Comments on: Friendship is Relative

By: scav

scav — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:13:41 +0000

I remember reading a really interesting psychology book once (and sadly I wish I could remember what it was called), which dissected the different shades of meaning in abstract words like “friend” or “freedom”, and their translations in other languages than English, noting that there isn’t a one-to-one relationship in general between the words used in one language and in another.

I can’t remember much about it, except the meanings were expressed in sets of simple statements that a speaker would be expected to agree on with reference to the term.

There was considerable difference between British “friend” and Australian “mate”, for example.

By: kvhhk

kvhhk — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:55:12 +0000

freeman, felkins: thanks for your help. i guess im just dense i simply don’t understand what exactly the sinclair/ mencken reference is bringing across. maybe someone could try again to point out the connection between the two?

By: freeman

freeman — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:24:11 +0000

Not quite, it’s an anti-political statement, most people don’t bother because the leftist bias here is so strong.

By: frelkins

frelkins — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:36:43 +0000

@kvkhk

Jay is making a partisan political statement of the kind we mercifully rarely see on OB. That’s why it looks so. . .odd.

By: kvkhk

kvkhk — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:12:12 +0000

i dont understand what jay is trying to say

By: Jay

Jay — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:51:01 +0000

“But salesman, politicians, etc. seem to usually act extra friendly to everyone; do we discount them enough for their being too easily “friendly”?”

So long as the government has a monopoly on the indoctrination centers we send our kids to I would say a resounding no. Public schools have every incentive to shove Upton Sinclair down our kids throats while never once uttering the name of Mencken.

By: delta

delta — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:44:08 +0000

You claim (correctly) that friendliness is relative, but then you go on to conclude that friendship is relative. Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise. People have different ways of expressing friendship, but this doesn’t entail that what they express is different. On the contrary, how would you know that their different expressions are all expressions of friendship, if friendship was as different as the expressions?

By: Barkley Rosser

Barkley Rosser — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:50:00 +0000

This is not a simple dichotomy. Russia is not like either the US or Sweden. Rather than being reserved, most are downright unfriendly, and have very low trust levels. However, if one does become a close friend with a Russian, it will be very strong and very deep, probably more of a contrast with the superficial friendships Americans are notorious for than what goes on in Sweden.

There are other countries where people are friendlier than in the US, mostly in sub-tropical regions. It is also the fact that some people are friendlier than others, and have more real and deep friends than others, although some may rank higher than others. This is not a zero sum game, although relatvity does matter.

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:09:54 +0000

It depends whether you’re trying to infer characteristics of an individual from knowing that someone else is friends with them – in which case, say, “Eliezer Yudkowsky regards this person as a friend” is a much stronger signal than “Ben Goertzel regards this person as a friend” because he’s a lot more tolerant than I am. But in terms of how much you can expect a friend to help, the game is not necessarily zero-sum, as Andy observed.

By: Zubon

Zubon — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:18:36 +0000

frelkins, how about Heinlein, “an armed society is a polite society”?

billwift, “Friends will help you move. Real friends will help you move bodies.”

I wonder about regional differences in the United States (or other large countries like Russia, China, India, or Canada). The Midwest feels much friendlier than New England. My wife had a job interview in Boston that included, “Why do you keep smiling at me?” The tone suggested that friendliness was presumptuous.

Combining that with Robin’s question, I think of the Republican primary, where Mitt Romney was described as an android deep in the uncanny valley while Mike Huckabee scored points with folksy likeability. But that is probably a lousy example because Governor Romney grew up in Michigan, while the Democratic primary featured a more famous Arkansan who was considered the less likeable candidate … against a Midwesterner. I seem to have run into frelkins’s mobility point.