We have a default to truth: our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are honest.

cost or sacrifice, into the familiar and the known, and we can’t.

Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.

the terrible false jollity that comes at you from every side, braying about goodwill and peace and family fun, makes loneliness and depression particularly hard to bear.

We think we can transform the stranger, without

To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative—to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception—is worse.

What is required of us is restraint and humility.

Puzzle Number Two: How is it that meeting a stranger can sometimes make us worse at making sense of that person than not meeting them?