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You seem to be operating on a model that says “either something is obvious to a person, or it’s useful to remind them of it, but not both”, whereas I personally find it useful to be reminded of things that I consider obvious, and I think many others do too. Perhaps you don’t, but could it be the case that you’re underestimating the extent to which it applies to you too?

I think one way to understand it is to disambiguate ‘obvious’ a bit and distinguish what someone knows from what’s salient to them.

If someone reminds me that sleep is important and I thank them for it, you could say “I’m surprised you didn’t know that already,” but of course I did know it already - it just hadn’t been salient enough to me to have as much impact on my decision-making as I’d like it to.

I think this post is basically saying: hey, here’s a thing that might not be as salient to you as it should be.

Maybe everything is always about the right amount of salient to you already! If so you are fortunate.

See in context

166 You can just spontaneously call people you haven't met in years

by lc

13th Nov 2023

1 min read

166

Here's a recent conversation I had with a friend:

Me: "I wish I had more friends. You guys are great, but I only get to hang out with you like once or twice a week. It's painful being holed up in my house the entire rest of the time."
Friend: "You know ${X}. You could talk to him."
Me: "I haven't talked to ${X} since 2019."
Friend: "Why does that matter? Just call him."
Me: "What do you mean 'just call him'? I can't do that."
Friend: "Yes you can"
Me:

Later: I call ${X}, we talk for an hour and a half, and we meet up that week.

This required zero pretext. I just dialed the phone number and then said something like "Hey ${X}, how you doing? Wanted to talk to you, it's been a while." It turns out this is a perfectly valid reason to phone someone, and most people are happy to learn that you have remembered or thought about them at all.

Further, I realized upon reflection that the degrees of the people I know seem related to their inclination to do things like this.

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[-]Vanessa Kosoy1y617

MIND. BLOWN.

Made a list of 4 people I can try to contact. Wish me luck!

[-]Vanessa Kosoy1y150

For the record, I contacted 3/4 but it led to nothing, alas. (I also thought of another person to contact but she moved to a different country in the intervening time.)

[-]Adam Zerner1y*2117

Perhaps a helpful question to ask: how would you feel if you got a call from a friend you haven't talked to in years? Probably somewhat excited. Probably not annoyed.

[-]Bezzi1y126

Hu, I don't know. I can totally imagine being mildly annoyed by this, especially if they end up inviting me to a social event on short notice.

[-]Richard_Kennaway1y*65

I would find it as odd to receive such a call as it would be for me to make such a call. I would be waiting for them to mention the specific reason for the call, something they wanted to ask my help with or whatever. It would be even stranger if there was no such reason, it was "just to talk".

[-]Viliam1y51

Depends on whether their next sentence is: "I wanted to tell you about this wonderful business opportunity. You can build your own business by recruiting people in a pyramid below you. It is completely new on this market; it only exists for a few months. I cannot tell you more now, but we should definitely meet to discuss this. Would Tuesday or Thursday be more convenient for you?"

[-]avturchin1y186

What about dropping a text message first?

[-]Ben1y92

This is a point of disconnect between me and my partner. I have never worried about the time elapsed before talking to someone again, but she does. Often I will suggest she meets one of her friends, and she says something like "I haven't spoken to them in years". My response is always "if more time makes it more awkward, then you should {ring/email/facebook message/text} immediately."

One of the good things about facebook (a very small category in my opinion) is that major life events (births, weddings etc) result in people who have kind of forgotten each other being reminded and exchanging a few pleasant messages.

[-]Louis1y70

Done!

[-]Review Bot9mo30

The LessWrong Review runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2024. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.

Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?

[-]arisAlexis1y30

how about texting vs calling? pros / cons? I frequently text people from my past but I find calling a bit more awkward/pervasive

[-]OrthernLight9mo00

I would like to be able to do this, but there are concrete reasons that I don't:

Many of my friends hate phone calls. Outside an emergency, I pretty much have consider calling my friends not to be an option unless I remember the specific person saying otherwise. (I, on the other hand, can't have a spontaneous conversation that's any good over text messages.)
- Right before I moved to a different area a few years ago, I asked a few friends if I could call them sometimes, and the only answer I got was 'I don't do phone calls'
Talking to a friend I haven't met in 1-2 years is fine and good. With someone I haven't met in 4-6 years, however, the usual result is that I feel like the shared context should still be there, but it mostly isn't, which doesn't make for good conversations.
- Probably there's some kind of better conversational approach that could solve this, but I don't know it.

[-]AlphaAndOmega1y-3-13

I mean no insult, but it makes me chuckle that the average denizen of LessWrong is so non-neurotypical that what most would consider profoundly obvious advice not worth even mentioning comes as a great surprise or even a revelation of sorts.

(This really isn't intended to be a dig, I'm aware the community here skews towards autism, it's just a mildly funny observation)

[-]Raemon1y5341

I think it’s not just an autism thing but something of an atomic modernity thing.

[-]Raemon1y2815

Maybe to elaborate: I had a lot of neurotypical friends, and a lot of autistic friends, and barely any of them have ever called me up years later to talk if we didn’t have some kind of social context. It seems like this is not a thing people do very often.

[-]lc1y20

I've had two people do this to me. It didn't register to me what they were doing at the time. But I also have a kind of different friend group than most rationalists.

[-]Kaj_Sotala1y1911

Hmm, I would actually expect neurotypicals to find this advice more useful, since they're more likely to have thoughts like "I can't do that, that'd be weird" while the stereotypical autist would be blissfully unaware of there being anything weird about it.

[-]Viliam1y103

"You can talk to people

this part is difficult for autists

you haven't seen for a long time, don't worry about being weird."

this part is difficult for normies

[-]bideup1y82

I think it falls into the category of 'advice which is of course profoundly obvious but might not always occur to you', in the same vein as 'if you have a problem, you can try to solve it'.

When you're looking for something you've lost, it's genuinely helpful when somebody says 'where did you last have it?', and not just for people with some sort of looking-for-stuff-atypicality.

[-]AlphaAndOmega1y00

I will regard with utter confusion someone who doesn't immediately think of the last place they saw something when they've lost it.

It's fine to state the obvious on occasion, it's not always obvious to everyone, and like I said in the parent comment, this post seems to be liked/held useful by a significant number of LW users. I contend that's more of a property of said users. This does not make the post a bad thing or constitute a moral judgement!