(no subject)

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

I am well. I don't necessarily mean this in the medical sense, although I now have bloodwork to prive it (my sodium is 148 thingies, which is 3 thingies above the normal range of 135-145, but everything else is very, very healthy). And I don't particularyly mean this in the health sense, as I think I'm coming down with something. I just feel really... groovy? Sure. Groovy: relaxed, kind of happy - the mellow high that drugs promise but don't deliver. Not sure whiy. I think it has something to do with diet, exercise, sleep and work.

Social Awkwardness:
Meg and I continued our social experiment of circumventing both our obliviousness and the social norms surrounding disclosure to find out how we come across to others by asking each other to ask other people and reort back without saying who said what. Now there are other people in on this too. I think we started something elegant. I look forward to more results.

Personal Questions:
That reminds me. Meg was asking me "do you mind if I ask you about x."
Let it be known: when it comes to personal matters, I am happy to discuss pretty much any topic and to answer pretty much any question, so long as it's in a face-to-face conversation. I want to know about people's personal issues, and I want to share mine.  Nothing is inherently off-limits. If I am not comfortable with a topic,  which is extremely unlikely, I'll let you know. I'm on a communication-will-save-humanity kick right now, so this kind of feeds into it.

- And Chris accidentally called me "Amy"
I'm impressed.

Comments

something elegant?

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

i don't understand this fascination with silly social games. if you want to know what people think you should ask them yourselves. it sounds like a justification for gossip.

i'm fine with gossip. i'm fine with people talking behind others' backs. that's what people do. i do not, however, think that he said/she said without naming the he/she is really anything beyond he said/she said.

call me cynical.

***

as for communication saving humanity...well, maybe that's correct.

there's a difference between communication and full disclosure, though.

[hundun.livejournal.com]

The original object of this exercise was to try to infer what exactly we were doing to frustrate ourselves in romantic situations, but it's spilled around a bit.

It's more along the lines of X asks the group what their opinions of Y have been over time and what they have heard from other people, again - no names, nor may X ask who said what, although they may ask for elaboration. Y then reports this to X. Y does not reveal who said what. This allows one to get information on how people pereive you that you otherwise can't get. It may be unnecessary in your case, but it seems to get information which one otherwise could not get and it does so briefly and with a minimum of fuss. It's patterned after the bases of confidentiality and anonymity in increasing response detail in qualitative research - the more layers of anonymity and the more prompting, the more open people will be. The data received to date leaves me satisfied, and no one who has been queried has had any objections so far.

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

people are never open. they're maybe just telling different lies.

[hundun.livejournal.com]

I disagree, but even were I to assume that people are nover totally open (even to themselves, perhaps), I think that I must accept that some things people say are more accurate than others. In this case, would it not be wise to try to provoke the most honest response?

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

the most honest response is the one they're unaware you're looking for.

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

it is best gauged through analysing their behavior, not asking questions.

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

I am exceptionally good at protecting people whom i hate from the knowledge that I hate them. Having the information anonymized through some third party may or may not make me bolder.

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

how do you know? i have it on reasonably good authority that you don't hate anyone! :P

[spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com]

Either that, or I'm doing a good job of deceiving you.

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

oh woe! i must cry in my corner now!

[osmie]

True -- but only for the majority of the population which is wired to be able to understand others' behaviour. Anyone who lives on the autistic/Asperger's spectrum is likely to find this advice impossible to follow. The only way to analyze other people's behaviour is to ask questions, because behaviour itself doesn't carry any intrinsic meaning. One might as well analyze random numbers for all the good it'll do.

My own dose of Asperger's is extremely mild -- luckily for me -- but I still recoil from the idea of having to make accurate projections from others' behaviour. That's so difficult! It means studying people extremely closely (yet without creeping them out), figuring out which bits of their behaviour are significant and which ones are random, and then settling down to run through possibilities in my head until I figure out which are the likeliest scenarios ... there's so much room for error that I wouldn't want to stake anything truly important on the results. I'm told I'm usually pretty good at it, but truly, I much prefer Sasha's idea. Language is so much clearer.

[bloodykitty.livejournal.com]

perhaps language is clearer. if one is doing the questioning oneself.