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Being kind to others is good for your health

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201–210 of 277 posts

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#201

I was doing all these things this week, and had a realization that the older I get more and more rely on me. I don't know how it got to be that way. But it was probably doing one kind thing followed by another. And now I'm getting all kinds of help requests. Just in the last week, I helped my cousin move (ridiculous amount of stuff), donated to my other cousins gofund me for his restaurant and stayed up 3 hours talki…

I only help people in the things that I’m likely to be the best resource. I’ll help you with a career transition discussion. No matter how many hours it takes. On the other hand when my best friend asked to help him move. I told him no. Laughed in his face. None of my friends dare ask me for physical help now. I think the world is a better place when we specialize in things we are uniquely gifted at.

You don't have to be uniquely gifted to help someone move, just average.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#202
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social sciences do seem to have a reasonable background in statistics and experiment design based on those I’ve known. What makes you conclude they wouldn’t know the causation/correlation principle?

The gigantic replication crisis in social science and medicine for a start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

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Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#203

These studies are always funny. So what this is trying to tell us is: Volunteering boosts your health, while the data only provides us with "volunteers are generally in better health". Now this study "tried" to adjust to that by some filtering, but this is still a pretty big leap. Essentially what they would need to do is this: Have one group of people who "actively" is kind to people, i.e. they actually act on their…

amen nigga

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#204

The only issue that I have, is that so many people (in my industry/nation/orbit) mistake kindness for weakness. I live in New York, which has a basic culture of "hyper aggressiveness." It isn't "rudeness," as so many people like to think of New Yorkers. They can be aggressively kind and generous. They are just aggressive. I'm also in the tech industry, which seems to have a very aggressive and competitive culture. It…

To be more specific they evaluated your courtesy as a sign of lower status from their perspective (whether consciously or not) and got angry because you did not in fact react as someone of lower status

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The variables here are: * where your boundaries lie along the spectrum from self-serving to doormat * your propensity to be generous to people on the good side of your boundaries I myself trend close to what you'd call a stoic. Probably out of fear of being a doormat. My boundaries are healthyish, but I don't quite trust them. So I don't seek out help from others, and in return I hope they don't ask for generosity fr…

I found the clarity of your thinking and writing refreshing, it's rare for someone to observe and recognize these archetypes. I by and large agree with how you see it. One thing jumped out: >> I think some people are just wired that way, or perhaps set on that course by environmental factors early in life. Either way, it's not a choice. So I think it's somewhat of a tragic condition. and >> My advice would be that if…

I quote that book in my HN profile and so many people on HN have found it grossly offensive.

Edit: Just wanted to add that it’s an incredible book that I recommend to everybody.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think morlockabove meant that thanks to the size of the US, the density of different cultures in many orders of magnitude higher in Europe than the US. Th cultural difference between Texans, Washingtonians and a New Hampshireite is minuscule compared to France and Germany, let alone France and somewhere like Estonia.

I believe it misses the fact that there are very different cultures within Washington or Texas. For example, Austin is very different from Houston and even north Houston is very different from south Houston. Eastern Washington is completely different culturally than western Washington(Seattle etc). No where else in the world has the massive amount of diversity that the US does at the scale of the US. It’s not even cl…

>No where else in the world has the massive amount of diversity that the US does at the scale of the US. It’s not even close anywhere else so it is difficult for both US residents and people of other countries to fully comprehend.

I honestly feel as though this is a lack of awareness of other regions and the differences inside of them. I don't know how you can make sweeping statements like that. A cursory look at a linguistic diversity map should immediately hint at a different reality, and that's just one metric. There are places in Africa where you have genetic lines that are distant by tends of thousands of years from surrounding villages as measured by their Y chromosomes.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#207
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social sciences do seem to have a reasonable background in statistics and experiment design based on those I’ve known. What makes you conclude they wouldn’t know the causation/correlation principle?

The gigantic replication crisis in social science and medicine for a start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

This is a very good point. But it makes me wonder how much is innate to the topic. If physics has as many confounding variables, I’m wondering if there would be equal difficulty in reproducibility

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the clarity of your thinking and writing refreshing, it's rare for someone to observe and recognize these archetypes. I by and large agree with how you see it. One thing jumped out: >> I think some people are just wired that way, or perhaps set on that course by environmental factors early in life. Either way, it's not a choice. So I think it's somewhat of a tragic condition. and >> My advice would be that if…

I quote that book in my HN profile and so many people on HN have found it grossly offensive. Edit: Just wanted to add that it’s an incredible book that I recommend to everybody.

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