Talking to strangers can make us smarter? | Hacker News Reader

Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

bbc.com

132 pointsrntn137 comments

I loved the understated humour of:

  "Some social scientists believe teaching kids that literally
   everyone in the world they hadn't met is dangerous may have been
   actively harmful."

Harms take many guises. Mutual distrust drives people to mediate and avoid others through technology as a psychological shield.

That breeds bad technology which divides and dehumanises, and feeds the loop.

Here on HN some people have argued for using cashless and automatic systems, not because they are "more efficient" but as a way to avoid smalltalk with a cashier or waiter. Having a map/GPS smartphone is handy, but it stops casual interaction for directions or local advice.

> stops casual interaction

... and the often hilarious scene that ensues when you don't share a common language. Some of my best memories are made of things like this.

Yes!

I think people are so afraid to be wrong or give bad advice since it's all to easy to be disproven (you said the street was X but it's actually Y, never-mind the fact that X runs parallel to Y and is just one block away) that they would rather remain silent. We used to learn better by being OK to be slightly wrong, then taking no offense when offered a gentle correction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_management_theory

I enjoy thinking of trust as a social technology. We've seen how ridiculous a trustless transaction system would look with Bitcoin having to validate things to a ridiculous extent. Similarly, a society that distrusts wastes a lot of time and energy doing things by themselves, which is inefficient in the best case and leads down harmful and delusional avenues in the worst. We should be engineering our cities and communities with the intention of creating surface area for trust to emerge (e.g. public transit where we can just coexist in the same space), rather than mandating that trust ought to occur, since that isn't how brains work. Give strangers the opportunity to see that others are not so bad. We all prosper, economically and spiritually.

Good thoughts.

Trust is such a complex subject.

For example, I see a fault in current cybersecurity thinking caused by misunderstanding "zero trust". In the right place zero-trust is precisely what we need, and the US government has recently made a huge policy leap in defaulting systems to zero-trust.

But oddly (not paradoxically) the place to deploy zero-trust is internally. And the place to design systems which leverage trustability is on external facing ones.

People who don't get it throw up their hands and say "that's crazy, it's the people outside we cannot trust". Surely our internal systems are trustworthy, so no need. On the contrary, it's precisely because internal trust already exists that security and low friction benefits accrue from going full zero-trust. For public facing systems the benefit comes from a more trusting stance, backed by high system security and resilience.

It's pretty much the opposite from what we've been doing.

It also stops, or makes it more difficult, to assault/rob a cashier. Though I think picking food will always be better with a human, given all the random questions you can ask them.

Article says: "Talking to strangers can teach you things, deepen you, make you a better citizen, a better thinker, and a better person. It's a good way to live. But it's more than that. In a rapidly changing, infinitely complex, furiously polarised world, it's a way to survive."

"The study participants who interacted when buying their coffee reported feeling a stronger sense of belonging and an improved mood than those who didn't talk to the stranger."

People say the same after a long, solo walk in nature. A more apt headline would be “doing a variety of things instigated valuable state change in our biology.”

Qualified answers are customization of well known generalizations.

Some of this is a bit presumptuous...

> "The authors concluded, "the next time you need a little-pick-me-up, you might consider interacting with the Starbucks barista...thereby mining this readily available source of happiness"."

Baristas, waiters, etc. are paid to provide services, not necessarily to be conversational partners. From their point of view, their choices are "be nice to this person who is chatting you up" or "upset the customer", so it's not really a stranger interaction, it's a client interaction. They're also likely pretty busy, so keep it short and sweet - i.e. "Thanks, this looks great, have a nice day".

Another issue is class stratification - far and away, this seems to be a delimiter in at least large American cities. Most people won't welcome a homeless person coming up to chat with them; people in business suits are more likely to talk to other people in business suits; etc. This kind of polarization is more of a divider than what corporate media likes to focus on, i.e. race and gender.

Finally, there's the inevitable issue of dealing with the occassional hustler or con artist... see this Atlantic article, 'Stranger Studies: Cities as Interaction Machines' (2010), which concludes with this one-liner:

> "Although I do not recommend it, by the end of the semester my students could likely launch successful careers as grifters."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/stran...

As someone who does customer service/support (mostly online retail but occasionally get in-person pickups), friendly conversation is honestly a perk of the job.

I think advising people to avoid it because the staff can't escape or ask you to leave just sucks that little bit of joy out of life for not only the customer, but the server too.

Of course, "friendly conversation" is the keyword here. Nobody wants to be emotionally unloaded on, but at the same time chatting with regulars always makes your day.

Thank you for the counterpoint. I think most adults can read other well enough to be able to start and continue conversation. And also pick appropriate time and place. (5 customers behind you? Keep the line moving.)

I used to work at Starbucks for about a year and a half and it all depends how busy it is. Unless it's busy, those random conversations with customers where the best part of the job, at least for me.

Giving compliments to people on their style, demeanour/energy or some situation that’s interesting in the moment is how I talk to strangers.

Also, only do it when you mean it.

Some people respond negative to lukewarm but most people really appreciate it.

It's weirdly hard to compliment people, at least as a man.

If you haven't warmed them up a bit first, it never feels right to compliment what they wear.

On the other hand, people love hearing that they have a nice playlist or run a cool place. It's something we put a lot of us into, so being complimented about it always hits hard.

Compliments are an acquired skill, but one that's so satisfying to use.

I think a lot of that is delivery. In a society like the UK (where I currently live) where there’s a deep and heavy cynicism and sarcasm in the cultural dialog, most people assume you’re taking the piss unless you really can convey you’re not - not that this is a good reason not to complement people if you think it’s warranted.

In NZ the culture is a lot more earnest, so it’s a bit easier.

Try non physical complements, eg. I really appreciated the conversation you started on x, I like that we can really go deep and get into the weeds on topics, or even it's cool that you really know who you are.

So that only works for people you know or have interacted in some way. That doesn't apply to strangers.

compliments

Agree - I always go for compliments about a choice someone made rather than some quality I perceive them to have. This suggests admiration for something they intended to do or worked on.

"I love that sweater" [that you chose] is a lot friendlier IMO than "you look great in that sweater"

I also try to indicate with my tone and bearing that a response is not expected, a good compliment is a gift (IMO) and gifts are freely given without expectation of payback.

I also like to stick to commentary I feel i actually know anything about, i wear earrings, so often comment about them. I dont wear makeup, so i rarely go there. I think fancy shoes are fun, etc.

> I also try to indicate with my tone and bearing that a response is not expected, a good compliment is a gift (IMO) and gifts are freely given without expectation of payback.

Yes! This so much this!

Questions are a great way to indicate interest without coming off as too forward. Where'd you get that hat? Is that sweater as comfy as it looks?

Instead of compliments, try a more neutral start, like a question.

* Is that the new model of X? They say it's great.

* Where did you find Y? I've been searching for it a long time.

* Do that Z work so well as they say?

I am a guy. Feel free to ask me questions via email on how I do it.

My only actual skill: being fine with awkwardness. It happens 20% of the time

I'm really reluctant to talk to strangers, but when I do... I use triangulation, where you don't talk about yourself (a stranger doesn't care) and you don't talk about them (it makes them uncomfortable), but instead you talk about a 3rd subject that maybe is visible to both of you, like the pretty fall leaves.

Actually, last year, right after I learned about triangulation, I was walking my dogs and stranger mentioned the pretty fall leaves to me. I then started telling him that he was using triangulation and explained what it is. He got uncomfortable and walked away. Derp.

This is called small talk, and despite being reviled by many needs, it serves an important social purpose of making people feel comfortable before we talk about things that can get uncomfortable (like each other).

Most people agree that it's silly but needed, which is why when you deconstruct with a random stranger (thereby making it about the two of you and NOT a separate thing), they will feel the need to quickly exit your presence.

Taking a conversation meta will make a lot of people uncomfortable, yes.

Just don't ask about the weather https://xkcd.com/1324/

I don't think compliments are a good way to interact with strangers. Better is asking for the way to ..., most important thing is to follow your intuition.

I remember the first time I went to Austin from the UK for a work trip. I wore my usual stupid pun t-shirts and the amount of comments/compliments I got walking down the street from strangers was insane to me (at least once a day).

The first few times I probably reacted poorly because it was so unexpected. I thought they were trying to get me to stop so that their friends could go and mug me or something. Took a while to get used too it and say something normal back.

I wouldn't take the negative/lukewarm responses personally, maybe they just don't know how to respond properly due to never experiencing it before.

Haha. American here. I still remember when I moved to Austin from Boston. Even within America Texas is a fairly friendly, outgoing place. At least compared to metro living on the East Coast.

The culture shock was noticeable. In Boston if a stranger walked up to me to say something my feet would already be pointed in the direction in which I intended to walk away from them. Whereas in Austin people are far more friendly, outgoing, and open to impromptu social interactions. I found it a very welcome change.

My theory is that such attitudes are heavily influenced by population density. If you live in a city that is packed full of people you start to guard yourself against the number of daily social interactions you will allow. For many, it’s emotionally draining to constantly acknowledge, say hello to, chat with, or humor every person that you meet. When you commute on the train every morning that becomes quiet time for you, even when you’re in a train car full of other commuters. It’s generally considered rude to chat up people too much. At least don’t be surprised when people want to keep to themselves.

Whereas in Texas and parts of the American midwest there is less need for people to live right on top of one another. Everyone travels alone by car, walking is less common. Meeting strangers in public is then less of an imposition and generally more of a warm-hearted experience.

Sadly, I grew up in the era of 'Stranger Danger' (this may be a uniquely UK thing, I'm not sure) which advocated entirely the opposite and, imo, discouraged an entire generation from interacting with those they didn't already know.

I also thought this kind of development was specific to only my country, but it's an almost global trend. Parents keep their kids closer (the last few decades compared with those before), under more supervision, are more suspicious of strangers, and so on, in general.

Moving into denser cities is also a global trend, and probably one that's correlated with it.

Safetyism is a broad cultural trend in the West, theorized to stem in part from the rise of sensationalist reporting on television in the 70s-80s.

The result is that the average parent is more likely not to leave even a younger teenager unsupervised than to address more mundane but realistic dangers like ensuring CO detectors have good batteries or using car seats and booster seats until somewhere between age 9 and age 12.

Danger from people you don't know has a much broader cultural context, though.

For some of my relatives in China, even making eye contact with strangers is unthinkable. You don't look at strangers, you don't say "hi" to them, nothing.

Growing up, walking past someone on the street, nodding, and smiling, even if I didn't know them, was normal. As population density goes up, that kind of policy becomes less workable, though. People try to insulate themselves from being psychologically overwhelmed from the sheer number of other people right there so they practice ignoring them.

That's not true everywhere. In good neighborhoods in the newer stretches of Bengalaru (Bangalore), for example, it doesn't quite work that way. People talk. They figure out how to solve problems together, they move on. Your network is your wealth.

My wife would probably have a heart attack in that atmosphere, though.

I feel like the city life makes us talk less to strangers. Living in London, I cannot really remember when was the last time I talk to a stranger except asking/being asked for directions.

Back when I was living in a small town outside Amsterdam called Abcoude, I had much more conversations with strangers even I don’t speak Dutch at all.

Learnt from them that it’s the only place in the world with name starts with abc and ends with de. :)

After living in a small town for a considerable amount of time, it is possible to run out of strangers.

What if there are middle grounds between small towns and large metro areas?

Running out of strangers isn't that bad for everyone. For some it's nice to be a regular somewhere and grow roots and feel part of the community.

Good point. I think that cities above 100k are pretty decent in that regard.

The busyness of downtown life has a lot to do with that rushing to work and home, and then when you actually go out, you have a few friends with you.

In Madrid, an obviously big city, you can easily convert small talks with long talks with strangers, so I think it is more linked to the city culture.

I swear 8/10 people I've met who say this are suburbanites going into the city to work. They rush around for work all day in the city, then sit alone in a car to get back home, wondering why they haven't met anyone new today.

Having had lived in cities and towns of multiple sizes, a dense neighborhood where my daily "operations" naturally put me in contact with the same faces everyday increased my level of interaction 10x.

I live in Finland, where the stereotype is that people don't do smalltalk, or interact with strangers.

But I see the same faces daily, in everyday life such as going to the local store. I've spent months chatting/flirting with the random people I come across, and it almost always goes well.

It would do everyone well to talk to a professional about the many fears they seem so comfortable expressing over faceless, remote internet discussions. Un- or under-acknowledged anxieties and fears develop into complexes, and can cause severe social discomforts. This can result in the issues like those described, where people may have trouble interacting with strangers, but blame the society for not fitting their tight mold of how people should interact, rather than recognize that their discomfort arises from their frame of mind.

> Living in London, I cannot really remember when was the last time I talk to a stranger

I lived in central London (Camden) for 15 years before moving to Stockholm, and almost every day was full of small encounters and discussions with strangers: about the weather, bemoaning our politicians, whether the food was any good, and so on.

London is a super-chatty town, and people constantly want to engage each other - even sometimes when you’re not in the mood.

If you want to see a place where strangers NEVER speak to each other (unless you’re obviously a tourist and the locals want to give you a good impression of their home-town), then come here to Stockholm. Right now there’s a big ad campaign running, encouraging people to say “hello!” To their neighbors (campaign is called “Hej granne!”)

Yep people don’t even say hi to the person they meet in the stairs.

Heh, one of the elevators at my uni had a sign saying "eye contact forbidden". It was a joke, obviously, but I could imagine seeing it in an office, somewhere between Liverpool St and St Paul's.

I was in a cable car with my wife in a Russian resorts area, Sochi, and a 'senior old couple entered sitting opposite to us. I immediately started a conversation with my 20 phrases I have learnt asking him where he was from. He snapped and started shouting at me in that small space.I understood that he was telling me it was me who should have said where I was from as I look foreign. I knew I screwed up by not starting with a polite Russian pozhaluysta. Still that did not stop me from interacting with Russians who are normally very easy going and open to strangers in a naive way sometimes. Ironically, I belong to the ethnic people what were in that region and were killed by the Russians.

Sochi Was the Site of a Horrific Ethnic Cleansing https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/150-years-ago-Sochi-w...

I read an article that showed that talking regularly to strangers and exposing yourself to "uncomfortable" situations can help you to reduce your "uncomfortability" levels, ie: you can learn to be comfortable in any situation by repeated exposition to uncomfortable situations.

Exposure therapy.

It’s a tool to treat general anxiety disorders too.

You become gradually desensitized to what used to give you anxiety by deliberately putting yourself in anxiety causing situations.

>As a straight white guy, I recognised from the outset that my interactions with strangers can be less fraught than they are for people who aren't straight white guys.

Classic BBC, everything is race and gender nowadays. Do people really live like that? Sexuality would be the last thing I think about when I talk to a stranger that I never see again in my life for 30 seconds

> Additionally, I strongly suggest men in my position be mindful of this when chatting with strangers themselves.

“in my position”? So straight white men shouldn’t talk to strangers, got it. Other races have to be mindful too?

> Do people really live like that?

A good way to answer this question is to ask the women in your life. It never fails to surprise me the number and variety of stories every one of my female friends/family/co-workers have.

Just last week one of my friends was telling a story about a guy in a car slowly following and harassing her on her way home. That kicked off a round of 'being scared by guys in cars' stories from others at the table.

I somewhat understand the 'not all guys' sentiment because this behaviour also feels very alien to me. I think it is worth taking the time to understand that it definitely is 'a not insignificant number of guys' though

Yes, this is true and a sad fact of life - but let us not forget the majority of stranger-assault victims are men and - generally speaking - these (righteous) discussions about individual safety are rarely extended to them.

It's more important to remember that the perpetrators are almost all men, whether the violence is from a stranger or someone well known, or whether the victims are male, female, or even one's self - suicide is far higher and more effective among men.

I don't see how that is more important to remember in the context of victims being discussed here. Male representation is not even acknowledged as an issue.

I've started to think of the "True Crime" genre as "Male Horror." Most of its audience is female, and the stories are largely about normal women who walk into normal situations and end up tortured, raped, and murdered; extra points if it was by a man no one would suspect. There's also Male Horror directed at an audience of men, but it's usually disguised as a prison story, or even more directly class-coded like Deliverance.

There's just this male sort of terror where a man doesn't want to hurt you for any practical reason, they're not trying to steal from you or stop you, they're doing it simply because physically torturing you directly arouses them. Men only feel that terror and that fear in prison, boarding school, the military, sports teams, surrounded by ethnic minorities or ethnic majorities, etc., whereas women simply need to evaluate every place that they enter that also contains a man, even if they know that man very well.

I’m sick of it too. I think, like masking, people will eventually get bored of the performative compassion, or at least they’ll stop getting so many social upvotes for it, and move on to something else.

Apparently what is meant is talking to strangers face to face, i.e. Twitter/HN doesn’t count.

> "I like humanity as a whole more because I talk to strangers."

Anyone here have any anecdotes where you had that same experience? What are some good ways and places you have found to get into conversations with strangers?

New Orleans dive bars.

It’s a joke how friendly people are and how it’s expected to strike a conversation with your neighbors.

To the point that when picking a spot you might think « no, not this one I need some space »

None are touristy, I live there since 10 years and it’s been a constant.

You don’t made real connection. But a crew of accointanc. In that decade I met one guy that became a close friend. But .. so much people I would wave at and say hi.

I do feel like that after meeting strangers on the road. It's one thing to drive through a country, and another to become part of its community, even if just for a week or two. These places become a lot more than just locations.

I know many people who are much better travelled than I am but lack any real knowledge of the countries they have visited.

I lived in Spain for 3 years, not knowing a word of Spanish at first although many of my wiser friends informed me this wouldn't be a problem because everyone in Spain speaks English!

It's less about language and more about curiosity. Some people are comfortable in the expat bubble, or as uninvolved observers. Meeting people, being actively curious about them, it demands energy.

However there are some experiences that you can't buy. There's no entry ticket to an intimate celebration. You have to talk your way into it. You have to put in the work. You have to genuinely care about the people you interact with.

I know this. I've experienced it time and time again. I just left a place full of people I will miss dearly. However after a long day of riding, I can't be arsed to do it. Thank god for extroverts who drag us kicking and screaming into their universe.

In an aeroplane over the sea. I've had some really interesting conversations on flights. I've sat next to a military psychologist, an American who moved to the middle of nowhere in NZ to farm who was self learning python for agri automation, a vicar taking a group of American kids on a religious trip to my home town in the UK at a time when I was feeling especially atheist. And many others, I always try chatting on flights.

> What are some good ways and places you have found to get into conversations with strangers?

In the UK:

a) while queuing b) waiting for public transport that has been horribly delayed

I don't need to rideshare, but still do, just for the conversations with random strangers.

Sadly it appears that for girls, ridesharing can be creepy if you do it without a boyfriend. This is not only anecdata from friends and familly: the app i use made a change a few years ago to propose "girls only" rideshare. Which is sad, but fair.

> “Anyone here have any anecdotes where you had that same experience?”

I actively engage with strangers in public. I do so in ways that match our current activities. What this looks like: Last week I was grocery shopping in the freezer section. The place I pick up tortellinis from had moved them, so me and another person were searching through the freezer cabinets. After a fruitless moment I asked them what they were looking for in the hopes during their search they had spotted the tortellinis’ new location. They mentioned they were also on a hunt for tortellini. I mentioned to them in passing that when a store moves something a note or something similar would be helpful to tell shoppers the new location for the item. We then continued talking about shopping experiences at other places, and some how wound up talking about our favorite dishes. In the end my new shopping acquaintance found the tortellinis and asked me how many bags I wanted.

Most experiences occur in shared events, such as standing in line for something, waiting after for an order to be fulfilled, or simply overhearing a conversation in a shopping center and commenting about my experience on what they mentioned. All these interactions, from my recent memory, have been positive.

I like speaking to strangers. I feel uplifted and I depart conversations feeling like I participated in something societal. At the base, speaking to strangers has also taught me a crap load of stuff too. Examples: how to hang a nearly squirrel proof bird feeder, how to cook lamb better, how to wire a lamp, where good restaurants are, how to put a post in the ground more securely but with less concrete, etc.

And, yes, I like humanity more because I talk to strangers. I see my appreciation for others happen when I become angry at people. I find myself asking “well they’re doing this for a reason, I just haven’t asked them their reason, yet.”

I really like your post,

I am extremely adept at talking to strangers, and I think its fn great to be able to chat-up a stranger and get to know them. it builds humanity and CO-munity.

I learn so much from others and I have a profound skill for just meeting a random and then being able to relate to them. most people are really surprised at my breadth of knowledge - and the thing is my breadth of knowledge is DUE to the fact that I chat so many people up to know them.

I thrive off talking to randoms.

EDIT: im lucky that I also have a good street smarts and I know what strangers to avoid

Very good points on the benefits of talking to strangers. :)

A total aside on the tortellini pointer idea:

> when a store moves something a note or something similar would be helpful to tell shoppers the new location for the item

This is a complete misunderstanding of why the stores move items. :)

https://bettermarketing.pub/the-secret-brilliant-and-questio...

"Supermarkets relocate their products around the store to make sure their customers get lost. As they struggle to find what they came in to buy, customers can’t help it but scan the freshly-redesigned shelves. That’s when the marketing magic happens.

[...]

That’s how you end up with three additional products you didn’t even think about before stepping in the shop. Your active search for pasta made you notice other merchandise and buy some of it.

In short, rearranging the store makes you spend more money — enough money for supermarkets to invest in this technique on a regular basis."

If they would want you to not get lost looking for tortellinis they could just leave them where they were. Heck there could be a tacit understanding between every shop to use the same schema and then you could just go in, grab and get out.

It would just result them earning less money. That is why they don't do it.

Maybe. I’d like to see the research that says this effect is greater than the impact of consumers switching elsewhere in frustration. Especially in the current age of increasing availability of online grocery shopping.

I’m glad I’ve started using online pickup. The only annoying thing is sometimes they give me a marketing goodie bag with various food stuff samples (usually high calorie almost candy snacks like some new granola bar) in it. I used to open it but now I throw it in the garbage without looking. I didn’t consent to them trying to get me to eat more stuff I don’t need.

It seems there would be a trade-off with folks going faster through checkouts, but I guess that benefit only extends to busy stores.

I used to hitchhike a lot, and nearly every stranger (a couple nutjobs here and there) I met in that manner was interesting. Travelling in general, you meet a lot of strangers in situations where they are feeling charitable or helpful, which leads to great interactions. Also, in/around the wilderness, strangers are usually more eager/open to interaction.

>Twitter/HN doesn’t count.

It definitely does

It is just medium with less informations eg it lacks face expressions

> “Anyone here have any anecdotes where you had that same experience?”

By coincidence, last night I went to a Halloween party - sort of crashed actually. There's really no better a venue for talking to strangers than at a fancy party where everyone is wearing cool costumes. I find it easier to come out of my shell when, for example, I have a kilt and a sword.

I recently bought - after seeing it mentioned on HN - Nick Gray's "The 2-hour Cocktail Party". It's a good resource on hosting parties where people interact.

I used to go regularly to meetups in my local town that were specifically about meeting strangers. They would usually be advertised as for people 'new in town' but in reality a lot of people went there just to hang out even if they'd lived there for years. Because the events were about nothing in particular, you had to learn how to make smalltalk and then how to nicely escalate it to more interesting conversations. Obviously it wasn't truly random strangers because people self-selected by going, but there was a steady supply of truly new people who just wanted to meet others and make friends. Met lots of people that way, made some great friendships and even business connections.

Will echo jemmyw about flights. Obviously you don't want to be the annoying seat neighbour, but usually if someone wants to chat they'll make that clear fairly fast. I had some great and interesting conversations with people on planes. Even got numbers from a couple of girls :)

I enjoy staying in hostels when I travel, specifically because I always meet someone interesting. There’s always someone from another country, or going to an interesting event, or from a religion I hadn’t had exposure to, or something else new and novel.

You’re sharing a room by default, and people willing to do that seem more likely to be fascinating and willing to tell you about it.

I am also a massive introvert, so it works well for me to know that once we’re done sharing stories I will never have to see them again.

"Every single person you know today was at one point of stranger. Even your mother."

There's a lot of cynicism in here and it sucks. COVID has made talking to strangers a little harder, me included, and while every single stranger I talk might not want to talk back, more often than not, I leave a random interaction happy because I went into the conversation curious and left with a new perspective.

The world is full of joyous people, but it's up to you to open your eyes and see it.

90% of times when strangers were telling me compliments it ended up with "street scam", iukwim

I'd also recommend that folks reading this remember not to put too much pressure on women when trying this out. They are already approached a lot and often will feel the need not to communicate their discomfort having had saying No go badly many times in the past.

Just remember that when you approach someone they might be uncomfortable even if they don't say that. Keep the pressure on yourself to end things, don't put it on the stranger you've chosen

Can something not be gendered, for once?

Why? There is a natural power imbalance between men and women. If you find it tiresome then you're getting a sense of how tiring it can be to be a woman in public.

It's important to pretend that's not true, because it makes men feel bad about themselves.

As a transplant from the Midwest to the North East, anecdotally, this matches my experience. Even after many years and friends, I still feel an outsider here. My wife and I often lament it. There is no sense of community to speak of, just thousands of ships passing in the dark.

Do you think you’ll eventually return to the Midwest because of the NE coldness?

Agree. I'm lived in PA most of my life and it's a cold, cold place. It's some kind of micro tribalism and has gotten worse over the years. When I was a kid, the adults in my neighborhood at least knew and talked to each other sometimes, now as an adult in a similar suburban neighborhood no one talks to me and as far as I can tell they don't talk to each other either.

I complain about it to my brother who lives in NJ and he says it's worse there. So it's a regional thing.

I lived out west for 10 years and people were much friendlier, even in SF and Seattle. I have heard of the "Seattle freeze" but NE US is far worse in my experience

The real issue with trust comes when a large portion of "civilized" society is willing to violate trust on a regular basis to such degree that I can literally count on one hand (with multiple fingers left over) the people I can actually truly trust… How's trust supposed to work in a society that teaches money is more important than literally anything else, and that you should be willing to do anything (including backstab your fellow humans) to get more money (or power, fame, or whatever other greed-pit you're trying to fill), else you're just "naïve" and deserve to have your trust violated.

Having grown up in Italy and moved to the UK a few years ago seems that in the U.K. we are much less prone to talk to strangers. In Italy oftentimes people who just banter with you even if you don’t know them (at the grocer, the elevator, public transport). Whereas in the UK everyone seems to be minding their own business. You can see it yourself. I noticed it particularly every time I go to Rome and catch the underground as opposed to londons. For instance I can feel the nervousness of people going up and down London Underground opposed to the laid-back and slow pace i instead feel in Rome. I might be just my impression though

Some people call this difference "peach vs coconut":

https://impactgrouphr.com/individualpost/peach-vs-coconut-cr...

Love this! Thank you

A random stranger trying to strike up a conversation with me on the London underground has to be in my top three on the "most likely things to make me change trains at the next station" list.

The other two include knife crime and loudly reciting religious texts, backpack optional but considered. I dunno, just leave strangers alone, we're in that situation because we're busy doing something else.

I think this is largely a London thing rather than a UK thing.

I posted an app idea for this a few months ago to the subreddit "Startup_Ideas" and reading over the text now, it's definitely not perfect yet:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Startup_Ideas/comments/wxokww/mobil...

But surely there is some "QR City" app that could help make these talks with new people, easier, more frequent, socially normalized, and gamified! I'm kind of shocked still in 2022 when trying to get someone's contact info we do that dance of speaking digits, typing them in and txt'ing or calling to transfer our number vs. a QR scan.

"Picture a world where strangers are not as scary. People are not as isolated and alone. Instead of asking for someone's phone number, you just hold open your IRL Present app. It has a distinctive branding border around the QR so people know what it is when someone puts their phone out with that showing. Even shy people can just open their app and show a QR without saying a word."

I run "office hours" where anyone can book a call to chat, pair program or rant.

Come and say hi! https://sonnet.io/posts/hi/

Perhaps to highlight efforts in some threads here, I'm reading The Managed Heart by Arlie Hochschild. Besides considering emotional work, she speaks of feeling rules. The latter provides a term for rules of engagement, so to speak, we bring to incidental, causal and serious interactions. Based upon the view that emotions are socially-resolved, not merely interally-resolved, we never escape either emotional work or related rules of engagement.

Does someone have tips on how to start this type of conversations?

I usually like to talk with strangers, but I have no idea on how to start the conversation. I there any way to make it easier?

drinks. Probably controversial advice in our health conscious times but it's the worlds most successful and oldest social lubricant for a reason. Hit the local bar.

I wouldn't call them conversations, just interactions. Commenting on a shared situation is the normal way. Where I live it's pretty common that strangers speak to each other about what's going on if you're idling.

That was not an interesting read. The article stretches the information in the title over many pages, links to many studies, but ultimately provides no new insights.

It doesn’t even attempt to answer the question posed by the title, except through vague platitudes.

You are supposed to buy the book to know the secrets. :) The article is still useful as it does a decent job of busting popular social perceptions in the west that often prevent us from socialising even to make small talks with strangers. Ofcourse as an indian, I didn't find it much useful - I grew up watching my parent's generation interact and socialise with strangers whenever and wherever they travelled. So I too have inculcated that habit. But I do feel it is a dying skill (and it is nothing but that - a social skill that anyone can and should learn).

I'm just glad that HN salvaged the situation with the quality of the comments. Sometimes all we need is a good prompt.

Our friends understand us through half-sentences and poor phrasing and assume good intent. Talking to strangers requires accurate wording and well-formed, generally understood tone and facial expressions. At the very least, it's very good for learning to speak well. This is not mentioned in the article.

being able to talk to strangers in a way that is comfortable and interesting is a form of smartness in itself that should be self evident.

The prescribed meaning of 'smart' is often so narrow as to be quite dumb

I think you can subsume this under being more worldly, but talking to strangers means it gets a lot harder to become really ideological/partisan and looking down to other people.

Obama talked to strangers too. He wrote in his biography that this was a thing that he missed when he was a president ("random chat with a stranger on the sidewalk").

I'm going to answer "no." It's how you can answer all headline 'questions.'

That's Betteridge's law of headlines:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headline...

Unfortunately I have to be pretty intoxicated for this to happen, which isn’t making anyone smarter.

I tend to find riding a bus somewhere new I end up talking to someone chatty about the local area.

Title should have been - Why talking to strangers can make us wiser

What advice can you give on becoming better at small talk?

Same thing that makes you better at everything else: practice.

BTW VR is a great place to practise doing this.

I live in San Francisco and people don’t even say “excuse me” when passing closely by each other, let alone initiate small talk. It’s lame.

I thought we're not supposed to talk to strangers.

What happens if someone says "Fuck you... pay me if you want to get smarter?"

Which things from kindergarten should folks ignore next, since lately it feels like this poster is told they're a communist if they want to be paid, and a Nazi if they say they wouldn't do that if you paid me.

Be specific because I am on the autistic spectrum, and sometimes don't understand things from... and I'm squinting at the URL there... Wales or whatever.

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