There are some people I engage with regularly, either because I expect doing so to leave us better off (for example, because I ordinarily enjoy interacting with them, or we can learn something from one another, or etc.) or because I've gotten into the habit and have not yet really noticed that our interactions are no longer providing value, or because I fear the costs of breaking contact are more than I want to pay in the short term despite probably leaving me better off in the long term.
Again, the set of circumstances that can lead me to those expectations are many and varied.
I don't mean "to respond regularly" I mean "to make some statement about ceasing interaction."
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?