I can't speak on behalf of anyone else, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want someone just like me as a best friend.<p>To assemble an effective RPG party, you need multiple roles, like warrior, wizard, cleric, and rogue. Effective RL social circles work the same way. I'm more of an interjecting quipsniper or a technical sidebarbarian, and I really rely on other people to carry the majority of a conversation. If I were to hang out with a copy of myself, there would be no conversation to add zingers, counterpoints, and trivia to.<p>There's only so much of that crap that other people can take before it gets annoying, so there's not much use in adding two to the same party, unless they're scripted, like Crow and Tom Servo.<p>Also, I have a theory of conversation that keys on conversational coefficients. If a group of people are having a conversation, you add together their coefficients. If the sum is one, you have a very natural, comfortable conversation. If it is less than one, you experience some uncomfortable lulls. If it is greater than one, some people get interrupted, can't finish sharing their thoughts, or are excluded. If the coefficient approaches two, separate simultaneous threads of conversation will form, and participants will spontaneously rearrange or split themselves between conversations so as to make each one have a coefficient sum as close to one as is possible.<p>People don't have a fixed coefficient. They can adjust it within a certain range, that is somewhat dependent on atmosphere and subject matter. For instance, a lecturer who can teach an entire class without losing the attention of the audience can stretch up to 1.0 for conversations, but probably only for that one topic. Someone who has trouble yielding conversational priority may have a lower limit somewhere above 0.5. I suspect that most people can easily handle a range from 0.2 to 0.5. But I max out at probably a 0.4, on very few topics, so my "soul mate" would need to be <i>much</i> more talkative than I am, not at the same level, because it would take at least three of me to have a good conversation.