Eagerness

[Elliot Temple]

Eagerness lowers status.

It is associated with children.

And when it comes to interacting with people, eagerness communicates that you need them too much and lack other options. Or something along those lines.

But wanting to interact for mutual benefit, and being eager for such benefits, does not actually, rationally imply you lack other options or are needy or low status. Eagerness for your life, and to get anything good underway, is good, isn't it?

People worry about giving too much away. About hiding their values. About letting others come to them. About hiding what they want so the price of it isn't raised. But why treat everyone as our enemies? And if someone actually acts like an enemy, not a cooperative friend, why interact with them at all?


Is there anything actually bad about eagerness? Or is *all* the dislike of eagerness mistaken?

-- Elliot Temple
http://beginningofinfinity.com/

[Rami Rustom]

On Jan 4, 2013 12:19 AM, "Elliot Temple" <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
> Eagerness lowers status.

?!?!

> It is associated with children.

Oh! Now I know why people say I act like a child sometimes. I knew
they meant that something I did was like children do, implying that
typically adults don't do it, but I didn't pinpoint what exactly. I
didn't see a problem with it, so I didn't question it much. I like
children. I like how they behave/think. I like them better than
adults.

> And when it comes to interacting with people, eagerness communicates that you need them too much and lack other options. Or something along those lines.

WOW!

> But wanting to interact for mutual benefit, and being eager for such benefits, does not actually, rationally imply you lack other options or are needy or low status. Eagerness for your life, and to get anything good underway, is good, isn't it?

YES!

> People worry about giving too much away. About hiding their values. About letting others come to them. About hiding what they want so the price of it isn't raised. But why treat everyone as our enemies? And if someone actually acts like an enemy, not a cooperative friend, why interact with them at all?

hmm. I guess people are afraid of rejection (aka social disapproval).

> Is there anything actually bad about eagerness? Or is *all* the dislike of eagerness mistaken?

I've run into trouble with it before. I make a plan. I'm eager to do
it. Of course I know that the plan is fallible, meaning that it might
fail. But because I don't explicitly say that it might fail, and
because I look so eager, people think that I think that my plan is
fail-safe. WTF!? Why don't they understand fallibilism?

-- Rami

[Elliot Temple]

On Jan 4, 2013, at 6:55 AM, Rami Rustom <rom...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2013 12:19 AM, "Elliot Temple" <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>> Eagerness lowers status.
>
> ?!?!

This is very common knowledge, but usually not stated explicitly. I'll bet you could recognize it if you watched examples on TV. Or if you kept this concept in mind while hearing people talking about dating and things like "playing it cool" and "waiting 3 days before phoning" and "not coming on too strong" and suchlike. It's also very visible in status relationships from the past, e.g. in courts with kings, and you can find many examples in popular books like The Wheel of Time series.

>
>
>> It is associated with children.
>
> Oh! Now I know why people say I act like a child sometimes. I knew
> they meant that something I did was like children do, implying that
> typically adults don't do it, but I didn't pinpoint what exactly. I
> didn't see a problem with it, so I didn't question it much. I like
> children. I like how they behave/think. I like them better than
> adults.

There are a number of good traits associated with children. A few more are "childlike curiosity", "[childlike, innocent] sense of wonder", asking questions about how stuff works, and asking persistent questions to try to get further answers with more detail.

So maybe it's some of those too :)


In general, children are better than adults in many important ways, especially rationality. Also lack of having lots of entrenched bad assumptions about life, happiness, and lack of bitterness and cynicism.

Stuff targeted at children is often good. For example, there is an idea in our culture that conflict is "adult" and lack of conflict is childish. One consequences is that adult movies typically focus more on conflict than children's movies. But how to live when life isn't going wrong and you aren't in a conflict is actually the more important, more interesting and bigger topic than how to deal with conflicts. A lot of the adult world seems to assume lack of conflict is boring.

>
>
>> And when it comes to interacting with people, eagerness communicates that you need them too much and lack other options. Or something along those lines.
>
> WOW!

You're shocked? OK, I'll try to blow your mind then. Consider this: pretty much everyone else already knows this and isn't shocked and doesn't even see anything wrong with it or try to change it.