I don’t have a favorite meal, but using a good meal at home as a baseline, having to listen to my upstairs neighbor’s dogs yap and fight all day while he’s not home is about −250 to −300, going out to eat with a good friend at a nice restaurant runs between 200 and 500 depending on how much energy I have to devote to it and how good of a conversational topic we find, and having a LW comment unexpectedly upvoted runs at about 5 to 10.
Making a complex point clear to a friend in conversation is worth at least 30, and such conversations usually involve other +utility situations as well, plus whatever benefit there is to be gained from having them understand that point. Getting feedback that makes it clear that a friend understands something important about me as a person is also worth at least 30, but can go a lot higher—I’d feel comfortable saying that some of the instances of that I’ve experienced were worth at least 1000. Perhaps interestingly, making a friend isn’t actually worth all that much to me, possibly even 0 - but noticing that I’ve come to trust someone definitely gets a positive score of at least 50. (Possibly important: Considering someone a friend and trusting them are correlated, for me, but not the same thing. I actually have two separate mental categories for different variants of ‘trusted friend’.)
I may be using a slightly nonstandard definition of ‘friend’. People I only interact with as part of a social group count as acquaintances*, not friends, and I do find such groups to be valuable. Someone goes from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ when I find myself interested in spending time with them personally, and while being moved to that group can be taken as a compliment, it’s generally net-neutral for me—I’m introverted enough that maintaining relationships with people who’ve passed that bar but who haven’t passed the first ‘trusted friend’ bar is actually about neutral cost/benefit-wise most of the time. (This does vary, but usually I find out that someone is unusually good as a friend well after I’ve started considering them one, and I don’t assume it’s going to be the case.) Passing the first ‘trusted friend’ bar, on the other hand, is a pretty big deal, and passing the second is even bigger, but also very rare.
* Strictly speaking, I consider someone an acquaintance when I reliably recognize them as an individual, which is nontrivial, so most groups that I socialize with consist of some mixture of acquaintances and strangers with possibly a few people from the other categories mixed in.
I don’t have a favorite meal, but using a good meal at home as a baseline, having to listen to my upstairs neighbor’s dogs yap and fight all day while he’s not home is about −250 to −300, going out to eat with a good friend at a nice restaurant runs between 200 and 500 depending on how much energy I have to devote to it and how good of a conversational topic we find, and having a LW comment unexpectedly upvoted runs at about 5 to 10.
Making a complex point clear to a friend in conversation is worth at least 30, and such conversations usually involve other +utility situations as well, plus whatever benefit there is to be gained from having them understand that point. Getting feedback that makes it clear that a friend understands something important about me as a person is also worth at least 30, but can go a lot higher—I’d feel comfortable saying that some of the instances of that I’ve experienced were worth at least 1000. Perhaps interestingly, making a friend isn’t actually worth all that much to me, possibly even 0 - but noticing that I’ve come to trust someone definitely gets a positive score of at least 50. (Possibly important: Considering someone a friend and trusting them are correlated, for me, but not the same thing. I actually have two separate mental categories for different variants of ‘trusted friend’.)
Wow. That’s surprising. Do you just figure you have plenty of friends already or is there more to it?
That one I understand. I perhaps hadn’t gone as far as to invoke a ‘trusted friend’ label but there were certainly different categories.
I may be using a slightly nonstandard definition of ‘friend’. People I only interact with as part of a social group count as acquaintances*, not friends, and I do find such groups to be valuable. Someone goes from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ when I find myself interested in spending time with them personally, and while being moved to that group can be taken as a compliment, it’s generally net-neutral for me—I’m introverted enough that maintaining relationships with people who’ve passed that bar but who haven’t passed the first ‘trusted friend’ bar is actually about neutral cost/benefit-wise most of the time. (This does vary, but usually I find out that someone is unusually good as a friend well after I’ve started considering them one, and I don’t assume it’s going to be the case.) Passing the first ‘trusted friend’ bar, on the other hand, is a pretty big deal, and passing the second is even bigger, but also very rare.
* Strictly speaking, I consider someone an acquaintance when I reliably recognize them as an individual, which is nontrivial, so most groups that I socialize with consist of some mixture of acquaintances and strangers with possibly a few people from the other categories mixed in.
Backwards?
Er, yes. Thanks. *fixes*