Talking to Strangers
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 assumptions like Malcolm Gladwell. Here he uses stories of deceit and fatal errors to cast doubt on our strategies for dealing with the unknown, inviting us to rethink our thinking in these troubled times.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
11mentions
11people
2019–2022years
55% recommend36% neutral9% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- 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.
- That style of policing was popular before Gladwell. It was Giuliani who really doubled down on it in NYC as the exemplar.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
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.
- That doesn't explain being pulled over before they have checked her documents unless they are using a 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 of interest - but that then becomes an issue of individual training or a systemic failure in the whole force to not let that happen.
- 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.
- "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/0...
"The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" https://www.amazon.com/Mosquito-Human-History-Deadliest-Pred...
"The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...
"Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Darwin-Genetic-Engineering-Hu...
"Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" https://www.amazon.com/Biased-Uncovering-Hidden-Prejudice-Sh...
"Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" https://www.amazon.com/Range-Generalists-Triumph-Specialized...
"The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War" https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Traitor-Greatest-Espionage-Story/...
"Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion" https://www.amazon.com/Trick-Mirror-Self-Delusion-Jia-Tolent...
"Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know" https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Should-about-People...
"Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence" https://www.amazon.com/Prediction-Machines-Economics-Artific...
- Sure.
No. 1. "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky.
No. 2. "The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator" by Timothy C. Winegard.
No. 3. "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution" by Gregory Zuckerman.
No. 4. "Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity" by Jamie Metzl.
No. 5. "Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.
No. 6. "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized 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.
