Agreed there are traits X where people with X tend to want those around them to have less X or contrasting trait Y, the most amusing one (in many important contexts, but in far from all contexts) being chromosomes where they’re literally X and Y.
Ha! ^_^
As Benquo notes I think the detailed anecdotes are good evidence, and it matches my experiences in business and what I know of other business.
I hope that helps share my intuitions a bit more?
I have a cleared understanding of your reasoning. And your personal experience, plus the anecdotes, and enough to cross the first two bars—the phenomena you describe certainly exist, and are not extremely rare.
The problem is the next step: how frequent are these phenomena, and how severe are they? Because there are counter-examples and counter-narratives (Benquo even called them “official” narratives). Once we admit they also exist, and are not extremely rare, then we’re reaching the limit of what we can get from personal experience and anecdotes (at best we can estimate how prevalent the various behaviours are in our own subcultures).
But of course, no one has successfully ‘run a study’ of the question, nor would I expect such attempts at such a study to get to the heart of the question effectively.
We can make some predictions from your intuitions (eg people with low empathy will have friends with low empathy, narcissists will hang around with other narcissists, etc...) and measure that as best we can. This won’t be proof, but it will be an indication, and will get us partway towards measuring the prevalence of the various behaviours.
Ha! ^_^
I have a cleared understanding of your reasoning. And your personal experience, plus the anecdotes, and enough to cross the first two bars—the phenomena you describe certainly exist, and are not extremely rare.
The problem is the next step: how frequent are these phenomena, and how severe are they? Because there are counter-examples and counter-narratives (Benquo even called them “official” narratives). Once we admit they also exist, and are not extremely rare, then we’re reaching the limit of what we can get from personal experience and anecdotes (at best we can estimate how prevalent the various behaviours are in our own subcultures).
We can make some predictions from your intuitions (eg people with low empathy will have friends with low empathy, narcissists will hang around with other narcissists, etc...) and measure that as best we can. This won’t be proof, but it will be an indication, and will get us partway towards measuring the prevalence of the various behaviours.