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Forces that fuel friendship

theatlantic.com

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Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#101

Post by javajosh »

erklik wrote: post #70
javajosh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your narrow-minded group believes in in- and out-groups, but not mine!

Ahh. You mean your "in-group" of people who don't believe in "in-groups". This is tongue-in-cheek. :)

There was a time I would lamented the need to be so explicit. But now, I'm just grateful the point got across. Communication seems to happen less and less reliably, with more error modes with greater negative emotional impact, and I worry that this implies the existence of some sort of inevitable drift between my brain and other people's brains. And I'm not sure if the solution is to bridge the gap, or just keep going and learn to accept inane resistance with some combination of stoicism and resigned amusement.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#102

Post by javajosh »

antisthenes wrote: post #94
javajosh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe your narrow-minded group believes in in- and out-groups, but not mine!

You will burn in sparrow-hell! https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3JLYwXUAAqDPP.jpg

Not sure how it applies, but it is funny in its own right. I mean, it's a good example of in- and out-groups, but it's not a good example of a group that denies the existence of out-groups (which is admittedly more self-referential and weird. You know, like an xkcd cartoon.)

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#103

Post by AtlasBarfed »

alexpotato wrote: post #54
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?…

Lou Holtz [0] used to use these questions and one more as the three questions you ask leaders in general. The other one was "Are you committed to excellence?" which he sometimes described as "Do you have high standards and do you strive to live up to them?" I always liked his ending statement whenever he talked about this: "Think of someone you respect. Now think of those questions. Odds are the answer to all three i…

...A college coach who participated in grift and bribery, indirectly or otherwise, in a system that exploited young athletes to play a violent sport with lifelong consequences for health mentally and physically and offered no long term health care and virtually no monetary reward.

No successful NCAA coach is a moral paragon. John Calipari used to be held as the bad boy, but actually he was the most honest of the bunch.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#105

Post by renewiltord »

joshgachnang wrote: post #97
renewiltord wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree with this one. I think you should ask favours of and offer favours to your friends. It's part of the enmeshing of one's life with another. If they are willing, it shows intention and trust.

There's a big difference between "hey, can you give me a ride to the store to pick up this large thing?" vs "hey can you give me a ride to work every day".

Okay, but I'm not talking about "Hey, can you give me a ride to work every day?" but "Hey, can you give me a ride to work?" every day. I think this might be a cultural difference, though, because I live with two close friends and they ask me this one often and I have no problem doing it or not based on whether I can. If it's a small deal, I might accelerate my morning routine so I can drop them off on my way to work. If I can't, I usually just say so.

I have a few different friend groups and I'm conscious of different cultural mores, though. The group where this is common has a certain low-social-distance norm.

In any case, I have lots of close friends and I usually see people lament a lack of any, so I think it's better to do what I do rather than what others do. But cultural differences are cultural differences.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#106

Post by more_corn »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #99
fny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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

In other words, business partners, beer buddies, and true friends. I still clearly remember the feelings I had on the day when I realized many who spoke of ‘friends’ likely not had a single one.

I went into business with my friends because I like collaborating on economic gain with my friends.

Did I lose friends? I don’t know. I still enjoy being around them, working together, economically gaining together.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#107

Post by GuB-42 »

I recently saw a video about the "Sex Raft".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali

It was a social experiment involving putting a bunch of people on a raft and crossing the Atlantic. The idea was to create an environment that promotes sex and violence, instead, everyone became best friends forever, except for the experimenter who was on board, everyone hated him.

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#108

Post by firecall »

GuB-42 wrote: post #107

I recently saw a video about the "Sex Raft". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali It was a social experiment involving putting a bunch of people on a raft and crossing the Atlantic. The idea was to create an environment that promotes sex and violence, instead, everyone became best friends forever, except for the experimenter who was on board, everyone hated him.

Your comment made me LOL :-)

Re: Forces that fuel friendship

#110

Post by MichaelZuo »

more_corn wrote: post #106
MichaelZuo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, business partners, beer buddies, and true friends. I still clearly remember the feelings I had on the day when I realized many who spoke of ‘friends’ likely not had a single one.

I went into business with my friends because I like collaborating on economic gain with my friends. Did I lose friends? I don’t know. I still enjoy being around them, working together, economically gaining together.

If you were in a truly life-or-death situation and they were in a position to help you but only through sacrificing a large part of their business interests, would they?

That I think would be the ultimate and clearest differentiator.

Of course such a situation is very rare so usually we can only rely on more ambiguous signals.

More prosaically, would they sacrifice a small part of their business interests in exchange for some great benefit to you if you give them a promise to do the same in the future? And vice-versa?

If so, then it would seem most likely they would be more than just business partners.

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