Talking to Strangers
by Malcolm Gladwell, Gai Herling · first published 2019
55% recommend36% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
Explores why people misread strangers, using cases like police encounters and spy stories to show how preconceptions and cognitive biases shape judgment. It serves as a clear entry point on the subject.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The routine traffic stop that ends in tragedy. The spy who spends years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The false conviction of Amanda Knox. Why do we so often get other people wrong? Why is it so hard to detect a lie, read a face or judge a stranger's motives? Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings - from history, psychology and infamous legal cases - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences. No one challenges our shared assu
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on “Books on Thinking About Thinking” ↗…licence plate scanner to ID her beforehand. Doesn't sound likely due to the questions about whether it is her car - or those questions are therefore blatent harrassment. I'd recommend Gladwell's last book 'Talking to Strangers' about how preconceptions and cognitive biases shape our interactions and how things can quickly derail as a result. You could put a spin on their motives that it is a prejudgement of her as a person…
on “I Was a U.S. Diplomat. Customs and Border Protection Only Cared That I Was Black” ↗…World" by David Epstein. No. 7. "The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" by Ben Macintyre. No. 8. "Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" by Jia Tolentino. No. 9. "Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" by Malcolm Gladwell. No. 10. "Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence," by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.
on “Books on Thinking About Thinking” ↗Malcom Gladwell addresses why proactive policing doesn't work at length in his book "Talking to Strangers". He refers to it as Kansas City style policing. Highly recommended.
on “In NY major crime complaints fell when cops stopped ‘proactive policing’ (2017)” ↗…It is also known as stop and frisk. This type of policing has also been adopted to traffic stops as well and arguably has lead to warrior cop policing. Gladwell discusses the implications of this in Talking to Strangers. So if you want a perspective on guns, gun violence, policing from the 1970s until today, I recommend it.
on “When pop history bombs: a response to Malcolm Gladwell” ↗I can really recommend Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Talking to Strangers'. It is a fascinating book in which he tries to explain why it so hard to understand what other people are really thinking.
on “AI can't tell you it's lying if it thinks it's telling the truth” ↗…Reality Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations Alone at Dawn: Medal of Honor Recipient John Chapman and the Untold Story of the World's Deadliest Special Operations Force Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
on “Ask HN: Books you plan to read in 2020?” ↗Reminds me of the characterization of Harry Markopolos in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers. His takeaway is that society is a pretty bleak place when we all lose our “default to trust” mode of operation.
on “No general method to detect fraud” ↗Talking To Strangers was a choice for Zoom book club I was in during the shutdown. I was looking forward to it a little since I recognized but didn't know the name. I couldn't make my way through it and dropped out. He has…
on “When pop history bombs: a response to Malcolm Gladwell” ↗Malcolm Gladwell also talked about it in the book "Talking to Strangers." It revolved around a breakdown on communication between the two and assumptions that they each had for the other.
on “Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?” ↗…Whether an algorithm decided whether or not you had cancer? I think for many of these cases, it’s well known that the algorithms do much better than people. I was just reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Talking to Strangers. He tells the story of a judge in Chicago who decided whether to keep detainees or release them on bail. He liked to look into the eyes of the detainee to decide whether he would skip bail. It turned…
on “Want Better Forecasting? Silence the Noise” ↗