How unfortunate, I am struggling to come up with first principles reasoning for my claim. All I have is overwhelming evidence, and I have always viewed evidence as being pretty useless. Maybe you can help me. Why is it that in our hyper specialized modern world, the majority of people are STILL acting as amateur friends rather than just leaving it to professionals? Why hasn't friendship as a service caught on? Why don't I toss my friend pocket change whenever he tells a funny joke or shares a take I think highly of? Why do platforms tend to let any two people interact rather than just connecting the people who provide the very best responses?
Discussion
Rewards are optional according to the taste of your audience in a free market of attention. I don’t disagree with your argument directionally (against friendship as mutual usury) but if you have a first principle, it would be more useful than pointing to the plethora of spiritually pure friendships since most friendships are based on circumstances.
Actually I'm not against the notion of friendship as some form of mutual usery. The only caveat is that the opportunity cost of trying to keep track of that debt and actively trying to negotiate is far higher than anything that you would actually gain from the friendship itself.
You are right that most friendships are based on circumstances, but without accepting my principles, do you have any kind of explanation for why friendships are based on circumstances? My explanation is pretty simple. The main benefits of friendships come from random and unexpected happenings that result in a single friendship having many unanticipated (and often unrecognized) benefits, often occuring long after the actual friendly interaction itself.
Because of this, I argue the phenomenon that gave rise to humans was heavily weighted so that we would tend to enjoy friendships for their own sake rather than needing to be able to calculate and quantify the benefits. Why else would humans seemingly waste so much time on friendship without expecting tangible benefits? Why else would humans care so little about specialization and optimizing friendships? Maybe I would have an easier time coming up with reasoning if I had some alternative exanation to compare with.
Have you ever read the classic literary masterpice "Green Eggs and Ham?" The audience doesn't always know their own taste. If all he wanted was immediate and tangible rewards, then Sam-I-Am never would have offered green eggs and ham in the first place.
So your first principle, on which you base your claim that zaps are counterproductive to the betterment of human social order, is serendipity?
To which I would add, at risk of repeating, that for an incentive to lube the inner workings of the social contract, it does not have to be intended. Gifts, in this way, are like ideology: they work whether you believe in them or not.
Or, as Yogi Berra said: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.” A gift is still a debt owed, even if the horse has cavities or halitosis.
I don't know what serendipity means and my web browser is broken. Can you explain?
I wouldn't say that I have a first principle. A good first principle is something that everyone can agree on. Or at least just us.
I think gifts are great. But I think gifts should be associated with the person and/or the topic they are engaged in. Nostr associates zaps with the specific idea they post, which I believe is too conditional to be respectful.
As long as you agree with yourself on a principle, call it a value, like gifts (acts of love) are good if given without the condition of a future favor or control, I would claim there’s no point to worrying about how your gifts (or those of anyone else) are received. Receivers receive and senders send.
Control yourself, the only thing you can control. Like the Stoics.