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The Science of Making Friends

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Re: The Science of Making Friends

#71

Post by ethanbond »

elorant wrote: post #67
stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

That’s because we’re all possessed with the idea of changing the world. We focus so much on the big picture that we lose track of what’s important in life. We also think that once you get past forties and haven’t done anything important you’re doomed for the rest of your life. We can’t go back to the park again because we take life (and ourselves) too fucking seriously.

That's giving people too much credit.

99% of the people here aren't heads down in their study for months trying to complete a masterpiece. People are simply asocial and lazy.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#72

Post by jfim »

stegosaurus wrote: post #48
stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

Christ, in some ways, this thread makes me want to just like, teleport some people from HN into the local park with some beers. I think we'd have a great time. No vi vs emacs, mind.

It's definitely doable. Anyone in SF wants to meet in the golden gate park today around 3pm?

Edit: Since this got a few upvotes but not many replies, feel free to come at 37°46'08.4"N 122°29'08.8"W (https://goo.gl/maps/Vvyctgz4CAQ2). Will have a Linkedin tshirt/backpack.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#73

Post by iliis »

stegosaurus wrote: post #48
stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

Christ, in some ways, this thread makes me want to just like, teleport some people from HN into the local park with some beers. I think we'd have a great time. No vi vs emacs, mind.

I'm in ;)

(Even though I probably would spend the time figuring out how the fuck you teleported us across the world.)

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#74

Post by seansmccullough »

navait wrote: post #3

I've certainly found myself in the difficult position of having moved to a place where I know nobody. I read "How to win friends and influence people", hoping I could learn how to make better friends with it. It's easy to go to meetups and make shallow connections with small talk, but getting people to talk to me is like pulling teeth, a lot of single sentence reponses and no attempt to further the conversation.

Me, too. Moving to a new city really sucks. You lose the "networking effect" of becoming friends with your friend's friends. Makes me miss college.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#75

Post by ajcarpy2005 »

hammock wrote: post #19
trevyn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The journal article cited for this indicates not that smart people are happier with smart friends, but that "More intelligent individuals actually experienced higher life satisfaction with lower frequency of contact with friends." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26847844 A lot of the meta-articles seem to be hypothesizing that intelligence could be an evolutionary adaptation for dealing with novel circumstances, a…

The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. If stimulating friends make you happy, and the average friend is less than stimulating, then spending more time with your friends may make you unhappier.

I would love to hang out with people who are directly mentally stimulating but even people who are less stimulating could be good friends if the activities are productive. (Contributing to physical and mental health, confidence, sustainable self-induced highs, etc.)

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#76

Post by trevyn »

stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

I think it's because mobility is easy in the downward direction -- if the banker and the lawyer chose to become the janitor and the homeless guy, they could do that easily.

However, the banker and the lawyer realize that they have more life choices available if they are nearer to top of the hierarchy, and this directly leads to more obligations -- to maintain their positions, they must fulfill more responsibilities.

More choice leads to more reproductive success.

Q.E.D.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#77

Post by compumike »

stegosaurus wrote: post #48
stegosaurus wrote: post #40

WRT the decline with age, I've always felt like a lot of it is 'ego based', for lack of better terms. I've found that as time goes on, people are far more concerned with doing things by the book, projecting an image, etc. rather than just 'being', enjoying life in the moment, doing things just because. I've certainly been guilty of this to some extent because it seems impossible to avoid. Personal anecdote: At age 16…

Christ, in some ways, this thread makes me want to just like, teleport some people from HN into the local park with some beers. I think we'd have a great time. No vi vs emacs, mind.

We basically used to do this when I lived in San Diego -- a monthly Hacker News meetup organized by email list. It'd start with a ~2 hours at a local non-alcoholic establishment, and then at a set time, whoever wanted would transition to a pub across the street. No agenda or presentation, just a meetup of interesting & like-minded folk. Good times!

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#78

Post by WalterSear »

Xcelerate wrote: post #33
agilebyte wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't limit yourself to "intellectually stimulating". Lots of people have something to teach us about life if we open ourselves to them and go beyond "specialist, PhD etc.".

I agree with this. Everyone has something unique to offer, and not everyone enjoys philosophizing over "deep" conversation topics. (Although I will admit it can get annoying at times when someone spends ten minutes listing all the coupons they clipped from this week's Kroger advertisement...)

I can't stand either of those kind of topics, fwiw. Intelligent conversation doesn't necessarily involve having opinionated debates about arm chair hypotheticals.

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#79

Post by ajcarpy2005 »

Most people also will expect there to always be some level of talking in social interactioms and feel awkward around pauses and silence. I believe this is because internally most people have not built up a constructive environment and use external activities and talking as a distraction rather than truly growth-inducing times.

It feels awkward without the pauses though. If internally we need change - (WE do.) Change comes from within. - we need to make sure we aren't running on the same programming. Responding instantly and avooding pauses is not a new experience...

Re: The Science of Making Friends

#80

Post by sdneirf »

If you use Facebook as a proxy, you can actually see that you max out on friends when you are in late teens to 20's and then its downhill from there.

Stephen Wolfram (mathematica fame) did a deep dive into the numbers and there are quite a bit of interesting insight..

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-f...

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