I don’t think it goes too too far in practice, still.
Three spontaneous complications, the first to me intuitively most relvant though idk how general it is—in the end for me there’s not much left of the original idea even if it’s a nice one; mind is a freaking complex machine, and friendship to me a hyperdimensional concoction of that machine, evading such nice trivialization despite the original appeal:
Kind stranger > Beloved friend? W/o thinking too much, my feeling is I’d potentially risk quit a bit more for a stranger than for some friends, if I think the stranger will have a positive impact on the world. Reminds me of how I’d be more incline to put a charitable organization than my friends—and I think my friends would even approve of that idea (I’m speculating, maybe they’d even be friends of me because they think I’m such a person—assuming I’d be such a person)
FWIW, on the other hand, I recently realized that—at least hypothetically it seemed to me—that some close friends could do absolutely terrible stuff and I’d still feel just as close to them. Not sure everyone has that intuition, and I’d not be surprised if my brain would sneakily de-friend me of them in case they lost status or so, but my intuition is such.
Weakness isn’t Fakeness!? Assume: Maybe I really love my friends very much, or my romantic love, but I’m really really weak. I love hanging out with them, I care in many ways really really a lot about them, I go out of my way to support them if I see need—but I just could not be put to do an actual explicit life-risking decision even with a low 1% or so probability. You may of course then say I’d be “an untrue friend” in that case, so it all boils down to definition; for my understanding of friendship, I find I could still be a genuine true friend even if I’m weak in that way, and I could easily imagine still loving my friends just as much if they told me “look sorry, btw, if ever you got kidnapped, I might be willing to spend my money to free you, but if I have to play Russian Roulette even with 1%, I fear I could not do it”.
State vs. Real/Hypothetical vs. Actual: Finally, this entire thing may in more real-world-ish circumstances a lot on subtleties, where slight nuances psychologically would pull us towards doing or not doing it, w/o there being a meaningful difference between situations, and, among others, the result might change a lot in hypothetical vs. in real. So asking myself how I’d react, simply might not get how I’d really act. Keyword “Stated vs. Real preferences”. So while conceptually there’s something interesting here, not sure sheer introspection in hypothetical situation does reveal the preferences well.
This is a very valid point—but I don’t think it inherently disagrees with the core idea. The kind stranger is still someone we admire, else we wouldn’t describe him as such. The more we look up to this stranger, the more we would be willing to risk our life for him. This also doesn’t directly imply a friendship: for that, the p-values have to be a two-way street. As you are a stranger to him, suppose a true stranger, he has no idea who you are, what your beliefs, achievements and goals describe, etc… - for all he knows, you could be a murderer on death-row. Even this extremely kind stranger will probably decide that it’s not worth it.
I think a lot of people would argue along these lines, they were simply “too weak” and couldn’t go through with it. I also think that people use the word “friendship” too inflationary and a lot of these relationships are exclusively self-serving. Having fun with people and spending a lot of time with them as a result is not something rare—everyone is having a good time, naturally you would like to reinforce this behavior. But this isn’t what I look at as a friendship. A friendship is defined by what happens when not everyone is having fun, when in fact everyone is miserable. Giving when there’s nothing to give. Protecting when one needs protection themself. You mentioned someone being fine with giving money, just not this. I only think this applies when money isn’t scarce, when the incurred loss is minor. Because giving money when it’s truly scarce often implies existential problems just as much, depending on where you live.
I’ll concede this point because it’s pretty much inevitable: a hypothetical clearly has limitations. But I do think that there are proxies much alike to this hypothetical, simply not as extreme. I’m sure each and every one has at least once during school seen a person they know get bullied. Did you step in, even knowing you might become a new target? This sadly introduces a lot of secondary variables that skew the resulting answer, but it does remove the noise of a hypothetical.
Interesting thought.
I don’t think it goes too too far in practice, still.
Three spontaneous complications, the first to me intuitively most relvant though idk how general it is—in the end for me there’s not much left of the original idea even if it’s a nice one; mind is a freaking complex machine, and friendship to me a hyperdimensional concoction of that machine, evading such nice trivialization despite the original appeal:
Kind stranger > Beloved friend? W/o thinking too much, my feeling is I’d potentially risk quit a bit more for a stranger than for some friends, if I think the stranger will have a positive impact on the world. Reminds me of how I’d be more incline to put a charitable organization than my friends—and I think my friends would even approve of that idea (I’m speculating, maybe they’d even be friends of me because they think I’m such a person—assuming I’d be such a person)
FWIW, on the other hand, I recently realized that—at least hypothetically it seemed to me—that some close friends could do absolutely terrible stuff and I’d still feel just as close to them. Not sure everyone has that intuition, and I’d not be surprised if my brain would sneakily de-friend me of them in case they lost status or so, but my intuition is such.
Weakness isn’t Fakeness!? Assume: Maybe I really love my friends very much, or my romantic love, but I’m really really weak. I love hanging out with them, I care in many ways really really a lot about them, I go out of my way to support them if I see need—but I just could not be put to do an actual explicit life-risking decision even with a low 1% or so probability. You may of course then say I’d be “an untrue friend” in that case, so it all boils down to definition; for my understanding of friendship, I find I could still be a genuine true friend even if I’m weak in that way, and I could easily imagine still loving my friends just as much if they told me “look sorry, btw, if ever you got kidnapped, I might be willing to spend my money to free you, but if I have to play Russian Roulette even with 1%, I fear I could not do it”.
State vs. Real/Hypothetical vs. Actual: Finally, this entire thing may in more real-world-ish circumstances a lot on subtleties, where slight nuances psychologically would pull us towards doing or not doing it, w/o there being a meaningful difference between situations, and, among others, the result might change a lot in hypothetical vs. in real. So asking myself how I’d react, simply might not get how I’d really act. Keyword “Stated vs. Real preferences”. So while conceptually there’s something interesting here, not sure sheer introspection in hypothetical situation does reveal the preferences well.
This is a very valid point—but I don’t think it inherently disagrees with the core idea. The kind stranger is still someone we admire, else we wouldn’t describe him as such. The more we look up to this stranger, the more we would be willing to risk our life for him. This also doesn’t directly imply a friendship: for that, the p-values have to be a two-way street. As you are a stranger to him, suppose a true stranger, he has no idea who you are, what your beliefs, achievements and goals describe, etc… - for all he knows, you could be a murderer on death-row. Even this extremely kind stranger will probably decide that it’s not worth it.
I think a lot of people would argue along these lines, they were simply “too weak” and couldn’t go through with it. I also think that people use the word “friendship” too inflationary and a lot of these relationships are exclusively self-serving. Having fun with people and spending a lot of time with them as a result is not something rare—everyone is having a good time, naturally you would like to reinforce this behavior. But this isn’t what I look at as a friendship. A friendship is defined by what happens when not everyone is having fun, when in fact everyone is miserable. Giving when there’s nothing to give. Protecting when one needs protection themself. You mentioned someone being fine with giving money, just not this. I only think this applies when money isn’t scarce, when the incurred loss is minor. Because giving money when it’s truly scarce often implies existential problems just as much, depending on where you live.
I’ll concede this point because it’s pretty much inevitable: a hypothetical clearly has limitations. But I do think that there are proxies much alike to this hypothetical, simply not as extreme. I’m sure each and every one has at least once during school seen a person they know get bullied. Did you step in, even knowing you might become a new target? This sadly introduces a lot of secondary variables that skew the resulting answer, but it does remove the noise of a hypothetical.