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Comment by wysifnwyg | Hacker News Reader

Many people ask questions they don't want the answers to. The question "How are you?" is a specific type of social interaction where there is an expected answer and that isn't to actually explain how you are. There are a lot of unspoken rules (such as saying yes when a person in authority asks/tells you to do something). A person with functioning social skills recognizes that a different approach is needed if they actually need to say no to their manager. Or that they need to seek guidance to see if they should be placing that higher on their priorities.

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> The question "How are you?" is a specific type of social interaction where there is an expected answer and that isn't to actually explain how you are.

Then why ask it??? To fake empathy, perhaps? If a person doesn't want to hear my answer to a question, I suggest they just don't ask the question. Saves everyone a lot of time, and avoids plenty of confusion.

Otherwise I'm just going to continue answering questions in a logical, honest and forthcoming manner, perhaps appearing (to some) as lacking "functioning social skills".

It's funny, because that question "How are you?" is never really phrased that way when I talk to friends and family, because I already know what's going on in their life, so I ask specific questions like "How's that promotion at work going?" or "Are you feeling better since that last sickness?". Same goes when they ask me about something.

The only people who ask me that question in that specific way are strangers, mostly during solicitation calls or any other calls where they have to read from a script.

As per your suggestion, next time I get a marketing call, I might just start delving into the details of my life for 10 minutes, explaining exactly just "how I am" :P

I've found that making a bit of small talk about exactly how I am is a great filter for people who have actual empathy vs people who view other people's lives as distractions from their own.

"How are you?" is an idiom. Just like "what's up" isn't a question about what is currently in the sky. It's unfortunate, and I wish it didn't exist, but it does. It functions as a politeness marker, and in some settings (i.e. nerdy programmers) politeness markers are seen as unnecessary and pointless, but in others they are seen as necessary.

As to why it exists, the answer is the same for just about every other linguistic feature: nobody really knows.

>What's up?

Positive on the Z. Fight me.

In all seriousness though, nothing drives me more nuts than asking questions you don't actually want the answer to, or are just asking to fill the silence. It's gotten to the point I ask people if they are really interested in the answer, or are they just looking for small talk,

Generally, I'm happy to talk with people, but I am not a big "small talker", because I'm generally a "communicate to problem solve, otherwise do" type of person. Building a relationship with someone requires over time I consciously build and try to track conversational contexts to facilitate faster, more efficient communication.

The process of doing that requires a significant investment of time not just to speaking, but to listening, building and working through conjectures, and familiarizing myself with how they approach problems, and determining how differently they do so from me

All this information rides along in my head all the time. The friendships and working relationships you build through such a process are unmatched. However, it takes significant effort, and it can lead to some awkwardness when you start actually noticing where the rougher edges are on who you're talking to.

I'm not one to leave a rough edge unsmoothed, but committing to help someone smooth out a part of their character in a way you can actually productively help is also a non-trivial task.

Some level of all of what I've described goes on in every encounter.

This makes people who ask questions they're not really looking for a true and substantive answer to incredibly annoying. It paints the picture of a person using me as a means to soothe their own discomfort with doing whatever they need to do. It's...trying on the patience.

It is not an idiom. Idiom conveys a meaning even if not literal. "How are you" plays a social role, but doesn't have any meaning. There is a linguistic construct called "phatic expression" and it seems much more accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

The social ritual exists to create and maintain a connection or relationship. We greet each other for the same reasons that other primates greet each other. We don't grunt or bark like dogs but instead now we say some words so we don't have to grunt. The words are not there to carry meaning.

Speech is not merely a rational exchange of information. If you try to understand every speech act in terms of the information content being exchanged through the surface meaning of the words, you're going to be confused by a lot more than just greetings.

Phatic communication:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression

It should be noted that asking "How are you?" while not expecting an actual answer is largely limited to English speaking countries. Someone from outside the Anglosphere would see this ritual as being ridiculous, which to be fair, it is.

Indeed, I moved to Finland. If you ask a Finnish person "How are you?" they will answer, and would expect you to do so too. If you don't care you don't ask.

And misunderstandings like this can be awkward, but sometimes they also lead to very good discussions.

When someone says "How are you?", I simply have it difficult to just say "very well thank you", if I'm just anticipating a root canal treatment, or whatever.

We Finns can indeed appear a bit autistic; it's not meant to be rude, but may feel like it.

I enjoy Finnish people, but I'd rather describe them as either terse or blunt.

It's not universal, but it extends far beyond the Anglosphere.

If one is in France and says "Ça va, Michel?" -- odds are one expects a little more diversity in the answer than "How are you?" expects in the US... but really, one still expects "Oui, ça va." or "Ça va bien" and not really "Ça va mal" or "Ça va pas."

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