Quacks, Ruminating on too much information

The astrologer told my mom I should be in the states and my brother, melchior here. I guess when you have a skeptic in the family, who doesn't put any stock into that crap you'd want him to be as far away from your income generator as possible.

Still a skeptic, and a skeptic who is fascinated with deception and cognitive bias.

Too much?Sometimes I'm worried about how I'll turn out when my ability to gather information improves? I was walking in the mall, getting us some dinner when I wondered how a world looks to a deception expert. He would be able to spot who's following who. Who in the group wants to be here or who is just along for the ride.

Walking to work I got to thinking, how much information is enough and will at affect my relationships adversely. Particularly when I start min maxing and using social and market norms to my advantage. Dan Arielly's piece on the matter got me thinking seriously about my relationships and how the Social Norms is part of my everyday work.

Many kinds of information becomes relationship altering, why shouldn't I be able to cope with this?

The interesting side affect of this study is that, I don't mind meeting strangers or co-workers. Its another way to view the world and I can learn to pick up tells much quicker. I guess it has become a game on to itself, when learning to pick up tells. My attention is engage, so is my memory, and boy does it remind me. I flinch, seemingly out of the blue when my memory just feels like triggering something along the data files regarding tells and behaviors.

I notice now, I use my peripheral vision to view the world more than looking at it directly. I wonder if I train my kid to look at the world, like he/she was not looking at an early age. All the notes and skills about how to deal with people, in a way I would have easily understood it when I was younger.

I know my eyes are tired when faces blur in my peripheral vision in 5 meters. I've begun to notice I can see facial movement and sometimes faces clearly with my peripheral. Its the only way to get a good read on people.

Cold Readers. I was imaging how the Fortune teller was cold reading my mom. Being so used to her, I've long taken for-granted the subtitles of her facial expressions. I wondered how the con-artist read her. It is only now I'm getting to know better the faces of my parents. Because of the prodding of the skilled Cold Readers. I know its not just the facial reading but knowledge of the types.

A stranger can know my mom better than me, just because he can know the type quite well.

How do you know you are being manipulated? Social Norms thing can be quite dangerous... only if you have the stigma of being a selfish prick. Nice guys can use social norms to enhance their quality of life, while jerks and users can't as easily because they don't have the capital of good will nice guys have.

Still, are we being manipulated or are we manipulating people who know this skill? First thing is that, how much has the person changed when acquiring this skill, and second how bad is it for someone for capitalizing on social norms instead of market norms.

You exchange good will with a friend, you now learn small gifts work as effectively as big gifts so you adjust your behavior appropriately. I begin to realize that the lessons in Art of Critical Decision Making comes into play, people intuitively know when they are being played. Personally, I would like to give gifts as to the type I want to receive but have to scale down because it sets a bad precedent and a overly generous gift creates a reciprocity imbalance.

We do have an intuitive sense of the good will we have accumulated with people. Especially because it is in memories and experiences that we hold most of it in stock. The more we are able to depend on each other the more good will we build up. Even if it is for fun. I mean, the good will my wife and I build up in Counter Strike is pretty significant in our marriage even if its just CS.