Talking to Strangers

Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.

The myopia theory was first suggested by psychologists Claude Steele and Robert Josephs, and what they meant by myopia is that alcohol’s principal effect is to narrow our emotional and mental fields of vision. It creates, in their words, “a state of shortsightedness in which superficially understood, immediate aspects of experience have a disproportionate influence on behavior and emotion.” Alcohol makes the thing in the foreground even more salient and the thing in the background less significant. It makes short-term considerations loom large, and more cognitively demanding, longer-term considerations fade away.

Just think about how many times you have criticized someone else, in hindsight, for their failure to spot a liar. You should have known. There were all kinds of red flags. You had doubts. Levine would say that’s the wrong way to think about the problem. The right question is: were there enough red flags to push you over the threshold of belief? If there weren’t, then by defaulting to truth you were only being human.

Hitler’s appearance and manner when I saw him appeared to show that the storm signals were up,”

Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.

drag you out

Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.

He moved between the monied circles of the Hamptons and Palm Beach.

was a bake-off: man versus machin

was a Thursday, which in his courtroom was typically a busy day for arraignments.