Comment by nuclearnice1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nuclearnice1 | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with you.

He doesn’t even want these things. May I try on your sunglasses? Can I have a taste of your ice cream?

I guess they set the bar low to encourage the experimenters. “Don’t worry you can ask for anything — ask for a dollar! Borrow their newspaper!”

I would be more open to it if they had done some thinking. What’s something you genuinely need? Go ask for it. But I guess that’s not as simple. This is just street side IRL spam. Can I have those plastic flowers that I don’t want by which I mean can I waste your time with a nonsense game so I fresh content for my blog?

It’s also fundamentally selfish: “ask random strangers to do you favors”

Why not go out into the world and ask if you can do favors? Find a homeless guy or gal. Ask if he wants your shoes. Ask if she needs a dollar. Then you at least anticipate finding people who welcome partition in your psychological experiment.

I had a different impression about the magnitude of the requests from your comment than from the article. I pictured the "ice cream" request as asking a person with an ice cream code to let you have a taste, but there's a nuance: the article doesn't actually refer to ice cream, and it looks like it would involve asking a food sample from a store.

From the article: "Examples would be asking for their newspaper, or asking for a few dollars, or a phone number, or to try on their shoes. Or going into a store and asking for some free food. [...] I asked for a number of newspapers. I asked to take the plastic flowers from a storefront. I asked to borrow board games from the board game store. I asked to climb a ladder that a construction worker was setting up – and he let me!"

For what it's worth, the food sample and plastic flowers requests are made from businesses, were the requests aren't too unreasonable (samples are normal to ask where I live, and the flower request can be paid back with repeat business). However, I admit that the sunglasses request was strange (along with the suggestion to try someone's shoes).

I like the spirit behind asking if you can do others favors, but I predict it might weaken the exercise. The behavior is targeting a reluctance to ask for help and favors from others when it counts (it's important for long-term wellbeing to have a balance between taking and giving, versus just giving). It's easier to get rejected when asking to help another person, versus when facing rejection when doing something for yourself (e.g. applying to a job or opportunity).

Thanks for your detailed thoughts.

On the ice cream, I was referring to this catchy tune and Apple advertising:

https://youtu.be/h6o51Qr7cPU

Enjoy!

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