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Comment by loganfrederick | Hacker News Reader

I have no direct connection to Rob Henderson but he's one of my favorite writers just from his Twitter and Substack because he dives into issues that are very close to my heart and life experience.

I've written past comments on HN about how I was raised by a father who was a professional con man who committed credit card fraud, drove family into bankruptcy, then ghosted on my mother and I. The depths of that process was deeply chaotic and disruptive at a formative time in my life (high school and college).

I've ended up having a solid career, but I have no doubt I'd have been able to make a bigger impact if the family drama hadn't dragged on my time and focus for years (basically in supporting my mother through the experience). Society's answer (at least in America) is basically to say "you could cut out your family if they're destructive" but that goes against one of the strongest aspects of human nature (to have a family). Choosing between chaos and isolation is a terrible dichotomy and a big job of society should be to ensure individuals have other warmer options.

Also identifying earlier and stopping those chaos agents like my father is an area of study that is under-researched compared to the upside for society in solving that problem. There are folks like the Mind Research Network (https://www.mrn.org/) working on this but IMO should be getting 10x the funding they currently do.

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Same, but my situation was different. From kindergarten to adulthood, straight bad. Alcoholic stepfather, suicide attempts included, eventually my older sister getting into drugs, alcoholic stepfather leaving, mother immediately going for a drug addict boyfriend who moved us halfway across the country. Separated from my other family for a bit to hang out with him and talk about how he had bugs crawling on him, he was paranoid and drugged out of his mind. He took me along on his drug pickups, and tried getting me to partake.

Got out of that situation in junior high only to move in with my dad and abusive step mother. Indoor chain smoking in a year-round hot climate, so I couldn't even open a window. Constant emotional abuse and isolation. Always getting in trouble for literally anything despite being a straight A student, not being given money for school lunches, the list goes on. Spent as much time out of the house as possible.

Finally got to college and things got a bit better since I was able to move away, but I had zero financial support outside of the academic scholarships I'd gotten. They also told me I didn't need to pay taxes since I didn't make enough money. That fucked me a bit.

For sure my life would've been way different with a stable loving family, or a society that could handle these sort of situations better.

> Society's answer (at least in America) is basically to say "you could cut out your family if they're destructive" but that goes against one of the strongest aspects of human nature (to have a family).

It’s also not really an answer, because non-chaotic families are a source of added stability. My sister in law lives with us, and my parents live 10 minutes away. So for my kids there’s never any uncertainty—someone will always pick them up from school on time and take them to their after-school activities even if mom and dad get caught up at work unexpectedly. This is very different from my wife’s upbringing, where her parents divorced and had shared custody, so there were missed handoffs, changes to extra-curricular schedules to accommodate different living situations, no consistent place to leave her things, etc.

It's also not always an option. If you're a child or a teenager you don't have a lot of options. If you're a romantic partner that is financially dependant you also don't have a lot of options.

I agree it’s not always an option. My point is that cutting out family isn’t so much a solution as it is the least bad of what may be worse options.

>one of the strongest aspects of human nature (to have a family)

I can't relate.

I treasure friendships, but I disdain familial ties enough that I have no intentions of making a family. Enough bullshit comes flying my way from the familial ties that predate my existence, I don't need nor want more.

Normal people value their families first and foremost, which necessarily limits the closeness of non-kinship relationships. I tell my kids about their great grandfather, a man they’ve never met and who I met when I was five (but who my mom lionized). Your friends’ kids won’t talk about you. Now, obviously you won’t care because you’ll be dead. But it’s reflective of the difference in the depth of the relationship during life.

I don't say this to be an asshole, but to point out that, if you are a non-shitty person, you are a presumptive source of stability for some young cousin, niece, or nephew. Because their friends won't care about them as much as those friends care about their own families.

I get where this sentiment is coming from, I wouldn’t put “normal people” at the start of it. Families are very complex and many normal people do not have normal relationships with any number of those people in their family, and the value proposition of these relationships are understandably low.

His usage of the word is correct and appropriate. Exceptions exist, obviously. So do norms. Valuing your family first and foremost is normal--thank god!

I am happy to be abnormal then. I value friends first and foremost, family dead last. If my family wants something from me, they can line up with everyone else; if I consider them a friend I'll value them like all my other friends.

Put another way, I don't treat blood ties as anything special because doing so leads to bullshit. If that's abnormal, so be it; not my loss or problem.

Nothing wrong with this, family ties can be ripe with abuse... free loading, mental abuse, etc...

For many people keeping a level playing field is the only way to keep the bullshit out, although I doubt anyone manages to get rid of all of it.

If I understand you correctly, you value your kids or your spouse less than your friends? How does this work in practice?

he is talking about blood ties, that means siblings, parents and other relatives, not his wife.

i have a good relationship to one of my brothers, and no relationship at all to the other. likewise i have no relationship at all with my dads family. mostly because they are all much older. the few cousins my age i wasn't able to connect to for unknown reasons, even though i went to school with at least one of them. on the other hand i have a fabulous relationship with one of the cousins on my mothers side, despite not growing up together, nor having seen each other for decades. the difference? character and upbringing i guess. i also have a great relationship with his parents despite serious religious differences. my own parents? loyal, supportive but distant. i do have few good friends, who are quite clearly closer than many relatives. how could it even be otherwise? the closest is my partner, well, because, she wouldn't be my partner otherwise.

all-in-all, i am not very close to most of my family, something which my partner and their family could not understand at all. the mere idea of not being close to family was completely alien to them.

and in the end, this lack of closeness affected me greatly throughout my life.

so i value those that appreciate my presence. regardless of how we are related.

> i have a good relationship to one of my brothers, and no relationship at all to the other. likewise i have no relationship at all with my dads family. mostly because they are all much older. the few cousins my age i wasn't able to connect to for unknown reasons, even though i went to school with at least one of them.

I've always wished I was closer to my cousins than I am. Some of it is my fault, much of it is nobody's fault. But, I've never thought this was "normal". Well, in a descriptive sense, it probably is quite normal, in contemporary Western societies – while far less normal when compared to human history as a whole. Normatively, however, I don't think it is how the world should ideally be, and so in that sense it is abnormal, and hence (in that respect) I am abnormal.

I've always been least close to one of my brothers. There's reasons for that. In the last year or so, we've both been actively trying to improve our relationship. But again, I say that in ideal circumstances we would have always been closer, so in that sense I say our relationship has been normatively abnormal, which is another way in which I am normatively abnormal.

i never felt that it wasn't normal not to be close to anyone. it was my normal, but i did run unto people who did not understand at all that my brothers and me could not work together well. it wasn't that we didn't get along. we did, but everyone was doing their own thing more or less.

it is only now that i understand how not having people close to me when i grew up affected me throughout my life. it affects my relationship with my partner. how and who i look for as friends. how i treat my children, both positive and negative. (the negative being that i repeat mistakes of my parents, the positive that i am more mindful about how that will affect them)

Thank you for the explanation, I can understand that.

> His usage of the word is correct and appropriate. Exceptions exist, obviously. So do norms. Valuing your family first and foremost is normal--thank god!

Yet, so many normal people do atrocious things- countless examples of normal mothers and fathers who abuse their kids, etc. You can say they are not normal, but that is just falling into the true scotsman fallacy.

> Yet, so many normal people do atrocious things- countless examples of normal mothers and fathers who abuse their kids, etc.

The problem is the word "normal" is ambiguous. It has both descriptive senses (e.g. "normal" as within two standard deviations of the mean) and normative senses ("normal" as conforming to norms which tell us how things should be), and people often shift between the two or mix them up without making that distinction clear.

> You can say they are not normal, but that is just falling into the true scotsman fallacy.

I don't think this is the "no true Scotsman fallacy" at all. Whether child abuse is "normal" in a descriptive sense is a factual question–I don't know the answer, but there are means available to produce one non-fallaciously (e.g. prevalence surveys). Whether child abuse is "normal" in the normative sense (conforming to norms of how things should be)–I hope we can all agree that "no, it isn't", and there is no fallacy in saying that.

Yes, I think you see my point. Talking about normality in regard to human behavior is incredibly superficial. Normality in that sense is more like a mask that is put on, which the wearer is often unaware they are doing. We are herd animals, and trying to blend into the herd is a behavior many of us feel compelled to do (and can involve as much self-deception as it can deception of others).

In my experience, the normal distribution of people I have met are from families that have problems (some more severe than others), yet that is the last thing they would share. They feel compelled to be normal and present themselves as happy, normal families.

Normality isn’t some mask it’s what you get from reasonably typical genetics and reasonably typical environments. Most people have something unusual about them, and the existence of such divination is completely normal because there’s so many different criteria. Similarly, the vast majority of 90 year olds have multiple significant health issues even if there isn’t a specific issue that’s nearly as universal.

It’s therefore normal for people to speak at least one language even if no specific language is universal.

PS: Humans aren’t herd animals, we’re social animals but there’s many kinds of social species. Ants, wolves, gorilla, and prairie dogs all have very distinct social structures from each other while cows, elk, etc have quite a lot in common with each other.

We are back to the ambiguity that affects all conversations about this. In my experience, most of the time when people are referring to what is normal, they are not actually referring to normal distribution, but to how they believe things should be concerning human behavior. Outside of ethicists who might be concerned with specifying norms, this is usually based upon group belief that they have adopted without reflection (i.e., herd behavior, trying to blend in, fit other people's expectations, etc).

> they have adopted without reflection

I’ve spoken to many people from many different backgrounds about their beliefs and it’s extremely unusual for people to not reflect on their beliefs.

However it’s easy to miss that frameworks of belief are self reinforcing. By which I mean belief in X increases the likelihood to believe in Y, and believing in Y increases the likelihood of believing in X. Therefore examining individual beliefs doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything and it’s much easier to swap to a new self consistent belief system than to adopt something unique to you yourself.

> Therefore examining individual beliefs doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything

I think some beliefs are more foundational than others. Foundational beliefs include beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality (e.g. materialisms vs dualisms vs idealisms), the nature of logic and rationality, the nature of knowledge (epistemology), metaethics (is ethics objective or subjective? and if objective, how so?), the basic principles of normative ethics (such as consequentialism vs non-consequentialism), etc.

If one changes one's foundational beliefs, very often the rest of one's belief system must change, like falling dominoes. However, a lot of people don't seem very interested in even examining their foundational beliefs, or aware that they even have them – things are so "obvious" to them that they are unaware anyone disagrees, or else they write off disagreement as "backward"/"superstitious"/etc without ever seriously intellectually engaging with it.

I agree people hold foundational beliefs, but they don’t seem to be things like materialism which then impose some logical consequences.

Instead it’s stuff like the fundamental nature of specific organizations/ideas. You can far more easily find an agnostic Catholic than one who believes the Catholic Church is irredeemably evil.

I’d call it tribalism rather than herd behavior because animal herds don’t attack other herds. Meanwhile football fans will fight each other over effectively arbitrary teams.

> Instead it’s stuff like the fundamental nature of specific organizations/ideas. You can far more easily find an agnostic Catholic than one who believes the Catholic Church is irredeemably evil.

I don't think one's opinion on the Catholic Church could be said to be "foundational"–for the vast majority of people.

If someone dislikes or disagrees with Catholicism, likely that is because of some other belief against which they are judging Catholicism – and that belief is more fundamental to them than any of their beliefs about Catholicism.

An atheist disagrees with all religions, Catholicism included – but their atheism (and related views such as anti-supernaturalism and physicalism) is far more foundational than their views on Catholicism specifically, which is just the application of their general principles to one of many specific cases.

A follower of a competing religious tradition – Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Protestant, etc – disagrees with Catholicism whenever it contradicts the teachings of their own religion. But, once again, their belief in their own religious tradition is more foundational to them than their rejection of Catholicism whenever it contradicts it.

A social progressive disagrees with Catholicism's teachings on abortion, LGBT issues, the role of women, etc – their beliefs on those topics may well be foundational, but their judgement of Catholicism is not foundational, it is just an application of those (more) foundational beliefs.

I think the only people for whom their views on Catholicism would be foundational, would be some devout Catholics. But, even among devout Catholics, I'm not sure if all of them would label their belief in Catholicism as foundational. Some might. Others might argue for Catholicism on the basis of philosophical and historical arguments, in which case those arguments (and the principles which underly them) might be said to be more foundational for them than Catholicism itself is.

> I don't think one's opinion on the Catholic Church could be said to be "foundational"–for the vast majority of people.

> Some might.

I’m not saying these specific beliefs are foundational for everyone that holds them or even that those people would label them as foundational, just that they preform that function for some people. Being American is a huge part of some peoples identity and largely irrelevant to others.

It could their job, politics, culture, hobby, or even taste in music etc. But many people seem to crystalize around some external concept. It’s not as clear as I’m a “vegan” or “Republican” therefore I believe all these things, but identifying as something seems to have knock on effects. Someone thinks of themselves as having made it into an higher economic status and suddenly they have options about wrist watches or whatever. People will not just own a PlayStation/BMW/whatever but reject competing brands and think this then implies other things about themselves.

Maybe we are using "foundational" somewhat differently?

You start talking about "foundational beliefs", and I immediately think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundationalism – maybe that's a consequence of having studied philosophy at university

I doubt many people derive their beliefs from a hobby or taste in music. You can find people who share the same hobby or like the same music, even while their views on politics / religion / social issues / etc are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

Foundationalusm assumes an internal logic to people’s belief systems that simply doesn’t hold up in practice.

People don’t decide the big questions to build up a belief system from the ground up. Instead they work from the middle of a web of beliefs. Arguably the true foundations of belief are things like object permanence which we discover as infants. Ie: Closing my eyes doesn’t make something go away.

Older kids ask questions like “what’s the point of life?” and get culturally appropriate responses from parents, religious leaders, TV or whatever. They don’t ask about things like materialisms vs dualisms vs idealisms until they are even older and have built up a complex web of interlocking beliefs.

> Older kids ask questions like “what’s the point of life?” and get culturally appropriate responses from parents, religious leaders, TV or whatever. They don’t ask about things like materialisms vs dualisms vs idealisms until they are even older and have built up a complex web of interlocking beliefs.

Sure, few people will hear about “materialism” or “dualism” or “idealism” as philosophical theories until adulthood, if that. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t presumed by a lot of things ordinary people say, and which children and adolescents end up hearing.

Someone who says “there is no afterlife: there is no scientific evidence for it” is effectively presuming materialism, even if they don’t know what “materialism” is. (Many people only know “materialism” as “excessive emphasis on material goods”, not the philosophy of mind sense.)

I agree, my point is that predisposition.

Though I can’t help but adding… You can have a non material world without having an afterlife (telekinesis or spells working) and you can have an afterlife in a material world (via active intervention and time travel).

So rather than materialism being foundational it can be thought of as a category that arises from more foundational beliefs.

> I agree, my point is that predisposition.

Well, I'd agree a lot of people choose ideas because of what they associate them with – as in, "religious people are boring and bigoted, science produces all these cool amazing new technologies, materialism is the science option and dualism/idealism are the religious options, so I'm picking materialism". From a strictly philosophical point of view, there are lots of holes in that argument – even if a non-materialist philosophy of mind is true, that does not in itself entail the truth of any particular religion, and (arguably) there are non-materialist philosophies of mind which are just as consistent with the results of contemporary science as materialism is – but, many people can't see those holes, so that kind of argument convinces them.

> Though I can’t help but adding… You can have a non material world without having an afterlife (telekinesis or spells working) and you can have an afterlife in a material world (via active intervention and time travel).

Telekinesis or spells could work in a perfectly material world. Imagine there was a swarm of nanobots which could read our minds, and are programmed to obey certain verbal commands – in such a world, telekinesis and spells would be completely real, but those facts would not in themselves make the world non-material. Furthermore, ideas such as Boltzmann brains and Poincaré recurrence suggest the possibility that an afterlife may be inevitable even in a purely material universe (although whether they actually do entail one gets into all kinds of complicated debates which I myself lack the competence to confidently decide.)

However, in another sense, my point stands. If materialism is true, it makes sense to identify the mind with the functioning brain, and hence to identify (presumably) irreversible brain death with the permanent cessation of the mind's existence; if materialism is false, that identification is a lot more open to question. With materialism, an afterlife is implausible, unless we rely on some highly speculative ideas (Boltzmann brains, Poincaré recurrence, simulation theory, etc). With idealism or dualism, an afterlife is much more probable, even without considering those kinds of ideas – if the mind does not necessarily depend on the brain for its existence, we have no strong reason to assume that the cessation of the latter must entail the cessation of the former.

> there are lots of holes in that argument

There’s holes in all kinds of things people believe. If you’re talking about actual belief systems then you can’t assume rational actors and logical thinking. Philosophy really doesn’t have the tools to explain what’s going on. We’re in the realm of psychology / neuroscience.

> to assume that cessation of the latter must entail the cessation of the former

Mind uploading blurs the line between life and afterlife because it wasn’t conceived of when those ideas were created.

IMO the conceptual framework that created the idea of a material world is really a delineation between magic rituals / religion and what people actually observed. The wacky nature of the observable universe is really orthogonal to the initial differentiation to the point where I think people would still talk about the material world in terms of things like fate and reincarnation even if spells worked.

> There’s holes in all kinds of things people believe. If you’re talking about actual belief systems then you can’t assume rational actors and logical thinking. Philosophy really doesn’t have the tools to explain what’s going on. We’re in the realm of psychology / neuroscience.

No doubt the average person's beliefs are full of holes, but education in philosophy and logic can make one aware of those holes, aware of one's hidden assumptions, the heretofore unconsidered alternatives to one's positions. I question whether psychology or neuroscience can offer us the same things.

> Mind uploading blurs the line between life and afterlife because it wasn’t conceived of when those ideas were created.

Nobody knows whether mind uploading is really possible. It is a purely speculative technology, its development could be centuries or millennia away, if it ever is developed at all. I also think its philosophical significance is overrated, since in principle it is just as compatible with idealism or dualism as it is with materialism.

> IMO the conceptual framework that created the idea of a material world is really a delineation between magic rituals / religion and what people actually observed.

I disagree. Most non-materialist arguments have as their starting point epistemology, not anything to do with magic, rituals or religion. Should our ontology straightforwardly mirror our epistemology (i.e. a first-person perspective is epistemologically fundamental and hence should also be ontologically fundamentally)–or invert it?

I didn't find rayiner's original comment which spawned this tangent about "normality" that ambiguous myself – because I've read enough of his other comments, I have some idea of how he thinks, and I read what he says in light of that understanding. I can see how it could be seen as much more ambiguous by someone who lacks that background.

I read rayiner as, first and foremost, talking about the norms and values to which he subscribes, which he believes to be correct. And to the extent he was talking descriptively, I think his emphasis was on the central tendency of global human society, not the central tendency of the contemporary United States (or West more broadly). And I think that's true – most societies in human history have put enormous emphasis on family ties, and that's still true in the majority of countries worldwide – their recent de-emphasis in the contemporary West is a significant deviation from the (descriptive) norm of human history as a whole.

> In my experience, the normal distribution of people I have met are from families that have problems (some more severe than others), yet that is the last thing they would share. They feel compelled to be normal and present themselves as happy, normal families.

I think you are now talking about a third thing – "normality" as an appearance to which one feels social pressure to conform.

In many cultures, it is viewed as inappropriate to "air one's dirty laundry" with acquaintances, work colleagues, etc – "oversharing" – something which should be limited to close friends/family.

Yes, this is why I cringe whenever I hear someone use the word normal when referring to human behavior. It is used uncritically, and loaded with meaning stolen from other contexts, and has caused real harm.

Addendum: I'm not able to reply to your comment below, so I will add this here. Anytime you ground your argument on what normal people do, you are almost certainly deluding yourself. This is not an objective statement you can make. It is a subjective statement about your own beliefs that you have puffed up by appealing to your impression that other people share them. Real harm has been done and continues to be done for the sake of "normalness". I felt the need to poke that hole because it really bothers me that in this day, most folks still are unreflective about this.

> Addendum: I'm not able to reply to your comment below

Did you try clicking on the "X minutes ago" link? Usually, even if the reply link is hidden on the comment, it is visible if you go to the comment's individual page.

> Anytime you ground your argument on what normal people do, you are almost certainly deluding yourself. This is not an objective statement you can make.

I don't agree appeals to "normality" are necessarily self-delusion. I prefer not to use that kind of language myself, due to its ambiguity. But, I believe in the principle of charitable interpretation, which means I try to understand what a person meant by what they were saying (based on my background knowledge of how they think), and attempt to prefer the strongest possible reading of what someone else says (seek to steelman rather than strawman).

To say that putting strong emphasis on family ties is descriptively normal in terms of the bulk of human history–I think that is an objective factual claim which is true. If you think it is incorrect, I'm interested to know your evidence for that. As I said, I'd prefer to make this point without unqualified use of the ambiguous word "normal", but a point is not incorrect just because it was stated in a potentially ambiguous way.

If we are talking about normative senses, well that depends on what ethics one adopts, which in turn depends on what metaethics one adopts. Many people believe that ethics is inherently subjective, but I don't agree with them. Not a "self-delusion" unless you apply that label to anyone who adopts different axioms than you do – in which case they can throw it right back at you.

> Real harm has been done and continues to be done for the sake of "normalness"

I think it is true that harm is sometimes done in the name of the "normal" – but conversely, one can also argue that some harm has been caused by the rejection of that concept. Which harm is greater is determined both by one's ethical values, and also one's conclusions on disputed factual questions.

> Did you try clicking on the "X minutes ago" link? Usually, even if the reply link is hidden on the comment, it is visible if you go to the comment's individual page.

Thanks

> I think it is true that harm is sometimes done in the name of the "normal"...

I think you could strengthen that statement to say that much harm has been done "in the name of the 'normal'". It is common for people to humiliate others based on perceived differences, and to do much worse things. That has been the basis for a tremendous amount of violence, which I believe is pretty much undeniable.

I'm not bashing us humans for being shitty- we are a heck of a lot kinder than most other animals are to each other. Hens regularly peck to death other birds that appear deformed or otherwise abnormal, and many mammals exhibit similar behaviors (even if it is less violent, like excluding them from the group, so they die). We have a lesser version of that, but it is still there- go to any middle school playground and you will see it on display- and most people don't seem to mature out of it, they just adapt better to deal with it.

Recognizing it in ourselves and reflecting on it seems critical to transcending it.

> I think you could strengthen that statement to say that much harm has been done "in the name of the 'normal'". It is common for people to humiliate others based on perceived differences, and to do much worse things

I wonder how many children, when faced with the consequences of a parent's infidelity, feel some jealousy of decades past when infidelity resulted in far greater social opprobrium? Probably more than just a handful – but I think it is a thought which many of them would hesitate to speak, due to its political incorrectness. Could that be an example of how weakening of societal norms (of the concept of "normal") has hurt some people? Infidelity is viewed as far less abnormal than it used to be

> We have a lesser version of that, but it is still there- go to any middle school playground and you will see it on display- and most people don't seem to mature out of it, they just adapt better to deal with it.

A lot of kids who pick on "different" kids are actually acting abnormally – not descriptively, but prescriptively, as in disobeying authority figures (teachers, administrators, parents, etc) who have told them quite explicitly not to do that

> A lot of kids who pick on "different" kids are actually acting abnormally – not descriptively, but prescriptively, as in disobeying authority figures (teachers, administrators, parents, etc) who have told them quite explicitly not to do that

Maybe, but much more likely you have the cause and effect reversed, and the authority figures told them because that is something kids have a propensity to do (i.e., if they weren't likely to do it, why would they be told not to?)

You are misunderstanding. I am not saying that valuing family is not normal, I am saying that because a person does not do so, given certain circumstances, does not make them abnormal. Family is a part of someone's life, and if you choose to define that person based on their family relationships, that is a mistake. There are so many people who are perfectly normal, and do not have close ties to a majority of their family. I have friends who are absolutely like brothers and sisters to me, and my kids will know and hear about them as well.

If you think people having abnormal families is a exception, you need to step outside your front door. I would say almost every family has people that other family members would not go out of the way for, and the circumstances are all that can define those situations, not a blanket "family is everything" statement.

> I am not saying that valuing family is not normal, I am saying that because a person does not do so, given certain circumstances, does not make them abnormal

I'm abnormal, in various ways. Some of those are (at least partially) my fault, some of them are entirely the fault of people other than me, some of them are nobody's fault. Everyone is abnormal, in at least a few ways. All families are abnormal–in some respects. Whether anybody should be ashamed to be abnormal depends entirely on the details of the specific abnormalities we are talking about.

People don't have relationships with their families for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes, their family deserves all the blame, and they are an innocent victim. Sometimes, they deserve all the blame, and their family is an innocent victim. Sometimes, everyone is to blame. Maybe, sometimes, nobody is to blame. All those situations are abnormal (in the sense that normatively they should not occur), and a person or family in an abnormal situation is (in a certain sense) themselves abnormal. But, as I said, whether anyone ought to be ashamed of that abnormality depends on all those details, of how exactly they ended up in that situation.

The initial sentiment was not discussing the details in which people are normal or abnormal, but the aggregate understanding of what a "normal person" might be. You can't say everyone is abnormal, it becomes a meaningless baseline, which could just be what this whole discussion boils down to anyways. Otherwise, I agree with all of your points.

> You can't say everyone is abnormal, it becomes a meaningless baseline

You can't meaningfully say everyone is abnormal in the same way.

You can meaningfully say everyone is abnormal in lots of different ways, if for each of those individual ways, only a small minority of people (say <5%) is abnormal in that way.

Consider the variable "number of deceased older siblings at time of birth". For most people, that's zero. For a small minority of people, that's 1. For me, it is 5. That's extremely abnormal, I expect there'd be less than 0.001% of the population for whom that variable is so high. I'd be rather surprised if you were abnormal in that particular way, although surely there are other ways in which you are abnormal but I am not.

I am saying when you walk up to a person, know nothing about them, what actions do or do not make them normal in general...not in a very very specific parameter? If that person says "I don't really talk to my family"...does that make them an abnormal person in the most general sense?

Are we talking prescriptively (normatively) or descriptively?

> Your friends’ kids won’t talk about you.

They likely will if the kids witness how their parent treasures that friendship.

By your own logic, even. What could "value their families first and foremost" possibly mean if the love a family member has for a friend-- and vice versa-- doesn't end up deeply affecting the bond the rest of the family has with that same person?

The exception that comes to mind is when a family has real question about whether that same level of love/respect is reciprocal-- e.g., they suspect their family member is being used by their friend, or perhaps both are involved in a spiral of drugs, etc. Outside of that, a family disrespecting a close friendship would make me question the health/depth of the familial bonds.

> What could "value their families first and foremost" possibly mean if the love a family member has for a friend-- and vice versa-- doesn't end up deeply affecting the bond the rest of the family has with that same person

We have many close family friends, since we immigrated far from our biological family. They can be loved and respected. But they’re still in a circle outside your family. Like, if you had to pick between your uncle’s life or your family friend’s it wouldn’t even be a close call for most people.

Frankly, this conversation would come across as bizarre to most people because it’s so obviously true. I think the only reason this fallacy exists is this western individualist yearning for complete self determination. This desire to transcend relational networks imposed by birth and believe that relationships built on choice can be as strong.

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