Pretty sure being in a long term relationship means you’ve moved on from small talk a long time ago.
I don’t want to talk with my wife about the weather, we have more important shit to worry about unless we’re literally having to dodge a tornado.
Small talk is for strangers.
Yup. And if we don’t have anything more important to talk about, we’ll just cuddle. Silence is absolutely fine with people you’re comfortable with.
Huh.
Wife and I talk ALL the time about anything and everything, be it the weather, how weather works, of free will exists, the kids, if kids exists, you name it…
Maybe you’re both extroverts?
We’re both introverts, so we’re totally comfortable just sitting next to each other reading different books, or cuddling on a cold winter night. Sometimes we talk about random stuff, but quite often we’re exhausted from dealing with other people but still want that proximity.
She’s extroverted as hell, I’m introverted as hell. Put together though, we talk like there is no tomorrow
If you went outside and the weather was pleasant you’d never mention it to your wife? Never say anything like “have you been outside? It’s so nice today!”
Or from what this post is even if people are missing it just asking how their day was.
Genuine appreciation for the weather enough to declare it to those around you isn’t small talk. Small talk is generic filler dialogue you do as a formality.
If you’re being that reductive about the definition of small talk then I don’t think small talk exists between couples who have known each other for a long time because you’re just regular talking.
I’m in this picture and my SO doesn’t like it.
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
What was Wenger thinking sending Walcott on that early?
The thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in!
I’ve seen women like that on dating apps. Claim to hate small talk, include in their bio that if you just open with “hi” they’ll unmatch you, and then when you put some thought into actually writing a response, ask a leading question about their interests or what they wrote in their profile, they unmatch you anyway.
#thisiswhyyouresingle
Remind me never to get into a sustained meaningful relationship then.
You can talk about ideas on what to do in the bedroom or kitchen instead of the weather. My girlfriend and I talk about the nature of the universe and consciousness quite often.
Sometimes you don’t need to fill the silence with sounds. I’d rather be in a relationship with someone that we can sit down and be quiet together
Or you can use literal sounds instead of words. My spouse and I have this thing going on where we make this kind of squeak/baloon sound with our mouth which has the same effect as “hi, nice to see you”.
Oh thank god my partner and I aren’t the only ones. Don’t get me wrong, we know and like that we’re weird, but it’s nice to have company.
A few steps away from becoming furries.
/satire
Me and my gf usually say Ahoozles (shortened from Anyhoozles) and just a way of saying “I want to talk to you, I just don’t know what I want to talk about
We just say “you know…” and then the other person will either say “yep/same” or “no I don’t know” depending on the mood. And if the cat makes noise we’ll also just say “I know buddy me too”
Hahahaha I love hearing about other people’s microcultures
My wife and I do things in threes: three taps, three nudges, three blinks, three noises, whatever. It means “I love you”. It’s a nice way to say it when you’re too tired to say it. I think it originated when we’d say it as we were falling asleep.
Or fuck.
For most couples that takes up like 15 minutes once every 3-5 days or possibly much longer.
Longer than 15 minutes?
Longer than 3-5 days I think
I don’t know if I have the stamina to go for 3 to 5 days, let alone longer!
Are you in a relationship, or have you been with someone before that truly enjoys hearing about little details of your day? What you ate, what your coworker joked about, etc? Silence is meaningful, of course, but so are the sounds of someone showing they love you everything you share.
They did say “sometimes”, but it seems like you took that to mean “all the times”?
Everything is a balance and people are different anyways. I don’t know many people who like any of the extremes. But it’s a different amount for everyone. And the “partner” thing is strange anyways. As long as you’re madly in love, you probably enjoy hearing about every pea in their canteen meal. That might fade after 20 years of marriage. Or a stressful day at work. Or with kids. Or it doesn’t. Both is fine. As long as it’s consenting partners. 😆
The key to understanding is finishing the sentence.
“I hate small talk… with people I have no reason to talk to and don’t care about.”
I love my partner, and even when it’s small talk I can listen all day, just to hear their voice and learn a little more about them, to feel closer to the person I married in many small ways.
But I don’t care about what Jim at the laundry mat did last weekend, or which machine he thinks makes socks dry faster.
But small talk is what got you your wife. What if Jim can be your future if you just gave him the time
Yeah, this one met its rider when it was searching for other worlds and happened upon drag performing a healing rite to a sickly dragon. How could one not love that that kind of power used for good?
Drag didn’t get drag’s dragon by doing small talk. Drag’s dragon fell in love with drag because it was impressed with drag’s magic.
Get yourself a girlfriend by impressing her with your arcane talents.
But I don’t care about what Jim at the laundry mat did last weekend, or which machine he thinks makes socks dry faster.
tough. :) here’s what he (might have) said: it’s the 2nd and 3rd dryers from the left. the smaller ones. you also need to use the smaller ‘double load’ front-loading washers. those have an extra extract cycle and get the most water out. the dryers used to literally only cost 25c to dry most loads (an extra quarter for all denim or something), but they (new owners of the laundry) increased the minimum needed per-load to $1.50 (on top of more than doubling the washers’ prices). greedy bastards.
I kinda want to know about the sock thing.
So you’re a small talk person
Sock drying speed is important information, not time filler like the weather or sports.
And Jim may have evidence to support his claim. This is important.
Unless the sport is competitive sock-drying.
The weather is life and death info
Most people talk about how sunny it is today and not climate change
Wife and I have a longstanding argument over whether free-will exists.
I say it does and she has no choice but to say otherwise.
and she has no choice
I am forced to see what you did there :D
One time I was talking about this with my friends. I said I believe it exists and they all laughed and said “particles have rules, you’re made of particles.” 🥺
Consider this, free will can still be pre-planned. We can choose what we want to do, so what if it was pre planned? I still chose it.
Why do we need to bother executing it then? Choice has no value if agency to exercise it is revoked at any stage.
if we don’t, then the predetermined outcome won’t happen!
Not executing it would also be predetermined. The only thing you can do is pretend to choose.
that thought affects your brain, and therefore the future! :D
But you didn’t choose to have the thought did you?
Quick think of a city and then explain to me why you didn’t pick ::: spoiler Title Cairo :::
speaking of brains, mine just exploded!
btw the text before the spoiler doesn’t show up on jerboa
I like to change definitions to secure my position also
what definition did I change?
The meaning of free will.
The meaning of free will is exactly what people are discussing when they talk about whether or not it exists. What does and what doesn’t count as free will is what’s up for discussion.
I think free will as a concept is kinda stupid I’ve yet to talk to anyone who can actually give it a solid definition that isn’t something like “it means we can do what we want”
Either your decision is based on your personality, meaning it’s not free it’s a set calculation based on genetics and accumulated experience or it’s completely random meaning it’s not will at all
Can your free will be restricted in any way? Someone in prison has less agency than you or I, if that means his free will is restricted then we have more free will than he does. Therefore it exists.
Free will as a philosophical concept has less to do with “I can do what I want” and more to do with “I have control over my actions/thoughts.” This gets into all sorts of interesting corners, such as:
- if God exists and is all-knowing, can God know what you’re about to do? If God does, is it really your choice, or just something God planned long ago?
- if God doesn’t exist, then we’re all products of everything that came before. Assuming that’s the case, a sufficiently powerful computer with a sufficiently large amount of data could determine what you’re about to do. If that’s the case, is it really your choice, or are you just a really complex automaton where the inputs (your life experiences and current situation) exactly determine your actions?
- in either of the above cases, if you’re unaware that another observer knows what you’ll do, do you retain free will? Does free will disappear the moment you learn of this observer? Can knowing about the observer change your actions in an unpredictable way, or can actions always be predicted?
And so on. There are some interesting discussions there at the edges, like at what point AI gains free will. That can have very real moral implications (i.e. when does AI get personhood?), so it’s not just idle chat.
If you just start talking to some random person about it, then you’re unlikely to get a high-quality conversation; because most of the stuff people will say about it is inane or obvious or obviously wrong, etc. But there are definitely interesting discussions and thoughts that can be had about it. I’ve had countless garbage conversations about, and a handful of good ones. Probably my favoutite take is from Daniel Dennett’s book “Freedom Evolves”. He is very careful to build up a strong picture of what is it that we’re talking about and what the ‘obvious’ problems are, before then carefully and systematically showing those things aren’t really problems with what we were talking about anyway. Before reading that book, I was hard line in the camp of “obviously free will doesn’t exist; that’s a scientific fact”; but after reading it… well, I’d now say “it depends exactly what you mean, but probably the free will you’re talking about does exist.”.
Free will exists because I can change my mind about liking or wanting something.
I want to rebuke you but you name is even more triggering. There is no linear chaos, you need non-linearities or discontinuities for chaos.
Glad I could be of use.
The concept behind linear chaos is that the chaos is bound at one point. The theoretical cone of influence can only move in one direction and widen at a set rate. Kind of a mashup of chaos over time.
Ah that’s really cool. So maybe similar to how turbulence can form at one point while the preceding flow remains laminar?
Yeah, chaos crops up in linear systems sometimes in unexpected places.
There are a couple of scientific papers on it, and at least one textbook. Even at that I’m not sure it’s a well-accepted theory, but the idea suits me.
How is it a choice if there is no other options?
/woosh
It’s really not much of a whoosh when some people hold that position legitimately
Absofuckinglutely. This is what I do, and what she does, though our methods of exploration vary.
They seem ritualistic social interactions. Like some bird’s courtship dance except there’s no relationships interest. So it’s just a burden that I didn’t want to participate in unless I have a genuine friendship.
I’d like to have similar interactions with my significant other to the ones I have with my cats. You know, things like siting on the couch together… saying silly things in even sillier voices… staring into each other’s eyes while blinking slowly… yelling at her to get down from the cupboard…
Talking philosophy is small talk.
Person: Hey you having a good morning?
Me: Depends… What does it mean to be a good person?
Define “good”.
“You see? We ended up at a semantic argument again!”
how do people who “hate small talk” plan on being in sustained meaningful relationships
That’s the neat part–I don’t!
haha I just small talk to appease social standards. In my ideal reality, intelligent beings are creating and doing greater things themselves every day and viewing it like a wasted day if they have not. I could, right now, talk about my design decisions I’m coding in to this editor today and what some of the plans are for it as of now. I wouldn’t talk about Why I’m focusing on the editor before the game because I’ve already been over that so there would be little gain for the ultimate quality of what I’m making in that conversation. And, with my ideal type of person, the conversation could easily drift in to what groundbreaking realms they are in too. It should be like this every day for an individual to be considered healthy. Comparatively, small talk is a waste meant to give vocalization options to beings fulfilling low to medium potential roles that cannot enter any realm of novelty themselves ~followers that cannot be waymakers. I know I say this in a realm of 90% people who are just fulfilling a low potential role while otherwise ‘passing the time’, just like the person in the post. So downvote me. You know it’s true tho and it isn’t the smalltalkers who are the next feynmans, einsteins, etc. Where do you aim for yourself? ‘passing the time’ ‘smalltalk’ level or higher?
💊
