What do you know about people you don’t know?

[cjsmith]

What do you folks think or guess when you don’t know someone?

Elsewhere I wrote:

I have some vague baseline sort-of-trust of people I don’t know well. MOST of them aren’t psychopaths. MOST won’t steal my stuff if they’re in my house for an hour. MOST will try to hide their misogyny from female-appearing persons. That sort of thing. And then I’m always on the lookout for signals that a stranger does indeed fit this model. It’s as if there’s a Generic Human in my mind, and I make a lot of guesses about what that Generic Human is likely to do.

What are some of your guesses about Generic Humans? Small or large, positive or negative - comment away!

(This is a public entry. An access-limited entry is here for folks who prefer not to comment on public posts.)

Comments

[amaebi]

I think that, for me, the question is a bit overly broad. If I hadn't read the earlier discussion I wouldn't have known what to do with it at all.

[cjsmith]

I seem to be fond of overly broad questions! Ah well! :)

[amaebi]

I'm sorry if it felt like having someone be a dick to you. If I was a dick to you, it was inadvertent.

I was going to say, and still will, that you likely do have more specific thoughts about Generic Humans, or categories of such thoughts, and now you're already helpfully spinning one out. :)

[cjsmith]

Oh gosh nonono you're fine!! You have never even once come REMOTELY CLOSE to being awful to me, not once. ♥

I do have TONS of specific thoughts. I would also love to hear everyone else's tons. :)

[amaebi]

Boy, a lot of mine have been heavily jaundiced by the existence and burgeoning of Trumpies and their allies.

[cjsmith]

Oh goodness yes. It has definitely colored things. (Orange, I suppose. It’s colored my view of the world orange.)

Edit: Which makes “jaundiced” a particularly apt term... :)

[cjsmith]

One of my guesses about Generic Humans is that any random human is more socially confident and more well-liked than I am. I recognize that this guess may not have a lot of data to back it up, but I find myself continuing to guess this way nonetheless.

[amaebi]

I think it's easy to think this one. One typically knows only the outward face and performance of another, and knows all one's own hesitations and uncertainties and quavering.

Another confusing thing is that a lot of people do friendships of convenience that don't outlast the convenience, making everything hard to evaluate and for fools like me, distressing.

I definitely have had that view of Generic Humans, but mostly don't now.

I now tend to think that Generic Humans in the USian Whiteworld tend to operate on extremely hierarchical bases and that they're likely to poke people including me for some perceived rank advantage.

[cjsmith]

Hmmmm, I think I have that “hierarchical, points-based, advantage-seeking” guess about men more than about women - but this may be my experience in computer-techie-land talking. I think high tech has more than its share of that set of traits, and the vast majority of my coworkers throughout my career have been men. (Also, in much of US culture it is seen as important for men to be “above” women, and I look female.)

[wcg]

This might apply to your query. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/when-malcolm-gladwell-says-nothing-at-all/597697/

[wcg]

Or this review of it. https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/757508763/in-talking-to-strangers-malcolm-gladwell-explores-why-its-so-hard-to-do

[cjsmith]

*nod* This reviewer isn’t particularly selling me on the book either :)

Still, it’s a question that is intriguing to me and enjoyable to noodle on.

[cjsmith]

That reviewer is quite unimpressed, but I admit I have been wondering if it might be worth reading that book. Originally I came up with this “what do we think we know about strangers” question via trust: what would I trust someone with. But broadening the question made me think of Gladwell’s book.

[cjsmith]

Another guess I have about Generic Humans is that any random person I see probably doesn't try very hard to grow as a person or think very much about how to be a good/ethical/kind/decent/grownup/responsible human being. I tend to guess that they're more likely focusing on simply getting through the day.

I have been shown to be wrong on this one more than once. Spectacularly wrong. It's humbling. (As I think it should be!)

[noelfigart]

Actually, it's rather awful and I have to guard against it:

Generic Human is unlikely to be as intelligent as I am and is probably not going to think things through.

1. Yes, I know where my IQ falls on the bell curve. It's not an excuse to be an arrogant ass.

2. While it is true that you can generalize and say "The average human" doesn't think things through, that doesn't mean ANYTHING for "The Human in Front of Me at This Moment." (Which also rather applies to point 1.)

[cjsmith]

*nod* I share your assessment of point 1 (again, I merely know where I fit in the bell curve) and tbh observation often does seem to support your point 2 (though I don’t think that’s one I tend to have in my own mind - my guesses make no sense sometimes).

I agree completely that neither of those says a blessed thing about any specific person.

If I see some stranger at a bus stop, and I know zilch, I have guesses. Most of these I’ve not been very conscious of. As I get to know a person better those will be confirmed or not, sometimes even shown to be massively blatantly wrong. But it’s interesting to examine what I have as a starting point.

[cjsmith]

Oh, I haven’t mentioned a big one.

Generic Human will decide at first glance that I am stupid.

[cjsmith]

Another big one:

Generic Human thinks very differently about Women than about Men, treats these two categories very differently, believes more complimentary things about Men than about Women, will evaluate individual Men as being better at things and smarter and more deserving of respect than individual Women, and will deny all of this vociferously when asked.