Hi Everybody,

Let’s say you were David’s friend. If you asked him to jump-start your car and he offered to pay a service, how would you feel?

Would your feelings change after David said exactly the same words he used in this chapter?

What does your reaction say about David?

What does your reaction say about you? You may dislike that question, but I urge you to answer it. Your answer and other people’s comments about it can teach you a lot about yourself. If you realize that you’re not thinking logically, you may find my comments in that chapter useful.

Regards,

Al

I would refuse him.

Nothing, since I would have the same reaction to everyone.

Very little, since 90% of people would have the same reaction.

I assume the point is just about the equivalence of time and money, but I actually think that there are more subtle dynamics of friendship and general social norms at work here. You can call those illogical if you want, but I think it's silly to call the people following them illogical. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I would only ask a friend to jump-start my car if i thought it would be a very minor inconvenience and zero out-of-pocket cost to my friend. If my friend responded by offering to pay a tow service, i would refuse the offer and consider feeling insulted.

this is the point of the book that i've just got to.

it was one of the most insulting things i've ever heard one friend say to another.

if David tries to make some sort of time and motion justification out of this (because his friend happens to be a poker player) it is complete arrogance

First I think I would have to contemplate the fact that someone like David is who I consider a friend.

Consider feeling insulted? Surely you mean you might feel insulted. I don't think you can 'consider' it: you either feel insulted or you don't.

Considering how you deal with your feelings is a different matter from considering feeling them. Determining whether or not you feel something is also a different question.

Sorry if this sounds nitpicky; I felt the issue of feelings not being logical was relevant here.

And yes, I would certainly feel insulted in the situation described.

^^Felt the need to qualify that statement: I haven't read the book, so I'm basing what I said on the scenario described in the OP. There might conceivably be some situations where I wouldn't feel offended, but it would depend heavily on the context and the nature of my relationship with the other person ('friend' is a very general word. Need to narrow ranges!). Can't help thinking such situations would be extremely rare.

I meant exactly what i wrote. Feeling insulted would not be inappropriate, but it's a choice, imo. Perhaps you go around reflexively feeling insulted from time to time, but i don't think automatically feeling insulted by less-than-aggregious events that may or may not have been intentional is particularly productive, so i am real selective about when i choose to feel that way.

Not sure if you read the rest of my post. So you choose to feel angry or happy or sad or whatever? Not just choose to control how you react to emotions, or choose to try to discipline your emotions, but choose whether or not to feel them??
I go around reflexively feeling lots of things, I must admit. It's a big leak.

This is a weird situation because it's not a problem you can get yourself out of yourself.

When your yard needs mowing, you can do it yourself or you can pay someone to do it.

When your car needs jumping, you CAN'T do it yourself. You need A FRIEND to help you or you need to pay someone.

Let's say David and I agree to mow each others' yards while the other is out of town on an extended vacation. David leaves town, I mow his yard. He comes back, and I leave town. While I'm gone, something comes up and he can't find the time to mow my yard, so he just calls a service to swing by and mow it. In this case I wouldn't care at all.

I wouldn't ask David to mow my yard under normal circumstances. I wouldn't ask him to jump my car in the first place if it were something I could do myself.

HEre's a better lawn-mowing scenario... my cousin's husband had an out-of-the-blue heart attack (he's about 40, three young kids, in unbelievably good health (not that it matters (but he was JOGGING to YOGA when it happened)). Anyway, he had some complications from the incident and he's basically out-of-commission in many ways for the time being. People volunteered to help out taking the kids to soccer practice, cooking meals for them, etc. I paid for someone to mow their yard (it's something he normally does himself) for a couple of months. Nobody seemed to think this was a tasteless or insulting gesture.

Obviously, though, it's hard to formulate a rule for when this sort of help is crass and when it's not. But I know it when I see it!

Your second post landed while i was typing my response. Nevertheless, my life approach is to control my emotions rather than letting my emotions control me. Sometimes i succeed. In particular, i think that feeling insulted is terribly counterproductive when the insulter didn't intent to insult.

Those who have not read the chapter are going under somewhat incorrect assumptions.

That being said, I chose to write about this incident because it did such a good job of making a point. Namely that gut reactions are hard to fight even if the argument against them are pretty irrefutable.

In the case in question my friend could not easily afford a service and I could. And I had jumped his car many times before. This time the inconvenience was such that I would have gladly paid hundreds to avoid it. But at the same time I fully acknowledged my duty to help him get his car started. He would do it for me. But he would not have been MY friend if he had insisted I do him this favor in the fashion that was much more difficult. And when I put it to him this way he agreed.

Again the point of this story is to illustrate an example where if you don't fight your feelings you will come to the wrong conclusion.

This I can agree with entirely.

It's certainly an interesting example.
The bolded part shows how important the nature of your relationship with the other person is, i.e. context.
Yes, and that's why I have doubts: all it does is illustrate the example (not sure you meant to word it like that exactly). To what extent is there a general principle that one can derive from this example and then apply in other contexts, apart from the idea that we sometimes have to fight our gut reactions?

I also have reservations about the value judgement inherent in calling something the 'wrong' conclusion (but then that's the whole point isn't it).

Again, I do realise that my assumptions and arguments may be way off the mark as I haven't read the book. But I'm guessing the purpose of this forum was to invite discussion, so...

Exactly how or whether the points I am trying to make with this story apply to you personally is for you to decide.

I would have no issues. I would think even better and thanks. Not sure what that says about me, but I wouldn't think twice about it.

You should buy him a new battery.

Or a new car.

Fair enough. I was trying to determine how and whether they apply - or ought to apply - to all of us.

By the way, in the actual story in the book, there was an extra layer of stickiness, without which my proposal would have gone down smoothly. This was before the days of credit cards over the phone. Thus I was forced to ask him to shell out the money at first, with the promise I would pay it back. Nothing changes logically as long as he knows he can trust me. Still that solution requires an even greater effort on his part to accept it without icky feelings.

The concept of friends helping each other is to save the money that expensive professional help would cost. If they end up paying for professional help anyways, then the primary goal of this "deal" has failed.

This holds true for most people, because the hourly rate that they get from their job is much lower than what the service of the car doctor would cost them. People usually do not assign any money value to their freetime.

David's case is different since his hourly rate is much higher than the hourly rate of the car doctor, so the service of the car doctor wasn't "too expensive" after all. That is why his solution makes sense to him.

While the money saving deal works in this direction, we may wonder how the friend could return the favor to a rich person like David. The friend got something that was too expensive for him but meant virtually nothing to David. If we want to mirror that, what could be very expensive to David but mean virtually nothing to the friend? How do we get around the difference in the value of money for both of them?

That's a pretty difficult problem and maybe that is the reason why the friend could and should feel offended. His pride dictates that he doesn't want to take anything for free, but since it is virtually impossible to return the favor, he may end up looking like a thief.

This is really just your opinion though. I know David's point was to show us a different way of thinking. Hear me out:

I'm standing in line at the grocery store. The person in front of me is having trouble with a coupon. I just watched this person spend over $200 on what looks to me to be at least a month's worth of groceries. This is a 50 cent coupon and this particular chain of grocery stores do double-coupons for anything under a dollar. There are six lines open in this store and all of them are four customers deep. I notice the manager that needs to "OK" the coupon is busy with another issue a few lanes down. I offer to give the person in front of me a dollar and to forget the coupon. My time and level of frustration is worth well more than a dollar to me, so it's really not a big deal. I am not giving this person a dollar as an insult: "It's a ****ing dollar. Here! Just go!". I'm genuinely just trying to help out and a dollar is not all that much to me at this point in time. I cannot help it if the person in front of me gets offended. If they could take a moment and not be insulted or offended, he or she could see that everyone involved, the cashier, myself, the people behind me, the customer with the coupon, and even the manager, is actually coming out way ahead in this scenario.


Let's move on to a different example. My friend needs a ride to the airport at 4am on a Saturday morning. He doesn't want to leave his car at the airport for six weeks and pay all that money to have his car parked for that long. A week before his flight, I offer to take him to the airport. Friday night rolls around and I find out that another one of my friend's band is playing at a local bar and I missed the last three times they played out. I decide I'm going to be out all night and that I'm probably going to be too drunk to take my friend to the airport. Before going out, I call him up and tell him that I've called a cab/car-service and already paid the associated fees and gratuity. They will pick him up at 4am. My friend gets his ride to the airport. I pay a few bucks as almost a punishment for choosing to bail on a commitment last minute as my friend would almost assuredly not be able to get anyone else to take him in such a last minute, and I'd be a true dick if he ended up having to pay out of pocket for a cab/car because he was counting on me.



I would think you'd be pretty okay with the grocery store scenario, but you might think my friend should be offended with the ride scenario. Why? Aren't they really the same? If he was really my friend and cared about me as much as I do about him, wouldn't he be understanding and want me to go out and have an entire night of fun as opposed to spending an hour in the car (only 20 minutes of actual time with him)?

Actually quite the opposite. I can totally understand the cab situation - except if I were the friend needing the ride (and I think probably most ppl) would tell you "no worries man, go have fun I can pay for the cab" and honestly not have any hard feelings. Even if there are some "weird" feelings anyone with any sort of brain will understand the situation and get over it very quickly. If someone said theyd take me and called me up and said "Hey, cant help you out cuz im getting drunk, sorry." and hung up then yeah, Id be a little pissed.

The grocery store scenario is infact insulting though. It is none of your business because you dont know the person and basically your actions are saying, no matter what words you choose, "look you cheap ****, heres twice as much as you wouldve saved just get out of my way my 20 seconds that its going to take for you to get your damn coupon out of your ass is worth more than a dollar." You arent trying to help them, you are trying to help yourself. I would actually probably get offended by this scenario personally if I were the coupon shopper - and I dont get offended easily. However, if you are behind someone paying with cash and theyre 25 cents short or a dollar short or something I think its totally acceptable to speak up and say "hey dont worry about it, I got it." Your actions there are saying "hey man, hate when that **** happens to me, ill save you the trouble of going to your car for a quarter" To me they are COMPLETELY different scenarios.

I was just saying that everyone in the grocery scenario wins if they can change the way they think about it and not get butt-hurt about nothing. I'm giving the person exactly what he or she would've saved. I'm not saying anything condescending or negative. I'm smiling and politely offering a solution to the problem. We could be standing there for five minutes waiting for the hypothetical manager to get there. In reality, if it was taking that long, the coupon wielder will probably say "Oh just forget about it" and take a hit. If I'm willing to pay $1 before it gets to that point, why is that the worst outcome of events?


In fact, I think the only reason anyone would get offended or insulted is because of their own thoughts on the other person's motives. In their head they very well may be thinking exactly what you just said. My commentary is only really saying about people changing the way they have been indoctrinated to always assume the worst in others. What if I had added, "Hey, I'm going to need to buy that very item next time I come to the store. Would you sell me that coupon for a dollar??" or some other overly friendly way of doing it? Would that have washed the negative connotation from the whole situation?

Sorry to break this down into two separate posts, but even if your friend said "no worries", he'd still be out the cab money through no fault of his own. Understanding or not, he has zero chance to get a free lift (or for the minimum, some gas money to a buddy) when he thought he had done all he needed to do to secure a ride to the airport. I could not, in good conscious, have my flakiness cost my friend a good chunk of change just so I could go out and have a few beers and hang with some friends.

I get your point. Pretty sure what youre saying is the basis for John Nash's equilibrium theory for economics - the best solution is what is best for yourself and everyone else (which I believe is the whole point David is trying to make).

I guess I was thinking more in reality terms. Economically, yes you are correct. In reality more people are going to be getting offended in the grocery store than at their friend.

this site fell apart.