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Being kind to others is good for your health

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Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#241

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

devdas wrote: post #238
momokoko wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Significantly different. Do you realize that metropolitan areas in US are not even 50% white or Christian or likely any of the other stereotypes people have of the US outside of the US. Many cities in the US provide documentation in often 4 or more languages. Schools employ large teams of specialists for teaching English as there are significant amounts of schools where less than half of the student population i…

Coming from India, the dominant flavour of Europe is some sort of white, Christian group, possibly with a dash of Islamic influence, but mostly monotheistic branches of the same family. There is some variety in languages, and food depending on the climate. The US doesn't have all that much diversity comparitively. There is more diversity in skin colour, but the major cultural groups are far closer to each other than…

I grew up in Africa. It's interesting that so many US citizens of African descent expect to go back to "The Old Country," and "just fit in." Lot like the Italians and Irish.

As far as Africans go, there's not a whole ton of difference between white Americans and black Americans. I think that, like in Europe, there's entrepreneurs, setting up "Return to Your Roots" tours for diasporans.

Europe probably has more experience with Africans than the US. When I have met black folk in Europe, they have frequently been first- or second-generation Africans, as opposed to the US, where most black folks I know come from families that have lived here for many generations. I think the UK has a similar culture.

I lived in Uganda, when Idi Amin threw out all the Ugandans of Indian descent. These were true Ugandans, who had lived there for generations. It was devastating; both to the people that were thrown out, and the nation, itself. The infrastructure of the nation collapsed, almost overnight.

It's pretty much impossible to "un-mix" a mixed society. That's not for want of trying, though. History is full of "ethnic cleansing" boneyards. It never seems to end well, but we seem to be a bit thick, in learning the lesson.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#242

Post by leonroy »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #26

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 think helping strangers vs helping family are different. Helping strangers is a very strong form of altruism. You come into their lives, you perform a service or deed and you leave. It could be a recurring thing, like assisting in a soup kitchen or a charity shop but it is both time bounded and emotionally bounded and when you choose to help a stranger the first time or a subsequent time the decision is voluntary.

With family though, (as I notice all your descriptions are from) it is neither time bounded nor emotionally constrained since family don't really leave - they're always there, sometimes physically and certainly emotionally. Your first act of kindness to assist might well be voluntary but the second act could well be more out of a sense of obligation than choice and creates an increasingly involuntary burden.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#243

Post by laurent92 »

xyzelement wrote: post #175

Defaulting to generosity - while operating with healthy boundaries - is by far the most beneficial mindset. The alternatives are: Victim. "I am too weak and poor to help anyone but I expect people to help me." This belief corrodes you. Stoic(can't think of a better word.) "I don't help anyone and therefore I don't expect anyone to help me". Well, better than the victim but ends up passing up many opportunities where…

You forgot one kind of generosity called « Actual experience »: The « I have been decently generous most of my life(1), and yet, when I had a need, no-one wanted to care much (you know, who cares about a white male, we want fewer of them in our company) so now I default to buying pure mercure on Alibaba and throwing it into the lake » kind of generosity.

If all of those speeches about generosity and inclusivity were remotely honest, I wouldn’t have to fight people who claim equality is giving an interesting job only to women. Also, no need to propose one now, I’m fat and suicidal and down a dozen social steps.

(1) $13.000 up to 32 years old, on top of normal taxes which are already supposed to solve poverty here in France.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#244

Post by bumby »

morlockabove wrote: post #106
bumby wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re applying game theory here, I’m curious what the objective function would be? (What are you trying to maximize/minimize?) I think a potential flaw is assuming people are static beings. Consider if you passed me shortly after my dog died...I may not be in a mental state to even notice you said anything. If we passed weeks or months later I could be in a completely different state but we’re still not connectin…

You're just playing tit-for-tat. The main benefit it extreme simplicity- in principle, one bit of memory per person, and one if-then decision. And it performs very well in iterated prisoner's games. Yes, everyone has a complex inner history blah blah blah. There's 6 billion people, and you're not going to give equal attention to all of them, so you need different approaches. Plus, explicitly playing tit-for-tat keeps…

As you state, it’s based on an overly simplified model. I.e., it’s a heuristic that may not generalize well to the more complex realities of life, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. It’s akin to an objective function of “find a reasonable local optimum solution that requires as little overhead as possible” which can completely miss the global optimum. I was asking for clarification because I was curious how important the “overhead cost” function was as a constraint to the OP. That’s probably where our perspectives diverge; I’m usually willing to take on more of that overhead cost if it can break me out of the local solution.

As an aside, the perspective is appreciated but dismissive approaches to comments (“blah blah blah”) tend to go against HN guidelines. You make good points but I wouldn’t want them to be lost to moderators because of the phrasing

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#245

Post by [deleted] »

laurent92 wrote: post #243
xyzelement wrote: post #175

Defaulting to generosity - while operating with healthy boundaries - is by far the most beneficial mindset. The alternatives are: Victim. "I am too weak and poor to help anyone but I expect people to help me." This belief corrodes you. Stoic(can't think of a better word.) "I don't help anyone and therefore I don't expect anyone to help me". Well, better than the victim but ends up passing up many opportunities where…

You forgot one kind of generosity called « Actual experience »: The « I have been decently generous most of my life(1), and yet, when I had a need, no-one wanted to care much (you know, who cares about a white male, we want fewer of them in our company) so now I default to buying pure mercure on Alibaba and throwing it into the lake » kind of generosity. If all of those speeches about generosity and inclusivity were…

[deleted]

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#246

Post by trianglem »

xyzelement wrote: post #175

Defaulting to generosity - while operating with healthy boundaries - is by far the most beneficial mindset. The alternatives are: Victim. "I am too weak and poor to help anyone but I expect people to help me." This belief corrodes you. Stoic(can't think of a better word.) "I don't help anyone and therefore I don't expect anyone to help me". Well, better than the victim but ends up passing up many opportunities where…

How about don’t mind helping but don’t really want to start a network effect of mutual back and forth because I don’t want to give up my time doing these things and get caught up in reciprocal network chains.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#247

Post by elbear »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #26

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 think the key is to want to do these things.

If you don't feel like doing something, you should stop. You'll eventually feel resentful and drained if you keep doing something you don't want to do.

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#248

Post by adamsea »

bserge wrote: post #236
adamsea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Want to gently critique: > sadly we're tied to these primitive bodies Our bodies (and the sensations and emotions produced by them) are not primitive. They’re super sophisticated and we are nowhere near being able to replicate them. There’s interesting work btw on the fundamentally intertwined nature of emotion and “rational” thought.

By primitive, I mostly meant the primitive brain and responses. Emotions are a drawback imo, the fact that they're so deeply intertwined with the logical parts is a drawback. We often act against our own best interests and health purely because we're afraid, for example. Biological bodies are indeed, very sophisticated and versatile, too bad we can't control any of the features.

> Emotions are a drawback imo, the fact that they're so deeply intertwined with the logical parts is a drawback.

Homie I hope you eventually wake up and smell the coffee :).

Take away emotions, lol, and you literally are no longer a human being.

Lol take away emotions and you literally die - fear, anger, sadness,desire, hunger, joy, curiosity. Intellectual curiosity is an emotion. The joy of solving a problem, doing something with some slick and elegant logic? Emotion.

> We often act against our own best interests and health purely because we're afraid, for example.

Best interest? The very concept fundamentally depends on caring about something - being alive, the good of humanity, whatever. Caring about absolutely anything? An emotion :).

We actually are able to control a lot, but not all of our bodies. Once we accept that we are inherently emotional beings and work on being more conscious of our feelings and mindful ;).

FWIW while it’s a lifelong effort, practicing to neutrally observe our feelings and treat them more as data to analyze, without divorcing ourselves from them or denying them, is a powerful tool to counterbalance the ease of confusing a transitory feeling with one’s self and the counterproductive behavior or decision-making which often stems from that. AKA practicing mindfulness.

Lol which I’m not really doing, writing such a heated comment ;).

Laughter? Emotion.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but computers are perfectly logical and have no emotion and they’re not fucking alive.

Take a page from Commander Data’s book and try to appreciate the fundamental nature of humanity :).

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#249

Post by YooLi »

Does watching people be kind to others also have health benefits? I’ve noticed quite a bit of videos on YouTube about tipping people large sums of money or giving away items to strangers and use that as evidence that people like to watch them. Are people attracted (not consciously) to the same mental/physical benefit?

Re: Being kind to others is good for your health

#250

Post by bserge »

adamsea wrote: post #248
bserge wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By primitive, I mostly meant the primitive brain and responses. Emotions are a drawback imo, the fact that they're so deeply intertwined with the logical parts is a drawback. We often act against our own best interests and health purely because we're afraid, for example. Biological bodies are indeed, very sophisticated and versatile, too bad we can't control any of the features.

> Emotions are a drawback imo, the fact that they're so deeply intertwined with the logical parts is a drawback. Homie I hope you eventually wake up and smell the coffee :). Take away emotions, lol, and you literally are no longer a human being. Lol take away emotions and you literally die - fear, anger, sadness,desire, hunger, joy, curiosity . Intellectual curiosity is an emotion . The joy of solving a problem, doin…

Perhaps you're right. My opinion has only been formulated from my own experience, so it's very limited. Emotions have simply been a net negative for me, and I barely experience the good ones.
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