I am not arguing with you since I agree. I am just saying you are going after the extreme and ignoring the much more useful and mundane aspects to non-verbal co

I am not arguing with you since I agree. I am just saying you are going after the extreme and ignoring the much more useful and mundane aspects to non-verbal communication. All I am saying is that there are non-verbal components when two or more people are communicating and it is useful to pay attention to it. Being aware of these allow you to be sensitive to the emotional undertones, something whose usefulness should not be discounted. Basically empathizing. And I too think NLP or stuff like - if someone looks left twice while blinking their nose - is complete garbage. I am not defending extremes like NLP or the far out profiling where you try to get in the mind of someone. By profiling - maybe I mislabelled it - I mean basic stuff that every police officer is trained to look for as indicators of nervousness or over defensiveness (indicators but not conclusive proof - a person might just be easily jarred). Certainly bluffing and reading tells are overstated but that does not mean they are useless and can't be used to a good level by expert players (as an aside making a bot that plays good poker is my hobby so I agree on the power of finding patterns in data as key and those who use holdem manager can also attest). Also by tells I mean little things that your mother or S.O. will know about you when you are thinking, nervous, excited etc. Consider, if someone you know is yelling with an angry tone can you tell if they are pretending to be angry or are really angry with good confidence? The same sentence read differently can have a world of difference. When you see someone can you have a good idea if they are confident? Stuff like downward gaze, slouched shoulders, shaky voice are the signals I speak of, any one of which may not be useful but taken together push you firmly into a certain distribution. You control this and you can have an influence on how people perceive you. No need to seek to NLP nonsense.