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The Science of Making Friends

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Re: The Science of Making Friends

#61

Post by SFJulie »

Made a bot that was used for dating. Nothing smart, just visiting pages of other persons randomly between 1/3 days and normally triggering alarms.

Girls thought I was shy.

I thought nothing, only that my model of human beings was right: people prefer 100 bouquet of one rose then 1 bouquet of 100 roses.

Since then, I stopped using bots even though it was successful and I prefered to learn from the bots : just be considerate, and even if you don't think of it consciously, because you may come back to where you were, you might influence positively people's opinion. Even cats and animals comes to me on a regular basis now (probably uncorrelated, but who knows?)

Being polite and considerate does not always mean being lowering your eyes when you see a bully :)

Since then, I make friends slower, but with more quality. and since my "turn over" in friendship is low, I kind of do not mind having enough time to share quality time with them.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#62

Post by TeMPOraL »

hodwik wrote: post #4

> "People with higher I.Q.s were less content when they spent more time with friends. Psychologists theorize that these folks keep themselves intellectually stimulated without a lot of social interaction, and often have a long-term goal they are pursuing." Therein lies the rub. Having friends makes you happier, as long as your friends are intellectually stimulating. I've been trying desperately for years to make some…

> Do you have any advice for generalists in need of smart friends?

I'm a generalist in need of smart friends too :(. That said, I've had some success with helping to create (and now running) a local hackerspace - most people who hang out at such places are usually pretty smart, so you have one half of your criterion met. So maybe check out if there's a hackerspace in your town, and go see what kind of people come to it?

Also, a big reason why I'm hanging out on HN is because I get the chance to read (and sometimes even engage with) smart people with broad areas of expertise :).

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#63

Post by nlh »

colmvp wrote: post #56
nlh wrote: post #41

For all the negative things folks have been saying on here about SF (expensive, etc.) there's a huge positive that overshadows all of it for me: I've made more new friends in the last 3 years since I moved to SF than, I'd honestly say, my previous decade living in NYC. I'm 37 now and feel like I have more of a community than in college. I think the key to finding real friends and friendships is to be in a place where…

Strange. I had the opposite experience. I made more friends in NYC in 2 years than real friends in SF in 4. That's not to blame people, because hey, it takes two to tango and my behavior sabotaged my own success. But even though I am in tech, I still never felt comfortable in the monoculture of SF than while in NY.

Interesting data point - thanks for sharing.

Tell me more: how did you meet and make friends in NYC?

In SF - I find there's a more intimate social scene -- more dinner parties than bar nights, so easier to have meaningful interactions. Maybe I'm just seeing the product of my own growing up...

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#64

Post by sloreti »

wskinner wrote: post #55

One point missed by this article (but mentioned by another commenter) is that it's not enough to just want more friends. It's not even enough to meet another person who also wants friends. What keeps friends together is perceived mutual exchange of value - it sounds callous, but I challenge anyone to describe a friendship that lasted where either party believed they derived no value. Our lizard brains aggressively pr…

"The only way to have a friend is to be one" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#65

Post by baron816 »

stonecraftwolf wrote: post #52
baron816 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think/hope my start up, Krewe ( https://www.gokrewe.com ), has found the right formula. I believe the key elements are access and comfort. Krewe places people into a group with five of their peers, making it comfortable to hang out at first. You don't have to single anyone out, it works kind of how things worked in your youth. And everyone lives within a half mile radius, so it's really convenient to meet up often.…

I thought this was a cool idea, and so I just signed up, but I was so alarmed by the process that I made an HN account to address this here. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you drop people into randomly assigned groups of people who live within a certain distance without giving the user a chance to screen that group for people they already may know and need to avoid? This is such an obvious potential problem that…

Thank you for very much for your feedback. I really appreciate it.

Yes, Krewe does drop you into a group as soon as you sign up and you don't get to see who's in it. Keep in mind that we never give ANYONE your location or email address. You also have the choice to leave the group right away and join a new group and you have the ability to vote people out of a group.

But I strongly believe the platform simply won't work if people are able to pick and choose who they want to be in a group with. It's not hard to imagine that men will only want to be in a group with attractive women. If people can choose, then they'll only choose "the best."

I believe that the issues you raised apply to essentially anything in life. Every time you go to the grocery story, you run the risk of bumping into someone you don't like. If you go on Tinder, you can come across your ex. If you join a recreational kickball league, you could be put on a team with your arch nemesis. Krewe doesn't make you interact with anyone, it just give you the opportunity to do so. You should always meet up with new people in a safe, public space.

With that said, I will be making some small changes that I hope will help address your concerns.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#67

Post by elorant »

stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

That’s because we’re all possessed with the idea of changing the world. We focus so much on the big picture that we lose track of what’s important in life. We also think that once you get past forties and haven’t done anything important you’re doomed for the rest of your life.

We can’t go back to the park again because we take life (and ourselves) too fucking seriously.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#68

Post by stegosaurus »

baron816 wrote: post #65
stonecraftwolf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this was a cool idea, and so I just signed up, but I was so alarmed by the process that I made an HN account to address this here. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but you drop people into randomly assigned groups of people who live within a certain distance without giving the user a chance to screen that group for people they already may know and need to avoid? This is such an obvious potential problem that…

Thank you for very much for your feedback. I really appreciate it. Yes, Krewe does drop you into a group as soon as you sign up and you don't get to see who's in it. Keep in mind that we never give ANYONE your location or email address. You also have the choice to leave the group right away and join a new group and you have the ability to vote people out of a group. But I strongly believe the platform simply won't wo…

I'm struggling to figure out OP's context (not sure why they're not just saying it) but one thing I can come up with is restraining orders.

It doesn't seem too outrageous to me that the use case of 'have been in a neighbourhood for a while and already have enemies' is just outside of the scope of the program, though. It has far more utility for people who have just moved to a new town and have no contacts at all.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#69

Post by modarts »

stegosaurus wrote: post #48
stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

Christ, in some ways, this thread makes me want to just like, teleport some people from HN into the local park with some beers. I think we'd have a great time. No vi vs emacs, mind.

I'd love to have an HN irl meetup sometime.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#70

Post by nostrademons »

stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

I've observed the same but interpret it differently.

Life gets more differentiated as you get older. You learn what makes you happy and what doesn't, you experience different situations and react to them, and you make decisions about who you're going to be and what you're going to do. And all of that becomes part of your identity. It's part of your accumulated self-knowledge.

And part of that is perceiving differences in how you see the world vs. how other people see the world.

A banker, a janitor, a nurse, an engineer, and a dropout can all still be friends if they have something in common, and confine their friendship to that thing. I still occasionally get together with my high-school friends, when I happen to be back home, and we've become bankers, janitors, nurses, engineers, and dropouts. But 15 years after graduation, the high school we went to is an increasingly small part of our identities. And it feels constraining to hang out all the time, like you're denying all the other parts of yourself that you've discovered since. It's great to get together for a weekend and reminisce about old times, but it's not something I'd want to do every weekend.

The economic aspects are second-order effects. Yes, this tends to stratify people into economic tiers. But the reason for that is that it's hard to do anything for a significant portion of your life without it becoming part of your identity, and it's hard for a skillset to pay off without doing it for a significant portion of your life. And different skillsets are compensated wildly differently, based on supply & demand.

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