The Science of Making Friends • Hacker News Board

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#211

Post by Spakman » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

abraca wrote: post #159

I have the opposite problem to most people, of having too many friends. And the number is ever-growing. Wherever I go - job, hobby, school - I pick up more friends. It's wonderful in that I am never lonely and I feel very loved. It is difficult though too because I sometimes feel overwhelmed and that I am not able to be a good friend myself. I have so many invitations, emails, texts etc that I can't keep up. I adore…

I'm glad you wrote this. I feel similarly myself, although it sounds like the making of friends comes more naturally to you. I have a surplus of friends that I know could become much closer friends if I was able to dedicate more time to those relationships, but the truth is that I already have a lot of excellent close friends.

It's absolutely lovely but exhausting. I too feel overwhelmed by texts, invites and the like and am trying to figure out how to handle this without compromising myself too much (life is tough right now and I feel like I need an increasing amount of time on my own right now). Honesty about it is the approach I've been taking - I try to be the best friend I can to all of those closest to me, but bear in mind that I am also the most important friend I have.

FWIW, I'm exactly with you on your points 1, 2 (replace calm with excitable sometimes though!) and 3.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#212

Post by rjsw » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 3:15 PM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #197

ChuckMcM wrote: post #104

There used to be a place in the Bay Area called "a clean well lighted place for books" which was a book store (of course) but it was also a pretty decent place to hang out. Of course talking and reading were fun (sort of a library without the librarian shhing you all the time) but I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was more tech oriented. Of course you would need something to hack o…

> I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was more tech oriented. Isn't this exactly a hacker space? Well...besides the clean part.

Yes, but why would I want to go to a hacker space, I have plenty of toys at home.

The excuse to go to the bookstore was to see what new books had come in.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#213

Post by Spakman » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

Spakman wrote: post #211

abraca wrote: post #159

I have the opposite problem to most people, of having too many friends. And the number is ever-growing. Wherever I go - job, hobby, school - I pick up more friends. It's wonderful in that I am never lonely and I feel very loved. It is difficult though too because I sometimes feel overwhelmed and that I am not able to be a good friend myself. I have so many invitations, emails, texts etc that I can't keep up. I adore…

I'm glad you wrote this. I feel similarly myself, although it sounds like the making of friends comes more naturally to you. I have a surplus of friends that I know could become much closer friends if I was able to dedicate more time to those relationships, but the truth is that I already have a lot of excellent close friends. It's absolutely lovely but exhausting. I too feel overwhelmed by texts, invites and the lik…

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I'm one of the most open, positive and optimistic people I know and I just want everyone to enjoy life and being alive as much as I do. Perhaps people like that.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#214

Post by Spakman » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

iammew wrote: post #177

They are all laughing over salad and a half eaten scotch egg. I'm glad I don't have friends like these.

Don't you wish that made you laugh?

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#215

Post by kingmanaz » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

Perhaps someone should create a "learnxinyminutes" for this.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#216

Post by andreygrehov » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 3:44 PM UTC

abraca wrote: post #159

I have the opposite problem to most people, of having too many friends. And the number is ever-growing. Wherever I go - job, hobby, school - I pick up more friends. It's wonderful in that I am never lonely and I feel very loved. It is difficult though too because I sometimes feel overwhelmed and that I am not able to be a good friend myself. I have so many invitations, emails, texts etc that I can't keep up. I adore…

With the only exception that all those people are not friends per se. They are just people you know in person.

I tend to say: "People with many friends do not have friends". I'm sure it's not a fact, but more like a rule of thumb, based on my personal observation.

My wife has a talent of building connections and enlarging the network. She attracts people like a magnet and I was always fascinated about that. I once asked her: "You know all those people, but is there the one you could truly call a friend?". In a second, she realized what I was asking about and said: "No, I don't have friends..."

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#217

Post by EGreg » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 3:49 PM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #119

stegosaurus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only explains half of the picture, though. The photograph in the linked article explains it quite well to me - regardless of how 'real' it is, there's a picture of a shiny gathering with the dresses and the shiny clothes and the fancy food, and so on. And there's nothing wrong with that. I love me some good dress-up and the food there looks super yum. But the simple gatherings seem to have disappeared. Outside o…

Do a weekly (or monthly) dinner. They key is consistency (OK an informality: byob, bring something you like, open invite instead of rsvps, etc).

Jews do this - they have Shabbat every week, and festivals and other things where people live in a community and have to interact.

Christians also have traditional Church attendance and so do Muslims and many other faiths I'm sure. The point is, traditional life revolved around a community. Today, everyone is very individualistic in the USA. They move out and have their own place, not just the men but the women too. The grandparents live alone and then are shipped off to nursing homes while the kids are shipped off to daycares. But it wasn't always like this. In our modern society we are disconnected like never before.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#218

Post by notduncansmith » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

stegosaurus wrote: post #204

notduncansmith wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't basic income take care of that? The idea being that once companies have to compete with the entire world (as opposed to a few other companies) for your time and attention, flexible hours (and many other changes to the relationship between employees and companies) will become the default.

I hope so. I try to live in that way, and I try to encourage those around me to live in that way (refusing imbalanced employment conditions). I think if enough people did, we could start to help each other, rather than relying on capital and private property so much. Basic income is one sort of stepping stone towards that. Ultimately I think the ideal is people actually having real choices, not the huge bias we have…

We totally can change the rules. We made them up. Most modern modern value systems are rooted in the scarcity mindset - the idea that there isn't enough (of whatever) to go around. The people that created those systems weren't bad, their ideas are just outdated. Now that technology has changed the calculus, and there IS enough to go around, it's just a matter of overcoming the momentum of the old value systems. You're right, basic income is a bridge measure. It demonstrates abundance for the skeptics, and shows us what pretty much full autonomy for every member of a society could look like. I'm not sure what comes after that, but if you've read Manna, the Australia Project as described at the end seems to have a lot of desirable qualities. It's a short read, and well worth reading (and has been on HN a few times, I think). Obviously we're not quite there, but it's not hard to envision if enough smart people were free to work on the various elements of that future, unrestricted by manufactured pressure to pursue more immediately-profitable endeavors.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#219

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 5:43 PM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #197

ChuckMcM wrote: post #104

There used to be a place in the Bay Area called "a clean well lighted place for books" which was a book store (of course) but it was also a pretty decent place to hang out. Of course talking and reading were fun (sort of a library without the librarian shhing you all the time) but I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was more tech oriented. Of course you would need something to hack o…

> I always wanted to create "A clean well lighted place to hack." which was more tech oriented. Isn't this exactly a hacker space? Well...besides the clean part.

There are two ways in which the bookstore differed from the current implementation of hacker spaces; ad-hoc local usage (book browsing), and commercial activity (book buying).

The hacker spaces I've been too have all shared a common "mode" which is "bring your stuff and we'll work in the same room." The allure being the social aspects and the interactions with other people interested in your space. But that has two problems, generally "moving" your space from where you work to the hacker space (for small embedded projects that is really hard), and for software projects they aren't necessarily "shared" any better in a social context other than IRC.

Hence the idea of the 'hack wall' which would be some common infrastructure that everyone would be able to see and work with (from a distance on their computers) and a common understanding of the opportunity and constraints. My thesis is that this is what the jigsaw puzzle does as a party, anyone can share in working on it, skilled or unskilled. At a conference I attended there was a similar sort of idea with "craft sticks" (aka popsicle sticks) and hot glue guns, but I think the need to be "artsy" was intimidating some people.

In my imagination the wall would be constructed somewhat like sections in a garden railroad might be, where each square would have some standard requirements, like power on the corners, 3.3v data busses, RS-423 connections, and maybe a serial port. And you could put squares together using something like 80/20 extrusions, then jumper across to the "standard" connectors, and each square would have a page in a local gitlab server which described its makeup. So to talk to an inner square you would have to create interfaces from the outer squares (which might all have a RasPi on them) to get to the inner squares.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#220

Post by coldtea » Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 6:15 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #209

coldtea wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that even with co-workers at the same bank, or one's "society for foo" it's extremely difficult and rare to hangout after a certain age. There are so many (work and self-imposed) obligations and "obligations" and BS, that it's even difficult to have quality/fun time with one's spouse. And this certainly cannot be explained away with "the spouse is a tiny part of your current experience/identity". So I…

[deleted]

>i dont know whats going on with your spouse, but you're assuming your experience is universal.

No, I'm merely making an informed guess that my experience is common enough.

Never heard about "not spending enough time with the family" as a thing of modern life, a.k.a "work/life balance" issue?

Here are some pointers: "According to a new study by Harvard and McGill University researchers, the United States lags far behind nearly all wealthy countries when it comes to family-oriented workplace policies such as maternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast feeding. Jody Heyman, founder of the Harvard-based Project on Global Working Families and director of McGill’s Institute for Health and Social Policy, states that, "More countries are providing the workplace protections that millions of Americans can only dream of. The U.S. has been a proud leader in adopting laws that provide for equal opportunity in the workplace, but our work/family protections are among the worst."

"As previously mentioned, Americans work approximately 47.1 hours each week; some employees work up to seventy hours. Therefore, it is safe to state that the average number of hours Americans presently work each week is the highest it has been in nearly seventy-five years."

"Fewer than half of working parents stay home when their children are sick, even though research shows that sick children recover more quickly when a parent is there. …54 percent of working women are not entitled to any paid leave for taking care of a sick child or other family members"