Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
This is, in truth, bad advice. The most obvious reason is the difference in values. People do not all want the same treatment. I may enjoy getting punched in the face but most people probably do not. One may argue that on a higher level, the application of the rule would mean being nice to people if you want them to be nice to you, taking into account their individual preferences. This would only lead us to the bigger problem of "what do other people really want?".
There is also an implicit motivation in the rule, which is that people will tend to treat you the way you treat them. Unfortunately, this assumption of reciprocity is often invalid. People will treat you the way they do, regardless of how you treat them. The correlation there, while positive, is almost zero.
The best strategy to adopt is therefore to do whatever the heck one wishes.
Why? Because if one tries to be nice to someone, they might not give a damn. Or worse, from their perspective, one might be acting like a jerk. Since the outcome, whether success or failure, is so random, the optimum thing to do is to act in a manner that is at least guaranteed to make oneself happy.
