I think there are a lot of factors. A few that readily come to mind:

Pecking order nonsense.

People who are big believers in pecking order see you as "beneath" them if you compliment them. They then feel owed and like you are permanently required to kowtow to them and aren't allowed to quit.

Prosody and tone matching.

My son probably is incapable of these two things. He gets very negative social reactions from people all the time. Tone matching signals pecking order at a subconscious level. People aren't consciously aware of it.

I apparently tone match by default, which gets me read as deferential and servile. It works quite well when dealing with, for example, wait staff who routinely get mistreated. I get excellent service anywhere that I am a regular.

But people who do not perceive themselves as "below" me conclude I'm a doormat and they can wipe their boots on me.

Value signaling.

People get this idea that they are irreplaceable and I am being so nice because they are so incredibly amazingly rare and wonderful. I have found it works vastly better for me to be kind of indifferent and make sure they realize "there can be another you in a minute." Which annoys the fool out of me.

The article title “people like you more than you know” might actually apply to you... From reading your past couple comments you might be perceiving that people are always trying to one-up you when that may not be their intention.

Yep, humans are imperfectly evolved game-theoretic machines, and all of these petty signals are incredibly important.

FWIW, Doreen you are one of the most level headed and sensible commenters on HN.

You mention your son getting negative social reactions from people -- I don't know how old is is currently, but he may grow out of that in time. I personally started getting much more positive reactions from people in my mid to late 20s, after lots and lots of social practice.

I agree with all your statements above, though. I think evolution has left us with some social behaviors that can be very frustrating.

The sad thing is that one outcome of the undervaluation of things that come easy is that mentoring/guiding people can seriously, seriously backfire.

I have a very long story from a peer's experiences about how taking mentoring a little far and becoming an advocate for a young engineer can create someone who is both entitled and incredibly lazy in a way that, I think, permanently damaged his career by training him exactly the wrong lessons about value and effort at exactly the wrong time.

That seems entirely likely. My favorite math professor comes to mind. I think he weighted the difficulty levels of homework and tests correctly. Basically the homework prepared you for more than the tests and the homework was explained well in class. So you’d for sure have questions on the test that you knew how to do if you kept up with the homework. That may sound like a lot of classes, but he achieved a balance between homework and tests that made it more likely to score well on the test than usual.

> My working hypothesis is our brains are always learning - literally everything

Slightly tangential, but my favorite post on this topic: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-unc...