Here are some of the most useful simple methods I’ve adopted for improving my connection with others (though I still have room for improvement):

1) When you like someone, greet them warmly, demonstrating with your face and body language that you like them.

2) Try your best to channel “interested attention” in conversations – where you give the other person your total focus while paying very close attention to what they are saying (and how they are saying it) and starting with the premise that they are saying something worth listening to.

3) When you disagree with a friend about something important, ask open-ended questions until you deeply understand their perspective, and if you still disagree, express that disagreement gently and respectfully while pointing out the parts you agree about before exploring what you disagree about.

4) If a close friend does something that bothers you one time and it is out of character for them, just let it go. If that friend has a pattern of behaviors that bothers you, wait until you are not actively feeling bothered, and then tell them how it makes you feel when they do that behavior (describing the behavior in objective, fact-based rather than subjective terms) and request that they try to avoid it going forward (in order to help strengthen your relationship).

5) Try to balance the amount of time you spend speaking vs. the amount of time the other person spends speaking so that it doesn’t go outside of the 40%-60% range. Note that this is an average across conversations, there are specific situations where it makes sense to do more or less of the talking (e.g., if one of you has a big story to tell).

6) When you think a nice thought about someone (and you don’t have any reason to think they wouldn’t want to hear it), tell them the nice thought. For instance, if you admire them in some way, or if they did something you really appreciate, or if you’re really looking forward to seeing them, let them know! As the saying goes, thinking something nice about someone and not telling them is like wrapping a nice present but then never giving it.

7) Don’t complain about how old you are unless you’re sure you’re the oldest person in earshot by a significant margin.

This piece was first written on March 15, 2024, and first appeared on my website on March 27, 2024.

If you’re like me and really dislike small talk, you may find these ideas useful.

(1) If you end up talking about their work, ask what they (i) most like about it and (ii) find most challenging about it.

(2) If they end up asking about your work, try to explain what you do in a way you’ve never experimented with before.

Example: if you’re a programmer, maybe you’ll say your job is to convert ambiguous human goals to instructions that are so precise a computer can follow them.

(3) Pay close attention to the other person’s vibe and make a positive (and genuine) observation about their personality or manner. For instance, if they have a really pleasant-sounding voice, tell them that. If they give off a lot of confidence, compliment them on it.

(4) Assume the other person is worth knowing. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Now your job in the conversation is to explore what’s interesting about this person.

(5) When the conversation lulls, say, “This is random, but I’ve been thinking a lot about something lately, and I’m curious what your take on it would be.” Then ask a question you’ve been pondering (e.g., “How do you decide how much time to spend making new friends?”)

(6) Assign yourself the goal of figuring out what they would enjoy talking about (but without directly asking – since “what would you like to talk about?” puts uncomfortable pressure on them). Ask questions about their thoughts and interests to discover the right topic.

(7) If there’s something interesting in the environment, remark on it and ask what their reaction to it is or open the door for them to comment on it too.

Example: “I just noticed that house has a different style of architecture from the others. Do you like its style better or worse?”

(8) Ask the person what sort of things they are interested in. This can be a slightly awkward question, but I think it’s often worth it. In my experience, it tends to have a good payoff in that it helps you jump to talking about something the other person cares about. Sometimes people will talk about work (when they enjoy it), but other times, they will bring up an idea they are interested in or a hobby they are passionate about, etc. From there, I find it’s typically much faster to get to mutually interesting conversations than if we started with small talk.

The thing about small talk is that it’s designed to be low-risk.

Deviating from small talk increases the chance that a conversation ends up being awkward.

And, of course, it’s possible the other person just doesn’t want to engage with you on a deeper level than small talk. It’s important to stay attuned to how the other person is feeling and not push them beyond the level of engagement that they feel comfortable with.

But when done skillfully, strategies like these often make the conversation much more interesting for everyone involved.

This was first written on December 3, 2022, and first appeared on this site on June 4, 2023.

1. Soldier Altruists think it’s obvious how to improve the world and that we just need to execute those obvious steps. They see the barriers to a better world as:

(i) not enough people taking action (e.g., due to ignorance, selfishness, or propaganda), and

(ii) bad groups blocking things (e.g., corrupt politicians or greedy corporations).

2. Scout Altruists think it’s hard to figure out how to improve the world – and most attempts either don’t work, only slightly help, or make things worse. They see the barriers to a better world as:

(i) not enough understanding of causal mechanisms (e.g., due to a lack of high-quality evidence, not enough attention to the evidence we do have, not enough careful reasoning, etc.), and

(ii) too much investment in bad solutions (e.g., due to people jumping to conclusions, doing what feels good emotionally rather than what is effective, ideological blindspots, inertia, etc.)

Soldier Altruists say we need to DO and FIGHT more. Scout Altruists say we need to THINK and TEST more. Soldier Altruists are more likely to think that if we could just get people to be less selfish and more motivated to act, we would make a lot of progress towards a better world. Scout Altruists are more likely to think that if we could just get people to pay more attention to evidence and to have more good-faith debates with strong norms around the quality of argumentation, we would make a lot more progress.

Soldier Altruists may think Scout Altruists are far too reluctant to act and are wasting their time on research and debate. Scout Altruists may think Soldier Altruists are far too confident in their conclusions and are wasting their effort pushing for changes that aren’t going to help much (and which, in some cases, might even make things worse). Of course, in reality, there is a continuum between these two positions. So, on a scale from 0 (Soldier Altruist) to 10 (Scout Altruist) where do you fall? I’m probably a 7 or 8.

As some commenters have pointed out, there is a relationship between this distinction and “Conflict Theory” vs. “Mistake Theory.” I think it is related – but also distinct in important ways. Conflict theory says that there is a giant zero-sum struggle (groups fighting over fixed resources). Whereas in this case, we’re operating from a framework of altruism: “the world can be made a lot better – what’s the big barrier to that happening? Is it that we know what to do and we’re not doing it enough/with enough energy, or is it that we don’t really know what to do?”

Also, to clarify another important point brought up in the comments: I’m not asking, “do you think it’s obvious how we should improve the world if we had a magic wand that could change whatever we wanted?” – instead, the question is: “is it obvious what to do to improve the real world, given that we don’t have a magic wand?” Do we just need to put more money/time/effort/people into executing the current “obvious” strategies because they will work well if we just scale them up? Or is it pretty unclear what strategies we should even be putting more resources into (meaning that a lot of thinking, research, debate and/or evidence evaluation will typically be necessary to even figure out what is worth scaling up)?

Julia’s book (which I highly recommend): https://www.amazon.com/Scout-Mindset-Perils-Defensive-Thinking/dp/0735217556/ref=nodl_

This piece was first written on April 23rd, 2021, and first appeared on this site on January 7th, 2022.

1. Ideators: generate novel ideas

Ex: Einstein

Strengths: creativity, insight

2: Investigators: vigorously investigate a topic in order to understand it

Ex: Curie

Strengths: truth-seeking, curiosity, systematicness, persistence

3. Provers: demonstrate that the ideas of others are sound, explore their limits, strengthen or work out the implications of existing theories

Ex: Singer

Strengths: consistency, logic, rigor, bullet-biting

4. Appliers: explore new, useful applications for existing ideas, or combine ideas to make something valuable

Ex: Ford

Strengths: pragmatism, knowledge, goal orientation

5. Doers: do things in the world, reflect on what worked and what didn’t, draw insights from and generalize this experience so others can learn from it

Ex: Graham

Strengths: experience, reflection, generalization, synthesizing

6. Critics: dissect ideas to find the flaws in them

Ex: Wollstonecraft

Strengths: questioning, challenging, dissection, disagreeing

7. Enhancers: refine, hone or clarify existing ideas to make them better

Ex: Bostrom

Strengths: clarifying, honing, making rigorous

8. Popularizers: figure out how to explain important, complex ideas in simple ways; spread them to the public

Ex: Sagan

Strengths: simplification, explanation, inspiration, metaphor

9. Activators: use ideas to change norms or improve society

Ex: King

Strengths: inspiration, eloquence, courage, altruism

10. Storytellers: tell compelling stories to convey information and ideas and to capture the narrative behind ideas

Ex: Gladwell

Strengths: narrative, journalism

11. Cataloguers: collect, categorize and organize information

Ex: Dewey

Strengths: comprehensiveness, organization, categorization

This piece was first written on August 23, 2020, and first appeared on this site on July 8, 2022.