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Comment by dec0dedab0de | Hacker News Reader

I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever.

There are plenty of people who like each other that have nothing in common. The idea that the reason people like people is because they are like them just feels ridiculous to me, but maybe I am an outlier. Personally, the more someone is like me, the less I like them.

But the bigger, weirder argument you seem to be making is that you shouldn't hire people that you like. I would say life is too short to be spending it around people you don't like, if you can help it.

I say that it is very possible to hire only people you like, and still end up with a diverse workplace free from abuse. You just need to start with good leaders.

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>There are plenty of people who like each other that have nothing in common. The idea that the reason people like people is because they are like them just feels ridiculous to me, but maybe I am an outlier. Personally, the more someone is like me, the less I like them.

Yes, you are an outlier. There is a very large amount of studies that show that people like people that are like them.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026540750809670...

Yes, you are an outlier.

Fair enough

There is a very large amount of studies that show that people like people that are like them.

The link you provide shows a coefficient of .47 for actual similarity, and .39 for perceived similarity. I'm not good at statistics, but that seems like a far cry from "the reason why people like other people is that they are like them." which is the line I was replying to. If I'm understanding it correctly it would be more accurate to say "people are somewhat more likely to like someone who is like them." If that's what was originally written, then I probably wouldn't have replied.

This is just my understanding, but I believe in social sciences r values are usually quite deflated and a coefficient of .47 is extremely high.

> The link you provide shows a coefficient of .47 for actual similarity, and .39 for perceived similarity. I'm not good at statistics, but that seems like a far cry from "the reason why people like other people is that they are like them." which is the line I was replying to. If I'm understanding it correctly it would be more accurate to say "people are somewhat more likely to like someone who is like them." If that's what was originally written, then I probably wouldn't have replied.

r, or Pearson's Correlation Coefficient [1], is a value from -1 to 1. for r < 0, the variables are negatively correlated, for r > 0 the variables are positively correlated, and for |r| ~= 0, the variables are uncorrelated. 0.47 and 0.39 are high values of correlation.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_correlation_coefficien...

I don't think it's precisely that people like people like them - it's that they like people who approve of their choices. The easiest way to signal that is to make the same ones.

The culture fit thing is the sort of keyboard warrior psychologist analysis that we all love... completely made up and is, in fact, how you get a toxic culture in a company.

I agree, people I like the most don't share most of my interests at all. Yet time and time again all I hear is that "not like me" means a different skin colour or gender. It's like race and gender are the only differences but at the same time I'm being told there's no differences between races and genders. Which is it?!

I have always viewed personalities as essentially waveforms, which when combined may exaggerate certain aspects, negate others, or complement them in other ways that make the resulting form more... well, pleasurable, for lack of a better word. I visualize it this way not for woowoo^1 purposes but just to make sense in my mind why some personality traits and quirks in others seem to boost parts of my own, or adjust spikes of my own personality that I view as too strong (i.e. I am generally very introverted when alone I'm a group, but a close friend who "evens out" that aspect of me can lead me to being more gregarious).

^1: it is, however, curious that similar visualizations can be found in woowoo circles

You can like people that is very different in the surface but share the psychological matrix of values. It can be extraterrestrial that you will like him/her as old friends in an instant. On the other hand you will not like someone that has a subverted or inverse matrix of values. An example of the inverted values are the radical left describing conservatives. It's a fundamentally incompatible world-view, completely irreconcilable even if they are biological twins.

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