Relationships develop through the escalating exchange of mutual vulnerability. A few people commented that I seemed to make friends very easily, so I started paying attention to my interactions with strangers. I noticed that I enjoyed sharing vulnerable anecdotes with people before inquiring about their own, e.g. dates gone wrong from the night before. Sure, sometimes I put my foot in my mouth, but people seem to like that and trust me more for it. When I started researching how friendships are forged, this was on the button.
There is an art to presenting vulnerability; to not diminish yourself whilst doing so. It not only improves your own outlook on yourself but helps prevent others using it against you, all whilst still being open and truthful.
The strongest model I have for understanding the world is that your prefrontal cortex is a simulator that is always predicting. When something occurs that surprises you (like a glass breaking in a restaurant), the anomaly diverts your attention to the sound source so your visual system can feed more data to your model and rationalise the event.
But when something happens that contradicts your model, it means your model is wrong, and this causes severe anxiety (cognitive dissonance). This explains why people get more upset when things don't go the way they expect than whether or not things go badly or well, which is why managing expectations is such a high priority for project managers. It also explains why autistic people who struggle to abstract and get upset by social disappointment rock themselves: to create a signal they can predict. Otherwise, the bottom of your world falls out every time someone moves their cheese - like a baby throwing a tantrum when they drop their favourite toy before they have a model of gravity.
Now, why would people want to get drunk together? I think we want to test congruence and resilience in a vulnerable situation. The better a person can predict your social cooperation in a variety of contexts, the less bandwidth they can afford to devote to modelling your actions, which might otherwise pose an existential threat. Once you have mutually compatible models of cooperation, you can safely turn your backs to each other and work on solving external problems without causing internal anxiety.
But being predictable also means you are vulnerable. If you can be modelled, you can be manipulated. So we crave a certain "predictable chaos" from our friends, partners and co-workers. We want someone self-aware enough to follow the rules, while pleasantly surprising us in ways that expand our mental territory without invalidating too much of the existing foundation. A quick way to upset a drinker is to turn down free drinks at a bar at night (but not in the middle of the day). It forces them to re-evaluate their model of the world - and, people hate doing that, especially drunk people. The same is true of questioning people's religion.
Incidentally, this is also why you dream and have nightmares, and seek out horror movies when things feel stagnant. Your mind is exploring your survivability in a bunch of threatening situations that could arise, and learning from them without dying.
Incidentally, the essence of what you say (the mind is always predicting and learns from prediction failure) is also the essence of idealist philosophy, and has found its most advanced expression in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Unfortunately, Kant uses a language that's difficult to access today, so a lot Kant's insight has fallen out of today.
The most popular trust-creation mechanism for adults seems to be getting drunk together, which reliably leads to little infractions, which every witness has the choice to exploit or not. The latter option engenders trust.
"I don't trust someone that I didn't get drunk with" is a sentiment I've heard repeatedly, both privately and professionally. The most successful startup that I worked for even asked "What's your favourite beer?" when they interviewed me for a programmer position, and when I asked by this was of interest, they said they took their after work drinking sessions pretty seriously, and "don't want to work with people they can't have fun with".
As somebody who doesn't enjoy being drunk, this was difficult for me to adapt to.
> "I don't trust someone that I didn't get drunk with" is a sentiment I've heard repeatedly, both privately and professionally.
That's something I've heard as well, and I tell them that drinking with me is a bad idea, and getting me drunk is even worse. Because that's when my persona slips and my shadow comes out to play -- and my shadow is kinda like Sam Kinison, only not funny.
As to the drinking after work... I think it's appropriate to set boundaries. I only drink a handful of times a year but will participate in some activities including outside work hours, I also don't have more than a single drink if I'm going to drive within a couple hours. Also, get two non-alcoholic drinks or glasses of water per alcoholic beverage, could pretty much stay close to sober all evening when I was in my 20s by doing that.
In the end, it's about striking a balance of being sociable without being irresponsible at the same time.
I agree with you, in that pretending to drink (e.g Tonic instead of Gin & Tonic) is probably what a lot of us do, and the obvious way out. But the point of drinking is not really being sociable, but making yourself vulnerable. Vulnerability and exploitability is the foundation of trust. By staying sober one undermines one of the core trust formation mechanism: by remaining sober and responsible, you avoid creating exploitable vulnerabilities that others can but don't exploit -- I trust X because X can exploit my being vulnerable w.r.t. Y me, but doesn't.
Note also that pretending to drink feels a bit like cheating to me: I'm actively deceiving others. I wish I could live my life without deceit.
I'm not pretending to drink... I actually have a few, but have a few not alcohol too, I make no attempts to hide it when ordering. I'm generally pretty blunt without much filtering in general, I don't need alcohol for that.
One of the best way to make coworkers friends is to talk about drugs you’ve done. Now that you have mutual comprimate it will be very difficult for one of you to fuck the other without it backfiring. Another good way is to hang out with the smokers, even if you don’t smoke. I’ve noticed that people smoking together is a nexus of power, especially if a higher up or the CEO does it.
Beware of doing this, as it can easily backfire when abused by HR. Stick to exchanging stories that could not be deemed to have an impact on your job, or explain bad performance.
... you can analyse this in a different way: think long term! The more successful you are in your job, the more you will bump into the same people again and again later, sometimes a decade later. Somebody else abused your trust by talking to HR, hence you could decide on the simple policy of never trusting them again, and cut them out of your high-trust network. Some fail your trust-related tests, some pass. Use this information wisely. (Note that an alternative policy is not being too history-sensitive, and let bygones be bygones.)
