Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Philosopher's Experiment - Fatal Flaws

After I made the first step in my experiment, it occurred to me that I had overlooked a fatal flaw in the experiment's design. The personality of the intended target is such that if you get on her bad side at all, you disappear from existence in her mind. It is as if you no longer exist and really never existed in the first place. When forced to acknowledge your existence by engaging her in conversation or by someone else referring to you directly in conversation, she recognizes your existence only marginally - to the minimum extent that it takes to remove you again from existence. I do not think she does this intentionally or maliciously, but as a defense mechanism to deal with stressful and possibly confrontational situations.

What does this mean for me? Well, it means that I picked possibly the worst possible mark for my experiment. Unless I can get her to acknowledge my existence at all, the entire experiment fails right off the bat. However, in order to get her to acknowledge my existence, we would have to be on neutral terms again, therefore effectively undermining the more grand scheme of the experiment.

However, all is not lost. If by using the conventions of the experiment, I can get her from being hostile to neutral, it will still be a success. Unfortunately, that is likely to take several months and I'm not even sure where to begin my work. Therefore, I think a change of goals may be in order. I will not give up on this task, but let it sit on the back burner for now. I think it may be a more important task to hone my approach in the first place. There are quite a few females in the group who are either neutral towards me or have only marginal positive feelings for me. I know that not talking about myself has become very difficult over the past few years (probably stemming from some internal social anxiety to do with unfamiliar territory and the need to feel like I relate to those I talk to.) Some practice speaking only of myself in order to prompt more information from the mark might be in order.

Edit: Decided to try applying this process to an old friend of mine who I haven't talked to in nearly forever, imitating what it would be like to start this process from the beginning. If I can see how it is supposed to run, I should be able to replicate the process in different situations.

Don't ever say I'm no Scientist.

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