Thesis: on Friendship

Awake, early, 6am-ish. But probably also sleeping too much, because I tire myself with too many distractions. A friend asks me if something is bothering me, and so I think about it, and become more awake (for better or for worse). Perhaps, just the usual tirade from my various sources, reading this and that, and considering the economics of pleasure, companionship, conversation, and sex.

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Where B = casual sex:

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I think, I demand a certain degree of intellectual agility from my closest companions, and no one should demand less. I think it's important for [friends to be able to discuss the costs and benefits of casual sex]:1, without [having to depend on sexual activity to make their friendship viable]:2. Too often, I suspect that I lose friends because they are incapable of dissociating point 1, from point 2.

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Probably, there are too many people in the world who depend on point 2, and that is why many other people are suspicious of point 1, as a strategy to flag abusers of point 2. Meanwhile, there are many practitioners of point 2, who are completely incapable of point 1. Of course, it is also important to note that you can algebraically replace the word 'sex' in points 1, and 2, with any other genre of behaviour, B, and this entire discussion on points 1, and 2, will still hold.

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For all possible values of B, in general:

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Here's an anticipated criticism of my thesis. The activity of point 1, may be defined to be a subset of the activities of point 2. For now, deeper discussion of this is left as an exercise for the reader.

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In general, I hope to meet many more friends who are capable of point 1 without point 2. And, I hope that in general, people who practice point 2 will learn to lose that dependence, until they have performed a thoroughly audited valuation that [whatever their friendships depend on] are priced efficiently.

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Many are likely to argue that some Bs are central to their preferred definition of friendship. As this once again depends on definitions, the construction of specific arguments about any ordered pair (B, friendship_definition), is also left as an exercise for the reader...