Cool story bro. Hope it keeps you safe and the golem at bay.
I’ve seen this, so, yes. And I think the dividing line is between a) someone who tells you what to do when you share a problem vs. b) someone who asks you what you need when you share a problem. It’s a pretty clear and easy to see line in reality, and people choose as they will.
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As someone who works in supporting and managing engineers, yes you have. WIS is often a lower initial roll than INT for engineers, but it comes in time.
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In that particular case, I tell you that this is a straw man argument.
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You sought advice. Now you want sympathy? Sheesh! 
In earlier times, in “western” cultures, this hit the gender line really hard. Possibly for very good reasons that are controversial.
Men were expected to solve problems and practice the emotional detachment that approximates optimally objective problems solving. That’s the help they were supposed to offer.
Women were expected to provide the emotional support humans need for optimal mental and physical health and develop the deep empathy that makes such support maximally effective.
I think the key things to recognize are that
- if somebody is asking for “help” they aren’t necessarily asking for you to solve their problems, that’s not the only way to help someone cope, and
- if what you are is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The book “Mrs. Parkinson’s Law” is unfortunately phrased entirely in 1950s gender stereotypes, but if you can see past that, it’s worth reading for a drily humorous take on this subject.
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There’s a big difference between normal reciprocal interactions between friends and the helpless constant complainers you’re describing.
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I didn’t see anything in that article that suggested good reasons for cultural conditioning.
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Well, I linked to the controversy, not the claims. But, anyway, in the article Peterson said:
That’s already been demonstrated in Scandinavia. Men and women won’t sort themselves into the same categories if you leave them to do it of their own accord. It’s 20 to 1 female nurses to male, something like that. And approximately the same male engineers to female engineers. That’s a consequence of the free choice of men and women in the societies that have gone farther than any other societies to make gender equality the purpose of the law. Those are ineradicable differences––you can eradicate them with tremendous social pressure, and tyranny, but if you leave men and women to make their own choices you will not get equal outcomes.
I think Peterson’s work can be interpreted to support the idea that men and women are genetically predisposed towards certain roles, and thus cultural conditioning is more effect than it is cause. And perhaps that such conditioning was the best early civilizations could do to make the most number of people happy, and the tribe as a whole happy.
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What is it about the phrase "simply supportive " that suggests to you that I see it as “not being supportive”?
What you see as paternalistic crap I view as challenging. I’d much rather be told a harsh and honest truth about how I’m making a mistake than to be given some pandering milquetoast sympathy and my friends aren’t wilting violets who are worried about my feelings but rather are more concerned with making me a better person and they expect the same from me.
It’s less about “solving” and more about positive action rather than pandering with sympathy. But some good steps are “Let’s go for a walk” or “Let’s make a scrapbook” or “When you have time, I’d love to visit her grave with you to pay my respects”. Of course you can’t fix the problem but you can help your friend stay out of the deepest end of the depression pool by keeping them engaged and active. Or you could just say “yeah man, that really sucks” and then leave them to wallow in despair.
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They might consider: How many copies of the death certificate to order? What to tell young children? What kind of flowers to have?
I read the Wikipedia article on the book of Job and have no idea what you are trying to say here.
The search phrase is “Job’s comforters.” However, the book itself is short and well worth reading because it’s a seriously insightful work on human social psychology. (You can ignore the religious aspects; it barely made it into the canon all those years ago because it’s not terribly pious.)
Shorter: Job’s neighbors come to comfort him in his loss and spend all their time reassuring themselves that it’s got to be his fault so nothing like it could happen to them.
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It could be interpreted that way. That doesn’t make it so. That dog won’t hunt.
If it were a predisposition, conditioning would not be neccessary.
"More broadly, theoretical frameworks of motivated empathy highlight that there is a tension between empathizing with others and the potential deterrents to doing so, thus linking empathy to motivation. For example, empathizing with others may have benefits of positive affect, affiliation, and social desirability but also costs of cognitive effort, suffering, material costs, and interference with competition11–13. Similarly, theoretical frameworks of motivation highlight that the willingness to exert effort is based on an evaluation of the costs and benefits of performing an action (e.g.25–28). Therefore, it could be hypothesized that individual differences in motivation are related to individual differences in empathy. That is, those who are more empathic might also be more motivated and vice versa. Such a finding could have important implications for motivated empathy frameworks. It would suggest that empathy and motivation are not just associated in certain contexts, or when directly manipulated, but that empathy is closely interlinked with motivation.
There is also evidence for associations between empathy and motivation in the typical population. The rate at which people discount or ‘devalue’ rewards by effort for others compared to self, a measure of prosocial motivation, correlates with individual differences in subclinical psychopathic traits39. It may also be that some dimensions of empathy are motivated but others are not. For example, individuals higher in cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy, learn faster which actions will result in rewards for others, suggesting that individuals high in cognitive empathy have increased prosocial motivation2. These findings lend further support to the idea that aspects of empathy may have a motivational component and that characterising these associations could have important clinical consequences. "
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Interesting. I’ve definitely had that reaction to some bad things happening but have managed not to say so aloud.
I feel like there’s something that feels very heroic about giving advice, it feels like swooping in and coming to the rescue, you can almost imagine the parade being thrown in your honor. That’s the problem with it. If you already have your heart set on seeing positive results and receiving praise, you are going to be upset if things don’t go your way, and if you rush in without even fully understanding the problem, you are basically guaranteed to not have a workable solution. So a person with any experience having problems people like trying to solve is gonna see you coming and be like “oh great here comes an adult-size tantrum”
The suggestion to listen and be empathetic and supportive is not necessarily because that’s what they need instead or no one wants solutions, it’s because it’s the only thing to be done. You listen to the problem, truly, fully listen, and then you might be able to understand enough to be there for them in whatever capacity is actually useful, with the understanding that “doctor without a medical degree” is not a useful role while “friend” is - If you aren’t prepared for that, you aren’t prepared for their problem and shouldn’t even think of yourself as trying to fix it, because all you’d be fixing without that is the problem of you hearing things that made you sad.
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Seriously. I’m not religious myself, but however they framed their literature the ancestors were far from stupid. Read Job – it’s short and citing it has its uses.
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Seriously this is why I am drawn to Buddhism, Unitarianism and even Unity churches over to ones that are filled with people who need someone to deliver generic advice to their individual problems and ram it down their throats.
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I think we’re using the word predisposition differently, then.
The paper was a very difficult read for me, even though I read lots of scientific literature, including neurology papers. Psychology has its own technical language that is pretty time consuming to penetrate. The division of empathy and apathy into multiple types was very new to me, in particular - thanks for the link!
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