141–150 of 168 posts
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It's remarkable how much of the criticism aimed at SV can be summed up as: # they're 20-something. # they're white. # they're male. # and this is low status.
The criticism was about the products / services.
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Maybe its a cultural thing. Around here we grow up and learn to state our preferences honestly and understanding its not hurtful to be truthful but rather the opposite. Weaseling about is something you correct small children on.
Does that extend to backing out of a social engagement at very short notice, simply because you no longer feel like it, without fear of causing offense? I think a lot of people make plans with friends in all sincerity, but sometimes end up feeling tired or socially burned out whatever, and wish they had left the time free but would feel unfriendly canceling at the last minute without a stronger reason. edit: also, I…
And if you really need to back out because of course nobody is always perfectly estimating their energy levels, you simply say it like it is: I'm tired, let's reschedule for some other time.
Respect is shown by not wasting other peoples time. Don't act, if we are really friends I'll see through you anyway, and I also respect that you really are tired and cannot come.
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Maybe its a cultural thing. Around here we grow up and learn to state our preferences honestly and understanding its not hurtful to be truthful but rather the opposite. Weaseling about is something you correct small children on.
I want to be wherever you are! Here, you make up a plausible-sounding excuse, and it's up to the other person to guess whether you're just being polite or not, based on whether you've made so many excuses that it's statistically improbable that they are the truth.
We're all human, and we all need downtime, no shame or guilt in admitting that.
I can't imagine being friends with someone who is this incapable of communicating. The solution to this problem is sending a text that says, "Hey, I'm not feeling like coming out today after all. Rain check?" This app is a worse solution than the obvious solution. Trying to be empathetic: if you feel the need to use something like this, I'm not qualified to diagnose you as having social anxiety, but I would suggest y…
But this app doesn't send any notification to the other person unless they also bail, so it is not equivalent to sending that text. If the other person doesn't bail, you can stick with the commitment. That opens possibilities, like getting a better opinion about time spent with that person.
The "possibility" this opens up is not taking responsibility for your own choices, and keeping really inane secrets from people who are supposedly your friends.
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That... also sounds worse. This is all just advocating for not actually communicating with your friends. That's not friendship, that's transactional hanging-out.
I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Let me tell you a story. Wednesdays, my friends and I go to the bar to hang out. We grab some beers and some wings, and we have a bit of a chat about, y'know, whatever. Sometimes we're around because someone just wants some company. Sometimes we're around because someone just wants to gripe about something going on. Sometimes we're there because... well, some Wednes…
It's not complicated, all I did was just summarize how you said you felt in two sentences.
I can't imagine being friends with someone who is this incapable of communicating. The solution to this problem is sending a text that says, "Hey, I'm not feeling like coming out today after all. Rain check?" This app is a worse solution than the obvious solution. Trying to be empathetic: if you feel the need to use something like this, I'm not qualified to diagnose you as having social anxiety, but I would suggest y…
I disagree, hear me out. The reason this app makes sense is because if you are an empathetic person, and know other empathetic people, there's actually no good way to solve this problem through direct communication. Lets say you have plans with someone. But then, you decide fundamentally: if the other person would still like to do this, I am happy to. But if not, I'd prefer not to. This is the game theoretic situatio…
If your friends are mature adults, they can handle being told that someone doesn't want to hang out with them sometimes, without taking it personally. If they can't handle that, that's a problem that needs to be addressed--it's not a kind or empathetic thing to walk around on eggshells and let that problem fester and grow. This isn't a "kind lie" even if such a thing exists. What you're describing isn't empathy for your friends, it's fear/anxiety that your friends won't react well, and if your friends are quality friends at all, it's not a rational fear.
To be clear, moral failure has nothing to do with my argument: I don't even believe in morality in an absolute sense. My argument is that, assuming people want to have cooperative, enjoyable interactions with friends, the best way to achieve that is to tell the truth about what you want and expect the same from your friends.
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I think more than 0.15% of people feel guilt/anxiety about wanting to cancel plans last minute. I don't have any data to back that up, but it is a fairly common emotion. 999/1000 people feel nothing when they have to renege on a social engagement?
No those people just know how to communicate like a normal human and say hey I'm really not up for it tonight let's reschedule. If anyone replies negatively or aggressively to that they then should find new friends. This is ridiculous
At the same time it is surprising that you can't even a little bit relate to the anxiety of trying to figure out how to get out of a social engagement. It is very reductive to recommend that you just 'find new friends'.
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I’m sorry but this has nothing to do with empathy. As an adult, you should have the grace to understand that sometimes people, for whatever reason, don’t feel up to hanging out. You are seriously overthinking this. Empathetic people can still communicate.
My claim is that empathetic people can be dishonest and still be virtuous, not that no empathetic people can be honest. Concretely, I know people who do not express preferences directly on such things where it may harm me, out of empathy for me. I don't consider these people morally corrupt despite not being completely truthful. An app like this (or any tool like this) which removes the conflict between these values…
It seems like this is a reasonable response to andrewzah, but to be clear, my argument has nothing to do with virtue--I don't even believe in virtue ethics.
I also know people who don't express preferences directly when they think those preferences will harm me. We can call this empathy or we can call it fear, but what it comes down to is that it's irrational: the end result is that they don't get what they want from the relationships in their life, and that comes out in negative behaviors.
This isn't a moral judgment of these people, it's just not something I want to deal with: I'll try to help these people work through their social anxiety, but if that doesn't work, that's going to limit how close we can be, because I can't trust them to be honest with me.
It's not kindness/empathy to coddle these people, either: that's just enabling them in a behavior that is going to limit them in many aspects of their life.
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The dishonesty doesn't help anybody, and it makes navigating the relationship more difficult for all parties. Empathic dishonesty is a consequence of poor social skills, where people don't know how to be truthful and set boundaries without being hurtful.
So says you. Like I said, I know people like this, and I am not willing to label them as people who have poor social skills or other disparaging things. I don't consider this category of dishonesty to be one that a person necessarily needs to correct, if there are approaches to the scenario where the conflict between honesty and empathy that conflict for them could allow the person to live more according to their val…
Labeling things like "ignorance" and "poor social skills" as "disparaging" isn't particularly useful. When I say someone is ignorant or has poor social skills, that's not a statement that they're a bad person, it's an identification of a problem they have (which is correctable).
> I don't consider this category of dishonesty to be one that a person necessarily needs to correct
It sounds like this may be the core of our disagreement.
I won't say that a person "needs" to correct it--instead I would say that the person, and my friendship with that person, will be significantly limited by not correcting this problem.