Continuing with my tradition of posting things that are of use to almost nobody, I present the genius face koan.
No, this is not a method for being a genius. It is a method to STOP being a genius.
Bruce Charlton has described various dimensions of genius. The one relevant to our discussion is mental repurposing. The genius is crippled in mundane life because his brain is heavily repurposed towards his specialty. His survival value is diminished, to the benefit of the group. This is K.
So I may fairly claim to exhibit this trait, to general eye-rolls and agreement, without claiming to be a genius in the Newton, Einstein sense.
Next, let us add deepsocket and low digit ratio.
I have explained on the NeanderHall that we must distinguish between deep-soul affect and surface affect. The stoic introvert is shifted deep; the teary flibbergibbet is shifted shallow. We assume that total affect intensity is the same; it is only the depth that differs.
My affect is heavily shifted deep. Moreover, my cognition is heavily repurposed genius.
What is the result, my dear friends? Can you guess?
I suck at large-group socializing! Which we already knew. But why? Aha, now we can explain.
When I walk into a buzzing room of cheerful, witty, calculating, swirling surface affect, the world. slows. down.
When you open 15 application windows on your ancient laptop, the world. slows. down.
Heck, it may even crash. (Pronoun antecedent left deliberately ambiguous.) At best, the experience will be far more trouble than it’s worth.
The computer slows down because CPU speed is slow and RAM is small.
The brain slows down because affect speed is slow and IQ is small.
IQ small? Koanic, I thought you were an ubermensch!
Well, yes, I am. However, it is the allocation that counts. If I am thinking in the deep thought style, I will not be able to simultaneously construct essays and keep pace.
This is common knowledge among social gurus, but nonetheless harder to fix the more one’s cognition is specialized towards the impractical. “Just get out of your head” is good advice for most, but nature’s chosen specialists may need something more industrial strength.
Like, “Temporarily resection your brain to allocate resources towards social performance. Don’t worry, it’s not permanent.”
Funny thing about geniuses. Given a choice between mission and getting laid, we’ll choose the former. So that last bit is important.
I really have to remind myself that it’s not permanent. Greedy genius drive is a CPU hog.
In fact, I might do better to tell myself: “This temporary reallocation’s only purpose is to secure additional free CPU cycles, which will pay off handsomely.”
Casual socializing? Casual home arson. You get the point.
The biggest problem a genius faces is that even when he forces his feet to show up, his mind remains firmly in a book. The one he’s writing in his head.
** Affect style FTW
So we are functionally retarded. No problem. Stupid people have been chattering away since the invention of language.
Not so fast. Aside from a glacial output of deep analysis, you’ve got nothing to say! Why is that?
Because you’re generating your topics from deep affect, not shallow. And deep affect is not a very nimble thing. Its preferred modes of travel are erosion and tectonic shift, with the occasional eruption to liven things up.
Hm. Cognition shifting advice is common. But affect depth shifting? Never heard of it! How would one even begin???
At this point the genius usually gives up and begins medicating heavily. However, since this is our actual area of specialization, that would be a cop-out. Also, we are out of drugs.
So. Affirmations? Mantras? How about, “I am a shallow, vapid person. Here are a bunch of strangers I can use to flatter my self-vanity through superficial contacted, feigned interest and empty comraderie.”
Jack Handy, eat your heart out. I should write a book.
Networking: “Our cheerful signaling will form a minimal baseline of probabilistic trust which we may leverage to reduce market efficiencies while pursuing egoic fulfillment. Some of these people may be child molesters.”
Can’t take credit for that one, it’s from LinkedIn.
Clearly text is not getting us there. How does one develop an interest in “people” when there are 7 billion currently alive and far more unread great books and undone great projects than lifespan remaining? Shall we rhapsodize with Gandalf on the pleasures of hobbit-bothering? Bash ourselves with Christian love for the humble sinner? Deny with Marx that inequality exists?
Begorra. Lobotomizing the deep self into some obviously incorrect conclusion is not the answer. We must change our vector of attack.
This is not about changing attitudes. It is about changing hardware. The deep self is supposed to sit back and chill out during these encounters, while SOMETHING ELSE handles the bulk of the interaction. The answer is not to give the billionaire driving lessons, or sitting-in-the-car lessons, but to hire a chauffeur.
Let’s check out the local labor pool. Hm, Jeeves the Mirror Neuron. Excellent social pedigree, 55 million years of service in prestigious primate skulls. Hired.
And it turns out, I have plenty of them. Which I was using for… face reading theory and social sensitivity threshold overwhelm. Perhaps not the most practical choice, all things considered.
I recently mentioned that I could model a face’s personality by “slipping it on”. And now I’ve established that I basically don’t allocate enough brain hardware to run my own surface personality. (Which is fucking hilarious. I do have a personality! It’s just under-resourced!)
So the obvious solution is to “slip on” my own face. Heaviside would love this; it’s so self-reflexive and obtusely overcomplicated. Yet this is apparently what I must do.
I can’t deliberately shut down my deep self, even for a second, without an immediate depressive “I just killed my soul” crash. So I’ll leave the koan diagram in the middle, and put my frontal and profile pics on the left and right. And then I’ll extrapolate and emulate my own God-damned personality.
Maybe I can even do some kind of energy channeling from core to facepics to generate the requisite narcissistic self love.
Now this sounds crazier than it is. Of course I do have a personality, and occasionally exhibit it at times by engaging the trivial. But over time, genius drive has subsumed more and more of it. This gives me a way to temporarily reverse the trend. We’ll see if it works.
Straitjackets: Because crazy people need hugs, but hugging them is crazy.
EDIT: Since implementing this, I find productivity friction greatly reduced. The deep self is the tank, the surface self its turret. Much easier to turn the turret than the tank. Ergo, much easier to decide what to do next when switching tasks. Much simpler heuristics involved. Damn that’s a nice feeling.