I disagree.
Being kind to others is good for your health
61–70 of 277 posts
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#62in theory this looks good. reality is a bit different. I constantly have problems with my left and right neighbor (middle of pandemic and this a hole is doing a barbecue with loud music since yesterday) about their lack of consideration (this in my parents house, where I am right now). In my apartment is no different... loud music, stumping on the floor... that kind of problem you have on a building. my father have a…
As a resident in NY during the pandemic, everything that you would think would cause people to cling together and bond in common cause during a difficult time period if you were an optimist, actually caused an increase of rudeness, hostility, annoyance, and battle for resources. From sidewalk space to aggressive driving to competition in apartment buildings for rare gym reservations or even elevator space, people are awful.
Ready for a move to a house of my own without audible neighbors or selfish and uncompromising attitudes.
Struggle for scarce resources triggers ancient and primitive defensive attitudes. Either that or people in the northeastern cities are rude.
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#63The only issue that I have, is that so many people (in my industry/nation/orbit) mistake kindness for weakness. I live in New York, which has a basic culture of "hyper aggressiveness." It isn't "rudeness," as so many people like to think of New Yorkers. They can be aggressively kind and generous. They are just aggressive. I'm also in the tech industry, which seems to have a very aggressive and competitive culture. It…
Kindness takes courage.
There seem to be a lot of people who live at a level of abstraction where they perceive every interaction as being about dominance and submission. In my humble opinion it is a very limited mindset.
I consider myself to be generous person, and also slow to anger. As a result, there are people who think they hit the jackpot and found a submissive pushover who is like a flimsy tree that will bend over at the slightest breath of wind.
Of course it's much more like being water; moving around obstacles, yet always forward and unstoppable.
What matters is showing people that there can be real kindness and strength in the world. Sometimes it plants a seed for others to also have the courage to be kind. I believe that's how to make the world a better place. It sure makes life worth living.
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#64in theory this looks good. reality is a bit different. I constantly have problems with my left and right neighbor (middle of pandemic and this a hole is doing a barbecue with loud music since yesterday) about their lack of consideration (this in my parents house, where I am right now). In my apartment is no different... loud music, stumping on the floor... that kind of problem you have on a building. my father have a…
This has been studied in game theory terms. The best strategy seems to be to give people the benefit of the doubt initially, being kind and altruistic without reservation. But as soon as they don’t respond in kind, you update your strategy immediately and stop extending any generosity beyond baseline courtesy. The ball is in their court now. If they switch from selfishness to altruism, then you can match them. Otherw…
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 connecting because you’ve already concluded it wasn’t worth the effort.
I feel like there is a fundamental issue if people look for interactions to be transactional marketplace. It’s completely different than deliberately acting from a place of compassion
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#65The only issue that I have, is that so many people (in my industry/nation/orbit) mistake kindness for weakness. I live in New York, which has a basic culture of "hyper aggressiveness." It isn't "rudeness," as so many people like to think of New Yorkers. They can be aggressively kind and generous. They are just aggressive. I'm also in the tech industry, which seems to have a very aggressive and competitive culture. It…
> they start trying to "game" me. Can you elaborate on it? I don't have much experience interacting with people.
It can take many forms.
Folks each have their own "schtick," but it's what they are after that matters.
1) Money
2) Property
They want me to give them money or goods.
3) Prestige
They want me to feed a need for prestige. This can be as simple as agreeing with them in public, an endorsement or referral, or a requirement for some kind of submissive fawning.
I started to write up a detailed description of how this can happen, but realized that this is probably not the best venue for that. Suffice it to say that I have spent my entire adult life amongst some very aggressive and manipulative people, and keeping a good relationship with them, while gently enforcing personal boundaries, has always been a challenge.
For me, I have a personal ethical code that revolves around rigorous personal and "cash register" Honesty, as well as Integrity.
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#66These studies are always funny. So what this is trying to tell us is: Volunteering boosts your health, while the data only provides us with "volunteers are generally in better health". Now this study "tried" to adjust to that by some filtering, but this is still a pretty big leap. Essentially what they would need to do is this:
Have one group of people who "actively" is kind to people, i.e. they actually act on their desired.
Then compare the results to a control group who "wants" to be kind to people, ideally has a proven track record of being kind to people, but are not allowed to act on that during the duration of study. Then of course they also need to still be as satisfied and happy as before, otherwise they turn into a biased control group.
Then if there are no differences, and compared to another control group of "normal" humans, there is a statistically significant improvement in health, then and only then, they may be on to something... Otherwise this is just another case of survivor bias.
This is all just pointless. At least here it's for a good cause, but I always am amazed by what kind of conclusions people derive from the well established: Causation implies correlation... Erm, NOT.
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#67The only issue that I have, is that so many people (in my industry/nation/orbit) mistake kindness for weakness. I live in New York, which has a basic culture of "hyper aggressiveness." It isn't "rudeness," as so many people like to think of New Yorkers. They can be aggressively kind and generous. They are just aggressive. I'm also in the tech industry, which seems to have a very aggressive and competitive culture. It…
That is often not a mistake. It is typically deliberate. On one extreme there are sociopaths that look for any opening to abuse. This is sinister, but tends to be more rare. The other extreme comprises stupid people who view any criticism as a personal assault, the Dunning-Kruger people. The Dunning-Kruger people tend to assume they are super awesome because people aren't willing to invest the energy to mention otherwise.
For those wonderful angels I am willing to lie to their face, because the nonsense that comes back is a stressful nonproductive time suck. Those are the people nobody wants to work with because they are a net negative and continue to exist merely as padding for future layoffs. The common uniting theme is underdeveloped self-awareness/empathy.
For everybody else kindness is a dose of honesty coupled with empathy and mutual reassurance regardless of excellent or poor performance. When it's sincere it is an investment in relationship building.
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#68I 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 only help people in the things that I’m likely to be the best resource.
I’ll help you with a career transition discussion. No matter how many hours it takes.
On the other hand when my best friend asked to help him move. I told him no. Laughed in his face. None of my friends dare ask me for physical help now.
I think the world is a better place when we specialize in things we are uniquely gifted at.
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#69These studies are always funny. So what this is trying to tell us is: Volunteering boosts your health, while the data only provides us with "volunteers are generally in better health". Now this study "tried" to adjust to that by some filtering, but this is still a pretty big leap. Essentially what they would need to do is this: Have one group of people who "actively" is kind to people, i.e. they actually act on their…
I started counting the number of qualifying words, even in the linked studies, and then just gave up.
Is human behavior truly so opaque that experiments cannot be designed that conclusively determine specific causation?
Re: Being kind to others is good for your health
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been studied in game theory terms. The best strategy seems to be to give people the benefit of the doubt initially, being kind and altruistic without reservation. But as soon as they don’t respond in kind, you update your strategy immediately and stop extending any generosity beyond baseline courtesy. The ball is in their court now. If they switch from selfishness to altruism, then you can match them. Otherw…
I don't have a link now, but if there is a chance for miscommunication, the good strategy becomes more "forgiving". So you can keep being cooperative and kind for more than one iterations to be sure they really want to defect. Then you can defect too, until they cooperate.
The Evolution of Trust[0] is a fun walkthrough of those game theory strategies. It adds the twist of miscommunication towards the end.