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I'm going to throw out a controversial statement: It's hard because adults don't (and rightfully shouldn't) make friends a priority. When you're young (<20), y

I'm going to throw out a controversial statement: It's hard because adults don't (and rightfully shouldn't) make friends a priority. When you're young (<20), you don't have many responsibilities or long term goals. But as soon as you get out of college, you have several multi-decade goals to work towards: 1) asset accumulation 2) lifestyle development 3) family raising From a pure risk management point of view, assets, lifstyle, and family are much more stable in terms of extracting value from. Friends, from a value added point of view, are a risky investment for a couple of reasons. They require time and commitment to make and get value out of, but have a high chance of no return. If you invest too much in friends, you're pretty much guaranteed that something out of your control breaks the friendship by 5-10 years, either moving away, diverging interests, or the most likely, the friend decides to invest time in the assets, lifestyle, and family instead of your friendship. There's a vicious circle (opposite of virtuous cycle) in this. As a society, if more people focus on family, assets, and lifestyle because they are less risky, there's less people willing to commit to being a friend available for those that want to focus on friendships, and eventually friendship by the age of 30 become extinct except in rare cases where special environments sustain them. To summarize, it's a systemic issue where even if you wanted to make friends, it's not worth it as an adult to do so.

zasz 8y ago
Friendship is worth it. Loneliness is a serious threat to your health. It keeps your cortisol levels elevated. The effect on your health is comparable to a bad smoking habit. According to this study, mortality goes up by at least 26%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25910392 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25910392 Anyway, what's the point of having a lot of assets if you don't enjoy your life at the end?
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  Despite research to support that I think the problem might lie in that friendship may not seem worth it. Societies can emphasize individual independence, and technology can amplify it in real terms, making human interaction not necessarily where it once was. Why have lots of friends when so much of the immediately-obvious utility can be bridged by some other services? Where neighbors used to possibly serve as an extension to your resources (a large ladder, sugar, someone to sign a package for you maybe), these days solutions (often technological) have sprung up to reduce the necessity of working together (rent-a-tool shops/sites, ease of transportation, configurable delivery). Of course, the negative effects of restricted social networks are being felt now in communities (poor cohesion) and individually (mental health issues)... Tech helps sometimes (connecting people who might feel isolated in their immediate surroundings) and can hurt a lot of the time as well.
  - zasz 8y ago
    Yes, I think you're absolutely right. It's a combination of capitalism and bad urban planning (having to hop in a car to see people is bad for socializing since people are so lazy).
- antpls 8y ago
  Anyway, what's the point of enjoying life if you die at the end? (I wish you a long and healthy life, just being pragmatic here)
harlanji 8y ago
I don’t disagree and my closest friends have recently dropped because I hit a bump in my career and/or politics (ostrasized from offices, destroyed resume), it was pretty hurtful for a while. “Your network is your net worth,” makes me want to not even go interpersonal again but I think an expectation realignment is a better path, invest more broadly. I’ve also gotten more into meditation/study again but lack of benign social interaction shows. In our city of origin we were a fraction of the passionate programmers so we stuck together, now all in SF there are more dimensions (eg. my new connections are primarily from fitness activities, service staff met at concerts or high end lounges). I wish I had people I felt I could trust like a friend again though, and also understood+got excited by the nerdy stuff. Everyone has their hustles. Takes time I suppose, a couple people I know could turn to friends. Hacker Dojo 1.0 was awesome, seems like hacker spaces have more general appeal now, can’t imagine parties like that again... but I do still know a handful from that era, 1-2 could be friends. I am connecting with relatives, feeling silly for neglecting them for 20 years. Anecdotes, hopefully helpful and not too self-focused.
montyf 8y ago
Do you view everything in life in terms of investing and value extraction? If so, that is deeply, incredibly sad. > you have several multi-decade goals to work towards Why do you think the goals you listed are worthwhile? Who made these goals and why?
- spyckie2 8y ago
  No, I don't view everything in investment and value extraction. I'm actually a very sentimental person, but since writing allows you to think before you type, I like to take the opportunity on HN to write out more objective focused arguments or point of views. To clarify - the study of systems is not to prove a point of superiority or inferiority or to affirm or deny your value system; it's to observe the features of the system that indicate why things might happen the way they do. When I say adults shouldn't invest much in friendships, it's not because it's bad for adults to value friendship, but because the investment into friendship yields less results than if they invested it somewhere else. When talking about systems, it's better to talk about them objectively rather than subjectively, and to consider them from a detached viewpoint. Observation is not the same as association; just because I observe a phenomenon and attempt to write it down doesn't mean I associate with it. For the goals I stated, I do not have an evaluation about these goals from a worth perspective. I merely point out that those things are the primary long term goals of most adults. There's a lot of others, but those seem to be the most common. I'd be happy to argue why they are, but again, my arguments will come from an objective point of view (the features that going after those goals have that make them so popular) rather than a subjective point of view (what I believe is a worthwhile goal).
  - montyf 8y ago
    I understand now, though I would argue that nothing you call "objective" is actually so. These goals you listed are just the formulation of a game, which a lot of Westerners choose to play (though not all global citizens, which already makes your opinions non-objective). We can choose to play any games we want on this planet, and it baffles me that people choose to invest time (the only thing you ever truly invest) into one of the worst games. It's no wonder that whenever I go back to America or see Americans in my travels I am struck by how utterly shallow and unhappy they seem to be. And the stereotype of the American Smile is already disappearing from people's memories.
ramblerman 8y ago
> lifestyle development So golf by yourself, and a walk around the block in your new suit?
- EADGBE 8y ago
  There are plenty of non-yuppie goals/hobbies.
zerostar07 8y ago
It depends on what you define value. The ancients wrote extensively about friendship and attributed very high value to it, and that value degraded gradually, first with christianity and then with industrial way of life. I think such a utilitarian view is a post-hoc rationalization rather than a useful way to look at it. But even if we follow this line of thought, it is not clear that family, for example is of such high value that it has to be detrimental to everything else. It seems more to me that family benefited from the time freed up by not having friendly relationships, but whether people derive more value from family than they did in the past is very debateable. Spending more time with it is not proof that it has higher value - people will always do something in lack of alternatives.
- spyckie2 8y ago
  I guess my definition of value is purely based on effort/reward. Especially as someone in their 30s friends come and go a lot, they are not hard to pick up but are very hard to keep, and other things like building a stable environment for myself takes priority. Many of my really good friends moved away, or settled down and married and kids. Not bitter about it but just stating the fact that lasting friendships aren't the best investment because of how volatile modern society can be.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Ah, this seems to be the root of the problem: trying to min/max life. This is a problem I associate with a purely empirical/rational worldview, which is the current societal norm and is therefore encouraged as the ultimate.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  You call it a problem, some call it a challenge. I'd like to posit that "back in the day", people's lives had reached a max in their 20's after they finished school, got a job (unionized and/or indefinite contract), got married, bought a house, started having kids, etc. Nowadays, school will take longer because you need it to make a decent living - there's too many low paid jobs. Second, to get married and buy a house and such, you need a decent income. To get that, you either need a high education and live in an area where you can use that, or work multiple jobs and have no time for a social life, or be lucky and get a middle class paying jobs in an affordable area. So it's not just a personal choice from ambition, like you're suggesting, but it's also that the previous generation had it easier. They had the option to work where they live, to buy a house off of that money, and do it all before their 30's.
  - noxToken 8y ago
    This reminds me if the college freshman who starts freaking out about post-college life. They immediately regret the college they chose. They're chattering non-stop about the what classes are worth taking. They later get two internship offers: one from a no name local place where the internship is data science (which they want), but the other is at Googazon Faceple chasing birds off the property. The student inevitably has a meltdown, because they want the prestige of a big four. This isn't to say that there is inherently anything wrong with trying to min/max life. You'll have a better time (to a point) when you make more money. But let's not forget that if you're spending 5 years in misery for little gain, that's 5 years you aren't getting back. You only get one life. Enjoy it.
    - vorhuts 8y ago
      Is life about happiness or is life about pursuing a meaning (you define) and as a by product, happiness is attained sometimes?
sergiosgc 8y ago
Assets and lifestyle are meaningless if not shared with someone [1]. Kids develop their own independent lives 20 or so years after you brought them into the world. The goals you define are neither written in stone nor happiness maximizers. Happiness is maximized by social inclusion coupled with a sense of meaning (as in your impact in your social sphere being needed and positive). Being surrounded by people who matter and who want you in their midst. That can be a large, cohese, multi-generation family, or an extensive friend network. Multi-generation families living in tight neighborhoods don't happen anymore, so your next best target is an extensive friend network. I'm sorry, but I sincerely believe your stated goals are plain wrong. [1] Someone other than your life partner; sharing assets and lifestyle with your life partner is limited and an exhaustible resource -- to use your terms.
- spyckie2 8y ago
  At the age of 30, you are not worried about your kids leaving the nest (you may not have kids yet), your social circle can still be lively with colleagues, family, and past friends that are slowly going out of your lives. You may not have any assets to share with others. Your lifestyle may be still in transition from a young adult mindset to a breadwinner. You may be moving around a lot or moving companies frequently. I'd understand the argument if 50 year olds should be making more friends. They have assets, they have a stable lifestyle, and maybe it's precisely because they didn't invest in making friends earlier that they don't have anyone to share their assets with. But I'll double down and say that for 30 year olds there are so many other things they can be doing and the environment for making friends is so harsh, that it's simply not worth it. For most young adults, their social circle is extremely mobile. Everyone gets more responsibilities and other priorities that take their time. Most aren't in a position to take care of others (from a combination of money, time, and responsibility) - the simplest of friend making activities, like inviting someone over for a meal, can be very much out of your reach as a 30 year old. For myself, I'm collecting assets because I want to build a responsible safety net of protection for your family & future. I'm developing my lifestyle to build a nice environment for my kids to grow up in. Not everyone has those things handed to them, and building up those things are not trivial in the modern world. These goals really are multi-decade goals. I'll acquiesce that they are not lifetime goals. After they are accomplished, there's still a lot of life to live, and values and priorities can change after the underlying needs that the previous goals are built on are fulfilled.
joncrane 8y ago
While I can see where this viewpoint works, I disagree with the ROI assessment. Friends can and do provide very strong returns on investment. They can help with asset accumulation (networking for better jobs; in my case I helped a couple of friends with portfolio management of their retirement plans!). Friends are part of a lifestyle. My lifestyle includes doing group activities with friends 2 nights a week. The social interaction that happens between rounds of trivia is more important to me than the trivia result themselves. Friends are part of a family, too. Good friends accept and even enjoy it when your partner/kids come along. Eventually you can enter into babysitting swap systems where one family watches the kids while the other couple goes and does other stuff. Also it's important to model mature friendship patterns for your kids. So overall, friendship isn't only super important in it's own right, it also overlaps with the three important categories you list in your post.
vorhuts 8y ago
I think family raising has more risks and possible value loss than friendships, especially with the divorce rates in the USA. Goals 1-2 are always top priority after Health, which is the most important!
baby 8y ago
> 2) lifestyle development How is making friends not a part of lifestyle development? Btw kurtzgesagt has a very interesting video[1] on the subject where they show that rats get really anxious if they can't socialize. They then take a leap and say that human are pretty much the same. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg

zasz 8y ago

Friendship is worth it. Loneliness is a serious threat to your health. It keeps your cortisol levels elevated. The effect on your health is comparable to a bad smoking habit. According to this study, mortality goes up by at least 26%: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25910392 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25910392 Anyway, what's the point of having a lot of assets if you don't enjoy your life at the end?

hardwaresofton 8y ago
Despite research to support that I think the problem might lie in that friendship may not seem worth it. Societies can emphasize individual independence, and technology can amplify it in real terms, making human interaction not necessarily where it once was. Why have lots of friends when so much of the immediately-obvious utility can be bridged by some other services? Where neighbors used to possibly serve as an extension to your resources (a large ladder, sugar, someone to sign a package for you maybe), these days solutions (often technological) have sprung up to reduce the necessity of working together (rent-a-tool shops/sites, ease of transportation, configurable delivery). Of course, the negative effects of restricted social networks are being felt now in communities (poor cohesion) and individually (mental health issues)... Tech helps sometimes (connecting people who might feel isolated in their immediate surroundings) and can hurt a lot of the time as well.
- zasz 8y ago
  Yes, I think you're absolutely right. It's a combination of capitalism and bad urban planning (having to hop in a car to see people is bad for socializing since people are so lazy).
antpls 8y ago
Anyway, what's the point of enjoying life if you die at the end? (I wish you a long and healthy life, just being pragmatic here)

harlanji 8y ago

I don’t disagree and my closest friends have recently dropped because I hit a bump in my career and/or politics (ostrasized from offices, destroyed resume), it was pretty hurtful for a while. “Your network is your net worth,” makes me want to not even go interpersonal again but I think an expectation realignment is a better path, invest more broadly. I’ve also gotten more into meditation/study again but lack of benign social interaction shows. In our city of origin we were a fraction of the passionate programmers so we stuck together, now all in SF there are more dimensions (eg. my new connections are primarily from fitness activities, service staff met at concerts or high end lounges). I wish I had people I felt I could trust like a friend again though, and also understood+got excited by the nerdy stuff. Everyone has their hustles. Takes time I suppose, a couple people I know could turn to friends. Hacker Dojo 1.0 was awesome, seems like hacker spaces have more general appeal now, can’t imagine parties like that again... but I do still know a handful from that era, 1-2 could be friends. I am connecting with relatives, feeling silly for neglecting them for 20 years. Anecdotes, hopefully helpful and not too self-focused.

montyf 8y ago

Do you view everything in life in terms of investing and value extraction? If so, that is deeply, incredibly sad. > you have several multi-decade goals to work towards Why do you think the goals you listed are worthwhile? Who made these goals and why?

spyckie2 8y ago
No, I don't view everything in investment and value extraction. I'm actually a very sentimental person, but since writing allows you to think before you type, I like to take the opportunity on HN to write out more objective focused arguments or point of views. To clarify - the study of systems is not to prove a point of superiority or inferiority or to affirm or deny your value system; it's to observe the features of the system that indicate why things might happen the way they do. When I say adults shouldn't invest much in friendships, it's not because it's bad for adults to value friendship, but because the investment into friendship yields less results than if they invested it somewhere else. When talking about systems, it's better to talk about them objectively rather than subjectively, and to consider them from a detached viewpoint. Observation is not the same as association; just because I observe a phenomenon and attempt to write it down doesn't mean I associate with it. For the goals I stated, I do not have an evaluation about these goals from a worth perspective. I merely point out that those things are the primary long term goals of most adults. There's a lot of others, but those seem to be the most common. I'd be happy to argue why they are, but again, my arguments will come from an objective point of view (the features that going after those goals have that make them so popular) rather than a subjective point of view (what I believe is a worthwhile goal).
- montyf 8y ago
  I understand now, though I would argue that nothing you call "objective" is actually so. These goals you listed are just the formulation of a game, which a lot of Westerners choose to play (though not all global citizens, which already makes your opinions non-objective). We can choose to play any games we want on this planet, and it baffles me that people choose to invest time (the only thing you ever truly invest) into one of the worst games. It's no wonder that whenever I go back to America or see Americans in my travels I am struck by how utterly shallow and unhappy they seem to be. And the stereotype of the American Smile is already disappearing from people's memories.

ramblerman 8y ago

> lifestyle development So golf by yourself, and a walk around the block in your new suit?

EADGBE 8y ago
There are plenty of non-yuppie goals/hobbies.

zerostar07 8y ago

It depends on what you define value. The ancients wrote extensively about friendship and attributed very high value to it, and that value degraded gradually, first with christianity and then with industrial way of life. I think such a utilitarian view is a post-hoc rationalization rather than a useful way to look at it. But even if we follow this line of thought, it is not clear that family, for example is of such high value that it has to be detrimental to everything else. It seems more to me that family benefited from the time freed up by not having friendly relationships, but whether people derive more value from family than they did in the past is very debateable. Spending more time with it is not proof that it has higher value - people will always do something in lack of alternatives.

spyckie2 8y ago
I guess my definition of value is purely based on effort/reward. Especially as someone in their 30s friends come and go a lot, they are not hard to pick up but are very hard to keep, and other things like building a stable environment for myself takes priority. Many of my really good friends moved away, or settled down and married and kids. Not bitter about it but just stating the fact that lasting friendships aren't the best investment because of how volatile modern society can be.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

Ah, this seems to be the root of the problem: trying to min/max life. This is a problem I associate with a purely empirical/rational worldview, which is the current societal norm and is therefore encouraged as the ultimate.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
You call it a problem, some call it a challenge. I'd like to posit that "back in the day", people's lives had reached a max in their 20's after they finished school, got a job (unionized and/or indefinite contract), got married, bought a house, started having kids, etc. Nowadays, school will take longer because you need it to make a decent living - there's too many low paid jobs. Second, to get married and buy a house and such, you need a decent income. To get that, you either need a high education and live in an area where you can use that, or work multiple jobs and have no time for a social life, or be lucky and get a middle class paying jobs in an affordable area. So it's not just a personal choice from ambition, like you're suggesting, but it's also that the previous generation had it easier. They had the option to work where they live, to buy a house off of that money, and do it all before their 30's.
- noxToken 8y ago
  This reminds me if the college freshman who starts freaking out about post-college life. They immediately regret the college they chose. They're chattering non-stop about the what classes are worth taking. They later get two internship offers: one from a no name local place where the internship is data science (which they want), but the other is at Googazon Faceple chasing birds off the property. The student inevitably has a meltdown, because they want the prestige of a big four. This isn't to say that there is inherently anything wrong with trying to min/max life. You'll have a better time (to a point) when you make more money. But let's not forget that if you're spending 5 years in misery for little gain, that's 5 years you aren't getting back. You only get one life. Enjoy it.
  - vorhuts 8y ago
    Is life about happiness or is life about pursuing a meaning (you define) and as a by product, happiness is attained sometimes?

sergiosgc 8y ago

Assets and lifestyle are meaningless if not shared with someone [1]. Kids develop their own independent lives 20 or so years after you brought them into the world. The goals you define are neither written in stone nor happiness maximizers. Happiness is maximized by social inclusion coupled with a sense of meaning (as in your impact in your social sphere being needed and positive). Being surrounded by people who matter and who want you in their midst. That can be a large, cohese, multi-generation family, or an extensive friend network. Multi-generation families living in tight neighborhoods don't happen anymore, so your next best target is an extensive friend network. I'm sorry, but I sincerely believe your stated goals are plain wrong. [1] Someone other than your life partner; sharing assets and lifestyle with your life partner is limited and an exhaustible resource -- to use your terms.

spyckie2 8y ago
At the age of 30, you are not worried about your kids leaving the nest (you may not have kids yet), your social circle can still be lively with colleagues, family, and past friends that are slowly going out of your lives. You may not have any assets to share with others. Your lifestyle may be still in transition from a young adult mindset to a breadwinner. You may be moving around a lot or moving companies frequently. I'd understand the argument if 50 year olds should be making more friends. They have assets, they have a stable lifestyle, and maybe it's precisely because they didn't invest in making friends earlier that they don't have anyone to share their assets with. But I'll double down and say that for 30 year olds there are so many other things they can be doing and the environment for making friends is so harsh, that it's simply not worth it. For most young adults, their social circle is extremely mobile. Everyone gets more responsibilities and other priorities that take their time. Most aren't in a position to take care of others (from a combination of money, time, and responsibility) - the simplest of friend making activities, like inviting someone over for a meal, can be very much out of your reach as a 30 year old. For myself, I'm collecting assets because I want to build a responsible safety net of protection for your family & future. I'm developing my lifestyle to build a nice environment for my kids to grow up in. Not everyone has those things handed to them, and building up those things are not trivial in the modern world. These goals really are multi-decade goals. I'll acquiesce that they are not lifetime goals. After they are accomplished, there's still a lot of life to live, and values and priorities can change after the underlying needs that the previous goals are built on are fulfilled.

joncrane 8y ago

While I can see where this viewpoint works, I disagree with the ROI assessment. Friends can and do provide very strong returns on investment. They can help with asset accumulation (networking for better jobs; in my case I helped a couple of friends with portfolio management of their retirement plans!). Friends are part of a lifestyle. My lifestyle includes doing group activities with friends 2 nights a week. The social interaction that happens between rounds of trivia is more important to me than the trivia result themselves. Friends are part of a family, too. Good friends accept and even enjoy it when your partner/kids come along. Eventually you can enter into babysitting swap systems where one family watches the kids while the other couple goes and does other stuff. Also it's important to model mature friendship patterns for your kids. So overall, friendship isn't only super important in it's own right, it also overlaps with the three important categories you list in your post.

vorhuts 8y ago

I think family raising has more risks and possible value loss than friendships, especially with the divorce rates in the USA. Goals 1-2 are always top priority after Health, which is the most important!

baby 8y ago

> 2) lifestyle development How is making friends not a part of lifestyle development? Btw kurtzgesagt has a very interesting video[1] on the subject where they show that rats get really anxious if they can't socialize. They then take a leap and say that human are pretty much the same. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg