2026-06-25
X: I met a friend. Y: I got more convinced I don't enjoy social interaction much
Disclaimer
- personal
- target audience - strictly myself
Main
- [I have lot of private notes about some interactions I've had recently.]
- One point I think is safe to talk about publicly is just: maybe I just don't enjoy social interaction much.
- Maybe this has nothing to do with ASI risk. Until now I was predicting all sorts of failure modes like I will lose motivation for current plans, or I will be angry with them, or they won't understand my grief. And like yes all of these are true and have totally happened in the past. But none of these have happened in more recent conversations, and yet I just think the conversations are meh, whatever, mildly positive but that's it.
- Maybe this has nothing to do with who the person is (man or woman, younger or older, technical/non-technical, regardless of ideology or their stance on ASI risk) or what type of interaction they want (advice, emotional support, shared hobby etc).
- If I look at my entire life, I can't point to any continuous period where I was sober and consistently enjoyed social interaction with a person for that time period. I only seemed to have enjoyed social interactions with people while not sober, at which point I have to genuinely wonder how much of the enjoyment was even because of the person.
- I could empathise with people more while not sober, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't eventually get bored of them. Eventually even with them, I would end up with a cadence of meeting sometimes, talk something, whatever, etc.
- At this point, I genuinely don't think I will enjoy social interaction even if I had a girlfriend.
- Until now, I seem to have been telling myself stories around okay, maybe you are bored of interaction with men, maybe you'll enjoy interaction with women more. But honestly I'm not sure even that is true.
- Like yes, I do think having sex with someone you love is great, I do plan to be there for such a person if they want someone to listen, or someone to give advice, or similar. But my honest guess in this moment (I could ofcourse be wrong) is that after a few months, and assuming I was sober the whole time, I will eventually get bored of anything beyond this bare minimum, even with this person, even if I love them.
- This should be a valid preference to have? Like, it is not obvious to me there is something inherently wrong with this.
- I would have preferred to be born into a mind and body that was capable of enjoying social interaction a lot more than this, but maybe I just, don't? And maybe I just need to adapt to this reality.
- It is obviously still true that social interaction is the aspect of life I enjoy the most. I can't point to anything else I have consistently enjoyed more than this, for any time period. But I don't even enjoy social interaction that much.
- One way of looking at this is calling it anhedonia or social anhedonia or whatever, and looking at it as a problem to be fixed. But another way of looking at is that this just normal and who I am lol.
- People can give me a lot of unhappiness, even if they can give me very little happiness.
- The upside of my good interactions is very little, and the downside of my bad interactions is high. The downside is things like white hot rage, loss of motivation for weeks, etc if a conversation goes particularly poorly. The upside is real too but maybe not that intense.
- I am currently at neutral mood to be honest. Neutral / mildly positive. Neither happy nor unhappy. Neutral is good.
Two hour fog
- In my previous notes I wrote something about the "two hour fog" hypothesis, which is basically I seem to be able to connect with people better (empathise with them, be more curious about them, etc) if I force myself to endure 2 hours of paying attention to something that is not ASI risk.
- This hypothesis is still live, and not necessarily invalidated by all my experiences of past couple of weeks.
- Side Note - but maybe not being sober plays a similar effect, in order to cut the two hour fog. Maybe sleep deprivation plays a similar effect (I have past experiences here). Heck maybe even travel does that, although the discusson around travel is a lot more nuanced.
Meta note
- I am very happy this note is in the "X: I did X. Y: Response was Y" format. I can just look at this note and realise it feels Real in a way, because it follows this format.
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