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Forces that fuel friendship

theatlantic.com

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Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#71

Post by geodel »

photochemsyn wrote: post #64

American society at least is highly fractured these days, along all kinds of lines, and this seems to have resulted in high levels of distrust across those lines - ideological, economic, racial, gender, and probably a host of others. This tends to push people into clusters where they all share the same ideological viewpoints, which is a depressing situation. My idea of a great party has always been one where a group…

Many good points here. Especially

> Here's a related (novel?) concept: don't try to leverage friendships for personal economic gain, for access to a job, for growing your multi-level marketing business, etc.

A little personal story - Many years back I was living with roommates and didn't have car. It would be easy way to ask for ride since office really couple of miles from home and really on the way of other guys commute. But I kinda made a point to just walk to work and consciously avoid asking for ride. Looking back I feel it really led to much better relationship than it would be if I had taken convenient route.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#73

Post by fny »

photochemsyn wrote: post #64

American society at least is highly fractured these days, along all kinds of lines, and this seems to have resulted in high levels of distrust across those lines - ideological, economic, racial, gender, and probably a host of others. This tends to push people into clusters where they all share the same ideological viewpoints, which is a depressing situation. My idea of a great party has always been one where a group…

> "don't try to leverage friendships for personal economic gain"

Aristotle identifies three types of friendships.

1. Friendships of utility, the types you exploit for gain

2. Friendships of pleasure, the types you exploit to play basketball

3. Friendships of the good, true friendships

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#74

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

1123581321 wrote: post #25
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious considering hackernewsians are the normies of the online world.

Most people here also belong to other communities and code switch how they write.

It is an interesting comment in itself. Does HN ( and other online communities ) have their own peculiar jargon and it is used to identify in-group? I definitely noticed some recurring phrases, but it does not appear to be.. say.. as obvious as 4chan or imgur.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#75

Post by pizza »

swayvil wrote: post #33
telesilla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this is for self-identifying women. I've several friends who have had success. I wonder what the conditions might need to be for platonic male friendships to form, it seems to be harder. Judging from my position as a woman who easily makes acquaintances that occasionally become friendships, and my partner who is very amicable to strangers but doesn't care to make new friends.

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

Just think of self identity as something that minimizes the KL-divergence of description of one's self given the outside + inner world.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#76

Post by bradlys »

multiplegeorges wrote: post #36
yosito wrote: 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.

1000? I think it's closer to 100 - isn't it?

> That was more than three years ago. Since then, I have done 100 interviews.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#78

Post by ranjit_holmes »

multiplegeorges wrote: post #39
swayvil wrote: 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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#79

Post by Gustek »

mbg721 wrote: post #55
Gustek wrote: post #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?…

If those were the only criteria, making friends would be easy. People have more built-in tribalism at the very least; the article reads like a '50s science fiction novel about robots making friends.

Is building trust and growing genuine care for someone easy for you?

Trust is always a gamble, at extreme you are putting your life on the line and you never know if the other person will decide to betray you next time regardless of what they did in the past.

Caring about someone is even harder as it is not a conscious choice we are making, it is feeling. You can't just decide from today I care about this person so they are my friend.

My point was, how do you know someone is your friend not how to make one. There is no method to make friends, at best some tips or guidelines.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#80

Post by multiplegeorges »

bradlys wrote: post #76
multiplegeorges wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1000? I think it's closer to 100 - isn't it? > That was more than three years ago. Since then, I have done 100 interviews.

Ah, you are correct. It's 100, I remembered incorrectly.

Up to readers to decide if my point still stands. I think it does.

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