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Comment by apacheCamel | Hacker News Reader

Would you be able to give other examples of this obsession with rules?

From this, and this alone, I'd like to imagine that people just want to clear up the unknown. Social interactions are almost always different from one person to the next. Social norms do tend to keep things pretty similar but the whole range can vary wildly. Maybe this is just a way to narrow the range? I don't think it is a great way to handle things that make you uncomfortable and I also don't think uncomfortable is always a bad thing.

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The problem with setting social rules, is they always seem to line up exactly with what the currently dominant group defines "normal", in my experience.

The worst advice I was given as a child was "treat others as you wish to be treated", because it is awful advice when moving in to a significantly different set of people.

"treat others as you wish to be treated"

It's a useful minimum surely? How else should you treat a significantly different set of people?

Yes once you get to know them, you learn how they want to be treated (mainly?) based on how they treat you and others.

Are you talking about using general formal politeness?

The problem is it sounds seductive, but fails when your rules of pilteness don't line up with other people's.

For example, I hate being asked questions multiple times. Therefore when i went to ubiversity, if I asked someone is they wanted me to buy a round, and they said no, I would not accept the answer. After some months I discovered I was considered tight, as the first offer is always refused, so "doesn't count".

Right, but 'first contact' situations generally call for both sides to be forgiving of the other side.

Theres plenty of time over the ensuing months to communicate your preferences.

FWIW I wouldn't say theres a particular rule requiring offering to buy a round multiple times, so I'd have have been viewed as tight also, even if I was trying to fit in with normal convention.

I believe "treat others as you wish to be treated" should be taken from a much higher approach than "if you like to be hugged, hug others". I've always seen it as more of "respect others and they will respect you." I still think it can apply to this situation though. Instead of setting social rules, we should show respect for the people we are interacting with.

I think that's trying too hard to read something better into a bad saying :) going straight to your suggested "respect others and they will respect you." seems like a better lesson.

Codes of conduct.

I think my original statement stands with this example as well. Codes of conduct try to standardize interactions. It tries to get rid of the "unknown". I think they can make sense in a business sense. You would want your employees to all act roughly the same towards each other or those around them (customers). On the other hand, I don't think we would need a "Code of Conduct of Life" for basic human interaction outside of the workplace.

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