HackerNews Readings: Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

All Time Past 6 Months

Propaganda

Edward Bernays and Mark Crispin Miller

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions

Gayle Laakmann McDowell

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

Nadia Eghbal

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

Camille Fournier

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Open: An Autobiography

Andre Agassi, Erik Davies, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Roger Fisher , William L. Ury, et al.

4.6 on Amazon

6 HN comments

Lonesome Dove: A Novel

Larry McMurtry

4.8 on Amazon

6 HN comments

The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness

John Yates , Matthew Immergut , et al.

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Tufte and Edward R.

4.6 on Amazon

5 HN comments

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

4.5 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

Malcolm Gladwell and Hachette Audio

4.5 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline, Wil Wheaton, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

4.3 on Amazon

5 HN comments

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

Clayton M. Christensen, L.J. Ganser, et al.

4.5 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything

BJ Fogg Ph.D

4.7 on Amazon

5 HN comments

Prev Page 6/58 Next

Sorted by relevance

jvanderbotonMar 28, 2021

I can't recommend Talking to Strangers enough. We have a crippling inability of people to read strangers correctly. In addition to amazing testimony and evidence, great case studies, the production quality of the audiobook is like a good podcast.

jkhdigitalonJune 11, 2021

Reminds me of the characterization of Harry Markopolos in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers.

His takeaway is that society is a pretty bleak place when we all lose our “default to trust” mode of operation.

CalChrisonJune 16, 2021

Talking To Strangers was a choice for Zoom book club I was in during the shutdown. I was looking forward to it a little since I recognized but didn't know the name. I couldn't make my way through it and dropped out.

He has a New Yorker writing style but without having anything to say.

sjg007onJune 16, 2021

That style of policing was popular before Gladwell. It was Giuliani who really doubled down on it in NYC as the exemplar.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

It is also known as stop and frisk. This type of policing has also been adopted to traffic stops as well and arguably has lead to warrior cop policing.

Gladwell discusses the implications of this in Talking to Strangers.

So if you want a perspective on guns, gun violence, policing from the 1970s until today, I recommend it.

specialistonJune 16, 2021

Just finished Talking to Strangers. That's an unfair ungenerous depiction, by omission. Specifically, the punch line.

Wide spread cargo cult adoption of Kansas City's policing strategy ignored the science, explaining why few reproduced KC's successes, with all sorts of terrible consequences, resulting many senseless deaths, and destroying trust and legitmacy of policing.

Just another tale of bad policy, unintended consequences, railing against entrenched dogma.

In this case, Gladwell's quixotic suggestion is to step back, reassess, try again. Daylighting the science during this cycle of turmoil seems reasonable. Might even help.

What more could he do? What would you do?