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Comment by 85392_school | Hacker News Reader

Why would he be helped if he truly doesn't give? He speaks about this a little:

  the person being aided can reciprocate with degrees of humility, dependency, gratitude, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement

which, at the time, was genuinely valuable [0].

[0] Discussed more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46555688

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You left off this part:

> It takes some practice to enable this exchange when you don’t feel desperate.

Which to me means that he had to fake the reciprocity.

Do you donate to a charity expecting reciprocity?

This comment leaves me confused as to what you believe. Do you believe a man biking across the country "takes and does not give" in a different way from a charity, or was "someone who takes and does not give" simply not meant in a bad way?

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