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" If it accurately describes the situation and enables you to think about it and get ideas by transferring what we know about other markets/interactions etc, is

" If it accurately describes the situation and enables you to think about it and get ideas by transferring what we know about other markets/interactions etc, isn't that better than putting human interaction, mental health etc into a corner of "this is so special that we must not think about it in trivial terms"?" Consider the following: It doesn't accurately describe the situation and that is what people are arguing.

luckylion 7y ago
I don't really see that argument, it looks more like "you shouldn't think of humans in those terms". Not "this doesn't work, look, that model has no predictive power", just "it's not okay to think like that". To me, that's mostly just closing your eyes and wishing really hard that human reality isn't profane and cannot be (roughly) described by (relatively) simple models. I see similar reactions in discussions about free will (or lack thereof) where some people seem to be insulted by the idea that humans aren't special and fundamentally different from animals, not just (much) smarter versions with opposable thumbs.
- watwut 7y ago
  If the person you are speaking with don't think about the people in such terms, don't treat them as such and socializes primary with people who don't treat him in such a way, then that person is not closing eyes from anything. His interactions with others are not like you described. Instead, that person is expressing moral, ethical or emotional base for his own behavior and thinking when he objects with "you shouldn't think of humans in those terms". One does not have to be able to make full fledged philosophical theory about own behavior and behavior of chosen acquaintances in order to know that what you say does not match his experience. And this is the case where your believes influence your experience and outcomes. And more importantly, the prevalent believe in community you are in heavily influences peoples experience and outcome. Whether you are able to express them neatly or not, whether you are able to perform well in debate or not.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > If the person you are speaking with don't think about the people in such terms, don't treat them as such and socializes primary with people who don't treat him in such a way, then that person is not closing eyes from anything. My experience is: they don't think about people and their interaction at all. If you ask them why something is happening etc, i.e. get them thinking about it, they'll start to come up with explanations that sound a lot like that. Which is fine, btw. Nobody has to think about anything if they're happy and doing well, questioning things might change that. If you're in a good place, you don't need to move. But thinking isn't really a choice, and neither are beliefs, mental models and experiences. Blaming those that weren't blessed with an intuitive access to relationships sounds a lot like blaming the poor for not being born rich or telling a depressed person to "just stop being sad".
- akurzon 7y ago
  I admit I may have had the tone of "you shouldn't think of humans on those terms," but I emphasize that the point I wanted to make was precisely that the reductionist economic perspective fails to describe how loneliness works. Friendship (and relationships in general) do not align with this sort of model. To me, attributing these messy interpersonal connections to markets is somewhat handwave-y; it's an unfalsifiable just-so story to explain the behavior, and I think it does more harm than good to think about it on these terms. Again, I would direct you to the Atlantic article I linked above about Tinder. It makes a stronger case than I could that viewing relationships in this way ends up backfiring.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    I don't really see how friendships and relationships in general don't align with that sort of model. Can you reduce them to purely mathematical transaction values? Of course not. Are they totally unlike any other markets where two people "trade" and both feel they get something of value? For voluntary relationships (i.e. it's different for your immediate family than for random people you meet): I don't think so. A market-model-based explanation doesn't deny that there's some non-trivial background, it just seeks to analyze how things happen, and it does an okay job in most cases. The Atlantic article (which I'm obviously not the target audience for, I find them hard to read with all their side stories and presenting n=1 anecdotes as meaningful) seems to not argue about the idea that they are markets, but rather that we shouldn't consider them as markets when we are engaged in it, i.e. if you're having a good time with A, you shouldn't wonder whether you could have had a slightly better time if you had met with B. Don't treat your friendships as you might buying a cell phone. Even business relationships have shifted in that direction, in my experience, it's a pretty recent thing to "shop around" and switch providers because you might save a few bucks. That's a different issue though, I don't believe that's happening because economists or sociologists use market-models to analyze relationships. Tinder and the commoditization of dating, like-count-fetishizing etc are not a thing because somebody said "hey, you know how car sales work? we should manage our relationships that way". Rather, it's how humans work on a very low level and these technologies and trends are just exposing that by giving people a way to visibly act on it. This isn't new, and pointing it out doesn't cause it, neither will it vanish if we just don't mention it and pretend it's not real.

luckylion 7y ago

I don't really see that argument, it looks more like "you shouldn't think of humans in those terms". Not "this doesn't work, look, that model has no predictive power", just "it's not okay to think like that". To me, that's mostly just closing your eyes and wishing really hard that human reality isn't profane and cannot be (roughly) described by (relatively) simple models. I see similar reactions in discussions about free will (or lack thereof) where some people seem to be insulted by the idea that humans aren't special and fundamentally different from animals, not just (much) smarter versions with opposable thumbs.

watwut 7y ago
If the person you are speaking with don't think about the people in such terms, don't treat them as such and socializes primary with people who don't treat him in such a way, then that person is not closing eyes from anything. His interactions with others are not like you described. Instead, that person is expressing moral, ethical or emotional base for his own behavior and thinking when he objects with "you shouldn't think of humans in those terms". One does not have to be able to make full fledged philosophical theory about own behavior and behavior of chosen acquaintances in order to know that what you say does not match his experience. And this is the case where your believes influence your experience and outcomes. And more importantly, the prevalent believe in community you are in heavily influences peoples experience and outcome. Whether you are able to express them neatly or not, whether you are able to perform well in debate or not.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > If the person you are speaking with don't think about the people in such terms, don't treat them as such and socializes primary with people who don't treat him in such a way, then that person is not closing eyes from anything. My experience is: they don't think about people and their interaction at all. If you ask them why something is happening etc, i.e. get them thinking about it, they'll start to come up with explanations that sound a lot like that. Which is fine, btw. Nobody has to think about anything if they're happy and doing well, questioning things might change that. If you're in a good place, you don't need to move. But thinking isn't really a choice, and neither are beliefs, mental models and experiences. Blaming those that weren't blessed with an intuitive access to relationships sounds a lot like blaming the poor for not being born rich or telling a depressed person to "just stop being sad".
akurzon 7y ago
I admit I may have had the tone of "you shouldn't think of humans on those terms," but I emphasize that the point I wanted to make was precisely that the reductionist economic perspective fails to describe how loneliness works. Friendship (and relationships in general) do not align with this sort of model. To me, attributing these messy interpersonal connections to markets is somewhat handwave-y; it's an unfalsifiable just-so story to explain the behavior, and I think it does more harm than good to think about it on these terms. Again, I would direct you to the Atlantic article I linked above about Tinder. It makes a stronger case than I could that viewing relationships in this way ends up backfiring.
- luckylion 7y ago
  I don't really see how friendships and relationships in general don't align with that sort of model. Can you reduce them to purely mathematical transaction values? Of course not. Are they totally unlike any other markets where two people "trade" and both feel they get something of value? For voluntary relationships (i.e. it's different for your immediate family than for random people you meet): I don't think so. A market-model-based explanation doesn't deny that there's some non-trivial background, it just seeks to analyze how things happen, and it does an okay job in most cases. The Atlantic article (which I'm obviously not the target audience for, I find them hard to read with all their side stories and presenting n=1 anecdotes as meaningful) seems to not argue about the idea that they are markets, but rather that we shouldn't consider them as markets when we are engaged in it, i.e. if you're having a good time with A, you shouldn't wonder whether you could have had a slightly better time if you had met with B. Don't treat your friendships as you might buying a cell phone. Even business relationships have shifted in that direction, in my experience, it's a pretty recent thing to "shop around" and switch providers because you might save a few bucks. That's a different issue though, I don't believe that's happening because economists or sociologists use market-models to analyze relationships. Tinder and the commoditization of dating, like-count-fetishizing etc are not a thing because somebody said "hey, you know how car sales work? we should manage our relationships that way". Rather, it's how humans work on a very low level and these technologies and trends are just exposing that by giving people a way to visibly act on it. This isn't new, and pointing it out doesn't cause it, neither will it vanish if we just don't mention it and pretend it's not real.