Humans are a social species, but not *only* a social species. To optimize for friends is to become a sheep-logic degen and descend into hell-is-other-people slowly imagining you're being soulful and large-hearted in your approach to life.
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Hmm interesting. I was being more exploratory with this tweet than ideological. I think youre imagining a stance I’m not sure I have. I agree with most of Ben’s piece there already.
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"optimized for the friends you meet along the way as the only goal?" sounds pretty unambiguous to me :D
isomorphic to "friendly ambitious nerd" thing, which also centers friendship in a way I find rather alarming as the raison d'etre of life itself
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that's definitely true as well, but not what I'm flagging here. Even for very social friendly extrovert people who get a lot of energy from investing in friends, making that the *only* goal to optimize for is imo dangerous to the psyche, a kind of gollumizing one-ring effect
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I disagree? I think friend-making (in a broad sense - to include status and mating advantages) *is* the main goal behind most endevours.
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What I mean is you don't have to make it the goal, it is.
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C'mon this is like a cartoon darwinism version of solve-for-friendship 🤣
"Only the friendliest survive!"
"Survival of the friendliest!"
"Friendliness selection!"
"Nature red in tooth, claw, and LinkedIn connections!"
The airport pop-sci book titles write themselves
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I think what you and Visa are doing is more sophisticated than this cartoon, but I think you haven't yet found the right language for talking about it properly. So "solve for friendship" is almost a placeholder for something more interesting, which is why I restrain the jokes :D
Re: Darwinism we did seem to group-evolve to select for sociability. I think what used to be a survival tool became a subliminal goal in the infinite game sense, yeah. Good data also on popularity / talent / success (bad news for disagreeable people like me 😋)
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I think any qualitative reduction of mechanics of evolution to a legible- stable objective function is basically not-even-wrong in the same way seeking "explainability" of AI is not-even-wrong. It's a narrative fallacy. There's no "hero trait" making evolution a hero's journey.
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You mean Visa & me or Visa & Paul? (Or Peter Paul and Mary?? )
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You and VIsa, both individually and separately. Paul's off doing something similar in a different scene (though now I think of it, his book would probably make a good salon topic for you guys)
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Curious which qualities of Anna and Visa's (distinct) work seem important, but missing from friends-language?



