Stop trying to have "interesting" friends

[-]Dagon2y2217

I think I'd be more comfortable with this (as with much social and cultural "advice" discussions) if it were framed in the positive, not the negative, and if it acknowledged that friendship is complicated and diverse, with multiple distinct reasons for making and keeping friends, not all of which will (or should) apply to all your relationships. One reason this bothers me is that it advises a directional change "stop trying" without specifying how to decide on the right level of trying, and noting that SOME readers might want to try a bit more to cultivate interesting friends.

I think part of your message is "think of friendship as somewhat illegible, with many of the benefits hard to measure, and therefore recognize that a strict cost-benefit analysis will be very misleading". I fully agree with this. Part of your message seems to be that interesting and intellectually stimulating are not worthwhile traits, and I rather disagree with that.

[-]Ben Pace2y1413

Friends aren’t resources for intellectual stimulation or new insights. I don’t want my friends to like me because I read niche blogs or have things to say about crypto. It comes dangerously close to conflating knowing a lot, reading a lot, or having thoughtful things to say with moral goodness.

I think I would reverse most sentences in this paragraph. Being able to think for yourself and have your own useful and insightful takes on how the world is working seems to me closer to a requirement for being able to take morally good action. Anything can be goodharted, but it doesn't mean that we should believe that there is an inverse correlation.

One thing I keep coming back to is open-mindedness...
Something I appreciated when living in Austin was my friends’ willingness to do anything at any time. Basketball until 1am? Yeah, we got five. Someone wants to go to happy hour? There’s a group ready to join you. I remember us discussing a Super Bowl watch party literal hours ahead of kickoff. Nothing was planned yet, but there was never a doubt that we would get something going.
These friends expand our boxes of possible experience. Spontaneity and unconstrained eagerness feel good because they are exercises in doing without thinking too much.

This seems like a fine thing to look for in a friendship, and I agree that open-mindedness is a positive trait. I would definitely object to "spontaneity" being a core part of what "we" should all want as a "north star". I think there's a strong current here of "lots of experiences" which many people don't want (as opposed to a simple and steady life). I think having your best interests at heart, moral virtue, reliability, and a bunch of other things can be good without the spontaneity aspect, so I don't think it's something that all people should want.

[-]Viliam2y124

(No coherent theory of friendship, just thinking out loud.)

Seems to me that there are two aspects of friendship to consider:

One needs allies. We need someone to help when we get in trouble. We need someone to do various activities with. Even if we do not literally "need" someone, it often feels better to have someone.
Humans instinctively copy their friends. Conversely, your openness to copying someone will probably set a limit to how friendly you can get with them.

To put it shortly, you friends will help you, and they will change you. (And vice versa.)

The first one would suggest that you should have as many friends as possible, but there is a limit, because you need to spend time and energy cultivating the friendship: meeting your friends, helping them, etc.

Talking about "friendship" can be confusing, because we use it to refer to different intensities of relationships. Or we can use different words for different intensities, such as "acquaintance"; but different people do not use these words consistently. Extraverts probably need more friends than introverts. Different people can be differently calibrated, because of different life experience. (For example, if your life is all fun, you probably focus on the "fun to be with" part of friendship, and ignore the "help each other when needed" part.) If you are attractive, cultivating friendships may seem unnecessary, because you can always easily make new ones. If you really suck at connecting with new people, you may overestimate the value of the friendships you already have; maybe the people you call friends are actually just using you.

...so it makes sense that different people have different theories of "friendship".

(Plus there is the usual human unconscious hypocrisy. Maybe you find it morally repulsive to choose your friends based on how instrumentally useful they are, and you are looking for fun and connection on the spiritual level instead. And yet, somehow, the people you connect with spiritually all just happen to be somehow useful to you. And the ones who stop being useful, you suddenly find less fun, and the spiritual link soon breaks...)

From the perspective of making allies, what is the value of "interesting" friends? First, they are useful instrumentally (literally: they do something that interests me). Second, to be "interesting" can be a proxy for social skills, intelligence, high status, and other qualities desirable in an ally.

What is the downside? Well, am I sufficiently interesting myself? If not, that is, if I am trying to make friends with people who are significantly smarter or more popular than me, chances are that they will not be interested, or that the result will be a painfully asymmetric relationship (e.g. the kind of relationship where you always do various things for your friend, but you friend is always too busy to help you). It would have been better to select friends e.g. between people who share the same hobby, because there the thing that makes them more interesting to you, happens to be the thing that also makes you more interesting to them.

From the perspective of copying, the question is whether the thing that makes the person "interesting" can really be copied. Because, some traits cannot be copied; most obviously, hanging out with tall people is not going to make you any taller (unless their secret is wearing high heels, and as a friend they will let you in on the secret). More controversially, what about rich people? I bet someone like Kiyosaki would argue that hanging out with rich people will let you unconsciously copy all the secrets of highly successful people. But what if you are kids, and the only secret is simply to be born to rich parents? You can't copy that! More likely, you will copy the habit of spending money, which may actually make you poorer. (Why do I mention rich people in a comment about interesting people? Because being rich is one way of being interesting. You certainly have more time and opportunity to do interesting things, compared to e.g. people who need two boring jobs to pay their bills.)

On the other hand, if someone is interesting because they e.g. can juggle well, hanging out with them is a good way to become interesting yourself.

[-]M. Y. Zuo2y41

You can side-step the issue if you limit 'friends' to a more restrictive subset.

i.e. those who are both worthy allies and worthy of emulation.

(Personal anecdote, this is the internal definition I had growing up so I was continuously mystified by folks claiming they made dozens of friends in high school, college, etc...)

But the downside of this method is that some people could literally go their entire lives without a single 'true friend' which may cause problems of communication somewhere down the line.

[-]titotal2y98

People can generally tell when you're friends with them for instrumental reasons rather than because you care about them or genuinely value their company. If they don't at first, they will eventually, and in general, people don't like being treated as tools. Trying to "optimise" your friend group for something like interestingness is just shooting yourself in the foot, and you will miss out on genuine and beautiful connections.

[-]arisAlexis2y52

But sometimes something happens in the world and your "best man always fun forever" friends can't seem to understand reality. They think it's because God wanted it this way or because there is a world wide conspiracy of Jews. Then you feel really alone.

[-]Viliam2y20

That sucks. I lost a good friend like this. He discovered religion, and... I hoped we could just "agree to disagree" on this topic, and talk about the many things we still had in common. Instead, he was even more annoying than all other religious people, because he assumed that he knows exactly how I think (he kept saying he also used to think the same way before he found Jesus) so he can show me the way. And he couldn't stop bringing up the topic. He became completely insufferable; we stopped interacting completely.

(For the record, I do have a few friends who are religious or have other beliefs I don't share. The trick is, they are not trying to convert me. We discuss other things. Heck, we can even discuss religion, if they accept I am only doing it the same way I would discuss Tolkien.)

When this happens, it's time to find new friends. Or maybe pay more attention to old low-intensity friends; sometimes the opposite thing happens and you find out that as you grew up, you have more in common.

[-]Gesild Muka2y10

Not necessarily a bad thing. This has happened to me a few times with childhood friends, especially in our 20s, and we've usually reconnected as beliefs have changed or we consciously decided that any disagreements we have simply make for good conversation.

[-][anonymous]2y31

If you're wealthy, in some elite intellectual class and social strata by virtue of your academic or professional credentials, the people with whom you end up forging these organic, valuable friendships end up being those who are more interesting, intellectually stimulating, etc. There's a certain stochastic privilege afforded to those who can approach building friendships and relationships in this carefree, feel-good, fun-maximizing way and still end up with much more interesting, high value, intelligent friends. You get to have your cake and eat it too.

If you're not well off, of a low status and removed from the power-centers of the world intellectual elite, you couldn't get such high chances associating with people in a natural, carefree way. You'd have to be directed, focused and deliberately agentic towards cultivating a high-value social circle bearing all the accoutrements of being interesting enough to match your criteria.

You can make good friends anywhere, but you could still manage to make interesting friends the "right" way (according to this post) by just relocating to places where the type of person you'd prefer to associate with, with respect to their intellectual/personal merit, is more common, and let the friendships develop naturally.

[-]Viliam2y43

Somehow this reminded me of an advice to women: "Do not marry for money; you will be unhappy. Instead, select your environment so that you only ever meet rich men... and then marry for love."

[-]Going Durden2y2-1

It comes dangerously close to conflating knowing a lot, reading a lot, or having thoughtful things to say with moral goodness.

Take note however, that life is generally short, and stakes of friendship are high. Interesting, knowledgeable personality is not equal with moral goodness, but it strongly correlates with at least, being more beneficial than harmful. It also strongly correlates with open-mindedness, and usually with empathy (since, part of empathy is being able to emulate the thought processes of another person within your mind, to guess their possible reactions, and that takes raw intelligence).

Or to put it differently: Interesting Friends are more likely to be Good Friends than Bad Friends. Non-Interesting Friends are slightly more likely to be Bad Friends, or that you would be a Bad Friend to them out of boredom.

So, given that we are unlikely to be able to acquire dozens upon dozens of friends to test, or invest equally in everybody around us, it makes more sense to invest in Interesting Friends, then test them for things like conscientiousness, ethics and open-mindedness.

(Note: we should also consider neurodiversity issues. An Interesting Friend is significantly more valuable to a person with ADHD. A perfectly morally upright and open-minded Friend who is nevertheless Boring, would make an ADHD person claw their own brain out in frustration. TO put it differently, people's tolerance of Non-Interesting/Boring people range from "eh, he's alright" to "hanging out with them is a Cruel and Unusual Punishment".)

[-]ponkaloupe2y10

i’d love for anyone to present the argument against this. eq says it’s things like karaoke which make friendships great. the friends i know who are eager to do karaoke are the same ones who will start wild, speculative conversation when we’re idly sitting in the living room together. they’re the interesting people.

the people in my life whom, come the first lull in smalltalk after dinner get uncomfortable and declare “great meal, time to go” instead of opening themselves up for those late-night intimate conversations, are the same people who would turn down an invitation to karaoke.

interesting friends are fun friends. “boring” is the opposite of both “fun” and “interesting”. so if the latter two mean something different to the author than to me, perhaps we agree by saying “build non-boring friendships”?

[-]Viliam2y20

I guess, as a first approximation, any unusual hobby selects for open-mindedness.

[-]Going Durden2y10

my hunch is that we naturally segregate into monkeyspheres where certain definitions of interesting basically equal fun for everyone involved, and the Boring people are basically strangers, breaking the flow. Moreover, humans are not that different, we tend to be interested in similar things, and tend to be bored with similar things, at least broadly speaking.

What I think OP is trying to tell us, is that we should not over-focus on superficially fascinating snobs, who talk good game but aren't good friends, but I think most people actually know that; we treat our brief interaction with Superficially Interesting People the same way we treat chocolate, wine or weed: its fun to have a little every now and then, but we're not building our lifestyle around it.

[-]KirstenH2y10

Great post! I've linked to it from the EA Lifestyles substack. https://substack.com/profile/127787889-ea-lifestyles/note/c-14971201

LESSWRONG
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LESSWRONG
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Stop trying to have "interesting" friends

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