I think the book is very polarizing. You either read it as “compassionate” or as “manipulative”. For me, I’ve often been teased for missing certain “obvious” g

I think the book is very polarizing. You either read it as “compassionate” or as “manipulative”. For me, I’ve often been teased for missing certain “obvious” gestures my whole life. But I’m not bad with people. Since I’m naturally an optimist and compassionate, I read it as the former category. It was helpful for me to help identify what behaviors I already do that I should reinforce to help strengthen my relationships with other people. I find a lot of self-help books are (sort of) “common sense” already, but that by reinforcing certain “nodes” in my brain’s “knowledge graph” I’m better able to reason about the knowledge later. Put another way, if I’m interested enough to read a book about making friends, by reviewing information about “successful patterns” to makes friends I’m better able to reason about _how I can make friends_. It isn’t manipulative to start a conversation in a coffee shop with somebody! (Unless I’m “manipulating” somebody by asking for their contact info..?)