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Comment by mooseburger | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm too cynical, but this sounds too much like a just world fallacy. At any rate, I'm having a hard time distinguishing between "nice" and "sucker", and the article didn't bother differentiating between the two. I guess in my mind, they're one and the same. Most guys I would describe as nice are actually just weak guys that are respected by nobody. It's hard to imagine that they're happy, and they do not seem to be happy.

There are men I have known that technically are nice, but I never would have thought to describe them as such. "Cool" seems a more apt descriptor. And the difference between "cool" and "nice" seems to involve a certain degree of selfishness.

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Nice != sucker.

Suckers are people who are easily conned or persuaded to do things they don't want to do. They're gullible or weak-willed or something.

Nice are people who care about other people. But they won't, necessarily, go so far in helping or doing things for others that they harm themselves.

A nice person gives you a lift home.

A sucker drives you to the 7/11, watches you rob it, and then drives you home.

EDIT: commas are hard, formatting

I think there are two principal kinds of nice: 1) You say positive things. 2) You do not say negative things.

Personally, I much prefer Type 2. Type 1 used to be called being a "Pollayanna" (like the Disney character played by Hayley Mills in a movie about 1960 -- a little girl who tried to always say only positive things). IMO, that kind of nice is tiresome.

I'm sure there are other variations on 'types of nice', like speaking up only to add positive comments, or to add info, or to add humor. But probably most folks would describe these using a term other than 'nice'.

Though not everyone would agree, I think niceness can also take the form of negative comments that are phrased constructively, such as suggesting how a problem could be reduced/eliminated or how a product could be made better.

You're only a sucker if you expect to be externally rewarded for "nice" behavior.

Yeah, some people are nice just because they think they have to in order to be close to likeable. Truth is, most of those would love to be assholes if they could get away with it. I've been like that. Probably still is, just to a lesser extent.

Being authentically nice requires a lot of deep-seated confidence. It's hard to care too much about others if you're constantly worrying about yourself.

I'm not sure about confidence. I have very minimal confidence in myself, but as a consequence I care very little about myself and much more about others. Seems to have a similar result though; people perceive me as confident (and regularly tell me so) and I laugh a bit about it on the inside. I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm not good at anything, but that seems to work :p.

I don't believe in myself, but I believe in others who believe in me and that seems to be okay lol.

It was easier for me to be nice to everyone once I realized that they and their loved ones are all going to die one day. Puts things in perspective.

I pretty much do the opposite. I remember that everyone was a child once and some, unfortunately, still are. Basically attributing annoyances/disagreements to ignorance/differing values rather than malice.

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