The new message, a museum director told me, was “Never mind the polar bears. Concentrate on how bad it’s going to be for you.”
“Pronin calls this phenomenon the “illusion of asymmetric insight.” She writes: The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.”
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
“We have come as far as we have because we are the cleverest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. But if we are to continue to exist, we will require more than intelligence. We will require wisdom.”
― A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
― A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
“To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.”
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
“The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. The same convictions can make us reluctant to take advice from others who cannot know our private thoughts, feelings, interpretations of events, or motives, but all too willing to give advice to others based on our views of their past behavior, without adequate attention to their thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and motives. Indeed, the biases documented here may create a barrier to the type of exchanges of information, and especially to the type of careful and respectful listening, that can go a long way to attenuating the feelings of frustration and resentment that accompany interpersonal and intergroup conflict.”
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
“Just sitting quietly, doing nothing at all, your brain churns through more information in thirty seconds than the Hubble Space Telescope has processed in thirty years. A morsel of cortex one cubic millimeter in size—about the size of a grain of sand—could hold two thousand terabytes of information, enough to store all the movies ever made, trailers included, or about 1.2 billion copies of this book.”
― The Body: A Guide for Occupants
― The Body: A Guide for Occupants
Apocalypse Whenever
— 13988 members
— last activity 5 minutes ago
The most active group for apocalyptic and dystopian stories! Join a monthly book discussion, get recommendations, or just tell us if you like canned p ...more
Dave’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Dave’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Adult Fiction, Book Club, Classics, Contemporary, Ebooks, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Paranormal, Politics, Science fiction, Suspense, Travel, and War
Polls voted on by Dave
Lists liked by Dave












































