Short Rant on the Antithesis of "Friend Poaching"

12/09/19

I contemplate postponing this action to two months later when all this is either solidified or has blown over. But sober me will never approve of such doings. High on adrenaline and a small percentage of ethanol, I am about to do something that I may regret for the rest of my life. Like the Witch in Into the Woods who never checked if the baker stole the beans. It cost her, her youth. And what this cost me, I do not yet know. But such unchecked wilderness cannot possibly lead to positive outcomes.

X is panicky, distraught, her constituents in anarchy. By the things that Y has said. X is hurt.

X appreciates Y’s point of view, that she likes her acquaintance sets to be pairwise disjoint, that the elements in such sets shall never intersect.

However, this house subscribes to the theory of six degrees of separation. And furthers it to say that in our globalized and connected world, a theory of four degrees of separation may be even more appropriate. This house believes that it is unavoidable that acquaintance groups will have a certain degree of overlap, that the intersection of their sets shall not be merely a trivial null set.

THBT, efficiency is key when it comes to socializing in this fast-paced world. X would rather append her lists, rather than leave them as separated lists, because only then can the elements in the list be efficiently processed. Translates, it is easier to use, and to associate and relate with everyone if they are in one list in your mind, rather than “pairwise disjointed sets”.

THBT, the order of growth associated with interacting with a combined mega list is much smaller than the order of growth associated with interacting with separate lists. The desire to keep these lists separate and prevent their elements from touching, is merely a manifestation of insecurity, which is a mental thing that requires fixing. It is hardly a viable strategy in today’s interconnected world.