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The One Thing That Can Tell You A Lot About A Person
How many traits do you need to observe to tell what type of a person someone is?
It is easy to make a list of things. But the longer the list, the more we include our idealistic expectations, including traits that in theory we think would tell us about a person, but which in practice only tell us what they’d do when all things are equal.
“If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The number one thing, for me, is how someone behaves when under pressure. That’s what actually tests the stuff people are made of.
Under normal circumstances, people will adopt moral standards that align with acceptable behaviors. These include the traits we expect to be tellers of human character. But in concrete situations, especially those that put them under some form of pressure, most will loosen up and act contrary to these moral standards.
