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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

Not at all. If you don't understand how to employ false smiles as needed, you won't get very far in life. This was one of the biggest mistakes I made when I was young. Once I learned how to stop being totally honest and how to be friendly to even those I didn't like, a lot of opportunities opened up that I would have never been exposed to otherwise.

Simple example: I maintain friendships with people I don't genuinely like primarily because they have wide social circles. Through those people, I've met individuals who I do genuinely like.

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It's one of those "be yourself" types of advice.

It works if "yourself" has certain characteristics and doesn't work if the "yourself" doesn't or has other attributes, based on the context.

> Simple example: I maintain friendships with people I don't genuinely like primarily because they have wide social circles. Through those people, I've met individuals who I do genuinely like.

That's genuinely good advice. You don't have to like or please everyone in your social network. There's simply not enough time or effort, but it doesn't mean you can't have fruitful transactions with those people.

A lot of people have some confusion around "be yourself" advice. There are a lot of things that can be unpacked about it, and people at differing levels of maturity or understanding will see different things.

This is one of the better discussions about this: https://antiblog.quora.com/The-One-Piece-Puzzle-Chapter-2

Some excerpts:

"When people talk about true self in Western culture, the discussion normally tends toward "the Snowflake Model" of identity. That's my phrase for the notion that your true self is discovered by polishing up your understanding of the way in which you are utterly unique, special, and valuable - a "wonderful little snowflake unlike any other.""

... and ...

"Am I like a box, or am I like light? Consider the difference: a box has a boundary, it has fixed characteristics, it has contents. A box wants to survive, it wants its contents kept safe, it wants to be properly labeled, it wants to be approved of when it passes through customs, it does not want to be crushed at the bottom of a huge pyramid of boxes.

A box, ideally, wants to be at the top of the pyramid. Or maybe off by itself, so that it doesn't have to feel anxious about being judged relative to other boxes. A box is an ego.

Light isn't like that: light wants to go everywhere, and it weighs very little."

> This is one of the better discussions about this: https://antiblog.quora.com/The-One-Piece-Puzzle-Chapter-2 ...

I don't get this. What does the author mean by "pie-slicing"?

Let me guess, GP is a 20 something person and you are at least around 40 (pardon me if you are not, your maturity level surely is).

I think, its a spectrum between extreme honesty and extreme dishonesty, and when very young extreme honesty has an appeal. But of course it's not healthy, just like any extreme.

Like you, I am totally for pragmatism, but still can't maintain contacts with people whom I don't like, even if they can help me with other useful contacts etc. Because, I feel, its possible to attain the same level of success, by taking a higher road.

There is beauty in preserving intellectual vanity. I know you didn't imply that, but total pragmatism, seems soulless to me. For example, in an earlier corporate life, I knew some people who were the "manager" sort and very aggressive, which yielded them dividends. When they entered the Startup world, sometime after I did, they tried to maintain the similar (aggressive) equation in the communication. I humored them with one meeting, which didn't go so well, from my perspective. I felt, that in my easy speaking manner, I'd given a lot of gyan to them, but still came out of the meeting taking away some vacuous corporate BS kind of gyan. Since I was left with a bad taste, after the meeting, I declined all further meeting requests simply because I could. Felt happy.

So life is a very complex experience and there never are any fixed rules. Some times you fake it till you make it. Other times you are brutally honest. Yes, but integrity, is a must have quality at all times. That's the only non-negotiable IMHO.

Edit: gyan means knowledge & minor typos

    > If you don't understand how to employ false smiles as needed, you won't get very far in life.

How do we measure how far we've come in life? Relative to what is this distance measured?

This question is only asked by those who cannot measure how far they have come.

We all have our subjective distances. But if you are a human being, some combinations of the following will be that distance:

1. Sustenance (food, water, housing, money)

2. Community (belonging, love)

3, Self-expression

4. Self-transcendence (altruism)

This is a gross simplification of Maslow, but give me some slack. If you question every person saying "you won't get very far in life" with "how do you measure getting very far", you are not only annoying the other person, but also yourself. Spend that time trying to measure how far you have come.

I appreciate your reference to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Assuming you have met safety/security (#1), general philosophy of living presently would ask "why measure at all?"

    > Spend that time trying to measure how far you have come.

Why? Who is the intended recipient of this information, once I have formulated it into words? Myself? I don't enjoy repeating things to myself I already know.

Formulating into words how far you've come can only happen while you know how far you've come. And while you're in the state of knowing how far you've come, you don't need to repeat to yourself how far this is. You know.

Neurotypical people often err in the direction of overvaluing social status (presumably because in the ancestral environment, it made a large contribution to evolutionary fitness in a way that it does not today).

If you find yourself smiling and nodding at the above, however, bear this in mind also: we geeks often err in the direction of undervaluing social status. If you haven't acquired basic skills in areas like networking and office politics, X effort invested there might do more for you than 10X effort invested in further honing your technical skills.

Given the vibes in this thread, this is an appropriate comment.

I don't think you understand the difference between "acquaintanceship" and "friendship".

If you don't genuinely like someone you're acquainted with, you're not being a friend when you pretend you do. You're being a manipulative, self-interested social investor, keeping a volatile asset around because of its potential payoff. Friendship, like romance (but less intensely), means an aconditional (not unconditional) acceptance of another's flaws - not just tolerance for a potential benefit.

I actually agree very much with your main point, that false smiles and "white lie" smalltalk really do have their place. I grew up enamored with the practice of radical honesty, but it only works when in a group of individuals with very high self-esteem. The point of faking nice isn't to dissemble, but to make a goodwill attempt to ensure that the people around you can feel comfortable to practice genuineness without judgment.

Not that that isn't a selfish and manipulative goal itself. I prefer being genuine in my interactions across the board, the only way to do that is to gradually accustom the people in my life to being comfortable being genuine back.

tl;dr you're not maintaining "friendships", but I don't think your choices are more or less selfish than any other.

> I maintain friendships with people I don't genuinely like

That's not friendship. That's an acquaintance you're using for ulterior motives.

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