Loved the write up but it all canceled out when I realized it’s a blog for an app that’s “your social operating system”
The electric fence stopped working years ago
21–30 of 151 posts
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chesterton’s fence isn’t “respect it forever” or “spend infinite resources”. It’s “don’t tear it down until you understand why it’s there”. The whole point is to avoid breaking something whose purpose you haven’t yet understood, because the original builders might have had a good reason that isn’t obvious to you. Once you’ve understood it, you’re free to remove it if that reason no longer applies.
Case in point: the electric fence is broken, but that doesn't mean it needs to be fixed.
Like border enforcement
People are here "illegally". A handful are criminals. But a lot of the farm workers putting food on the tables of citizens, are "illegal."
If they're already here and not causing trouble they should be legal. The legalization process shouldn't take as many years and as much money as it does
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#23I never had this fake sense of shame or embarrassment when it came to contacting people. Some people will keep tabs on when someone last contacted them, and hold it against them. I don't.
Just last month I had lunch with middle school friends I hadn't seen in 40 years. I literally hadn't seen once since Grade 8. I friended them on Facebook years previous but didn't really have anything to chat about, but when I was in the same town as them, I pinged them and said let's go to lunch. It was absolutely amazing, once of those moments that I will remember forever. Not because anything breathtaking happened, but it was just really really nice to connect with people I hadn't seen since the beginning of my life, and meeting them all over again as adults.
I still routinely have lunch with coworkers from 25 years ago. I have friends that I chat with on Whatsapp daily going back almost 50 years. I have no qualms in being the first to reach out, ever.
I have a friend from college that I have been in and out of contact for 30 years, who ghosted me for no reason this past year even after I contacted her a few times. Guess what? I won't hold it against her and I will give her space. I will ping her for her birthday and see if she responds and if not, then I will just leave her alone until she contacts me. But I don't feel shame or anger or embarrassment because I got rejected, that's on her, not me.
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#24I can unfortunately think of some fairly recent counterexamples to "why not reach out." They didn't justify keeping imaginary fences up, rather they justified cutting those people out of my life entirely, because they just don't fit into the overly tidy script of "might as well try."
Just as it is important to not deny yourself positive social experiences with people you trust, it is just as important not to hold out too much hope for change and be generous when it is not merited, as the consequences can lead straight back to maladaptive coping patterns.
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#25This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago. I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I wri…
I have a friend like this, the amount of times i thought "shit he's gonna get us killed" only to see him become a persons best friend is not small number of times.
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#26This is called "learned helplessness" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
No. Learned helplessness is entirely different.
A dog learning not to go past the porch because it will get shocked is "conditioning".
Learned helplessness is when a subject won't bother saving themselves from pain because they don't think it will make a difference. For example, if a dog is constantly being electrically shocked, but won't leave the area that is electrified because they think they will get electrified no matter where they go. This is what happens in the case of abuse victims that stay with their abuser. They stick with the abuser because they honestly don't believe their situation will get better with someone else, and at least they know this particular abuser.
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#27I don't initiate conversation most of the time, not because of some kind of perception of weakness but because I don't really have time to hold conversations with every random person that I know. I like knowing they're there but I don't really feel the need to socialize with them or make smalltalk on a regular basis. If there's something I want to talk about I'll reach out but only if I know the conversation won't go on for days.
I don't play the stupid games "Oh so and so hasn't reached out in forever I hate them now" or "weakness vs strength" in communication. Communication is a tool.
I don't dislike having friends. I just wish everyone stopped these stupid games and stopped acting like everything needed to be a calculated action. We're animals who evolved to make a bunch of stupid over-thought games for ourselves that make us miserable. If you don't want to talk to someone or don't have time, don't talk to them. If you want to talk to them, reach out.
I don't understand why I'd need some app to solve that. I don't feel hindered approaching life this way. I either get more of the time doing the things I care about or I get to potentially have a good conversation with someone. Don't let some company or app's profit create more barriers in your head.
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#28For a happy minute I thought we were talking about the malloc() debugger. Such a useful little tool back in the day. Allocation was a disaster back then.
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#29This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago. I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I wri…
I've got some sort of facial blindness. It's hard to tell exactly how it works because I've got a bunch of unconscious coping mechanisms for identifying people.
One of the times I got it comically wrong was in college where I made a friend for a semester because I thought he was someone I already knew. So I can absolutely believe that attitude and approach makes a huge difference because I've been in at least one scenario where falsely believing I was friends with someone was all it took to be friends.
Re: The electric fence stopped working years ago
#30Funny enough, an alleged Chesterton's fence is very likely to be one of these derelict electric fences. People who advocate the "Chesterton's fence" argument (which is similar to and equally misguided as the precautionary principle) are essentially saying "whoever built this fence either didn't understand why they built the fence, or didn't manage to explain their reasoning to other people affected by the fence, and…
char* strcpy(char* destination, const char* source);
and its numerous replacements and "improvements".