Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

Twitter does not allow others to understand your deep thoughts and broad perspective. It only allows others to confirm how stupid they already think you are.

Apparently, it can be easy to forget that other people have minds with the same general capacities and experiences as your own. Once seen as lacking the ability to reason, to choose freely, or to feel, a person is considered something less than human.

Sit up straight and you’ll feel more proud of your accomplishments.7 Smile and you will feel happier.8 Even furrowing your brow, as if you are thinking harder, can lead you to actually think harder.

Others' minds will never be an open book. The secret to understanding each other better seems to come not through an increased ability to read body language or improved perspective taking but, rather, through the hard relational work of putting people in a position where they can tell you their minds openly and honestly.

It calls to mind a famous line of George Carlin's: "Have you ever noticed that everyone driving than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That is the essence of inhumanity.

Treating a mindless gadget as mindful can sometimes look a bit silly, but neglecting the mind of a sentient human or a potentially sentient animal is the essential ingredient for inhumanity.

No human being succeeds in life alone.

I couldn’t measure the angle of a roof if I had an hour and a handful of protractors, but both you and I can sense the angle of a person’s eyes down to decimal points within a split second, and can therefore easily figure out what someone else is looking at. Once two or more people are focused on the same thing, their minds start to merge,

The only difference in the way we make sense of our own minds versus other people’s minds is that we know we’re guessing about the minds of others. The sense of privileged access you have to the actual workings of your own mind—to the causes and processes that guide your thoughts and behavior—appears to be an illusion.

This is why those with greater social sensitivity have stronger friendships, better marriages, and are happier with their lives in general. At work, leaders do better when they have some sense of whether or not their instructions are being understood. Managers motivate their employees when they have some sense of what their employees want and need. Salesmen close more deals when they have some ability to know what their customers want and can modify their pitch accordingly. Most of us avoid getting into fistfights or looking like complete idiots because we have a reasonable sense of what others think and feel, and thus can manage our relationships reasonably well. Being able to understand others