enough to be excited by it or fall in love or similar). If I had an off switch for b, I could do more of a, and I think this might help me. I have tried suppressing my desire for b to try and maintain friendships with women but it doesn't really work, so now I don't try. (All this assumes 1 to 1 context where you meet regularly.)
• I like listening to people's problems.
  • Again, for whatever reason, I find it easier to listen to women's problems than men.
  • I also like listening to men's problems, to be clear. This also makes me happy.
  • I think with some of my male friends we have reached the "disagree but accept" point regarding my ASI risk beliefs, such that neither of us feels that judged when sharing their problems with the other person. Even so, not many people are willing to listen to my shit, but I am still willing to listen to theirs, atleast once in a while.
  • I remember one house painter I met back in Arunachal I think, he talked about how people in his town in Arunachal treat him nicely but people in Kolkata or Guwahati don't. I like hearing stuff like this. I don't know, maybe lower class men are more willing to share their feelings about things more quickly? I don't know though, I will have to go look at my notes to confirm something like this, it sounds plausible to me. [1]
• I hate group conversations with a burning passion.
  • Groups tend to systematically derail conversations about anything that is actually important.
  • I have a theory for why this happens, but the theory is not as important as the empirical observation. The theory is just yeah, with 1 to 1 conversation it is easier to negotiate when you actually feel safe enough to share something, often you can look at body language and implicitly judge things. With 3 people this is still possible. With 4 or more, this becomes much harder, so it is easy for atleast one person to just assume not everyone is okay with the topic, and just derail the convo.
• I am very choosy about intellectual conversations nowadays.
  • Most intellectual conversations also bore me nowadays. As in, I can participate in them, but I don't enjoy then, they don't make me happy. They engage a completely different part of my brain as compared to the one I want engaged, if I want to be happy.
  • Especially after encountering the whole EA/LW worldview, some topics just seem not that important anymore, a lot of things in my head fit into a coherent worldview. Like someone will talk about climate change and I will be like, ok here's why this is not important. Someone else will talk about fertility crisis and I will be like, here's where this fits into my worldview. Someone else will talk about interstellar travel and I will. be like, okay here's why this doesn't matter.
  • To be clear, I did this sort of prioritisation even before encountering EA/LW, it's just that EA/LW accelerated the process.
  • Nowadays if I actually want to learn about topics, I need to talk to people who have atleast put in a few months of serious effort studying the thing. Only then do I find myself capable of learning new information from them. For instance if someone has just casually read blog posts about solar, I am not going to learn much from them. If they have done a degree in solar energy, then I can probably learn a fair deal of useful info.
  • Eventually though at some point you do also realise that maybe you don't want them to offer you a full class in the conversation itself, they can just refer you to some material. And then I'm like, okay right now I want to study cybersecurity not solar lol. And the material will sit untouched.
  • Lots of people (especially in my circles) treat intellectual conversation as a fun social game as opposed to an activity with civilisation-defining consequences, and I dislike this. I have become a lot more utilitarian about this (not like, full bentham-style utilitarianism but atleast halfway there), because I know how much effort it is for me to get novel and important and true insights about anything.
  • I might like conversations about important books. For instance, if someone says they liked a book about Kant or Dosteovsky or whatever, I might like listening to their insights on it. I don't know, maybe the underlying pattern here is also the same, if someone has actually bothered to read a entire book about a topic, they might have a novel insight about the topic. Otherwise though I just ask them to give me a good sales pitch for why I should read the book, and it goes into my reading list which again I often don't touch (but sometimes do).
• I don't enjoy conversation about hobbies much.
  • This could include travel or food or shopping or music or sports or whatever.
  • Sometimes if a topic is quite novel to me, I might like listening to it a few times, before eventualy getting bored of that too.
• Some of my above preferences get altered when I am not sober.
  • I want to understand why I found socialising so much easier back when I was not fully sober. I am sober now (and will stay sober) and hence find this much harder.
  • Maybe one factor is that right now I have very long-term oriented view. When not sober, I have lower impulse control and more desire for instant gratification. Other people seem to derive value out of me having lower impulse control because it is novelty and entertainment for them, heck it might even be novelty and entertainment for part of me to see other parts of me do this.
  • I mean there is also the factor of just, you already have higher dopamine or whatever so you are less reliant on the conversation to give you the same high. Even shit conversations become more tolerable.
  • I don't know, I think there is something core I am missing here that I don't fully understand.
  • Yet another hypothesis, I seem to have this "two hour fog" when I am sober. Like, I am in a sort of permanent malaise and monofocus as a result of my beliefs of ASI risk, I feel (my projection of) the weight of all of civilisation on my head, this sort of overwhelming responsibility. Whereas if I engage in any activity for two hours, could be dancing, could be sauna, could be listening to a talk irl, eventually the fog fades and I am again capable of experiencing happiness from whatever is in front of me again. If not sober, I can erase the fog more easily (although eventually that too became its own type of intense suffering, not getting into detail here). If I hear some experience someone else has with suffering, I can erase the fog more easily.
  • Talking about being not sober is a trigger for me. Note to self - I am happy I have managed to stay sober for 4 months. This is an accomplishment and I should be happy about it. I am happy about it.

Main 2

• Lmao I was just looking at the above list I have. I am becoming more like a psychologist lmao. I want to understand how people's minds work. I want to understand the depths of human suffering. I don't know, maybe I should properly go skim an actual degree in psychology and see which parts of it I like. The problem is again, the interesting parts of psychology are practical not theoretical. But maybe, I should read some stuff anyway.

[1] Side Note

• Is there a more polite sounding phrase for "lower class"? idk. I don't think phrases like "working class" or "blue collar" capture what I am actually talking about here, they sound far too americanised. Maybe "labour class" but that sounds too technical lol. Like yeah, the important factor is whether you are valued for physical versus intellectual labour, not how much money you make. If you are don't make money from intellectual labour, you don't value education in the same way (you see education as a thing your kids need, to make money; not as a thing you personally need to become a more complete person). I mean I have totally met lower class people who are intellectually curious as well, this exists, it is just not the norm.

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