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Comment by wallflower | Hacker News Reader

> 2. Be easily impressed, entertained, and interested. Most people get more pleasure from wowing you with their humor and insight than from being wowed by your humor and insight.

I have struggled with this in the past. The key takeaway I've learned is that the person is just trying to relate a feeling to you - about what they are talking about - e.g. not to convince you. Stop trying to be a know-it-all or Mr. Logic.

Example: Woman friend enters wearing thrifty-looking but interesting pea coat.

Friend: "Hey, check out my coat. Guess how much I paid?"

Me: "Hmm. $25?"

Friend: "No. $30"

Both: Silence

What I should have said: "$100?!"

Or even better?: "Let's go case out that store. I want one in my size." (joking)

It's not about getting the correct answer - this is not a game show "The Price is Right" - being friendly is more about letting someone express their emotion behind their words and maybe even brag a little

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The problem is that your friend will eventually ask the same question to an honest person, or otherwise discover that $25-30 is really the widespread going rate for the coat. And then feel even worse (especially if she actually overpaid for the coat and lost the chance to return it within 30 days). By making yourself likable, you're potentially reducing the long-term happiness of the friend. Of course this example is about a frivolous thing, but what if the original question was "what do you think of my startup idea"?

There are some cases where being brutally honest has no long-term benefit so you might as well white lie, but it takes too much mental overhead to figure that out at every such stage in every conversation. I hate it when people default to always white lying.

I default to being honest, to the extent that I respond truthfully to the dreaded "does this make me look fat" question. I hope we can still be friends.

> but it takes too much mental overhead to figure that out at every such stage in every conversation

This is the heart of the matter, I think. A large part of the brain's power seems to be tuned for sensing status and other social friend-or-foe questions. It's a genuinely complex problem, and it's hard to do while you're also thinking hard about something else.

(The flip side of this is that sometimes it's useful to anthropomorphize the elements of the problem, and that explaining a problem to someone else often brings out aspects you've overlooked.)

Absolutely right. I know a person who does that and it almost feels as if he is deliberately trying to break rapport. Does anybody have any idea how to inform this person without being patronizing?

You can't. I have the same problem ("being Mr Logic"), and my girlfriend points that out to me a lot. Each time she does, it feels like she's accusing me of actively trying to be that way -- of being broken. She's not, of course. That's just how it feels to Mr Logic.

And maybe people like us are broken, in a sense. It feels like I'm missing something everyone else around me seems to have: an ability to immediately understand the reason why people phrase things the way they do.

The person you're referring to probably knows he has the problem and has forgotten about it. If you want to point it out to him, pretend like you're pointing out an embarrasing bad habit, like picking his nose. So you probably want to tell him in private, etc. Also he'll probably deny having the problem. Let him deny it. Just tell him specific examples of what you've noticed. The more specific, the better. A video would be ideal. (Not that I think you'll get one; I'm just trying to convey that telling him specific examples is very important, because otherwise he won't be able to make the mental leap "I have a problem" => "Here's how I fix it".)