I’m in the process of trying to unpack the process of making friends, which is kind of mysterious to me. My old implicit model was:
I like someone → We (sometimes) become friends
Of course my feelings don’t directly cause anything but my actions. The simple insight that I was attributing a consequence to something that could only cause it indirectly, gave me the opportunity to notice some of the mediating causes, and fine-tune them separately:
I like someone → I behave pleasantly toward them → Increase P(Friendship)
I like someone → I invite them to things or accept their invitations → Increase P(Friendship)
I like someone → I ask them questions about things that interest them → Increase P(Friendship)
Now if I want to be better friends with someone, instead of just uselessly liking them more, I can do things like strike up more conversations, or invite them to hang out. There’s lots of stuff I’m missing, but finding mediating causes is a powerful tool.
Well, merely liking someone does increase P(Friendship), in that not liking someone presumably decreases it. Usually you don’t become friends with people you don’t like.
That’s the whole point though. Merely liking someone doesn’t do anything, but cause the behavior/actions that actually have an effect (pleasantries, invitations, questions). If I didn’t like the person, but did everything else the same, we would be just as good of friends. I can like someone to death, but unless I show it in some way, it’s useless for forming a friendship.
I’m in the process of trying to unpack the process of making friends, which is kind of mysterious to me. My old implicit model was:
I like someone → We (sometimes) become friends
Of course my feelings don’t directly cause anything but my actions. The simple insight that I was attributing a consequence to something that could only cause it indirectly, gave me the opportunity to notice some of the mediating causes, and fine-tune them separately:
I like someone → I behave pleasantly toward them → Increase P(Friendship)
I like someone → I invite them to things or accept their invitations → Increase P(Friendship)
I like someone → I ask them questions about things that interest them → Increase P(Friendship)
Now if I want to be better friends with someone, instead of just uselessly liking them more, I can do things like strike up more conversations, or invite them to hang out. There’s lots of stuff I’m missing, but finding mediating causes is a powerful tool.
Well, merely liking someone does increase P(Friendship), in that not liking someone presumably decreases it. Usually you don’t become friends with people you don’t like.
That’s the whole point though. Merely liking someone doesn’t do anything, but cause the behavior/actions that actually have an effect (pleasantries, invitations, questions). If I didn’t like the person, but did everything else the same, we would be just as good of friends. I can like someone to death, but unless I show it in some way, it’s useless for forming a friendship.
But only in the form that attitudes affect your actions, and these affect your friendship, as mentioned above.
It’s like a wossname… markov blanket.