Judge Or Predict?

Are you a good judge of character?

Are we supposed to judge? Aren’t we supposed to avoid judging others so as not to bring judgement upon ourselves?

In reality, there’s actually no solid way to judge a person’s character accurately all the time.

Humans are like a body of flowing water and nobody is the same from moment to moment.

Indeed there are some stable characteristics that create unique personalities, but that’s how far stable each person is.

To imagine that we can safely judge anyone’s character accurately is to declare that we like to set people up to act a desired way – manipulation.

Interestingly, you can pay close attention to how similar the human motives have been overtime and how stable these motives have remained throughout the different societies.

From there, you are better able to make decently accurate predictions of what any human’s character (re)constitution is going to be under certain circumstances.

This relieves you from the burden of having to constantly separate judgement from predictive capabilities.

What’s the difference? When you correctly establish the similarities of human motives, and you understand the dynamics of any particular circumstance, then you are focused on what anyone at all could possibly do under these circumstances, not just what a particular person would do; sort of an effortless broadening of perspective.

Being able to separate judgement from predictive capabilities spares us a lot of biases and unnecessary complexities. For starters, judgment is something that can mostly be best applied in retrospect after many constants have been established.

If you’re thinking futuristic, your goal is to put your predictive abilities ahead of your judging abilities. Prioritizing your predictive capabilities allows you a mental flexibility that can help you to spot fallacies and avoid extremes when addressing any situation.

Can we be great judges of character? Maybe. Can we certainly rely on our projected judgement? Sometimes. But when we’re judging we need to pay the most attention to our process of arriving and our own personal character.