I don't really get you
But maybe that's good
People come in and out of our lives while we remain the constant. I thought about this recently when a friend I had begun to grow close with and I had to cut off our relationship because of another conflicting relationship. I’ll save that story for another time.
This experience prompted me to reflect on how we decide on who we let into our lives and who we let out. It all starts with a first encounter and the best tool we have, conversation. When you first meet someone, you have no model from which to calibrate. No instrument from which to gauge expectations versus reality. So we begin with something of a base model. Maybe it’s the average of all previous conversations you’ve had with everyone you’ve ever met, with room for snap intuitional judgements as you approach this new person — the equivalent of reading a book by its cover. No greeting smile, expect a serious person. Weak handshake, passivity. Then the magic begins: conversation. As new information leaks in through the back-and-forth, you adjust your prior in real-time as you continue to develop a unique model of your interlocutor.
You leave that first encounter with some variably-reliable approximation of the person. It allows you to run a simulation. You have some idea of how that person will behave in certain situations and respond to certain questions. No longer must you rely on your blunt base model.
On second encounter, that person will now be measured against your updated model. As per last encounter, new information will lead to iteration. As your model of that person improves, it should better predict what that person will say and do. It provides you a better map of the territory.
This continues. With each successive encounter, the possibility of anomalous behavior dwindles as you narrow into a more high-fidelity representation of how that person should act. This applies to most, which is why I’m always intrigued when I meet someone for whom this doesn’t apply. Someone who evades any attempt to pin down. I like meeting people like that. People who continue to surprise. It’s those very people who I’m always, paradoxically, most interested in understanding enough to forge mental models and simulate. They’re unpredictable, multidimensional, responsive. They keep you on your toes. They also offer the most complex sparring partners from which to stress test your own thinking. They make you understand yourself more fully in the process of understanding them.