Book review of Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

I listened to the audiobook version of Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Stranger's through Libby, listened to the first 10% two weeks ago and decided it wasn't worth listening the rest, but figured might as well finish the rest yesterday. Thoughts...

Gladwell argues we don't give people enough benefit of doubt, enough credit, and that tendency is utilized by adversarial forces to undermine our trust. But, he argues, not everyone can be a tinfoil-hat-wearing weirdo who cannot maintain relationships with people because they mistrust people. Our society can exist only because we must trust people, and they will often live up to the expectations. Our standards for judging others are unfair, including that of actual legal judges, and it's bad because we catch people who 'don't fit the pattern' rather than perpetrators of crime or adversarial people. To put it differently, we trust our 'people-o-meter' a bit too much, without noticing that we are catching unwanted 'weird' people in our 'suspicious' list while we let go of charming people who can work the psychology of others despite blaring warning signs. Then there's a chapter on Policing in Kansas City and how policing in America is broken because they're looking for the wrong signals and took the wrong lessons from a few monumental experimentation in public security done in the 80's and 90's.

I wish the book had been better organized, and the message was stronger instead of a bunch of case studies. It could have been longer, that would have been of little concern. Gladwell doesn't make a strong enough cause for trusting people enough, besides saying that's how the society works and we would be loner preppers if we didn't let ourselves be lied to every so often.

Despite that, it's a pretty decent book. Gladwell gets a lot of eyeroll from the pop-psych-hating book, but the messages of his books are often re-interpreted and turned into bit-sized morsels of wisdom that then flake out into vapid stupidity, it's not a fault of his own. This is a well-researched book with a clear important message, and I'm much smarter for reading it. Wish it had more 'self help' aspect of trusting people more too.

Nine out of ten stars, great book. Recommend to everyone.