I like this. I hope this thread fills with many more comments.

I think it's important to remember especially in traffic and such that cars aren't cars, they are people. I have no idea the real ratios, but imagine 20% are genuinely good people, 60% are just going about their lives, and 20% are miserable for some reason and drive like miserable people. It's easy to think everyone else is an idiot and become aggressive, but remember it's a small percentage who actually agitate you.

Now to answer the question. I guess it's when I was a kid, I'd completely torn my ACL but they wouldn't operate until I was done growing. I don't know how old, 12 maybe? I was in Washington DC running across a busy street when my knee slid out of place and I fell in the road. A Mercedes stopped, purposely blocking both lanes of traffic, and a husky middle aged black lady in scrubs got out and dragged me out of the road onto the sidewalk. She asked if I was ok, and I was as it happened here and there, and off she went. It was such a kind gesture in a city that seemed so cold and always on the go.

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neilv 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> I have no idea the real ratios, but imagine 20% are genuinely good people, 60% are just going about their lives, and 20% are miserable for some reason and drive like miserable people.

Lately, this is my experience in general, not only cars. Though I want to say both that 20% and 60% are genuinely good, and that first 20% are readily above-and-beyond.

In the big-name college town where I live, which still pretends to be warm-fuzzy (the remaining hippies are silver-haired), eventually you pick up on a pervasive undercurrent of selfishness.

A lot of people only get into the prestigious places because they look out for their own interests, and being here is only temporary and transactional.

And a lot of people are strained by the high cost of living for lousy conditions, and are just trying to get by.

Still, I've seen, for example, delirious (opioids?) street people slump off a bench on the gritty main drag, and quickly be surrounded concerned and helpful passersby who looked like yuppies. (And the only phones out were multiple people calling 911, no social media content creation, just genuinely helping and then disappearing.)

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oaiey 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I believe the same: everyone wants to be in New York / Munich / pick your local fashionable place. Everyone moves there to be someone. But not everyone can be someone, so there are a lot of unhappy / selfish people.

	▲	neilv 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's very different from what I was thinking. Most people have to be a bit selfish, to acquire greater money/power/status than others. You usually don't come in first in the race, by pausing to help another runner who fell. A lot of the people just trying to get by, on the other hand, have it harder because of the externalities of someone else's selfishness and sometimes cheating. But, people just barely getting by can go one of two ways: they may or may not decide to help another person who falls. Some just getting by will think we're all in this together, and we help each other, no matter what the jerks do. I think this is actually pretty popular philosophy, and is my own thinking. But other just getting by might think they can't afford to help others, or that it's every person for themself. That philosophy happens, too, and is unfortunate, and it can be contagious. But much of the helping-others group is resilient. Since you mentioned NYC: A very minor anecdote, but once, when I day-tripped to NYC for a startup interview, I just missed the last train home to Boston. I went to the booth where I saw an employee, and asked them what do I do. Her initial reaction was gruff indifferent dismissal, like is a stereotype of people in NYC. (A stereotype being something like, you can't care, because there is so much misery and crazy around you, and other people's problems are just too much to deal with besides your own.) But I think she picked up on my implicit Pollyanna belief that she would help me, because, an instant later, her whole tone changed, and she projected warmth and caring, and told me how to get home on a bus. (The startup was offering me the position, but I declined, because I decided NYC was too rough for me at the time, the nice lady in the train station notwithstanding.)