I think a potential flaw is assuming people are static beings. Consider if you passed me shortly after my dog died...I may not be in a mental state to even notice you said anything. If we passed weeks or months later I could be in a completely different state but we’re still not connecting because you’ve already concluded it wasn’t worth the effort.
I feel like there is a fundamental issue if people look for interactions to be transactional marketplace. It’s completely different than deliberately acting from a place of compassion
A constraint is wanting to remain open to potentially rewarding new relationships (so not simply closing yourself off to people who aren't already in your circle).
Another constraint is remaining flexible for when people update their behavior (in either direction). Which I think answers your objection? If you were in a bad state because your dog died, that's completely understandable. But now it's up to you to salvage the dynamic, not me, as I already went out on a limb once. If you do that, then the first encounter would be water under the bridge and I wouldn't hold it against you.
Giving compassion is wonderful, but life is a lot better when you reserve most of it for people who will respond with compassion in kind, rather than milking it for their own benefit and giving nothing in return. Sticking up for yourself doesn't mean being transactional--it just means that you extend compassion to yourself as well as to others.
I found it only feels wrong because I expected something. So the problem is as much in my expectation as their behavior and based in a faulty assumption that interactions are a zero sum game. I don’t always embody non-transactional compassionate behavior but having tried both approaches, once you can get past the expectations of what people can do for you, I find it a better way to live.
But in many cases compassion may mean self sacrifice: time, money, effort etc. It's fine to expect something back, at least not being mean or more demanding to you or sour about why you didn't do more. There are toxic people like that that you better not help. You can learn it the hard way. Maybe it can be communicated better, but in many cases people are predisposed to see you as a threat. If you offer to help, they think you do it as a scheme to help yourself and screw them. And they will fume even years afterwards that you somehow screwed them over when you genuinely helped them. That you didn't help enough, that you were selfish etc.
You need to choose who you spend your finite energy on. Not every person in a bad place is some idealized angel who is thirsty for your help and will be grateful.
I'm more talking about when someone goes in the other direction and is notably unkind, inconsiderate, cold, exploitative, or otherwise disrespectful to you. That's when it's time to switch to a new strategy.
To me, ignoring a neighbor who greets you is pretty cold and disrespectful, but yeah, everyone has a different line when it comes to these things, and it depends a lot on context.
Yes, everyone has a complex inner history blah blah blah. There's 6 billion people, and you're not going to give equal attention to all of them, so you need different approaches. Plus, explicitly playing tit-for-tat keeps you from being emotionally gamed as easily.
As an aside, the perspective is appreciated but dismissive approaches to comments (“blah blah blah”) tend to go against HN guidelines. You make good points but I wouldn’t want them to be lost to moderators because of the phrasing
You could probably also put a maximum age on your game state. E.g. if it's been more than a week since this person failed to reciprocate, then treat this like an initial interaction.
