Comment by zappo2938 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zappo2938 | Hacker News Reader

I worked on a boat in the middle of the ocean for many years. I've been grounded for the last few years and tried to make friends. The experiment has been a massive waste of time and energy. I did so much for so many people trying to be nice and helpful and got so little in return. From an economic point of view, I'm completely self reliant and don't need anything from anyone else. I invested so much in other people and I got nothing back.

There is one case where I watched some guy's dog for a weekend, took someone else's boat into the ocean to save him when his engine died, helped him move all this uncles' stuff after the uncle committed suicide, go drinking with him downtown even though I didn't want to go out, ect.. I moved into a new apartment and needed help putting up new blinds. He kept making excuses to not help me even though he is a contractor. From now on, I don't help other people. I work, make money, and if I need help, I'll pay a stranger. I'm fine with that.

I've grown convinced it is a myth that we need friends.

I have found that "giving" with the expectation of getting something in return is just wrong headed. Give because you want to give. Of course you have to be careful of the takers. Friend of mine for many years was moving, he called me and asked me to help. I said "Roy, you are worth 10 million bucks, go pay someone to help you!" and he did. There are endless supplies of good people in the world. But it takes effort, and sometimes you are rejected. Live with it and move on.

When I was really young I lived in a small town and things were tight financially for most people. I guess helping each other when someone needed something was a not some virtuous thing but rather a form of currency. Hey, can you help wire the electric to the shack in the back yard. Sure, can your daughter watch my boys tonight. And, it continues like this.

I disagree. I think there is a reasonable expectation that someone who is a contractor who consistently asks for large favors to help for a couple hour to put up blinds.

I don't need friends.What we see in movies and the media is a myth, once again, an unobtainable expectation.

So there is something called The Ben Franklin effect, [0] which basically says that people are more likely to befriend/like you if you ask them to do you a big favor rather than the other way around.

The psychological explanation is that people will smooth the cognitive dissonance between their indifference and/or antipathy to you and the fact that they have actually done a favor for you by revising their opinion of you.

Of course asking a favor from someone who is indifferent or slightly hostile toward you may only confirm their misgivings, and I've never tried such a strategy myself, but I have read that such favor-seeking often works.

In the Wikipedis link, Franklin is quoted from his autobiography as follows:

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"Having heard that [a rival legislator] had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.

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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect

EDIT: added prepositional phrase

I always wondered what this effect is called. It works amazingly well.

You need to be aware of the related effect which is helping someone when they can't return the favor is an very effective way to create an enemy. The cognitive dissonance created by a favor that can't be paid back is resolved by revising their opinion of you in the negative.

That's an excellent point. I had heard of the Ben Franklin effect, but not this. Yeah when I try to give my help to most people, they get resentful.

Am I special/broken in that if someone does a favor for me with the implication I don't pay them back, my opinion of them goes up? Perhaps I'm just not used to the phenomenon lol...

I agree that asking for help from someone you consistently help is reasonable.

You may quote me on this. "The expectation of reasonableness is an unreasonable expectation"

I dont "need" lots of things, but they do make life more enjoyable.

You are probably choosing the wrong people to be friends with. And yeah, doing things for people doesn't work in the same way that being the errant boy for the girl you liked in elementary or high school didn't work either.

Yeah pretty much this. Even though it seems OK from an "objective" standpoint to lend your aid when it seems obvious that you can do it and it is not too much cost to you, this doesn't really work in the making friends dept. Yes there are maybe 5% of people who will catch on to what you are doing and click but that is not good odds.

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