[ExI] Survival

[PJ Manney]

On Jan 4, 2008 2:30 PM, Vladimir Nesov <robotact at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not at all clear to me that this works. Are there experiments
> that show that such assessment is better than random?

If you went statistically, the aggregate doesn't test more than
randomly, although some individuals are very good at it and others
very bad.  There is data on this and Gladwell's Blink goes into it.
But I've met people who are amazing, like police detectives.  I had
one in my office when I was a movie exec many years ago and he
deconstructed me down to an inch of my life.  It was a gas.  It's part
training and part wiring (analysis is what attracts them to the job in
the first place), but a few detectives I've known are some of the best
cold readers I've ever seen.  They're consciously picking up clues,
discarding what appears to them as dissembling, etc.  they've learned
to get rid of as much of their own garbage that obscures their view
and have met such a variety of people, their mileage outstrips most
anyone.

PJ