I don't think that my case mirrors yours, and I can think of at least three tangible differences between the most recent situations I've been in that are even close.
But people often use the same habits for wide classes of situations. And I still feel like your reactions to things differ slightly from my hypothetical reactions, which is really what I'm curious about.
Like, when you ignored the e-mail, did you think, "I don't care that much about that stuff, and I'd really rather not deal with all that." then close it and never open it again? (Underlying assumption: do you usually have verbal thought processes? Or even explicit thought processes about these things?)
By the way thank you for continuing to respond.
I don't think that my case mirrors yours, and I can think of at least three tangible differences between the most recent situations I've been in that are even close.
Good. I was worried by the "It saddens me to think..." sentence that you were taking it to heart.
Like, when you ignored the e-mail, did you think, "I don't care that much about that stuff, and I'd really rather not deal with all that." then close it and never open it again? (Underlying assumption: do you usually have verbal thought processes? Or even explicit thought processes about these things?)
Yes, I have an inner monologue, and yes, I did have more or less that reaction.
The other day, someone did something I didn't expect. It was something many people have done before; something that I thought of as very normal, but that I in no way understood and had not predicted.
As I said, this had happened many time before, so I wrote it off as "me not understanding people" or "people are weird" for a second, like I usually do, before realizing that "bad at" really means "lacking basic knowledge", which I had never realized before.
And then I thought "I should ask someone who is different from me why people do that, and eventually someone will have an answer."
But many people will have many more questions like this. So, what have you observed people doing time and time again, but never understood? Or something that you only understood after a long time or asking someone about it?
And can Less Wrong tell us, not necessarily why (I for one can make up evolutionary psychology fairy tales all day if I want) but what conscious thought process occurs behind these events?