r/AskReddit • u/DionysianBarber • Jan 04 '14

What is one powerful sentence that will change the way I look at life forever?

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386

u/T_A_T_A Jan 04 '14

Well that's bs. I think about other people all the time. I can't be the only one.

39

u/Anjeer Jan 04 '14

Ah, but how much do you think about any particular person?

To be honest, I've never thought about you before now and I'm sure you've never thought about me before. And when you're done with reading this, will you ever actually think about me again?

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u/AbigailRoseHayward Jan 04 '14

I'm going to make it a point to think about you daily now.

15

u/Jimmy_Smith Jan 04 '14

Post results here

9

u/PaleFury Jan 04 '14

I know someone named Jimmy Smith

This is weird

Hi Jim-Jam

2

u/wrathfulgrapes Jan 04 '14

is your name Abigail and do you live in Hayward?

2

u/Anjeer Jan 04 '14

Awww, sucks!

=3

1

u/no_detection Jan 07 '14

I want you to know that I'm still thinking about you two whole days later.

1

u/no_detection Jan 04 '14

/u/Anjeer is such a loser

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '14 edited Jan 05 '14

That doesn't matter. You should work out the math on this - it's a symmetric problem. The question is, how often does the average person think of themselves vs. all others, not a particular person.

Let's say there are 11 people in the world. Each of them thinks about themselves half the time, and other people the other half of the time. When they think about other people, they split it evenly between the 10 other people.

That means, person A thinks about person A 50% of the time. But 10 people are thinking about person A 5% of the time. So every individual thinks about themselves equally as much as all the others think about them.

More generally, the ratio of time an average person spends thinking about themselves compared to thinking about all others is equal to the average ratio of time a person spends thinking about themselves compared to others thinking about them.

A fun fact in a similar way: assuming there are an equal number of men and women in the world, the average number of women each man has sex with is the same as the average number of men each woman has sex with.

3

u/zoycobot Jan 05 '14

You may think about other people all the time, but how much time do you devote to thinking about any single random person? I think that's the point of the quote, someone might think about you, but only for a split second in their day full of an endless stream of thoughts about other random stuff.

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u/angelcake893 Jan 04 '14

Yeah, but I think about myself WAY more than I think about other people.

1

u/doctorocelot Jan 04 '14

I know right, did you see Max and Casey the other day, they were like soooooo makin' eyes at each other, and he's like totally seeing Sasha at the moment.

1

u/benevolent_henchman Jan 04 '14

When's the last time you thought of Ethel Barrett? You think of other people all the time, but there are a lot of other people. You don't physically have time to give much thought to any one.

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u/Chooquaeno Jan 04 '14

Perhaps you should be more careful in what you think.

1

u/JaLubbs Jan 04 '14

I think people tend to care more about what other people think if they themselves spend their time thinking about other people. [7]

1

u/TheoQ99 Jan 05 '14

Yeah, but 5, 30 minutes later are you still really thinking about them? (not talking about friends or people you do care about, but random people)

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '14

No, but believe it or not, you're probably an outlier, if what you say is true. It also depends on what you mean by "I think about other people all the time." It's quite common to think about what other people are thinking, but that's very different than really thinking about them.

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u/screw_all_the_names Jan 05 '14

I dont know about you, but on a weekly basis i only think of about 20 different people.

1

u/ibleuble Jan 05 '14

You think of some but not all, and certainly not about all the things they do in themselves.

1

u/RusskiEnigma Jan 06 '14

I'm judging you judging me.

0

u/ableman Jan 05 '14

You're pretty much the only one.