Blake Eastman: See People, Read People [The Knowledge Project Ep. 185]

Shane Parrish: I want to start with how I can improve my ability to read nonverbal cues.

Blake Eastman: Okay, that’s a process; all right? … It starts with evaluating how you process behavior as it is, so it starts with your default approach. So the problem is this: we go … through life, we have this neural net in our head, and it’s based on a past model of all the interactions that we’ve had. And the truth is [that] you have to understand how much you’re wrong before you can improve the accuracy of what you’re right on. So there’s a lot of pop science stuff or cultural biases or just experiences in your life that shifted the way that you view things, and the first [step] is acknowledging all of that. That’s the first step, which is a pretty robust process, which I’ll talk about; [it’s] really looking at your perspective for life and how you view social interactions.