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I spent a good five years of my career working (software consulting) at the Starbucks near my old house. As it turns out, the place was a hotspot for MLM pitche

I spent a good five years of my career working (software consulting) at the Starbucks near my old house. As it turns out, the place was a hotspot for MLM pitches (not generally directed at me, but it wasn’t hard to notice). Once or twice, I actually saddled up next to them after their original mark had left and got the pitch, although the conversation generally didn’t last too long when I started to ask for more details. One of the funnier ones ended something like: Me: So what exactly would I be selling? Or doing? That part isn’t clear yet. Him: Ok, let me ask you something. If I told you that you had to shovel cow manure for two years and then you got to retire with a good steady income for the rest of your life, would you do that? Me: does the job involve shoveling manure? Him: No. That’s an analogy. Me: Oh, so it’s not shoveling manure, but it’s like shoveling manure? Him: No no no it’s nothing like that. Me: Oh ok, so what would I be doing then…? And on and on… But, over time, you start to notice subtle tells, and can even see it as they’re walking across the parking lot. “Those folks are going to try to recruit someone into their MLM today!” I really wish I could nail down what exactly those tells are… but even years later, I was sitting having a coffee and my scammer alert went off at a couple walking across the parking lot and sure as shit they spent the following hour trying to recruit some kid. Edit: actually, to your point, is that little things are off. When they do actually talk about business, they use business words but they don’t mean quite the same thing they normally do. Or in the couple from this weekend, they were dressed up like… a stereotype of a “business couple”. Like if you learned how business people dress by watching TV. Just the details were off. He was wearing an expensive looking shirt with a decent tie, but with a spring (not suit) jacket that didn’t match the look, and dress shoes that were simultaneously too fancy to be comfortable on a Sunday afternoon and also too cheap looking to be something you’d wear to the office every day. She had the same kind of thing going on. Fancy frilly black dress with her hair done up (not something you’d normally just wear to Starbucks on a Sunday), but wearing very plain black flats that just didn’t match the fanciness of the dress. And something about her gait… like walking like someone who was trying to look confident? Weird stuff. I dunno.

robocat 5y ago
I know other people like you: extremely attuned to subtle signals and they turn out to be bang-on correct. It is a real sign of deep subconscious intelligence that your brain integrates the cues and surfaces the answer. Plenty of people think they are “intuitive” and can “read people”, but actually I think there are few people that are really genius at it. A genius will say it is obvious, because it is to them, and they might even latch onto some rationalisation about how they know. The rationalisations are sometimes not correct, but I suspect the extremely talented can even correctly explain the pattern they have identified. They make me feel like I have an IQ of about 60 . . . although I also believe you need to have some ability to even be aware of the truly skilled, so maybe I have some latent talent!
- tonyarkles 5y ago
  Hey, not to get too dark about this, but I'm going to offer an alternative hypothesis that isn't quite as rosy as your flattering interpretation: I grew up in an abusive alcoholic household. I had 18 years to really refine my "subtle cue" radar to try to guess whether or not it was going to be a calm night or a wild night of yelling and screaming. It's often not as conscious of a process as the situation this past weekend was. As a brutal example, I had a partner a long time ago who, as it turned out, was having an affair. I started having anxiety attacks but couldn't explain what they were about. In an attempt to try to figure it out, I kept a journal of my thoughts every time it happened, but I couldn't find any kind of correlation. At some point the attacks just stopped and I was happy... When the affair was finally revealed and after the dust had settled a bit, I pulled out my journal and we sat down together and put together a timeline. Every single anxiety attack lined up with one of the times she was out with the other guy, and I think we worked out that there was only one time they had been together where I didn't have an anxiety attack. Pretty much perfect correlation, but I had no clue _why_ it was happening until ~6 months after they had stopped the affair. At any rate, yeah, you're spot on about the tuning. It's definitely tough to rationalize what's going on sometimes, and it does definitely come from deep inside the subconscious. I'm just torn on whether I like it being characterized as a "deep subconscious intelligence" or whether it might be better called "a powerful survival mechanism refined by two decades of (mostly) verbal and (occasional) physical abuse"
  - robocat 5y ago
    Thank you for your story - it is an exact example of the talent and you don’t seem to know what the cues were. I guess the question is: do most people with abusive childhoods learn better spidy-senses? Perhaps you are exceptionally talented (smart) in that area. Is there a standardised test? How can you judge yourself against others? How do you go to a course to improve? I think of intelligence as the ability to integrate subtle information and come up with a correct answer. Intelligence is usually seen as something rational, but I certainly see it as mostly subconscious. I try to be broad minded when looking for smart people as some of the smartest don’t appear to be on the surface (hidden/crypto smarts): the skill to recognise subtle fashions, the skill to correctly read complex human situations, the skill of pruning, etcetera. Usually the skills are not taught, instead a brain just picks it up. If I wanted to get better at reading people, what do I need to do to get my brain tuned in? I know that the usual routes we are taught are poor: e.g. reading a book about how to ski.

robocat 5y ago

I know other people like you: extremely attuned to subtle signals and they turn out to be bang-on correct. It is a real sign of deep subconscious intelligence that your brain integrates the cues and surfaces the answer. Plenty of people think they are “intuitive” and can “read people”, but actually I think there are few people that are really genius at it. A genius will say it is obvious, because it is to them, and they might even latch onto some rationalisation about how they know. The rationalisations are sometimes not correct, but I suspect the extremely talented can even correctly explain the pattern they have identified. They make me feel like I have an IQ of about 60 . . . although I also believe you need to have some ability to even be aware of the truly skilled, so maybe I have some latent talent!

tonyarkles 5y ago
Hey, not to get too dark about this, but I'm going to offer an alternative hypothesis that isn't quite as rosy as your flattering interpretation: I grew up in an abusive alcoholic household. I had 18 years to really refine my "subtle cue" radar to try to guess whether or not it was going to be a calm night or a wild night of yelling and screaming. It's often not as conscious of a process as the situation this past weekend was. As a brutal example, I had a partner a long time ago who, as it turned out, was having an affair. I started having anxiety attacks but couldn't explain what they were about. In an attempt to try to figure it out, I kept a journal of my thoughts every time it happened, but I couldn't find any kind of correlation. At some point the attacks just stopped and I was happy... When the affair was finally revealed and after the dust had settled a bit, I pulled out my journal and we sat down together and put together a timeline. Every single anxiety attack lined up with one of the times she was out with the other guy, and I think we worked out that there was only one time they had been together where I didn't have an anxiety attack. Pretty much perfect correlation, but I had no clue _why_ it was happening until ~6 months after they had stopped the affair. At any rate, yeah, you're spot on about the tuning. It's definitely tough to rationalize what's going on sometimes, and it does definitely come from deep inside the subconscious. I'm just torn on whether I like it being characterized as a "deep subconscious intelligence" or whether it might be better called "a powerful survival mechanism refined by two decades of (mostly) verbal and (occasional) physical abuse"
- robocat 5y ago
  Thank you for your story - it is an exact example of the talent and you don’t seem to know what the cues were. I guess the question is: do most people with abusive childhoods learn better spidy-senses? Perhaps you are exceptionally talented (smart) in that area. Is there a standardised test? How can you judge yourself against others? How do you go to a course to improve? I think of intelligence as the ability to integrate subtle information and come up with a correct answer. Intelligence is usually seen as something rational, but I certainly see it as mostly subconscious. I try to be broad minded when looking for smart people as some of the smartest don’t appear to be on the surface (hidden/crypto smarts): the skill to recognise subtle fashions, the skill to correctly read complex human situations, the skill of pruning, etcetera. Usually the skills are not taught, instead a brain just picks it up. If I wanted to get better at reading people, what do I need to do to get my brain tuned in? I know that the usual routes we are taught are poor: e.g. reading a book about how to ski.