Honestly yes that’s kind of what I do.
It’s not small talk, because i actually care how my wife’s day was.
How do you get married to someone if you never started with small talk?
Because that way “I see you as a friend!” lies. At least that’s why I’m single.
I guess I see small talk as gateway questions to deeper conversations. I met me wife by asking about the weather.
“Hi there! Beautiful weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
“Yes, perfect for marrying…”
Try getting married to a dragon, they don’t care about small talk
I can’t, morally, upvote you but I appreciate your self-consistency.
What did drag do?
Idk. Everyone’s done something but I don’t know them like that.
I was adopting a joke stance against their dragon fuckinf.
through meeting with intent so your talks are not small.
You seem lovely on dates
The free will question is much closer to the conversations I was having with my wife before we got married. We were talking for hours every day, I can’t imagine spending hours on small talk.
Fill the void with intercourse.
In the case of my grandfather he just went all in on his batshit insane stories, his first one was apparently how he electrocuted his balls. My grandmother avoided him initially, but after she realized he was the charming type of insane she warmed up to him. The fuck were people doing in the 70s?
Electrocuting their balls, apparently.
Well that and using chemicals that cause cancer if you don’t use a mask with a filter. He came to regret that one. My grandfather was a walking OSHA violation.
Well that wasn’t really the question. But actually I met her when we were both pretty young so I don’t recall it being much of an issue. We probably talked about kid stuff.
What’s your favorite color? Do you like hot wheels? Perhaps our definition of small talk differs from others. To me it’s a starting point to get into deeper conversations.
ITT we ask the autistic to self identify
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The laws of physics are not deterministic at the fundamental level, we clearly experience some kind of agency, so doesn’t it make sense to assume that it could be the origin of this indeterminism?
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Chemical processes told me to tell you “quantum deez nutz” and I am powerless to disobey.
You’re assuming quantum indeterminism is random in the sense that there is no agency behind it, but there is no evidence of that. If anything, the fact we feel like we have free will suggests there might be some agency somewhere, and if it manifests anywhere, that is as indeterminism at the fundamental level.
If there is an agent who is deciding it then that would show up in the statistics. Unless you’re saying there exists an agent who decides the outcomes but always just so happens to very conveniently decide they should be entirely random. lol
My idea is that the agent is the particle itself, and the laws of physics are simply the statistics of what decisions it tends to make. I imagine that if a fundamental particle like an electron was phenomenally conscious and had some kind of agency, it wouldn’t have any intention or self-awareness, so it would decide practically randomly, based on its quantum state, which would be some kind of rudimentary experience it has.
I feel like this is no different practically speaking than just saying its behavior is random, but anthropomorphizing it for some reason.
The reason is trying to work towards a model which could actually solve the hard problem, something which the physicalism prevalent in science has failed at completely. Consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, and it needs to be taken seriously, any model which doesn’t include it is either inacurrate or incomplete. Yes, a single particle might act randomly, but that might not hold for a more complex entangled system, especially an orchestrated one inside a living being.
So this person thinks they can choose small talk? curious.
Why the fuck does everyone want to be in sustained meaningful relationships?
Because relatedness is a fundamental psychological need and sustained meaningful relationships are the best way to achieve that
Can get that from a chat at the bar. Sustained meaningful relationships are the best way to lead to depression and severe physiological trauma. Fuck that shit.
“physiological” trauma? Like diabetes from all the PDAs?
You’re clearly in need of therapy and a proper support network, I hope you get the help you need before it’s too late
Ha. I’m American, we don’t have those things. Just rugged individualism.
Yeah, this literally is how it works, like to a T.
Free will exists, the conditions to have free will do not exist.
I love these sorts of conversations.
Alright: for how much money would you eat a teaspoon of shit?
I would eat shit for a down payment of the house I would want and manage to pay back with interest.
Done, I’ll pay you 100 local currency for a downpayment on a shared ownership (me and my 500 partners) permanent leasehold with renewal charges every 5 years for a 4 sq meter “house” in the middle of the desert with high background radon gas
Yes.
“Such weather we’re having huh?”
Truly peak romance
But at least it’s a conversation you can work with “oh yeah it’s so nice we should go do X” or “yeah it’s crazy out there, we should stay in and watch a movie and snuggle” the point of small talk is to open avenues of conversation… I think people just don’t know how to have conversations anymore and chalk it up to “not liking small talk”. Observation and response is a perfectly normal way to start a conversation
People will also say something stupid about the weather or news or whatever just because they want to express to you that they’re friendly and open to converse. Ignoring “small talk” from a stranger is like actively rejecting someone’s desire to connect. What are they supposed to say if they want to chat? “I AM A HUMAN RECEPTIVE TO CONVERSE, PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT GEOPOLITICS”
Which is fine, if you’re as antisocial and spiteful against “casual life” like everyone in this post is pretending to be and you love it and you’re happy, that’s great. Say “just put it in the bag” and get out of there.
The problem is most of these people who act like people talking about “last night’s game” are NPC’s in the Matrix and they would NEVER stoop to the level of talking about sports or weather… are the same people who will race home to post their manifestos about how lonely they are and how society is crumbling and how they wish they lived somewhere walkable with community and how hard dating is.
Our cognitive dissonance as a species is maxing out.
we should go do X
we should stay in and watch a movie and snuggle
That’s not small talk, that’s planning what to do today. You can open the same conversation with “hey, what do you want to do today?”
Most people who “hate small talk” in posts like this have either very specific ideas in their mind of what it means, such as annoying coworkers who talk about quilting or baseball loudly in the next cubicle, or are deeply sour, lonely, cynical shits who think they’re god’s gift to intellectualism and have never had a girlfriend in their life so they can’t imagine what people talk about casually in private, and think that being in a relationship with someone needs to be like, always planning a heist over a map of the city sewer system or talking about geopolitics or lecturing their imaginary waifu about science facts.
I occasionally lecture my 3DPD wife about science facts and she hates it. She’ll say things like “what?” And “I was just asking what we should do for dinner”
And how will you plan anything if you don’t know the weather genius???
I think it’s more about your expectation from interactions with strangers. I will tolerate a ton of weather talk from my wife but if the guy taking my order at 5 Guys tries the same thing it’s not going to be as well received.
Why? I like when strangers try to talk to me honestly
I think I like it more than most but not just to hear words out loud. If you have a story about the weather impacting your day that’s much more interesting than just commenting on it in general.
It’s raining in south latvia btw
Amazing
Yet sunny in central australia
the point of small talk is to open avenues of conversation
If you’re married to someone, all avenues of conversation should be open the minute you’ve both said hi. If you need to talk about the weather before you decide what to get for dinner, with your spouse, then your marriage is a failure.
Lotta folks on both sides of this conversation who have never been in a long-term relationship.
The current state of society is: “Ugh I can’t believe this cashier is talking about the weather when I’m in a hurry to get back on the internet to complain about how lonely I am and how hard it is to make friends and date.”
You’re probably joking, but know that there’s a subset of us that gets pathologically anxious and confused by small talk. Autistic people for example. Different folks, different strokes. Not everyone deals well with talking about the weather, and that’s ok. There’s billions who do deal well with it, and that’s ok too! Be a mensch and talk to them instead.
Oh I get it, I understand better than most, it’s why I make a pest of myself in these posts about the benefits of just talking to people.
It’s fine if you don’t like talking to strangers or making eye contact if you’re fine with your present social life. I am usually ragging on people about this because we’re also having some pretty serious issues with loneliness right now. And you don’t get from lonely to less-lonely by avoiding the things that make you uncomfortable.
I was non-verbal for a period as a child, deeply introverted, only recently diagnosed as on the spectrum though, particularly because when I was a child there was no real understanding of autism, so when taken to a doctor they just X-rayed my brain. I learned to adapt/mask but it took a long time for me to push through social discomfort and I also thought myself like many of the people in these posts who seem absolutely spiteful against people who try to strike up conversations with strangers. Again, it’s understandable if talking is uncomfortable for people, particularly if they are on the spectrum or have trauma, but we need to understand that social avoidance is an obstacle to overcome, not an identity to cherish.
Pushing through discomfort talking to people and actively making an effort to be open, to go ahead and babble nonsense, to stop being afraid of bothering people with my own autistic spiels or niche bullshit, I actually started to “get it” and understand how the game is played and from there only had strings of successes both personally and professionally. Meteoric at times.
It still took some effort, but took me until middle-age to unlock this skill-tree to even start trying to work on it, and I strongly feel like I could have had a much, much better life if I made that effort sooner, and if even one other person reading this sighs and says “Okay I’ll try speaking up at the next meeting” then I’ve done some good because I know their lives will improve if they stick to it.
It’s great that it worked out for you, and I’m happy for you, but we don’t need to force everyone to fit the same mould.
I really think that a huge issue we’ve been having since the dawn of the internet is the perplexing effect that seems to impact a large portion of the population, where when they see someone suggest something, they take it as “being forced” and I cannot understand it. I can only assume that we grew up in very different environments and a lot of people aren’t really aware of their own agency.
Ah my bad, I thought you were complaining about people not wanting to engage in small talk, and I thought you were suggesting that people should just suck it up and talk about the weather even if they don’t want to. I’m a bad communicator, and I sometimes misread stuff like that.
my suggestion is that if you’re lacking in social contact, or even if you just want to open up more opportunities in either social life or professional, don’t “suck it up” and pretend, but learn to understand and appreciate how socializing works by engaging in it like a game, learning what’s actually happening in “small talk” and how to make people feel comfortable with you and gain emotional intelligence and empathy; qualities that most people look for in friends and romantic partners.
This is a severely neglected field of understanding for a lot of younger men right now and I don’t think we should be making whole communities that provide validation for people avoiding the discomfort and instead we should treat it like exercise and diet. We don’t exercise and diet because it feels good, we do it because the results are worthwhile. We tell people struggling with it “Just stick with it, it gets easier” and we treat that like good advice.
And again, it wouldn’t be such an issue if there wasn’t such a massive problem right now with social isolation. It’s a message of public health, not social conformity. If you’re happy as things are, nobody is forcing you to do anything, but if you battle depressive episodes or are lacking in relationships, if you don’t feel like you have people to talk to, if you’ve never had someone give you comfort and support and you would like that, well the good news is you can have that. You can have people in your actual, real life who care about you, which can then open up more opportunities. But it takes exercise.
Like yeah, exactly. With the right person, you can talk for hours and hours about all kinds of stuff that interests you.
with the right person you can also be quiet with for hours
This! Silence is so much better than unnecessary and forced talking
Absolutely, but a lot of people don’t understand that you can’t arrive to that point by not ever “small talking” along the way. Small-talk is how we express to each other how we feel, how we want to be talked to, what we notice around us and so on. It’s a critical component to socializing. Conversations between human beings doesn’t play out narratively like in media and movies, there’s no “point” to conversing with someone you’re close to, you’re just sharing shit.
One of the best relationships I ever had.
We still don’t talk sometimes
But also meaningless bullshit. That does not denote a bad relationship.
Exactly. I can’t remember where I heard this - it might have been a podcast like RadioLab or something else - but it was talking about how happily married, intelligent couples talk to each other .
It turns out, it’s not usually super deep, intelligent conversations. The vast majority of conversations are just meaningless bullshit. Most of the time, couples aren’t even really talking to each other, but they’re just kind of thinking aloud. Stupid stuff like, “I swear I saw a dozen blue Volkswagens today.”
It turns out that people who are comfortable with each other don’t need to have deep conversations all the time. They can just relax, unwind, and be themselves.
My partner will talk to herself, loud enough to be audible, but not (to deaf me.) loud enough to be coherent. Drives me fucking insane. I have my ways of driving her insane.
That may be a blessing for the both of you, friend.
Sorry mate, that’s gone right over my head. She’s said to me that “love is putting up with your partners downsides”. I’m a massive pain in the arse, so …
She’s not wrong. I just meant her muttering may be about the downsides. Not always, ofc, because I’m single and still mutter.
Nah, it’s about what she’s doing or whatever’s going on.
The way I understand “Smalltalk” is not whether the subject matter is “serious enough” but rather whether either party actually has any interest in it, or if it is a polite nicety to avoid awkward silence.
Discussing the weather in a car ride with a coworker is smalltalk, contemplating with a friend how one might conquer the world using ant-controlling super powers is not.
This exactly. “Do you think free will exists” could, in fact, be small talk, if neither of you is particularly interested in the topic.
Talk about the stuff that interests you, you know, the small stuff
Small stuff doesn’t really interest me, or my partner.
Doesn’t mean we’re incapable of discussing dinner plans or cleaning schedules.
Was meant as a joke :)
Indeed I can confirm.
Just a few days ago I pondered the life of plants and asked my wife how she thinks the death of a plant is defined if for animals (including humans of course) it’s mostly the heartbeat.
So when is a plant dead?
When you see its little planty soul waft up to heaven.
For hours, every day, for years or decades? That has never happened.
My wife asks how my day was “great, or good, or whatever” then I ask how her day was she usually stops talking before bedtime. Works for both of us!
These kinds of philosophical questions are easily defeated by asking “does it matter though?”
“It does if you are mad about me cheating on you.”
Old friend of mine: “Will this matter at my funeral?”
I guess, if they answer “No” or “Yeah your simple rebuttal has made me realize the problem of free will is nbd actually”.
But if they say “Yes. It does matter.” Then suddenly it isn’t defeated and you’d need to provide a compelling argument for it not mattering, which would make for good conversation.
it may not matter at all, but we’re here, somehow, made of sentient flesh, kept on a giant rock hurling through space, spinning around an enormous buring ball of fire. it’s all bizarre and none of us knows what is going on, so why not take some time out of the lives we live as statistical abnormalities, and just ponder on the whys and hows and whats of the things around us, and our own minds
A continous nuclear explosion even.
I don’t think that defeats it at all, it just changes the direction of the conversation and is as deeply philosophical as the first. Some might say life goes on with or without free will so it doesn’t matter, other say that the a societal acceptance of the absence of free will removes the burden of guilt, and could reshape society in very profound ways, so of course it matters.
a societal acceptance of the absence of free will removes the burden of guilt
Those cops, judges, lawyers, jail guards etc also don’t have free will, so while maybe the burden of guilt is gone, the legal repercussions still would exist all the same.
There is value in asking the question and in the consideration itself. Even if we never find the answer, it’s good for our brains to think about these things. Knowledge, and the search for it, can be an end unto itself. We don’t always need to do something with it.
Meaningful.
The clue is in meaningful.
