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Comment by mock-possum | Hacker News Reader

I think you misread the comment you’re replying to -

> he was very rational and threatened other children to play with him and treat him like a friend

My emphasis. He’s not forcing people like him, because you’re right, you can’t force that, he’s coercing people into acting like they like him.

The point is that since he (supposedly) can’t feel the feeling himself, or can’t understand it, all he has to go off of is what he observes - i.e. the behavior - and you can absolutely force a behavior.

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No matter how you try to explain it, trying to force other kids to play with you is not a rational behavior. Rational behavior would be trying to find out why they don't want to play with you and try to do something about it. Would you say that if a girl doesn't want to date you then forcing her to date you is a rational behavior?

Personally? No. But if I was a kid who didn't understand that stuff? Totally.

I mean come on, there are plenty of adults who think that that's a perfectly rational approach to getting what they want.

You wouldn't force a girl to date you because you know it's not rational. You wouldn't force kids to play with you because it's not rational either. Simple as that. Just because somebody thinks it is actually rational doesn't make it so. The kid wasn't rational at all, if anything his behavior was completely irrational

Yeah we wouldn't, because we have empathy and understand other people. If you can't conceive that people can even like each other at all then all their behavior just looks like some complex status game to you. There's nothing irrational then, with your limited understanding, about coercing a behaviour that you want, any more than it would be irrational to force an exchange in chess because the Knight didn't "want to" move.

There's some irony here of trying to force another HN user to understand that rationality depends on your base understanding of how the world works.

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