The book may be a good read or bad one, I am unfamiliar with it. However, terrible recommendations are made on HN all the time, as well good ones, so I’d caution against “recommended a few times on HN” (on its own!) as an indicator of much anything.

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EDIT: changed wording from “multiple times” to “a few times” to be more clear.

   This is the second time [I’ve seen that] someone has recommended this book on HN

That is not a goal. It is an adaptive strategy to meet changing constraints.

There’s no goal in biological evolution. Being subject to natural selection based on the present environment is an inevitability.

You could argue that mutation isn’t inevitable, but its presence and degree is subject to natural selection as well.

In this age, is living next to "10 besties" really needed?

I have one neighbor that I'm really close to - yay! I can borrow their wheelbarrow, or they can borrow my sprinkler attachment, without asking, and return it promptly (to remain friends!). We watch each other's dogs on vacation. All of this is much easier than if I had to use a farther-away friend.

But my other neighbors are just ... small-f friends. Friendly. I would even consider asking them to borrow a cup of sugar.

But as nice as it would be to have ALL my besties nearby, we do just fine with phone calls, texts, social media, and seeing each other at events.

I do agree with the advantage of incremental change. I suck at completing big tasks. But if I view each step as a small task, I can get there.

This comparison feels like it's in very poor taste. The article doesn't promote any kind of ostracizing and certainly isn't promoting that anyone in the community is forced to be there. Making friends, especially with people who already probably have their own social lives, tends to be a lot harder than maintaining friends. It's completely valid for people who are already in each other's social circles to plan to live close to each other.

My partner and I moved into a house on a pretty secluded street of a very suburban township. There are 5 houses on the block. We're friendly with everyone but we're all in very different periods of our lives. Two of the houses have younger kids, one has older kids, and one is empty nesters. They're all super nice and we're friendly, but none of them are coming over to lift heavy weights in the garage while Creed is blasting.

How can it not be, where you want to build an enclave of 'like' people (alike in friend connections, education, outlook, not only race, which is what you seem to assume).

It's a stage of life where you should be branching out and meeting 'other' people, not just surrounding yourself with college buddies, and further cloistering yourself in that bubble.

Friend compounds are typically the ultimate echo chambers. It sounds fun, until you have a vastly controversial opinion. Suddenly, you are no longer a friend, you no longer feel welcome in the very place that you live.

The less you know about your neighbors, the better. They could be whoever you want them to be.