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“Sometimes it is easy,” he said. “Other times it will be hard to sort out the right probabilities. Today, the news reported that teens who publicly commit to avoiding sex have more success in abstaining, compared to those who don’t. What would you conclude about the probabilities in that story?”

“Obviously it helps to make the public commitment. That improves your odds.”

“Perhaps. Or maybe the teens who wanted to abstain were the only ones who were willing to publicly commit. Or maybe the teens who made the public commitments were more likely to later lie about their rate of sex. Probability is simple but it is not always obvious.”

Relationships

The old man rocked some more and smiled at me. “You’re alone much of the time.”

He was right. I enjoyed being alone. I had friends, but I was always happy to get back home.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Your pupils widen when I talk about ideas.”

“They do?”

“There are two types of people in the world, my young friend. One type is people-oriented. When they make conversation, it is about people—what people are doing, what someone said, how someone feels. The other group is idea-oriented. When they make conversation, they talk about ideas and concepts and objects.”

“I must be an idea person.”

“Yes. And it causes trouble in your personal life but you don’t realize how.”

“That’s rather presumptuous of you. What makes you think I have trouble in my personal life?” I had to admit he was right. Everyone has an imperfect personal life, but for me that imperfection was almost a defining principle.

He continued, “Idea people like you are boring, even to other idea people.”

“Hey, I’m insulted,” I said, not really feeling so. “I will admit I’m not the life of any party. Whenever I try to inject something interesting into a conversation everyone gets quiet until someone changes the topic. I think I’m pretty interesting but no one else does. All of the popular people seem to babble about nothing, but I usually have something interesting to say. You’d think people would like that.”

“Actually, the popular people only seem to be babbling,” he countered. “In fact, they talk about a topic that everyone cares about; they talk about people. When a person talks about people, it is personal to everyone who listens. You will automatically relate the story to yourself, thinking how you would react in that person’s situation, how your life has parallels. On the other hand, if you tell a story about a new type of tool you found at the hardware store, no one can relate to the tool on a personal level. It is just an object, no matter how useful or novel.”

“Okay, so how do I become more interesting?”

“If I gave you advice, would you follow it?”

“Maybe. It depends on the advice.”

“No, you wouldn’t follow my advice. No one has ever followed the advice of another person.”

“Now you’re just being disagreeable,” I said. “Obviously people follow advice all the time. That’s not a delusion.”

“People think they follow advice but they don’t. Humans are only capable of receiving information. They create their own advice. If you seek to influence someone, don’t waste time giving advice. You can change only what people know, not what they do.”

“Okay then. Can you give me some information that would help my personal life?”