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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3371 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 14, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How unreasonable is it to prioritize work over interpersonal connections? I truly enjoy my work and find it so much more gratifying than anything else I have ever done in my life, but there seems to be some sort of prevailing consensus that you are only human if you relate to others? Has anyone else led a somewhat more solitary existence and prioritized only themselves over connections with others (outside of the connections you make at work anyway in a team, although those connections are more transactional in nature)?

It's reasonable if it's a stable, long term preference. If it's only an intermittent preference, and especially if you might want a family, your late 20s and early 30s is exactly the wrong time to remain socially secluded.

At some point companionship would be helpful but I am opposed to children, even though they’re lovely, because of other personal reasons.

How were your early 30s in terms of socialization? I don’t dislike the idea of it, but the effort vs returns can vary significantly

How were your early 30s in terms of socialization? I don’t dislike the idea of it, but the effort vs returns can vary significantly

I moved states, got married, had a baby, and moved again during Covid, so my social life outside my husband and family was pretty thin.

In my late 20s, my social connections were through church, liberal arts college, and volunteer work, and that was lovely. We were putting on supras (formal toasting dinner parties), bonfires, game and beer nights, holiday festivities, meditation meet ups and other pleasant events.

Personally, I would have gotten burnt out working all the time and not prioritizing community get togethers, but I'm a woman, low in conscientiousness, and doing the kind of work where more work doesn't result in increased opportunities, so ymmv.

Your 20s sound so idyllic, thank you for describing them and your life now too, it all sounds lovely. I sort of imagined myself vicariously at a bonfire too for a moment.

This is the thing with socialization, it never seems like a bad thing and people’s overall view of them doing all this is always great to learn about.

I’m a woman too but I think I crave positive reinforcement in the form of quantized and measurable feedback which a high-impact, complex job seems to offer. Sometimes I struggle with such feedback from human beings, and it might be unseemly to ask people to rate their social interactions with me on a scale of 1-10?

it might be unseemly to ask people to rate their social interactions with me on a scale of 1-10?

Haha.

I remember enjoying how CS Lewis talked about philia in The Four Loves.

My parents keep joining book clubs; currently they're looking forwards to a TS Eliot meetup. But we were all educated lower middle class, and didn't have any idea how to get complex, satisfying jobs with quantized and measurable feedback. We've mostly had the kinds of jobs where feedback came in the form of getting yelled at, or sometimes unexpectedly fired. I can see how it would be very appealing to put time and effort into an actually good job that you're good at.

We've mostly had the kinds of jobs where feedback came in the form of getting yelled at, or sometimes unexpectedly fired

That sounds terrible and that is my fear that if you devote yourself even to a satisfying job at some point you may lose your humanity and see people as numbers (or worse human resources, or worse liabilities on a balance sheet)

I'm curious to see what, if anything, comes of the LLM driven automation of the next decade. It seems primed, especially, to take over low level management work. I wonder if it would be better or worse for the average worker to have high level decisions made by an AI program vs a human manager. Thinking of some of the human decisions, it might be mixed. Reports out of Amazon warehouses aren't great.

We've been learning about the mining labor struggles of 19th Century Colorado. This isn't from Colorado, but is a good song: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MjFcllICjUc

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