[HN Gopher] Observations from people-watching
___________________________________________________________________
Observations from people-watching
Author : jger15
Score : 391 points
Date : 2025-05-10 22:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (skincontact.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (skincontact.substack.com)
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I think a lot of what the author sees in people is more a
| reflection of her own self
| the_af wrote:
| Yes, but this is often true of how we see others. We are not
| robots, we pour ourselves in others.
|
| Still, the article is insightful and a fun read.
| rixed wrote:
| It would still, like the broken clock, be correct sometimes.
| Our ability to understand others comes from, and is limited by,
| the fact that our feelings and behaviors are a mix from a
| shared palette.
| boomskats wrote:
| Beautiful writing and emotional vocabulary. Internal
| architecture. Feels almost psychedelic.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I felt the same, genuinely unusual especially in this listicle
| space.
| turtlebro wrote:
| It reminds me of how psychedelics can sometimes put you in a
| hyper observant, heightened state of awareness. Maybe some here
| have experienced this, it can be very mind blowing. People are
| open books and communicate much much more then we think we are.
| Motions, gestures, tiny subtle reactions, the way someone
| walks, it can give you a direct glance into someones soul. Some
| people are probably naturally very skilled at being observant,
| the author being a painter only make sense.
| Bjartr wrote:
| This seems like a set of well balanced, if not comprehensive,
| principles behind how people interact. Even if it's not complete,
| I think it can still be helpful. There's a lot here that
| resonates with me, but only in hindsight. I struggle with
| understanding people emotionally in the moment a lot of the time
| it'd benefit me if I could internalize this list.
|
| As they say, all models are wrong, some are useful.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| It helped me to do only try to understand myself in the moment
| or conversation than the other. It is not easy and most of us
| do not know ourselves.
|
| It's actually kind of hard to do. You try to pay attention to
| the words you are saying, the thoughts you are thinking, the
| emotions, the feelings, the body posture of yourself. But it's
| got to be easier than trying to understand another.
|
| Doing this eventually lead to a better perception of others.
| But by then I didn't need to try to do it. I'm still no where
| near as perceptive as the author of this submission but I've
| improved. However its a bit like a muscle and needs to be
| exercised or made into a discipline or habit and I have
| atrophied over time. I do still have my memories of this
| though.
|
| One thing I noticed by observing others is that most people do
| not understand themselves. And I include myself in this group
| almost all the time too.
|
| I should get back into this, thank you for your comment.
| delichon wrote:
| most people love what loves them back
|
| That is exploitable. I tried it and it works. When I was 18 I got
| a job in a telemarketing boiler room. Two dozen people sitting at
| long tables with phones and scripts, asking for donations for
| various causes. Yes I should probably burn in hell for it, but I
| was a dumb kid.
|
| The first day really sucked, but they let me try again and I came
| with a plan. Before every call imagine my feeling of love for
| that person. As I read the script, think "I love you grandma".
|
| Something magical happened. I got like 3 donations out of 5 calls
| for the rest of the day. The boss was joyful, I was the flavor of
| the day. He presented me with an alarmingly large bonus when I
| left.
|
| I was nauseated and never went back. That was my last job in
| sales.
| walterbell wrote:
| Observer effect also works for code created by humans.
| neilv wrote:
| Do you think you might've been able to find a sincere, non-
| manipulative way of doing it?
|
| For example, if you could quickly intuit whether and how much
| the person naturally would want and be able to donate, and you
| connect with them on the basis of that, and they might or might
| not pick up on that themselves, but no mind tricks of either of
| you?
|
| One appealing thing about this is that it's using some of the
| strongest potential for manipulation, to try to avoid
| manipulating.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Probably not. You are taking their money. They become poorer
| because of your behavior. That doesn't fit with love, no
| matter how you try to contort yourself.
| neilv wrote:
| It doesn't have to be love.
|
| If it's for a good cause, the person would like to donate,
| and can afford some amount, then there's a role for
| cooperation in facilitating that.
|
| As a facilitator, you can look at it like: here's a person
| who wants to donate, I approve of that, and I can help with
| that.
|
| If you like the person for wanting to do that, and that
| comes across, and that helps them get past their aversion
| to sales in general, all the better.
|
| Where it can go wrong is if you play manipulation games on
| them and/or yourself.
|
| (Telemarketing modality of phoning and disturbing is a
| different problem, though. That's a reason not to do it at
| all, at least not that way. But manipulation can be
| averted.)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Technically correct and yet I feel this is wrong.
|
| "Become poorer" is the technically correct part, but
| imagine a person with a million dollars in their name who
| donates USD 100 to a cause they like.
|
| They have technically become poorer, but it does not matter
| to them, neither objectively nor subjectively. On the other
| hand, if the donation was helpful, they may appreciate you
| informing them about that opportunity.
|
| Of course that all depends on lot of variables (e.g. "the
| charity is not a scam, but a genuine attempt to help
| others), but the basic idea that _giving away money is
| always harmful to people_ I cannot agree with.
|
| I would be delighted if someone I love spent some
| reasonable money and/or time on worthy causes.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The classic salesman tactic is that the salesman has to love
| the product. The best conmen have to con themselves first. They
| are basically method actors.
|
| In our tech sphere we see this in tech hype circles where the
| early investors have to become believers and make new converts
| which turns into feedback loops of hype.
| walterbell wrote:
| Another observation by the author: my life became
| a lot more fun once i realized work can literally be anything, if
| i know how to sell it (this month i'm paying rent by
| writing mothers day poems for tech employees to mail their mom)
| sonofhans wrote:
| _Another_ observation? That seems rather the point of placing
| this article here on this date, yes?
| walterbell wrote:
| To sell last-minute custom poems to HN? Impressive cynicism.
| Submarine poetry competition might be fun, but the quote is
| not even from the article. I saw it by randomly clicking on
| substack, then couldn't even find it again to link here, due
| to substack's inscrutable layout.
|
| Now that you've brought up the topic, how _should_ one sell
| poems? Maybe start earlier with content marketing and link
| the product somewhere in the content? Apparently this blog
| has only been submitted twice to HN, today and three days
| ago, with zero mention of poetry. But it does mention
| weddings.
| smcin wrote:
| > _Submarine poetry competition might be fun..._
| There was an old boomer named Maude, who sold
| composition by fraud, She got her kicks from
| spurious clicks but her mores were seriously flawed.
| danhite wrote:
| ah, limericks amore, so reflecting more mores ...
|
| Once a young techie in YC
|
| was asked: Start-ups all why seed?
|
| "To save the World of course
|
| --shopping cart before horse--
|
| for growth at scale: launch high speed!"
| sonofhans wrote:
| Most poets who make any money sell their work by publishing
| it as song lyrics, I think. I don't think we have many rock
| star poets left, and I'd be surprised if many at all made a
| living at it.
|
| I've most often bought poems from people sitting on the
| sidewalk writing them out, FWIW :)
| lapcat wrote:
| The author is projecting a _lot_ into the hearts and minds of
| strangers, based on limited or indeed no interaction with them.
| These are not _scientific_ observations in any sense. What does
| the author do to confirm or refute her psychological theories
| about others? She 's very good at telling stories, but these
| stories feel like fiction, not hard fact.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Sure, the words she uses to represent her observations is a
| reflection of her self; in that she describes it in a more
| creatively descriptive way than, say, a scientist in a
| laboratory. It's observation, not research; but it's also not
| judgment which is where I find projection lives.
|
| Under that I see someone whose job it is to be keenly observant
| and to notice these things, otherwise she wouldn't be a very
| good wedding painter. It probably helps that she seems to be
| passionate about observing people. Why have someone paint your
| wedding if the painter isn't able to understand and observe the
| nuances of human interactions going on?
| epgui wrote:
| In the extreme, a perception can be very interesting even if
| it's delusional.
| walterbell wrote:
| _Delusional Wedding Paintings_ , coming soon from your
| neighborhood LLM!
| lapcat wrote:
| > it's also not judgment
|
| I disagree. The observations start to become extremely
| judgmental at around #8 and following.
|
| > Why have someone paint your wedding if the painter isn't
| able to understand and observe the nuances of human
| interactions going on?
|
| Do you think the wedding painter is paid to reproduce the
| naked reality of the situation, if that happens to be
| contrary to what the couple wants to see and preserve on
| canvas forever?
| sandspar wrote:
| She's an artist. It's her job to be slightly irrational.
| Overall she seems kind.
| jweir wrote:
| And how often the artists arrived before the scientists.
| datameta wrote:
| I think sometimes because art needs no why.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Extremely rarely IMHO.
|
| A nice example of this is Masamune Shirow, of Ghost in the
| Shell fame. If you go through the interviews, most of his
| inspiration comes from early scientific research and
| engineering debates that he internalized and integrated
| into a coherent and compelling vision of the future.
|
| This is no small feat, he is extremely influential in that
| he exposed whole generations of people to these ideas and
| cutting edge research fields, and many researchers today
| probably chose their fields based on the ideas exposed in
| his art.
|
| But did he get there before the researchers ? I'd say no.
| And he doesn't need to, what he did is incredible in other
| ways already.
|
| PS: too many people assume that scientists or engineers
| don't have imagination nor project their ideas into the
| future. That would be misguided.
| bigiain wrote:
| Did Arthur C Clark "beat the scientists" when he wrote
| about geosynchronous radio communication satellites in
| 1945? This was 12 years before humanity had launched
| _anything_ into orbit, and 20 years before we launched a
| communications satellite to geosync orbit.
|
| Did he "get there before the researchers"? I'd say "that
| question makes no sense".
|
| Mathematicians certainly "beat him" to the realization
| that orbital periods depend on distance, and could
| obviously range longer and shorter than 24 hours.
| Physicists certainly "beat him" to calculating the
| altitude of a 24 hour orbit of earth. Engineers almost
| certainly "beat him" to the idea of satellite radio
| communications.
|
| This is kinda cheating though. Clark was a physicist as
| well as a fiction author. He even calculated the delta-v
| needed to launch to geosync orbit and compared it to the
| German V-2 rocket.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2011/05/0525arthur-c-clarke-
| proposes-g...
| LouisSayers wrote:
| Who says the two are mutually exclusive?
| xweb wrote:
| Maybe she can throw some percentages into her next article on
| human interaction to make HN happy
| apwell23 wrote:
| thats just the beginning
|
| - percentages aren't in a published paper
|
| - isn't in a prestigious enough journal to be taken seriously
|
| - hasn't been reproduced to be reliable
| kortilla wrote:
| It doesn't really have anything to do with HN. It's anyone
| who cares about the truth.
|
| Stuff that sounds believable because it "sounded good" and
| was argued by charismatic people plagued medicine until
| shockingly recently.
|
| It's human nature to believe people and your snarky reply is
| evidence of that. Your gut reaction should be to agree with
| the comment or call out the author for fabricating stuff, not
| to dismiss intellectual rigor.
| walterbell wrote:
| Do weddings hire painters to record objective or subjective
| truth?
| gusgus01 wrote:
| From the author, it's a newsletter on what she's thinking.
| I didn't see any advertising of shoddy medicine or claims
| of being scientific. Do we call out authors for writing
| poetry on the human experience? Why should we apply
| intellectual rigor on some observations made by an artist?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| "Two households, both alike in dignity," he says, with
| the confidence of a man who's never run a census.
|
| We are given no confidence interval, no error bars, not
| even a passing nod to the broader Veronese housing
| market. Two? Why not three? Why not seven?
|
| Dignity, too, goes unmeasured. Are we talking patrician
| gravitas or the brittle self-importance of guys who name
| their swords? The line presumes a convenient symmetry
| where there is almost certainly chaos, over-leveraged
| family fortunes, and at least one uncle squatting in a
| basilica basement.
|
| Frankly, I suspect "two households" is just the number
| Shakespeare could hold in his head without dropping his
| drink.
| dooglius wrote:
| "call out" as a metaphor doesn't apply to the discussing
| of a online newsletter on a separate site; neither the
| author nor other readers are likely to be aware of the
| discussion. It does seem very apt, if poetry were posted
| here that makes claims about the human experience, for
| commenters to dispute those claims.
| sibilantcinder wrote:
| Adding stats won't help, this is a sampling failure: she only
| observes the sort of people who attend weddings that employ
| painters
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| At the time of writing, three of the four existing replies
| showed no indication of understanding your point xweb; the
| fourth one having been made unavailable via flagging (but one
| can guess from context that it too didn't understand).
| dullcrisp wrote:
| Damn, even the prestigious _Journal of Scientific Facts_ is
| using LLMs to write its rejections.
| another_poster wrote:
| I used to have similar concerns as you -- how can anyone truly
| know what other people are like? Unless we're doing research
| with the scientific method, we can only speculate
| unscientifically, right? Without science, what we say is just
| our belief, not established fact.
|
| But how do you explain people who intuitively understand
| things? Mathematicians, for example, intuitively understand
| math. Psychologists and experienced authors intuitively
| understand people. We gain intuition through education and
| experience, which in turn improve our understanding and
| sensitivity towards the truth. Expert mathematicians, for
| example, _can_ have a good sense of whether a theorem is true
| before they prove it. And in general, people who possess
| scientific knowledge can intuitively know things.
|
| I do agree with your intent, though -- we need to possess
| humility about the accuracy of our beliefs. The author can't
| factually know what other people feel and think without asking
| them.
|
| But we also owe some deference to wisdom. Being wise is like
| being an expert darts players: you're better able to throw
| darts into the bulls-eye than most people. If we develop a
| wisdom worth trusting, we should trust it.
| buttercraft wrote:
| But how do you know if you are gaining wisdom if you don't
| even know when you're wrong?
| swiftcoder wrote:
| If we must talk about social interactions in terms of
| science experiments, repeated observations are exactly how
| one validates a hypothesis.
|
| People-watch at enough weddings, your observations of
| wedding-goers will become more accurate.
| perlgeek wrote:
| I agree that repeated observation increases the
| confidence in a hypothesis.
|
| But, only if it's a hypothesis that can be validated in
| such a way.
|
| From OP
|
| > By internal architecture, what I mean is, when someone
| talks to me, what I notice first are the supporting beams
| propping up their words: the cadence and tone and desire
| behind them. I hear if they are bored, fascinated,
| wanting validation or connection. I often feel like I can
| hear how much they like themselves.
|
| The last part (how much they like themselves) is an
| interpretation or a causal speculation, and something
| very prone to confirmation bias.
|
| Like, what kind of observed behavior would you make less
| confident in that?
|
| The article is a mix of very good observations and some
| more speculative statements, which seems to trigger us,
| the HN commenter crowd :-)
| sizzle wrote:
| Yeah a lot of those stood out like thorns to me cause I
| just don't agree with her conclusions. Immediately set
| off some alarm bells i.e. that's just, like, your
| opinion, man...
| koliber wrote:
| I don't think the author had a chance to interview each
| person they observed to see if their worried were right.
| That does not mean that they could not validate their
| observations.
|
| You look at patterns and note them. Over years you will see
| similar patterns, both in people you only observe once, as
| well as people you get to know better. The ones you get to
| know better are the ones where you validate your theories.
| I'm not explaining it very well, but it works. It's kind of
| like a sort of sparse sampling or a very long-term Monte
| Carlo simulation in n-dimensions (that's an allusion and
| not a strict explanation)
| uoaei wrote:
| Anyone who has had to learn social skills/cues as an
| adult, with analytical faculties in place of a more
| intuitive understanding, can attest to these seemingly
| universal patterns. People are ultimately more
| predictable than they believe themselves to be, and there
| are clear signs of a rich (evolutionary?) history of
| habit formation over many generations that in a real
| sense define "the human condition". One should consider
| themselves privileged not to have been forced to spend
| their cognitive efforts on understanding these patterns
| rather than merely be socialized into them.
| djtango wrote:
| Feedback is better, but lack of confirmation didn't stop
| the Greeks from dreaming up a model of the atom...
|
| From my own experience, with things to do with social
| interaction some of the most successful people forge on
| running purely on intuition, they don't burden their minds
| on things like worrying if their model of wisdom
| acquisition is deficient of a feedback loop
| RajT88 wrote:
| I have a friend who is a bit like the author here. He picks
| up on a lot of little things and seems to intuitively
| understand what those things mean.
|
| For example, I invited him to a BBQ at my friend's parent's
| house. (He was my roommate at the time, and had met my other
| friend a few times so this was not a random thing)
|
| He talked to my friend's mother for maybe 15 minutes at the
| BBQ. She is a cheerful and loopy sort of person, and that was
| exactly the sort of conversation they had. On the drive home
| he asked me, "that family has been through a lot of tragedy,
| haven't they?". Indeed, it would break your heart to hear
| about them.
| Nopoint2 wrote:
| I believe that this comes from the exact opposite of what
| the author does. People like this can discard the
| irrelevant details, and find what can be put together to
| create a clear picture.
| levocardia wrote:
| Sounds more like cold reading. Find me a family that _hasn
| 't_ been through a lot of tragedy!
| bruce511 wrote:
| I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by tragedy.
| On one hand people get old and die, and that's sad, but
| not tragic.
|
| Burying a child is tragic.
|
| But to answer your question, I would say most families
| have not suffered tragedy. Mine certainly hasn't.
| dijit wrote:
| It's like the someone said recently.
|
| If your psychologist asks you if you've ever thought
| about suicide: it is not being as in touch with humanity
| as you think to say; "Hasn't everyone".
| Bjartr wrote:
| In the sense of thinking about it as a serious option.
| No, not everyone has.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Burying a child is tragic
|
| Yes. This. And much more.
| xparadigm wrote:
| In my experience, it comes down to matching patterns.
|
| Here's what I think likely happened: your friend talked to
| other people who went through tragedy. He noticed something
| common in their behavior. It can be something so subtle
| that it's invisible to most people, but your friend notices
| these kind of things. Then when he talked to the current
| person, he found the similar pattern.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Ah, but some people have more attitude for perceiving
| those patterns in the first place.
|
| I imagine the author of this article is describing
| something along the lines of my friend's cognitive
| capabilities.
| IMTDb wrote:
| On key difference here is that those mathematician then go
| through the process of actually proving the theorem. Just
| having "an intuitive understanding" is _never_ enough, no
| matter how many times you have been right before.
|
| The author here does not go through that process at all. It
| just feels like saying: I watch people a lot so I feel like I
| know what I am talking about, I feel entitled to write a
| piece about it. Math people have those pieces peer reviewed
| and experimented upon before they are actually published.
| K0balt wrote:
| Perhaps she talks to some people and learns something about
| their (self reported) life? I would imagine this is how
| these types of intuitions are formed?
| Almondsetat wrote:
| >Mathematicians, for example, intuitively understand math.
|
| They can intuit all they want, and good for them if it makes
| them more efficient in their job. But at the end of the day,
| if you have to convince others of your intuitions you have to
| provide verifiable proof. Your intuition might help you
| overcome a hurdle when proving a theorem, but, still, prove
| it you must.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > Psychologists and experienced authors intuitively
| understand people
|
| I interacted with at least 7 psychotherapists (one of them is
| a relative) and a whole bunch of other specialists in the
| field. It took three decades and a push from my side for
| someone to even figure out that something about me was kind
| of strange.
|
| Yes, experts can recognize patterns. But that has limits &
| biases, and tends to be unreliable for outliers. And when
| that person doesn't even check their results all bets are
| off.
| ashirviskas wrote:
| I'm sorry to intrude, but this interests me very much. What
| was the thing that you wanted figured out about you that
| gave surch hard time for psychotherapists?
| dgfitz wrote:
| > Psychologists and experienced authors intuitively
| understand people.
|
| You lost me here. This isn't true.
| SamBam wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| > It is easy to spot the person in the room who thinks they are
| better than everyone. [...] This is also painful to see,
| because they often cannot see their own misery, how unpleasant
| the world is if no one is good enough to be loved.
|
| Honestly, where does this person get off thinking they can
| evaluate a whole person's psyche based on how they walk into a
| room and chat with a few people?
| relaxing wrote:
| Really struck a nerve, huh?
| icameron wrote:
| I'm not OP but I felt that one. I have at times avoided
| socializing, not because of a superiority complex, but from
| anxiety
| acrooks wrote:
| I interpreted the "uninterested in giving ... attention"
| part of that point a bit differently. To me, somebody
| avoiding socialising is not giving off a superiority
| complex. I suspect what the author meant is being
| inattentive while socialising (i.e., not actually
| listening to you, focusing the conversation on
| themselves, etc.)
| croissants wrote:
| I took a course on Freud in college, and what struck me at
| the time was that the framework of psychoanalysis seemed
| basically cruel, in that the analyst was free to say that
| either acceptance or rejection of their claims was evidence
| for them, and that it would be maddening to deal with that
| for any extended period of time.
| SamBam wrote:
| Well, it's clear to me that you're only saying that
| because of unresolved feelings towards your mother.
| dalmo3 wrote:
| > It is easy to spot the person in the room who thinks they
| are better than everyone.
|
| It's also easy to spot the one with the canvas and the
| substack.
| tinktank wrote:
| Where does she say they are scientific observations?
|
| The dictionary definition of "observe" is to notice or perceive
| (something) and register it as being significant.
|
| By that definition the word observation in the title and text
| is completely legitimate and used correctly.
| lapcat wrote:
| Where did I say that the word "observation" was
| inappropriate? I'm certainly not denying that the author
| observed a bunch of people at weddings. My criticism is that
| these observations are insufficient to read accurately "into
| the hearts and minds of strangers".
| antonchekhov wrote:
| Then what did your second sentence ["These are not
| scientific observations in any sense. What does the author
| do to confirm or refute her psychological theories about
| others?"] intend?
|
| > She's very good at telling stories, but these stories
| feel like fiction, not hard fact.
|
| There was no claim of objective fact. This is a Substack
| piece, not a peer-reviewed submission to "Nature" journal.
| lapcat wrote:
| > This is a Substack piece, not a peer-reviewed
| submission to "Nature" journal.
|
| Are you suggesting that we can't criticize the crap
| people say on Substack?
| scotty79 wrote:
| There are very few hard facts in the entire domain of
| psychology.
| scotty79 wrote:
| The only way to validate such observations is to check if they
| have predictive power. I'm sure the author checked that to her
| satisfaction. You are free to do the same.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| Somehow I knew that a comment along these lines was coming. HN
| never disappoints when it comes time to be nauseatingly
| analytic. No amount of whimsy or attempt at writing anything
| approaching literature or something long-form go unanswered and
| uncriticized.
|
| I wish I (and lots of others) had just half of the ability to
| see people the way that the author does, it would make the
| world so much more rich and maybe more kind.
| nophunphil wrote:
| Why does it have to be scientific? Lots of people write their
| thoughts on the world and the people in it. Why would a blog
| called "skin contact" need hard facts?
| keepamovin wrote:
| It doesn't. But that is the GPs own projection when
| encountering this OPs work. It's the modern abuse of the
| scientific to insulate yourself from all things you cannot do
| or do not understand, or don't wish to face.
|
| Like someone evaluating literature as if it's an academic
| paper. Hilarious. Just ego protection from things you don't
| wish to face. _Carpe Diem!_ not "Scientific Blinkers" sold
| on amazon, $1 for a 10-pack. Wear it and you'll never be awed
| again!
|
| Worship an idol of false objectivity, and demonize the
| subjective - to hide, when objective and subjective are both
| seeing and making from different points of view. But those
| trapped objectifying the world - an authoritarian abuse of
| science when science _is_ observation - you 're only harming
| yourself, and trying to turn your dynamic human-ness into a
| fixed robot!
| lapcat wrote:
| My use of "scientific" was partly a play on words, because
| it's a natural accompaniment to "observation". But note that
| I said "in any sense". We don't have to don lab coats and
| acquire lofty job titles to take a kind of scientific
| approach to our own beliefs. And formulating a personal
| "theory of mind" is indeed necessary to navigate the social
| world. The crucial part is this: "What does the author do to
| confirm or refute her psychological theories about others?"
|
| Painting weddings presents good opportunities to observe the
| interactions of strangers. On the other hand, it does not
| present good opportunities to come to know strangers
| intimately, which is the only way to confirm or disconfirm
| your superficial observations of them. The wedding guests are
| unlikely to ever become the hired hand's close friend, lover,
| or relative. If the article author is somehow an expert at
| reading people, that expertise was assuredly not acquired by
| painting weddings. At best, preexisting expertise could be
| practiced there. Reading the author's list, however, I'm
| quite skeptical. She appears to be someone who is judgmental
| and jumps to unwarranted generalizations based on anecdotal
| evidence.
|
| Most of us are pretty good at reading other people. That's
| natural, not magical. But pretty good is fallible at best,
| and overconfidence in our own abilities is another natural
| human trait. You can easily become overconfident by having a
| few lucky successes. The most troubling combination is
| overconfidence and charisma, which allows you to deceive not
| only yourself but many others.
| sureIy wrote:
| Ironically the article tells me more about the author than the
| people she observes.
| conductr wrote:
| Sure, she's also just peering into a single night/moment of
| their life. She's watching group dynamics of people who are
| attending a wedding. As I read through all the bullets, I
| thought about how many of the weddings I have attended have
| gone and where she would have pegged me on those nights and I
| could probably fit half the list depending on which event she
| was present on.
|
| People attend weddings for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it's
| full of your most favorite people in the world, sometimes you
| only know a few people in the room. Sometimes you have a lot of
| fun, sometimes the entire thing just feels like a massive
| inconvenience. Sometimes it stokes the flame of your
| relationship, sometimes it occurs during a time when your
| relationship is under some stress. Sometimes I'm
| dancing/partying all night, sometimes I never leave my table
| and leave before the cake is cut.
|
| Anyways, I'm sure she does see a lot of these patterns and you
| can try to infer a lot of things about the people, with some
| reason, but people are fluid and this is too small of a sample
| of their life to really _know_ anything other than how this
| group of people interacted on a single night of their lives.
| koliber wrote:
| Then again she is a painter whose job depends on literally
| observing the details and atmosphere and capturing not only
| the visual field but also the essence. So if not her, then
| who is better suited to make such observations.
|
| I don't think any of the things she said are deterministic or
| objectively descriptive. At the same time I think she does
| capture some essence or wisdom from her multitude of
| experience and her knack for noticing this and being able to
| put it into words.
| watwut wrote:
| That is overstating what painters do and what they mean by
| "essence".
| koliber wrote:
| I think we'll disagree on that.
|
| Painting is not just capturing the pixels of light on
| canvas. This is what children consider painting. Great
| painters capture emotion and energy on canvas -- that's
| part of the essence that I am alluding to. That's what
| separates an artist who can realistically capture a scene
| from a master. Emotionally mature people who experienced
| life can recognize that emotion and energy in great
| paintings.
|
| It's kind of like math. Some proofs and formulas are
| considered elegant or even beautiful. To the untrained
| eye they look like letters, symbols, and numbers.
|
| Take Euler's identity: e^(i*p) - 1 = 0. My kids see
| gibberish, since they are in grade school. I see
| something surprising and neat but don't fully understand
| it. I've spoken to people who have a deeper understanding
| of math who can talk wonder about this simple-looking
| equation and use words of feeling to describe it.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Then again she is a painter whose job depends on
| literally observing the details and atmosphere and
| capturing not only the visual field but also the essence.
| So if not her, then who is better suited to make such
| observations.
|
| No, her job depends on making the married couple happy,
| which is not at all the same as 100% accurate
| representation.
| netcan wrote:
| > These are not scientific observations in any sense.
|
| This is... IMO, a misguided criticism. It implies every study
| of anything should be scientific. This is the road to bad
| science, pseudoscience and whatnot. In fact, it's the road we
| already _have_ taken.
|
| Psychology is full of dubious scientific pretense... often
| because art, anthropology, philosophy and such are derided and
| rejected as unscientific.
|
| Give me great art or philosophy over bad science any day.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > These are not scientific observations in any sense
|
| I think it's worth poking at why you feel that social
| interactions should be subjected to the rigours of the
| scientific method in the first place?
| conformist wrote:
| It's fine to be non-rigorous as long as you're not a jerk and
| treat your own conclusions on relatively little data as
| preliminary. Sometimes it's good to have some information with
| relatively large error bars and be willing to update quickly
| rather than ignore information because the error bars are
| large. From the article it doesn't become apparent that the
| author wouldn't update her views quickly as new information
| comes in (eg by talking to someone). So yes the observations in
| the post are not scientific, but there's nothing preventing
| them from being the starting point of rational reasoning and
| behaviour.
| rambambram wrote:
| If all you have is a hammer, every problem... you know what,
| never mind.
| James_K wrote:
| It seems entirely mean spirited here to expect some rigid
| scientific insight from a person recounting their observations
| about the world. Where does science begin if not with a story
| that wants verifying?
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| If we must do science then why must it be about the validity of
| her observations?
|
| I'd be more interesting to know which unproven-social-
| deductions are commonly made by the general population.
|
| Its frankly ridiculous to critique a post not just on its lack
| of rigor, but on its merit in regards to a hypothesis you've
| pulled out of thin air.
| betterThanTexas wrote:
| "Fiction" doesn't seem to be the right word for open
| speculation positioned as open speculation, which is how I
| immediately evaluation observation.
|
| think this is just an observational essay. The confident tone
| makes for better reading, even if you're questioning the
| accuracy while you read it. It also allows a more loving tone
| than a more hedged rhetoric would allow.
| Veen wrote:
| Science isn't the only form of empiricism. In this case, the
| writer is reporting what she has learned through a long process
| of observation, a useful form of experience. No doubt in the
| process she has formed ideas, watched to see if they bear out,
| changed her mind, examined events in context and their
| outcomes, come up with generalizations based on observations
| over time, and so on. You know, how most people learn most
| things.
|
| Could she be wrong, sure, but as we have learned over the past
| few years, so can more "scientific" approaches to psychology
| and sociology. But that doesn't really matter because what
| she's doing isn't failed science, but taking part in a sort of
| humanistic shared inquiry. It's a woman reporting her
| observations and thoughts, not as claimed facts, but as
| suggestions readers can integrate into their own developing
| understanding, so they can build on them to make their own
| observations and inferences.
| disambiguation wrote:
| I would describe myself as the opposite of OP (very bad at
| reading people) so it was quite a shock the first time I met
| someone like this. Not only for the revelation that these type of
| people exist, but the experience of another person reading my
| "internal architecture" - and subsequently judging it - it opened
| a new avenue of self reflection for me. And while I think there's
| still a lot of the subjectivity in the author's formulation, I do
| have a relatively new appreciation for "people watching" insights
| like this now.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| It's actually not that surprising that some people are
| incredibly good at reading others. Your body is constantly
| broadcasting information through tiny facial expressions, tone
| of voice, posture, and even micro-movements. Every second,
| you're sending out lots of signals, and some people are just
| especially tuned in to pick them up.
|
| The interpretation isn't always right, but if you're good at
| engaging with people (mostly by listening) you'll improve that
| skill pretty quickly.
| walterbell wrote:
| TV series _Continuum_ has AR glasses interpreting human
| micro-signals.
|
| Modern video conferencing streams may contain enough
| information for emotion inference.
| elric wrote:
| Indeed. And I'm a bit surprised at how negative some of these
| comments are. These are just innocent observations, coloured
| by her experiences and biases. At no point is she claiming
| that these are absolute truths. We all make such snap
| observations all the time, but we mostly don't write them
| down or turn them into paintings.
| schrectacular wrote:
| It's a sight full of autists, don't be TOO surprised.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Site. Sorry, OCD. :)
| vonunov wrote:
| Don't worry about it. And don't call me OCD!
| dooglius wrote:
| The surprising thing isn't that the signals exist or are
| picked up, but that the SnR is good enough to be able to
| support the level of confidence expressed in TFA.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I don't think it's surprising at all, we've evolved to pick
| up social queues and read each other's body language/facial
| expressions. It's deeply ingrained in our social wiring, we
| do it so well it's subconscious.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm not sure that we know this to be the case. It's
| difficult to objectively study.
| disambiguation wrote:
| In hindsight yeah it's obvious. But at the time I had a
| mentality of "well you can't know for sure, you can't assume
| this signal means that, it's not scientific, it's not
| objective, etc." There's also a part of it that feels kind of
| judgemental and impolite "intruding" in that way, especially
| if you make the wrong read.
| Kirth wrote:
| "I don't like it" "I don't want it to be so" "I don't want
| this thing which I'm inept at to be real; it's
| unscientific!"
| pkoiralap wrote:
| I reached the same conclusion but in a roundabout way. I think
| the ultimate goal is to know about one's own self at the most
| deepest of levels. One way obviously is engaging with the self
| at a deeper level which is not always possible. Unfortunately,
| it is extremely hard to master.
|
| However watching others and just collecting more datapoints
| help in the process of learning. You are learning to read and
| be more observant regardless of judgements.
|
| I found the article really good.
| clueless wrote:
| This stuff always reminds me of "The Adventure of the Greek
| Interpreter" from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes TV series
| (This is Season 2, Episode 2, originally aired in 1985). In this
| episode Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are at 221B Baker Street,
| and Holmes gives a detailed demonstration of his observational
| and deductive skills by people-watching out the window.
| smcin wrote:
| Jump to 7m31s :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMm1GWMUoJI?t=7m31s
|
| _Sherlock Holmes (1985) Season 2 Episode 2 The Greek
| Interpreter_
| padolsey wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| > People who don't pause exist more in their head than their
| body. The mind is top-down, rigid, quick, enforcing an
| established view. The mind is waiting for the other person to be
| done so they can say what's rattling around inside. The body is
| slower, needs more time, and then words bubble up organically,
| one after another, without planning. People who exist more in
| their body are generally better at connecting emotionally with
| others.
|
| I don't really understand this one.
|
| Maybe there's a bit of a reductive or meaningless conflation
| here. A body can be fast while the mind is also fast. A body can
| be slow and pensive, and the mind follows. Being bodily 'in
| touch' does not equate to emotional sensitivity IME.
|
| I am reminded of people whose bodies are dysfunctional or
| disabled or disregulated. I don't really see a correlation there
| where they have less emotional sensitivity. Often the opposite. I
| am then reminded of people who are hyperactive and always want to
| be moving. One might say they 'exist more their body' but they
| might often be impatient and inattentive in conversations..
|
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding the author?
| anon84873628 wrote:
| The author uses several metaphorical dichotomies, and I think
| this one is the most tenuous and unintuitive. I understand the
| two groups of people, but tying it to where they "generally
| exist" doesn't make sense to me. The mind/body dichotomy can
| imply so many different things that this would need a lot more
| elaboration to clarify. Or maybe I'm not enough of a natural
| people watcher.
| pizza wrote:
| I think this is really about the actively made decision to
| spend longer with each sensation than you 'normally' would -
| relative to your own individual baseline. Basically whether
| this is a tool in the person's metacognitive toolkit that they
| typically use or not. Like 'the feeling of the touch of a
| thought' on the mind itself, as opposed to a linear pre-
| simulation of a performance to play out loud. Or the difference
| between making what you say out loud a cheap, low entropy,
| lossy encoding of all that you're thinking, versus gathering
| all the aspects quietly and needing to find a way linearize all
| that incidental complexity.
| praptak wrote:
| To me "to exist in the body" Vs "to exist in the head" is a bit
| about where your point of view is when your mind is processing
| reality.
|
| I'm not talking about the literal visual point of view but
| rather the metaphorical center point of the conscious
| experience.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| I do think some people are very good at reading others. And I
| also think that as we generally don't see ourselves we may not
| realise how we come across. There is a huge amount of information
| we send out by how we hold ourselves/talk etc.
|
| Personally I think I am very good at reading people's internal
| state. But I also am aware that I can be wrong. Reading someone
| who is very quiet for example can be hard and more prone to
| error.
|
| When I talk with someone I often do assess how much turn taking
| they do, particularly with a stranger. When I'm really engrossed
| in a conversation or I'm with a good friend I can sometimes turn
| off this assessment.
|
| Final point - the article was a great read. I'd have been really
| interested in their views on gender differences in communication
| (there can be differences).
| kortilla wrote:
| > Personally I think I am very good at reading people's
| internal state.
|
| How are you evaluating that?
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| We all read people to an extent. Behavioural signs will show
| to a degree their emotional state, their status, their
| attention and interest in you/the conversation. Combine it
| with how they use language and you get a good idea of how
| they think and how self aware they are. You can see if people
| monologue at you or if they are interested in turn taking.
| You can get a feel for how quickly people can grasp
| information, how relaxed/restless they are, how internal they
| are, how nice they are, how insecure they are, how aggressive
| they are etc.
|
| I suppose I also look also for how real a person is. For
| example in a work setting some people are much more prone to
| wear masks and fake emotions and some people don't do that. I
| do try to factor in how much games playing some people
| do/don't do.
| asidiali wrote:
| What if they are intentionally misdirecting you?
|
| This is what makes our world special. Not all is as meets
| the eye. Illusion is powerful.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| That is true. But also covered in my last point about
| people wearing masks to an extent. If you have a limited
| amount of time with someone you can be fooled but a mask
| "can" slip if you really get to know someone. But yeah
| it's not fool proof and people can definitely be fooled.
| But having an understanding of the power dynamic between
| yourself and the other person can help.
|
| But yeah some people can hide negative emotions (e.g.
| sadness) very well.
| atq2119 wrote:
| Also beware the Fundamental Attribution Error.
| alwa wrote:
| I remember being amused to learn that psychology folks call
| a real smile a "Duchenne" smile, and that the tell, to
| them, is that a Duchenne smile forms creases around the
| corners of the eyes.
|
| To hear Ekman, father of the Facial Action Coding System,
| tell it:
|
| https://www.paulekman.com/blog/fake-smile-or-genuine-smile/
| DFHippie wrote:
| I imagine one gets a sense of how surprising the actions of
| others are. If you foresee what they will do, you know your
| model of them is accurate.
| robocat wrote:
| From what I've seen, a few people are intuitively correct at
| reading others.
|
| Unfortunately many people think they're intuitive regardless
| of how poor they actually are at reading others (high self-
| belief, but poor ability).
|
| We all notice how it takes high skill to recognize the very
| highly skilled in areas we are talented in.
|
| That was the less commonly talked about part of the Dunning
| Kruger Effect. While the Dunning Kruger paper has been
| somewhat dismissed now as due to statistical artifacts, the
| DK effect seems to resonate with real life so we want to
| believe it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Probably observing them longer and verifying if the
| predictions from earlier evaluation match their future
| behaviors.
|
| Something like "she seems sad" and 5 minutes later "yup,
| she's crying now"
| alwa wrote:
| There's the evergreen genre of business-oriented instruments
| that are mainly cheery self-assessments ("I notice when
| people are feeling sad: agree, or _strongly_ agree?")--but
| I'm not sure how valid those get.
|
| As far as interesting efforts that reach for more
| objectivity, I feel like the personality psychology people
| circulated a bunch of "EQ" instruments like this in the '00s
| and '10s, rooted in Paul Ekman's work on facial expressions:
|
| https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/ei_quiz/
|
| Then again, they dealt with their replication crisis around
| the same time; I'm not sure how well these kinds of things
| held up.
| cuttothechase wrote:
| This feels like "Linda Goodman of Sun Signs" style of
| storytelling. Arguments like what the author makes can never be
| confirmed or proven wrong. I feel like this is important work
| because it has a bit of mass delusional element to it (see the
| number of likes), very similar to Linda Goodman works, and we can
| see from the outside what makes these kind of arguments appeal to
| so many people!?
| dillydogg wrote:
| I find it hard to imagine ever assuming so much about people I've
| never met. This read as incredibly judgemental to me.
| xelxebar wrote:
| Funnily enough, this response gives some insight into your
| personal affect. What kinds of mental states are capable of
| producing just such a reaction?
|
| FWIW, hypothesizing attributes about a person is also just
| what's required to begin empathetically understanding them.
| Judging this as judgemental seems like an unpleasant kind of
| state to be in, at least to my eyes.
|
| I certainly don't know you but have just as certainly felt some
| aspect of you. Hoping you are well, stranger.
| smallnix wrote:
| I think we got very different reads here. I understand the
| comment on the author to be judgemental to be very gentle.
| Dillydog is a person who affords everyone a rich and deep
| hidden inner life, so much so, that assuming people are so
| shallow to be read by a glance makes them angry on their
| behalf. I think they are in a good place already, emphasizing
| deeply with others.
|
| Of course just my interpretation.
| xelxebar wrote:
| Indeed! But haven't we now hypothesized dillydog here to be
| "a person who affords everyone a rich and deep inner life"?
| Or more provocatively, haven't we made a character
| judgement?
|
| In the same way that we perform root cause analysis via
| guesses and validations, I think it's natural, and perhaps
| unavoidable, that we also make guesses as to a person's
| personality.
|
| Of course, we usually call someone judgemental for making
| negative assessments, but I think it's important to allow a
| person whatever possibilities, regardless of moral
| judgement.
|
| My read of the article is that the author ascribes negative
| traits without judgement and just as easily as positive
| ones. Heck, as I see it, big part of empathizing with
| someone is recognizing how all their conditions and traits
| are natural and operate similarly inside ourselves to one
| degree or another.
|
| None of us chose to be the way we are in the situation
| we're in. Like, 3+1 dimensions and mostly Euclidean space.
| Who ordered that? Modus ponens?! Glaciation periods! All
| these deeply affect our day to day experience, obviously or
| not and at the behest of no one.
| card_zero wrote:
| Judgmentalception? Judgmentalpocalypse. Personal Droste
| affect.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| No, it gives arrogant people like you the impression of an
| insight. There's not enough information for real insight, but
| you'll invent an insight in your head and you'll stick with
| it. You're judgmental.
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| How insightful.
| tinktank wrote:
| Interestingly, your comment reads as hostile and condescending
| to me.
| voxl wrote:
| Ignore the other comments you're right on the money. Self
| described empaths always make roll my eyes and this post is
| that on steroids.
| rixed wrote:
| That's quite a judgment about the author, based on a single
| blog post.
|
| You could argue that one reveals much more about their
| personality on a blog post that's about their though process,
| than one does when walking in a room and behaving during a
| wedding reception but... I'm actually not sure it's true,
| considered the former is the fruit of conscious reflection
| and the later is mostly not filtered by consciousness.
| dgfl wrote:
| How would you explain when these predictions then turn out to
| be right? People who are this skilled at reading others are
| rare, but they do exist.
| kaashif wrote:
| I'm sure they do exist, but I need to see harder evidence
| of these skills.
|
| It's not enough that the person is correct in some
| predictions, they have to also make few mistakes. And the
| predictions must be objective and not vague or horoscope-
| like.
|
| Would you be impressed if I made a prediction of a coin
| flip and was right? What about if I predict a 50/50 choice
| someone is about to make?
|
| What if I have a book of instances where I made correct
| predictions?
|
| Not impressive unless the mistakes are there too.
| balazstorok wrote:
| I have to agree. There is a clear pattern indicating what she
| thinks is "the best way to live". Be open and be happy. Be
| otherwise at your own demise. It also sounds a lot like she is
| trying to convince herself she is striving for the right way of
| living. First it seemed she has a point, later in the post I
| felt she lacks intellectual humility, a "healthy" level (oh the
| irony) of doubt.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Just because they parse people this way, doesn't mean they're
| too attached to the results of that parsing (which is what I'd
| describe as being judgemental).
| gwern wrote:
| One wonders how much of it is true and how much is fundamental
| attribution bias.
| CivBase wrote:
| IMO "judgement" of a person carries a sense of finality and
| should be separated from one's "expectation" of a person.
|
| I think it's okay to let your observations of someone guide
| your expectations of them so long as you are open to being
| wrong and do not use those expectations as justification for
| mistreating someone.
| abc-1 wrote:
| This is phrenology nonsense and it's shocking to see people
| almost nodding along in the comments. This is the same kind of
| nonsense people spout when they say they're great interviewers
| and "just know", when actual studies show they very much do not.
| walterbell wrote:
| In this scenario, there's a feedback loop based on whether the
| subjects of the paintings recommend the painter for weddings.
| lukebitts wrote:
| I disagree. The difference here is that she is not advocating
| for acting on her assumptions, like an interviewer does.
| Maturity is not letting your assumptions cloud your judgement.
| rixed wrote:
| I understand your concern I think, but still believe you are a
| bit harsh. In this case the author is not pretending to be
| always right, and seems to refrain from hard cut judgment based
| on those perceptions.
|
| Also, it's impossible not to form a model of others based on
| all those visual and behavioral cues. Better trying to make it
| consciously than to let it happen unconsciously, no? I believe
| conscious thoughts that one tries to describe and understand
| have actually less agency on one's judgment.
| dominicq wrote:
| Agreed. She's not actually stating anything. That is, it's so
| vague that you cannot pinpoint it, it could be interpreted in
| any way. You cannot make a prediction out of her
| "observations".
| binary132 wrote:
| Maybe it would be better to mind our own character and behaviors
| more and that of others less.
| analog31 wrote:
| I have to admit that I get creeped out if I think that someone is
| trying to "read" me, to such an extent.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Don't worry. It's not about you. You are just one of humans.
| gorbachev wrote:
| In every interaction with anyone they're reading you. How
| deeply varies by occasion and whom you're interacting with.
|
| For example, a sales person will be reading you with everything
| they got to find the best angle to sell you stuff.
|
| On a first date, you can bet both people involves are trying to
| read each other every minute of the date, whether intentionally
| or unconsciously. They even often talk about how they read you
| afterwards with their friends.
|
| A long-time partner probably doesn't try to read you every time
| you talk.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, and there are interactions that I avoid, such as
| dealing with sales people. Why would I even want something
| that's sold to me via the best angle?
|
| I think there's a matter of degree, and if it's excessive,
| then it's creepy. Maybe the purpose matters. Getting into my
| head in order to manipulate me is immoral.
|
| And I never experienced a "first date." People avoid that too
| if their culture allows it. At least by the time something
| emerged that could be called a "date," I already knew her
| from casual interaction. She knew I was nuts.
| mellosouls wrote:
| It's having a bit of pushback for presumption here, but
| considering this is "just" a list article, it seemed unusually
| thoughtful in its exposition of the author's perceptions.
| Genuinely interesting to read.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Also noticed this. Maybe we are starting to see well written
| articles by people in the format of badly written AI Slop for
| engagement purposes. "Well most articles read by people look
| like this now, so why dont I?"
| danybittel wrote:
| Pretty sure that's illegal in Europe, if she were an AI.
| 8s2ngy wrote:
| From the movie, The Life of Pi: Animals don't think like we do!
| People who forget that get themselves killed. When you look into
| an animal's eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back
| at you, and nothing else.
| rixed wrote:
| Are you suggesting that reading other people's minds is as
| error prone and vain than giving human emotions to animals?
| ranprieur wrote:
| There's some good stuff here, but some of it is just wrong.
| Sometimes the person with the loudest laugh is laughing the most
| authentically.
| Fricken wrote:
| Here's my observations from people watching:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t4pmlHRokg
| Zorass wrote:
| She wrote, "seeing someone is like noticing their internal
| structure" -- that line made me pause for a while. As a kid, I
| used to think everyone could pick up on those tiny things in
| people -- like the hesitation behind a sentence, or the way
| someone's eyes seem like they're trying to escape. Turns out, not
| everyone "sees" like that. Watching people is more like passive
| resonance. Sometimes you're just passing by, but your body has
| already picked up the entire vibe of that person. No words, just
| a quiet read.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| This is very good. I've also noticed I do the polite engagement
| sometimes and how its roboticsness is obvious to any person with
| not low EQ. Some people seem to just be naturally happy in almost
| any settings and its a very valuable trait imo.
| gumboshoes wrote:
| I suppose what is the main friction in this piece is the constant
| attribution of things to body or mind, as if they are
| independent, or as if cannot be both at once. A second friction
| is that I perceive the author has definitely learned to observe
| well, and has successfully learned to generalize based on past
| observations. But the author has difficulty moving from learned
| to explainable.
| neerajsi wrote:
| I once met a gate agent in the Maui airport. She looked at me and
| my pregnant wife and congratulated us on our upcoming baby boy. I
| asked her how she knew. She said it was the way we carried
| ourselves and looked at each other. Not sure what specifically
| she saw, but she told us if another couple she observed who were
| having a girl. She said the man looked like the type who didn't
| treat women that well, but who was clearly trying to be on his
| best behavior.
|
| Most of the times situations are a complete cypher, but in more
| unisual cases when observing groups of people who know each
| other, you can tell how they feel from analyzing the behaviors.
|
| This author is clearly in a privileged position in the wedding
| group. She's in the background with the specific job of looking
| at everyone and capturing their feelings. They don't try to hide
| their behavior or respond to her, and the usual western taboo
| against staring at strangers doesn't apply.
|
| This was definitely a good read!
| lightning8113 wrote:
| Not only does she have a privileged position, but good artists
| are skilled at making their art convey emotions and feelings.
|
| Telling a complex story in a static picture requires great
| attention to detail, and a solid understanding of how humans
| express emotion.
|
| Before you can create art that captures these emotions, you
| need to be able to observe them. I am not at all surprised that
| countless hours painting people has helped her develop this
| skill!
| darkerside wrote:
| It likely includes projecting emotions that may not actually
| exist in order to tell a great story. It doesn't make the
| read any less interesting though.
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _congratulated us on our upcoming baby boy. I asked her how
| she knew. She said it was the way we carried ourselves and
| looked at each other._
|
| Does she have more than a 50% succes rate?
|
| In the wost case (null hypotesys?) that she can't tell, it's
| similar to the gambler falacy. She remember only the succes
| cases. People post online only the succes cases. Nobody
| remember the wrong cases.
|
| In this case it doesn't matter, but there are evil people that
| use similar tricks for scams.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Fair point - I guess it would be interesting to see how
| accurate many "people watchers" are, empirically.
|
| That being said, I think I'm willing to suspend disbelief a
| little. I do think there's an art to being able to not only
| read people, but to express it in a way that conveys the
| underlying point.
|
| ... the same way a good comedian can make an audience say,
| "oh yeah, I always noticed that but never really realized
| until you said it."
|
| Is it true? Maybe, who knows? But it seems like it could be,
| and that's enough for me to find it interesting :)
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Realistically she doesn't remember any cases because no one
| comes back to the airport to tell the gate agent what gender
| their child was
| missinglugnut wrote:
| Often when we make guesses about other people, we reveal more
| about ourselves than the other person.
|
| "She said the man looked like the type who didn't treat women
| that well"
|
| Maybe she was right about this man, maybe she was wrong, but in
| either case that judgement came about because he reminded her
| of someone.
|
| I'll go a step further. She assumed happy couple => boy, and
| future father seeming strained => girl...that gives me a guess
| about a difficulty she faced in childhood.
|
| Of course I'm susceptible too. I jumped immediately to the
| "opposite sex parent had issues" narrative on reading a small
| anecdote about this woman. Is that the truth, or am I
| projecting something? Could be both?
|
| Look at how you analyze others and you'll learn a lot about
| yourself.
| aorloff wrote:
| This is a set of astute observations about a group of people in a
| setting where people are often drunk.
|
| As a result it seems to have a skew highly specific to
| generalizing about people's "internal architectures" when you
| happen to be seeing them socializing with alcohol at a wedding.
|
| I think they call this overfitting the model in machine learning
| darkwater wrote:
| Most people are not drunk from minute 0 at weddings, and the
| author went to many weddings, so she clearly had the
| opportunity to see people interacting also when not drunk.
| winnit wrote:
| In vino veritas
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I've always hated that phrase, because it's objectively,
| provably bullshit. Almost everyone has some experience of a
| friend of acquaintance who become someone other than
| themselves when they got hammered.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| It's which self you regard as the "real" self that matters
| here - alcohol tends to make it hard for people to maintain
| their habitual masking;.
|
| Your otherwise calm friend who starts barfights when he
| gets his drink on? Probably not as calm as he seems on the
| surface.
| danhite wrote:
| You've made an interesting point, but then, roughly in
| the ~theology of no-virtue-without-temptation we have
| this classic ~counterpoint ...
|
| Batman Begins - "It's not who I am underneath, but what I
| do that defines me."
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I've met/worked with plenty of people who seem very nice
| under normal conditions, and become complete assholes to
| coworkers/friends/their own wives and kids when they are
| under stress...
|
| So I'd amend that to something like "what I do in
| stressful conditions defines me". Anyone can act cool as
| a cucumber _before_ the shit hits the fan
|
| (Batman's whole existence is stressful. He specifically
| gets a pass on this one)
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I hate the phrase because it presumes that the person one
| becomes for less than 1% of their conscious life, while
| under the effects of a mood-altering drug, is a greater
| representative of their true self than their behaviour of
| the other 99%+ of their life while they are sober and
| clear of head.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I would say that people cannot be "other than themselves".
| You will just see their other side when they are drunk. And
| it is quite often the darker, more primitive, violent side,
| which they suppress under normal conditions, knowing well
| that other people won't like it.
|
| There is a sentence in some Stephen King's novel (and King
| is a recovered alcoholic to boot) about the main hero. IIRC
| it sounds like this:
|
| "There was a dangerous dog in his mind. Sober, he could
| keep that dog on a leash. Drunk, the leash disappeared."
|
| Maybe you are observing the leash disappearing.
| kadonoishi wrote:
| I once read a small book for an anthropology class, and got more
| and more puzzled, and rather incensed. It was covering its
| subject well but with this bizarre hodgepodge of different
| anthropological framings, some of them quite anachronistic, some
| current, jumping around with jarring inconsistency.
|
| I got to the end (it was a small book, only maybe 110pp)
| wondering what in the heck this thing was, and flipped to look at
| the author at the back. And it was a missionary! Instantly my
| attitude flipped; I was in awe that a missionary could do such
| good anthropology, and the inconsistencies in framing made
| perfect sense.
|
| This author has good psychological insights, but her theoretical
| framings are somewhat mis-specified, inconsistent, sometimes out-
| of-date by psychological standards, to my eye. But it's very good
| stuff.
|
| artist : psychologist :: missionary : anthropologist
| quietthrow wrote:
| What's the name of the book? Can't just leave that hanging !
| kadonoishi wrote:
| Gah, that would be hard to dig out. It was over 30 years ago.
|
| edit: Ok that wasn't too hard, it was in a box. It's
|
| "Fields on the Hoof: Nexus of Tibetan Nomadic Pastoralism" by
| Robert B. Ekvall, 1968, 1983.
|
| Thanks for making me go find that, the notebook for the class
| is interesting to look at again.
| ragazzina wrote:
| >I was in awe that a missionary could do such good
| anthropology, and the inconsistencies in framing made perfect
| sense.
|
| The author graduated in Cultural Anthropology some 30 years
| before writing the book.
| raincom wrote:
| "Missiology is the academic study of the Christian mission
| history and methodology". Earlier, Missiology used to be called
| as "Practical Anthropology". Even today, the best materials for
| learning phonetics and linguistics practically come from
| Christians, because of their drive to proselytize everyone on
| this earth, with various languages, etc. "Summer Institute of
| Linguistics" is one such.
| taylorius wrote:
| So many pronouncements on people's inner lives. The temptation to
| caricature the wedding guests in her paintings must be
| formidable.
| jk431 wrote:
| Nice observations and thanks for sharing.
|
| Do you mind sharing how you built this skill? Any books/podcasts
| that you followed to learn?
| thom wrote:
| Your outie has a popular therapy-speak newsletter.
| nanacnote wrote:
| I think words got in the way of what OP wanted to say.
| James_K wrote:
| I feel that those incensed by this article would have a strong
| distaste for fortune tellers. I counter that vague wisdoms and
| unsubstantiated claims often give us a chance to reflect on our
| lives.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| The author draws overall conclusions based on observations at
| wedding parties.
|
| I've know very many (techies) that are extremely introvert and
| yes, bored, in such an environment, yet when you would observe
| them at evening drinks at a tech conference, they would be
| engaged, open, interested, welcoming and kind.
|
| I fear the author overextrapolates from a specific context to
| people across contexts.
| DeathRay2K wrote:
| Isn't this simply recognizing that people are not fixed points?
| The same person who is open and happy at one time could
| certainly be bored at another.
|
| It does not seem to me that the author claims otherwise.
| tryauuum wrote:
| unskippable cookie banner covers 50 percent of the screen
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| This post has all the hallmarks of some therapist's suggestion to
| focus on the external. Bit too much projection going on here,
| with a very definite "correctness" to the characterizations.
| wvlia5 wrote:
| Could all these statements be expressed as math equations?
|
| Make a model of mind, behaviour and society, such that all of
| these could be deduced as consequences of some fundamental
| theorem.
| mpweiher wrote:
| I used to be very impressed by this sort of stuff, because it
| baffled me.
|
| It certainly _sounds_ uber-impressive!
|
| However, I have seen how error-prone it is, and also read and
| understood a little more about the mechanisms.
|
| For one, I have had people tell me stuff they "read" in me. It
| was valuable as an insight as to what vibes I might be sending
| out, unbeknownst to me. But it tended to be laughably wrong about
| me.
|
| Now you might think that this is just me being defensive..."you
| can't read me".
|
| But people do get it wrong, and a girlfriend once confessed to
| me, somewhat exasperated: "I can't read you". To which I said:
| "You should try _listening_ to me instead ".
|
| Communication [?] Reading
|
| I have also gotten quite a bit better at it myself, and it can be
| intoxicating. Because when it works it is almost magical.
|
| But while it can be stunningly _precise_ , it just isn't very
| _accurate_.
|
| So it's a useful tool that can yield information, but don't get
| high on your own supply. Treat it as a very sensitive but also
| very noisy channel of information.
| ZeroTalent wrote:
| Your comment is on point, but also, while I feel this article
| is kind of interesting, I fail to see it is relevant to Hacker
| News. I feel we are recently, often, going quite far off-topic.
| mpweiher wrote:
| Hmm...
|
| _Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That
| includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce
| it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that
| gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| shermantanktop wrote:
| This article would be appealing to someone who enjoys
| having basic human interactions explained to them in
| narrative form. I hope HN is broader than that.
| pton_xd wrote:
| > But people do get it wrong, and a girlfriend once confessed
| to me, somewhat exasperated: "I can't read you". To which I
| said: "You should try listening to me instead".
|
| > Communication [?] Reading
|
| Mostly true, except sometimes people have a habit of saying one
| thing and doing another. Ultimately, actions are all that count
| in a relationship. Maybe that's what she was responding to?
| mpweiher wrote:
| Nope, the exact opposite.
|
| I was and am extremely congruent between my actions and my
| words. This is not easy.
|
| She ignored my words, tried and failed to "read" me instead
| and then was baffled when my actions were congruent with my
| words and not her reads.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| Ntrails wrote:
| A tremendous frustration at the inability to say what you
| mean and mean what you say has plagued me for years
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Humans generally use multiple channels of communication
| (speech, body language, etc.), not just one, and if someone
| says they can't read you, that doesn't mean they aren't paying
| attention to what you say, it means they are paying attention
| to _more_ than that, and their is a perceived incongruence
| between the channels of communication.
|
| And if it is someone who has been around you a lot, it means
| that the usual attunement through experience that adapts this
| multichannel communication to the quirks of particular
| individuals is still insufficient to resolve the incongruence.
|
| This can be, among other things, connected to neurodivergence
| and lack of experience dealing with the particular form of
| neurodivergence beyond one individual.
| mpweiher wrote:
| > that doesn't mean they aren't paying attention to what you
| say
|
| That was exactly what it meant.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| It sort of works like pseudo-science and woo. It sounds
| impressive and even plausible but at the end of the day, it's
| asserting something unknowable as though it were truth, but is
| largely a product of projection.
|
| Nevertheless, I can still read and appreciate it from _that_
| perspective because it's always interesting to me to hear how
| others see the world.
| wvlia5 wrote:
| I used to not have this skill at all. People behaviour was just a
| random process with unexplainable outliers.
|
| Then I vaped weed for the first time at 34, and I got this skill.
|
| It makes me uncomfortable to observe how people compute their
| behaviours so erratically, specially when they take my own
| behaviours as inputs for computing theirs. I wish people would
| act according to a standarized protocol (etiquette).
| pricedown wrote:
| Is it a little strange that the observations end with favoritism
| towards a kind? Or not at all? Can't people just be people, and
| not kinds of people?
| jallbrit wrote:
| Your comment seems to suggest that having a preference towards
| certain personality types is inherently wrong.
| Animats wrote:
| This sort of thing is called "cold reading".[1] It's well
| understood, and it's taught to cops and salespeople. First-line
| people in the hospitality industry (restaurant greeters, hotel
| desk clerks) tend to have skills in that area.
|
| There's "Manwatching" (1979) by Desmond Morris, a more serious
| study of this.[2] Good pictures and drawings.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading
|
| [2]
| https://archive.org/details/manwatchingfield0000morr/page/n5...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Lie detectors are also well-understood and taught to cops. K-9
| probably cause manufacturer units are well-understood and also
| taught to cops. In fact, the list of things that are totally
| bogus and well-understood and taught to cops since the era of
| Bill Clinton is so long that perhaps it should be well-
| understood and taught to cops too.
| azan_ wrote:
| This article perfectly mirrors my experience with people that
| claim to be good at reading people - just assume some things
| about person you are "reading" and then instantly believe it.
| It's really easy to be good at it when you don't need any
| grounding in reality.
| robocat wrote:
| Two sets of people:
|
| A) The overconfident that self-describe as intuitive at reading
| people
|
| B) people skilled at reading people
|
| You have seen a lot of A and you are arguing that means that B
| doesn't exist.
|
| I think that both exist.
|
| For the B's it is a bit of a superpower, and I suspect they
| don't generally show off their superpower unless you have a
| very close relationship with them.
|
| I am skilled enough to recognize the A's, but the B's are
| harder to recognize. To recognize the A's you have to be better
| at reading others than the A's are. To recognize the B's you
| need to be as skilled as them or better (which I believe is
| difficult, and uncommon).
|
| When on the receiving end of A's or B's judgements you need to
| be able to read yourself better than they can plus you need to
| have zero self-denial: to judge if their reading is correct.
| Many people are just not that good at self-awareness (we often
| act according to childish drives).
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| When I'm people watching, I'll extrapolate tiny details into
| entire life stories of strangers. It's a lot of fun to do with a
| date, shared storytelling is a cool bonding experience.
|
| But never once have I thought those stories were anything but
| fiction.
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