I'm not sure I want to like more people all that much.

I have a generally cheerful disposition, and I have no trouble with civility toward those I dislike. There have been people who clearly disliked me whom I thought well of nonetheless; I've met me, and I recognize this particular combination of attributes isn't to everyone's taste.

But I've never had a situation where I wanted to make an effort to like someone who I didn't like. I think the goals here are typically anti-productive, assuming reasonable socialization skills and some pre-existing friends.

It is useful to like people. For one thing, if you have to be around them, liking >them makes this far more pleasant. For another, well, they can often tell, and if >they know you to like them this will often be instrumentally useful to you.

Let's take a look at these advantages:

1. More pleasant. Yes, true. Point well taken.

2. Puppeteering. OK, maybe a bit too harsh, but "instrumentally useful," sounds like that. I certainly want people to do lots of things, but I don't usually trade in on personal relationships quite that way.

Disadvantages:

1. Personal rot. There are qualities in people that it is unwise to overlook, because the cognitive dissonance is so strong. "He's fun, except for the light stealing," is not going to lead to healthy thinking. This is inevitably corrupting.

If you're admiring something that's interesting but maybe not admirable, you're changing yourself in some way that might not be good.

1. Failure to change people a little tiny bit. Yeah, your view toward the other human is unlikely to change them a lot if they're adults, because people are bad at learning or attempting to learn new modes of socialization. (This is doubtless why Alicorn's posts on these topics are popular; the deliberate reinvention and aiming of self is both impressive and interesting. And quite rare.) But a little change might be brought about through social cues that recreational puppy-stomping is frowned on.

2. * A lot of effort that might be spent better elsewhere.* Overall effort's not fixed, so you might gain extra effort points by doing this, but there's still got to be a net loss.

Premise rejection:

1. People know more about themselves than you do. As far as experiences, yes, As far as who they are and what they are good at... maybe not.

Anyway, it's a very interesting post, much as I think it's a bad idea. I note that I was and remain a big fan of niceness in most circumstances and a big fan of the niceness post linked at the top of this one. I think this is dangerous step past that.

On a side note, I apologize for failing to honor the tone norm in this thread and addressing the post. For whatever reason, I found the post more interesting than the comment thread, which I gather was moved over from Gawker.

--JRM