Never met someone who claimed to be good at reading people who didn't just always assume the most cynical reductionist motivations and never realized they are just adopting “prestige tv” traits of people who are good at reading people and never verify their ability in the real world.
From this tweet.
I guess this could be called the cynicism fallacy: the belief that because your interpretation of people or events is cynical, then it means it is somehow more "true" than a more charitable one. I think the bottom line is simply that cynical people project their cynicism everywhere, and become stuck in a prison of their own from which they believe they understand the world and everyone within it. They are likely to be people who don't interact much with others but who read a decent amount, giving them an illusion of understanding human psychology.
In my experience though, there is a fair amount you can predict from people by assuming they are mostly selfish—including the selfish display of selflessness funnily enough—and acting in whatever way has worked for them in the past, but this isn't enough to fully understand regular people. There is at the very least a few odd things which can pop up here and there given unconventional circumstances, a glimpse of genuine warmth and perhaps heartfelt laughter. Even in a society of machines, finding people who are purely mechanical 100% of the time is quite difficult.
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2024-12-14