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Forces that fuel friendship

theatlantic.com

41–50 of 112 posts

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#42
post #32

I clicked expecting to see some science-based research about what results in good friendships. Instead I found an opinion based listicle. Not necessarily a bad article for provoking thought, but definitely more opinion than fact. I recently went to cross cultural a meetup where friendship was the topic of discussion. One thing I realized is that people struggle to agree on a definition of friendship. There's an espec…

To call this a listicle is technically accurate, but does a large disservice to the experience of the author. She has conducted ~1000 interviews with friends to determine the content of the list. While this is not a peer-reviewed work, I would bet that her dataset and experience amounts to an easily publishable qualitative sociology/psychology paper.

[deleted]

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#43
post #34
post #13

I learned there are only 2 pillars under friendship: shared interests and trust.

Empirically speaking, I learned from a wise old friend that a party requires 4 things : Food, music, drugs and games. And people at parties are similar to friends. For what that's worth.

I would say rather that it requires any two of those. You’ll get very different types of parties depending on which two you pick.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or "normies" while we are at it. A recent trend I am noticing more often on HN.

Agreed, "normies" is a fine shorthand for "people who are not concerned with the niche thing we're currently talking about", but seeing people who think of it as an actual category that they judge people by is a dangerous mental model that a lot of people on here seem to fall victim to.

We are amall group primates, it's our nature. Us vs Them. In and Out groups. Everyone is a victim of it.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is self-identification really a thing? Identity seems more of a social artifact, emerging naturally from the collective dynamic.

Yes, it is. Someone can self-identify as a gender (among other things), alter their appearance to present as such, and a kind and empathetic society will (should) then regard them as such.

It sounds to me like 2 different uses of "identity". One for distinguishing an individual. The other for asserting a narrative.

That's 2 quite different uses.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#46
I think there are only 2 questions you need to answer to decide if someone is your friend.

1. Do you trust them?

2. Do you care about them?

Ideally it should reciprocated. The hard part is getting there, usually it comes naturally as you spend more time with the other person out of your own volition. Just because you are meeting someone everyday at work does not mean they will become your friends, do you trust them? do you care about them?

Once you friends you don't need to meet often as long the trust and care is still there. You can become friends in short time as well if you decide to put the trust early into the other person and they reciprocate. Point is, there is no formula or plan to follow.

When I say friend I mean a true friend, not colleagues or acquaintances. Were these meanings mixed into "friend" word before Facebook as well?

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#47
post #31

I don't know if something is missing from this article or if I have a very restrictive view of friendship. For example, when I was in college, there were a few people with which I talked pretty much everyday, had lunch with them, went to class with them. However, I don't really consider them my friends. They were a bit more like "colleagues". We never saw each others outside of college, and spending time with them do…

Friendship requires a shared experience in more than one context. Since you only saw those people in one context they did not become friends.

I don't think that's true, I've made friends at school while only seeing them at school. I saw them in other contexts only after being friends with them.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#48
post #38
post #32

I clicked expecting to see some science-based research about what results in good friendships. Instead I found an opinion based listicle. Not necessarily a bad article for provoking thought, but definitely more opinion than fact. I recently went to cross cultural a meetup where friendship was the topic of discussion. One thing I realized is that people struggle to agree on a definition of friendship. There's an espec…

Agreed, I was expecting more substance from this article. I don't think its much of a stretch to view friendship as a concrete social problem. Especially good friendships in our professional spheres which are vital to career fulfillment and health imo. Anyway there was (sadly) nothing realistically actionable in this article for anyone seeking something even vaguely science or stat based.

>> Anyway there was (sadly) nothing realistically actionable in this article for anyone seeking something even vaguely science or stat based.

Actionable to achieve what? It makes clear that there is no fixed procedure for making friends, but there certainly are a lot of suggestions.

I suspect the many linked stories have a wealth of information and examples, but they will all be anecdotes where none of them could be forced to happen if we tried.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#49
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious considering hackernewsians are the normies of the online world.

That’s Reddit. On HN I sometimes find people with niche interests and expertise in all kinds of fields, which I like. It’s also relatively civilized. You don’t need to be a 4-chan edgelord to be not-normie.

HN broadly participated in the moral panic over lab leak theory being allowed to exist. This place is far more 'normie' than it likes to believe itself to be and is nowhere near as independent thinking as it pats itself on the back for being. But it does exceed Reddit in the percentage of posters who confuse their wealth for wisdom.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#50
post #3

So basically. Turn off the computer, delete GitHub, delete hackrank, turn off all my docker servers and swarms across the multiple library networks and then go out and talk to NPCs?

>> Turn off the computer, delete GitHub...

I've met a few people on github that could become real-world friends if circumstances ever bring us to the same place or we clicked in some additional ways. But yeah, that's not really happening in a pull request ;-)

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