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?
I fantasize about horrific situations to subject fictional characters to. This I recently recognized as being due to my long-term work on decompartmentalizing new information. Essentially I find rules of the fictional realm, put them together in ways not intended by the original author, and get the small rush of self-congratulations for "taking an idea to its logical conclusion." This results in being "too realistic" for many fantasy settings. On the other hand, it is why rationalist fiction so pleases me - it reminds me of how I think!
Depending on what you mean by "horrific situation" you may have a psychological condition known as "author".