If your social circle consists entirely of straight-talkers, where will you go when you need to be comforted? If a putty-person wants to associate with you, but you have a well-established reputation for shunning putty-people and a relatively homogenous social circle… well, then, they’ll pretend to be a straight-talker, because blending in is what they do. Eventually the game-theory of this makes you paranoid, which means more need and less opportunity for emotional comfort, which means any remaining infiltrators get more of your social bandwidth because they’re better at providing that comfort.
Er, what? What are you talking about? This doesn’t happen. Is that something you experience in your life? People infiltrating their way into friendships with you, when they know that their personality traits are something you hate? That must suck. :(
Also, you seem to have missed the distinction between in-principle independently-verifiable fact and self-reported preference.
“You can’t prove I hate your pie, so I might as well lie and say I like it.”?
No thanks. If that’s how you (the hypothetical you, a person who wants to be my friend) behave, then, all else being equal, I don’t want to be your friend.
Er, what? What are you talking about? This doesn’t happen.
It is a thing which I have seen happen to people. There are known countermeasures, which I am attempting to discuss and you are discarding as repugnant.
If you want me to boil it down to three words, “business before pleasure.” Accumulate some people you can count on to cover their own specialties and communicate with you accurately and precisely, and some other people who are fun to be around. Optimize those groups separately. If someone wants to straddle the line, never let them apply leverage from one mode to the other. Never forget which mode you’re currently operating in. Business gets priority in emergencies and strategic decisions, because survival, but there should be a balance overall: it’s “before,” not “instead of.”
I thank you for the information/advice, but with respect, I am going to ignore it entirely. I will continue to have a small circle of close friends who are both fun to be around, and don’t lie to me. I will continue to avoid closeness with people who lie to me; should any infiltrate my circle of friends (for reasons that I still can’t imagine), I will cut them off utterly as soon as I discover their true nature.
Er, what? What are you talking about? This doesn’t happen. Is that something you experience in your life? People infiltrating their way into friendships with you, when they know that their personality traits are something you hate? That must suck. :(
“You can’t prove I hate your pie, so I might as well lie and say I like it.”?
No thanks. If that’s how you (the hypothetical you, a person who wants to be my friend) behave, then, all else being equal, I don’t want to be your friend.
It is a thing which I have seen happen to people. There are known countermeasures, which I am attempting to discuss and you are discarding as repugnant.
Well, ok. Let’s posit that this is a thing that happens. What are the countermeasures?
If you want me to boil it down to three words, “business before pleasure.” Accumulate some people you can count on to cover their own specialties and communicate with you accurately and precisely, and some other people who are fun to be around. Optimize those groups separately. If someone wants to straddle the line, never let them apply leverage from one mode to the other. Never forget which mode you’re currently operating in. Business gets priority in emergencies and strategic decisions, because survival, but there should be a balance overall: it’s “before,” not “instead of.”
Wow. That sounds like a terrible life.
I thank you for the information/advice, but with respect, I am going to ignore it entirely. I will continue to have a small circle of close friends who are both fun to be around, and don’t lie to me. I will continue to avoid closeness with people who lie to me; should any infiltrate my circle of friends (for reasons that I still can’t imagine), I will cut them off utterly as soon as I discover their true nature.
Personally, I find people who lie aren’t fun to be around.
I suspect it happens to celebrities and very rich people all the time.