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Comment by throw0101c | Hacker News Reader

The Harvard Study, which has been following individuals for their entire lives for decades, and has even started following some of their descendants, has found that connections are strongly correlated with happiness, health, and general life satisfaction:

> What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life.

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61272271-the-good-life

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Something I noticed at my current workplace (20 employees, 80% women and mostly between 20-30 yrs old) is that all the girls constantly take breaks or walks together to just to be with each other and get things off their chests. They frequently give each other hugs at random times during the day. New employees arrive and they immediately fall in to the fold. One arrived from abroad and after a few weeks said "you guys (she meant gals) are my new family here"

Meanwhile there's us 3 developer dudes who all get along fine but our relationship goes about as far as "all good?", "yep you?". And then of course talking about IT geek stuff. Kind of general problem with men I think. Very difficult to open up to other men.

Men (generally speaking) want to fit into the social dynamic of their tribe. If you started to slowly open up and talk about more vulnerable topics it's very likely they would follow suit. I've seen it many times, almost always where I was the one that started it. I was once a super 'introverted dev' but really I was just not well socialized and unwilling and unable to express my emotions with confidence and clarity. Once I started to feel my feelings (I started with a feelings journal where I'd write down any emotions I felt that day) then I could start to describe them appropriately for the setting. Opening up to a trusted member of whatever tribe you are in (work, friends, hobby club) at the appropriate pace inspires a great deal of trust. If you talk about how you feel openly (and again, appropriately to where the group is) they come to trust that you will say how you feel when you feel it and that inspires trust and security, which makes you a very valuable member of that tribe.

Thanks for the advice :) Paradoxically I'd feel more comfortable telling my life story and recent mishaps to a total stranger than to someone who I spend 8 hrs in an office with. Something to do with if it comes across wrong or people get freaked out, you're still sitting next to them for 40hrs a week until you leave the company.

The good news is, you absolutely can tell a total stranger about your recent mishaps, or worries or problems or whatever! Services like The Samaritans exist just for this and many people find them extremely beneficial.

That makes sense as you have more to lose with the people you know than the total strangers. Doesn't stop you from testing the waters though. Additionally, it is useful to find out who you can open up to and who you can't.

I honestly don't think it's as big a problem as you would expect. Guys aren't quite so built to be huggy friendly and we tend to be more defined by real working relationships.

Or maybe it's just a me thing.

Like, at work for me I would be most rewarded by other people who are engaged in that common work cause and interact within that context. Not with stories about family life or opening up about whatever.

Hanging out with friends is kind of pointless without a common cause. To do play some game or sport or actually do something that's worth doing and is fairly collaborative.

To me a friend is like "hey I'm building a fence, wanna help?". And the ability to be building a fence yourself and asking the same. Or whatever project you can imagine.

The "you good" shit is mostly a consequence of lacking that sort of common cause, at least in my experience.

Or just watching other people do stuff is good too. "Hold my beer" silly stuff that you can watch and joke and one up each other about.

But if someone started that family huggy stuff (barring needing help or talking about their problems) I'd be distancing myself from that hard. In my experience those people are out to get you, smile on a snake.

> Hanging out with friends is kind of pointless without a common cause.

I'd've missed out on a lot of good feelings if I had thought this way.

Is "good feelings" just a euphemism for sex here?

Funny :) but no.

"Good feelings" as in I feel supremely content and I love my friends and they love me.

I used to have this attitude and regret losing good friends over it. It’s too easy to be independent these days, and, if you’re naturally introverted like me, too easy to neglect friendships due to self-reliance. I’m gradually learning to reach out to friends for no other purpose than spending time together, and it’s broadened my horizons. I think modern life is by default too isolating to allow most relationships to build themselves like this. You don’t have to hug people, but reaching out for non-transactional contact is rewarding IME.

> It’s too easy to be independent these days,

To be fair, I didn't say you have to have a good common cause. Just something to do in some capacity.

Like, you don't need help, it's fun to hang out and it's an excuse to get help.

My point is to say the relationships are different rather than transactional. Focused on a common cause and that sharing of it rather than relationships directly.

> Hanging out with friends is kind of pointless without a common cause.

Hanging out with friends to enjoy each other’s company is the common cause.

> Guys aren't quite so built to be huggy friendly and we tend to be more defined by real working relationships.

Do you think this is really true, or just how it is in some societies? There's been a lot of talk about suicide rates in men and lack of social connections. Maybe this is just wrong, and as others have said, pure social connection without having to "do" something is the point.

A lot of old guys out there dying alone because they can no longer "do" and don't have an idea of just how to "be."

> Hanging out with friends is kind of pointless without a common cause

Absolutely not. Relationships need to be nurtured. Hanging out with your friends without any specific plans is great and I can't imagine not doing it regularly.

I am all for doing things together and that is usually how we men bond. However, we do need each other emotionally as well, when stuff gets real.

I have been going through mid-life issues lately. Its been hard to talk to friends about it. I have talked to older men as well as peers. I have made it a point to overcome the fear of opening up personally (make no mistake, its a fear that kept me from opening up to others before). I am a strong believer in letting it out there in the hopes that others are able to help. To many of the men I know do not want to show weakness. They try and look tough/strong/having it together, but really they are lonely because they have no one to help them through their struggle. The hardest part is that they choose this by deciding its more important to look strong them to have encouragement from friends.

I have seen a discouraging trend. Those that are not able to open up about their own issues are the ones that are not able to help me when I am going through issues. They don't know how to relate and its almost that some of them are afraid to enter into a deeper need. They have nothing to say, even if they can relate their words are empty because there is not a deeper bond there. The friends that have helped me are the ones that have actually reminded who I am and what I have already come through.

I am not saying we have to be a touchy feeling but when my friend is in a dead end/low paying job (in his mid 40s), had a side project partner back out on him, has to move out of his apartment because of new renters, and has a wife that is in increasingly dissatisfied with apartment living and tells say "I'm doing ok" on the phone... He is dying inside and won't let others in.

I am not afraid to go there with my buds. I will also so say that the men I go deep with always walk away from the conversation thanking me and grateful for the friendship.

About five years ago I got to know a new woman colleague. (I’m a man.) Very soon it felt like she was confiding in me. No one just confides in me like that, so I thougt we were developing a friendship -- I would never think to do something like that to anyone that I didn't trust. It felt great that someone would go out of their way to seek my Platonic companionship.

But I eventually realized that I was just the most convenient guy/person (most of her immediate coworkers were men) for her to complain about work while stuck at work. We never did anyhing together otside of work contexts.

The one thing I miss from when I was a smoker was the easy, no-expectation, daily excuse to hang out with other dudes at the office. I quit smoking 10 years ago but I still have strong relationships with some of my smoking coworkers from back then, but I haven't developed any work friends at all since then. I find that the main component in building relationships is just how much relaxed time you spend together.

I'm not sure that's a problem, so much as it's gender observations. I've seen the same things. There's a meeting I go to, where it can be various blends of men and women. All the people are close and comfortable with each other, but if it happens to be only men, there's silence. If it's a mix, particularly if certain women are present, there's this animated chatter that's easy to join in on.

I know for me the heart of what I am isn't about 'opening up', it's about things like that IT geek stuff (but translated into what I do).

It feels like an emotional Dunbar number: I do best when there's just a couple people with whom I keep track of how they're doing in a personal way, and it matters a great deal but I won't feel at all the same way about twenty people at once. It seems like women are more likely to keep track of how large numbers of people are doing, in a social way, which won't always mean trying to HELP people: they can get caught up in drama when there's conflict among the people, and it takes on great importance.

I'll have a much smaller number of people like that, and will bind more loosely to them, and I think it's the same mechanism but it just doesn't scale the way it does with women. I don't see it as a problem, more as an observation.

> And then of course talking about IT geek stuff. Kind of general problem with men I think. Very difficult to open up to other men.

I think men generally are about doing things together as opposed to 'just' being together. "Talking" isn't really counted as an activity for men, but is for women.

Get a bunch of guys together for paintball, or hunting, or sports, and relationships will form.

I find it weird that other men don't do that. I try to be good friends with men and women I feel I can trust, and we do often talk about personal stuff to let out steam, take breaks for talking, go for walks once in a while, etc.

Just yesterday at work I stayed until 9pm because a friend was waiting on some CI shit, I stayed to do today's work in advance. We were close before but we talked about a lot of personal stuff to each other, it's nice advancing the friendship to new levels.

But I also talk deep stuff with my male friends. It's not really with everyone but there's plenty of people who are ok with that.

uhhh. that's normal. working on cars with friends is one of the best things ever.

guys bond over tasks, machines, sports, ect. you can talk about whatever you want with mates, along the 'plotline' of fixing a car.

prioritizing 'work families' at work sends the wrong signals. start a union if you want to intertwine your lives to the quality of a 'work family'.

> The simple but surprising answer is: relationships.

The trick to understand all of this is to realize that humans are a tribal species. I don't mean in the in-group versus out-group stuff (though that is also a big piece of the human behavioral puzzle). What I mean is that for all of our most recent evolutionary history, our survival did not depend on our individual performance as much as it did the performance of our tribe.

A solitary Homo sapiens on the savannah is as dead and useless as a worker bee without a hive. Our entire cognitive and emotional systems have evolved to understand that deep truth. To be abandoned by the tribe is an existential threat, and to be accepted and valued by the tribe is winning.

Once you realize that, so much of human behavior makes more sense.

I think it really says something about modern American culture that we find the answer "surprising". For almost all of the history of Western civilization, it was so obvious that it didn't even need questioning. We're like fish flopping around on land who are finally realizing what water is.

Could it be that in the surveys which measure happiness , more social people are more likely to say they're happy? Because they talk to their peers about their lives and are more likely to present more presentable aspects of their lives.

With people with less social contact, maybe they don't reorganize their memories with respect to social visibility and just by intensity or time spent in that experience.

There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.

> Could it be that in the surveys which measure happiness , more social people are more likely to say they're happy?

In addition to surveys, there are interviews at regular intervals, so observations of the participants are also used as data points.

> There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.

Empirical evidence does not support this. There are such things as 'set points' of happiness:

* https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/meditation-for-moder...

Some folks have lower, and some higher, 'base levels' of happiness. It seems that some people are / can be 'inherently' happier than others.

Personally I've found that joy cometh before a fall. Literally. My worst rollerblading accidents were when I was feeling joy (those hand guards do not protect against broken fingers). As such joy is not an emotion I actively cultivate, and when it happens I take it as reason to be wary.

> There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.

This is not true at all, in my opinion.

I used to believe everyone has approximately the same life satisfaction after their needs are met. I've always been quite happy, but I became much, much happier after I moved across the country and made really close friends with whom I spend a lot of time. Meanwhile, my old roommate still spends 8-5 in the office and then comes home and plays League of Legends. There is no way our life satisfaction is the same. Don't get me wrong, I was pretty happy going into the office and seeing my friends for an hour or two each day. But now that I have a life with much more time spent with deep friendships, I see that life satisfaction is not zero sum. You can be a certain amount of happy. And you can be even happier than that at no cost.

>With people with less social contact, maybe they don't reorganize their memories with respect to social visibility and just by intensity or time spent in that experience.

That wouldn't correlate with smaller lifespan and worse health outcomes for people with less social contact pretty consistently observed (filtered for objections like "they have less social contact because they are sick, not the other way around").

>There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.

In other studies, above a certain level like starvation and homelessness, "basic necessities" are not even the biggest factor in happiness. Meaning, social circle, and status are.

> That wouldn't correlate with smaller lifespan and worse health outcomes for people with less social contact pretty consistently observed

You didn't filter for "friend noticed there was something physically wrong and got them to go to a doctor". Plenty of people's lives have been saved, or have been made healthier, because of such interventions.

> There is a theory that I'd like to believe that everyone is equally happy over a period of time after basic necessities of life are satisfied.

n = 1 here, all basic needs met… still working on the happiness thing

I was a part of a study with San Diego state which followed my through my life until I told them to stop...

The study was to see how different people from differing socio-economic backgrounds turned out as they got older...

When I was about ~16/17 I told them to kick rocks.

They used to show up every year and interview me for an hour about how my life was progressing...

I lived on a famous hippy commune in Lafayette California until I was 4 years old... My mom knew Jim Jones (of the koolaid fame) and a bunch of other famous people from San Francisco in the 1970s...

Later, I found an article in Playboy Magazine (yes, no funny joke there) which was taken with the founder of the commune, Vik Baranco (I dont know how to spell his name) where he recvealed that the commune was being followed by the CIA...

I think the study from UCSD was a CIA front as I spoke with other kids from the commune and the weird shit that happened to them....

EDIT: my mom was doing acid with the grateful dead, fleetwod mac, and a bunch of other people... who probably dont want to be named...

anyway - the 1970s and 1980s were briliant for computers.... BECAUSE OF ACID...

Look at Cisco, they developed the core of BGP while on acid in a hot-tub in Sunnyvale...

So much of tech is tied with psychs.

The weird stuff was definitely the CIA, and not say, I dunno... the questionable life choices of someone who hung out with Jim Jones and hippy commune cult leaders.

Obviously there would be weird stuff around Jim Jones and hippy communes.

Parent didn't say anything about any "weird stuff" being by the CIA.

They said the "study by UCSD" might have been a front for CIA.

Hey, I'm not going to argue with you... but it WAS fn weird... and a part of my life's dialogue.

Can I write you a book on growing up in a family that built California?

You know why there are so many places and streets named 'Folsom' <-- my great-great-uncle

I know a lot of shit.

My great grandfather was ticketed MANY times when they were first installing street lights in SF to "NO MACHINE IS GOING TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO"

(I kinda inherited that)

The CIA are assholes, and they do routinely violate the rights of Americans (even today, though it was probably worse decades ago).

But their interests are narrow. What about that would have piqued their curiosity? If you are right, does that mean one of the hippies was some Soviet asset? And even then, that's got to be the worst cover story ever. On the other hand, the Feebs were really bad at counterintel tradecraft, but it's difficult to imagine them being sophisticated enough to pull off an academic cover like that.

Maybe I was harsh. Near as I can tell, almost all of those agencies were into some seriously stupid shit (when did they give up on psychic phenomena research again?), but it still just doesn't strike me as plausible. I've having trouble processing it.

If you ever do write that book, plug it here so I have a chance of noticing it, would ya?

Yeah, snide-ness aside, you'd be suprised what happened in the 1970s among the 'hip' crowd in San Francisco....

Ever know about Charlie Manson's CIA fixers, for example? (haight street SF) - I dont have time to give you a history lesson on the CIA and silicon valley...

Go apply at palantir if you want to know what is going on....

Vic Baranco

http://www.lafayettemorehouse.com/index.html

>which followed my through my life until I told them to stop.

Plot twist: or, perhaps, even after that!

Interesting. The Jonestown "doctor" who devised the Flavor Aid solution was in my dad's social circle at the University of Houston in the late 60s. UCSD is my alma mater (different school from San Diego State fwiw).

Hypercard was also dreamed up while on an acid trip, IIRC.

We had one of the first TV studios powered on APPLE ][e machines...

And youre not going to like this, the TV station was called "CLIT"

(my first job was in middle school de-soldering mem chips from app mainboards (un-related to the above, but still related in more ways than one)

I happened to live in that area of Lafayette when I was a kid, in the late 70s - early 80s. From over the hill from my house, we could see all these purple buildings. I'm pretty sure that's the commune you're describing.

As kids we didn't really know what was going on over there, but we knew it was something a bit...unusual.

Yup, the "purple people" it was vics' wifes' personal farvorite color... so all the houses were purple...

I have many stories.

my dad was his personal body guard... if you want to hear crazy stories from the 1980s, Tahoe, and Cocaine and the bay area, ... uh... yeah...

these bitches were flying TONS TONS did I make that specific? Tons

into trukee ( south lake tahoe )

where do you think all the coke in vegas came from?

Yeah. I remember there was talk that it was a "nudist colony" so we'd peek over, hoping to see something ... but we never really did see any people outside the buildings. I was too young to really understand the hippie/drug angle so it didn't factor in, but now when I think back, yeah, makes a lot of sense.

This trivializes the process of developing relationships, and the mechanisms by which relationships promote well-being. In turn:

1) You must consider the dynamics of rejection. People may recognize and seek relationships, but find themselves unable to build them. However much you might want to have a relationship with someone, they have to reciprocate. And if there's something "wrong" with you, you're going to find that a lot of people will not want your company. Additionally, thanks to network effects, one person taking this stance can close a large swath of relationships that might otherwise come into being; being on the bad side of someone who is popular or well-connected can quickly turn you into a pariah.

2) Relationships don't just magically make you happier or healthier; they provide access to goods and services that fulfill needs, because affinity prompts people either to provide them directly or to direct you to places where you can get them. Not every relationship is equal, either, but having more of them means a greater chance of having some that cancel out or improve upon deleterious relationships or the lack of a relationships. Some relationships take more out of you than they give.

I committed heavily to open source development as I wanted my relationship with SOCIETY to be a certain way, and I've found it has this effect for me.

Discovering that the 'reach' of my work has extended farther than I expected… for instance, someone who's asked for particular code turns out to be in a homeless shelter as I once was, many years ago, and their connection is giving them hope for their future, or for another instance, someone's shouting me and my work out by name in a BBC radio interview and seems to get what I'm trying to accomplish… these things hugely add to my identification of my life as fulfilling and meaningful.

The one is very personal, and the other is easily understood as celebrity and promotion, but they're the same. If the purpose to life is making connections, a large circle of social friends (or a siamese-twin relationship with a romantic partner) isn't the ONLY option. There's all sorts of ways to connect, and finding meaningful work will almost certainly mean functional or even parasocial connections with lots of people.

And parasocial relationships are still relationships in this sense: they're one-to-many, in which you can't give what's normally understood to be friendship on the one-on-one level, but it doesn't work if you haven't got love for the collective entity of your fandom. I think parasocial relationships become more intense when the celebrity center of the relationship is really hungry for it. Modern examples aren't the only examples I can give: consider Johnny Carson, king of the parasocial relationship :)

Without reading the study I assume this conclusions is from averaging out the experiences of a bunch of people. The problem with group averages is that they are just that. They apply more, or less, or not at all, to particular individuals within the analysis.

Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them. “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” is the type of stuff you could only find on the internet or in academia, you can logic yourself into it but it’s so far beyond common sense it’s insane

Anecdotally, I disagree. I definitely feel more lonely when I’m in large groups and feel disconnected. If I’m alone, I’m not lonely unless I’m thinking about those large groups and my absence of connection - and I can even feel lonely if my connections just aren’t available at a given moment.

well I guess it's the kind of thing you have to experience to believe.

from my personal experience, being with the wrong crowd can definitely make you more lonely than being alone doing your own thing.

> “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people”

Oh it’s entirely easy to be super lonely when surrounded by other people. The easiest way to achieve this that I’ve found is being a +1 at a wedding. You’re surrounded with people you’ve never met who all know each other pretty well and have tight bonds. Makes you feel super isolated and alone in a way that just isn’t noticeable in an empty room.

I used to feel like this and yes at weddings in particular.

At some point I realized that I am not the only +1 at this wedding and somehow those other +1s aren't fucked up in their head about it.

Eventually you realize your agency. Like you can for example spot the other +1 and strike up a conversation.

> Eventually you realize your agency

Oh that's not the problem at all for me. I am perfectly capable of feeling lonely right through that entire super fun engaging conversation with strangers. Because a conversation doesn't scratch that same itch. Like eating potato chips when what you really need is steak.

It's not a good metaphor because a potato chips conversation can end up a steak conversation

Sometimes yes sometimes no. Sometimes steak just isn't available, but you can have a great roast instead.

> Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them.

Not necessarily. I often visit my mum and her partner. I love them both and they love me. Yet, I feel more lonely when I live with them than when I live alone. I can even see it in the intensity of my online chatting and dating app use. Presence of nice people just makes me more hungry for connection.

"Appetite comes with eating."

I'd say it's not "people who are often around other people are lonelier than people who are not", but rather "people who are lonely, feel lonelier when they're around other people."

I definitely relate to the latter. I can go for a long bike ride by myself and feel blissfully content, but standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time is intensely lonely and isolating.

I can relate to this and I think it's about this:

// standing in the corner at a social event where everyone else is having a good time

I used to be like that, and I would judge the people I was disconnected from like they are dumb for having a good time. Eventually I figured out, I was the standoffish jerk - and forced myself to learn how to go say hi and be more part of the group (although I am still not amazing at it, I realize that if I am disconnected in the corner, it's because of what I have chosen to do/not do)

It's the contrast. Like with impossible/imaginary colors. People are apparently comparing themselves to others.

It's very basic common sense.

You might even be saying the same thing and not realize it.

They don't say people feel more lonely "when around people who they like and who like them".

They say LONELY people feel more lonely "when around people", that is, when they are around people who don't care for them.

Like a lonely person at a club full of people where everybody else seems to have friends or a partner.

That's what they say, which is absolutely common sense.

Not that people feel lonelier when with their friends - as you might have understood it.

> Yeah, people feel less lonely when they’re around people who they like and who like them.

People who they like and who like them. And you don’t think that that is a massive caveat? The original claim was just “people”, not “fantastic and awesome people”.

> “People feel more lonely when they’re around other people” is the type of stuff you could only find on the internet or in academia, you can logic yourself into it but it’s so far beyond common sense it’s insane

And who are you to make this statement? Only on the Internet and in academia? I don’t know what “only on the Internet” is supposed to mean. That everyone lies on the Internet or that none of them (us) are real people? I’ve seen people who have made this claim. On the Internet at least. (How candid are random people about this “in real life”?) They seemed sincere enough about it.

I don’t even know what the hell you are getting at with “logic yourself into”, as if how people feel is just a philosophical-analytical experiment gone wrong. Get a grip.

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