'Person Likes This Thing = Person Is Like This' - how accurate is this idea

How accurately can you tell what someone's like by, say, what books they like to read, what newspaper they habitually pick up, food, music, etc, etc?

Put that generally, and the answer is probably 'not at all', but I've been wondering lately whether it's possible with, say, some books and not others - or within certain locales, or in a certain decade.

I guess I'm also interested in the question because while I might find myself smirking at the idea that what car you buy defines you, I definitely also make assumptions about people based on their choices and can be quite disturbed by this tendency when I notice it.

Death to anyone who says this

i'd guess that amazon/google/facebook/timelord/et al. think that it is very possible to predict what someone will like based upon their existing habits and buying decisions.

i think yr taste in art has some bearing on some other aspects of yr character but then for one thing it's quite possible for different people to like the same thing for different reasons

i mean if you buy a lot of David Icke-y books you might just be into it for a laugh but it's fairly reasonable to draw certain assumptions about the kind of stupid idiot you are

I think there are people that are very outward about the things they like, to the point of accessorizing with those things, and if those things are very trendy and you have enough "data" you can make pretty good guesses about other other things they like from that information.

I guess it might sometimes be safe to infer other 'choices of thing' based on one 'choice of thing' a person made?

Well yeah, all you have is an anecdote until you get more info. True with anything.

Oh wait sorry I misread.

I don't think that's a safe assessment, no.

I've distrusted this line of thinking ever since I figured out fairly early in life that it was mostly a means of pitching inferior crap to people (eg. "If you liked HOME ALONE, you will love BABY'S DAY OUT!")

Though statistically that might be a perfect recommendation!

Fair enough. For me, it was probably more the difference between being 11 and being 15.

this thread makes me think of whiney g. all the way

Pierre Bordieu to thread

I mean c'mon guys this is totally true in some ways

ppl who like NPR tend to be more conservative; ppl who like fox news tend to be frightening; ppl who like Judith Butler tend to be feminists; etc

NPR = conservative? Thought NPR more = polite liberal.

wait yes thats what i meant

It seems a lot more difficult to argue against this. Like, if someone is wearing skinny jeans and a Pavement t-shirt they are prob more likely to be liberal and like indie rock and maybe Wes Anderson films or something than someone in overembellished distressed jeans and an Armani Exchange polo with a popped collar

none of these things actually tell you what they're like as a person though.

the fact that somebody may be liberal or conservative or a feminist does not tell you what their personality is like.

people who like cheech and chong movies are more likely to smoke grass are more likely to be melllooowwwww

If you only need 9 numbers to uniquely identify yourself, i think you could probably do the same with like say 6 things you like.

like if someone wrote, 'my favorite food is GAGH', then I would know you are Worf.

none of these things actually tell you what they're like as a person though.

the fact that somebody may be liberal or conservative or a feminist does not tell you what their personality is like.

― Shamrock Shoe (LocalGarda), Tuesday, June 25, 2013 3:25 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

exactly. there are a lot of different ways to locate character. cultural signifiers are kind of a way to ignore that imo.

i try not to judge people when they come in my store because its such a cliche for the used record store guy to judge you based on your tastes. having said that, i TOTALLY judge people when they come in my store and most people are really boring and lame.

you should post that on yr store's yelp page

what would you consider "bad taste"? i feel like basically every musician has had their defenders on ilm.

As I've gotten older - and maybe culture's changed so these signifiers carry a lot less weight too - I think less and less about other people's taste. When I was a kid it meant way too much looking back on it, cringeingly so. But then, what else do you have to define yourself when you're in school? And finding other really like-minded people felt so iportant then. As an adult, meeting new people mostly through work and friends-of-friends and through our kids, it seems like it would be ridiculous and kind of socially inept to worry to much about. But then - when you do find stuff you both like, it does tend to help cement a friendship, even now.

Also - I think ILM and other web stuff has shown me that people can be super smart and hilarious and cool and care passionately about stuff I have no interest in myself.

or total dicks and clueless and totally into the exact same stuff I like

i just don't want ppl to be militant about their tastes. and i would like them to have at least considered other possibilities, even if to reject them

what if you have a taste for being judgmental?

none of these things actually tell you what they're like as a person though.

the fact that somebody may be liberal or conservative or a feminist does not tell you what their personality is like.

But being conservative or liberal or feminist or bigoted etc is part of what a person is like, though, surely. It might not tell you whether they're kind, sunny in disposition, giving, intelligent, etc but it does tell you something about them. I mean, if it's true (and that's a big 'if') that liking Pavement means that someone is more likely to be left-leaning, that at least does show that someone's taste for Pavement tells you more about them than that they like Pavement. Still a big 'if' though.

it's not all dud. For instance, a shirt a fellow has on can make it quite easy to detect posers. In my line of work, posers are unacceptable and the problem can multiply if it is not addressed immediately. Posers must be beaten immediately or the consequences are dire.

After all, remember the slogan - "If the tee says Hatebreed, make his nose bleed"

Valid points.

"what would you consider "bad taste"? i feel like basically every musician has had their defenders on ilm."

nah, i'm not even talking about bad taste. most people with bad taste don't bother hanging out in a used record store. or if they come in they look at the small selection of compact discs i have and then leave quickly. i just end up judging the people who seem to have the SAME taste as so many other people. and i'm not talking about the taste for popular stuff that most of the world likes. those people don't come in the store much either. its some sort of liberal arts-approved taste in old stuff. safe taste. i can't help it. let's be blunt, i'm a freak. when it comes to art and music anyway. there are 17,456 people in the town i live in and there is nobody even remotely like me when it comes to music. i know cuz i would have met them by now. there are great people and cool people and people who like all sorts of stuff, but i only truly bond with omnivores like myself. or people with vast knowledge and obsessions that mirror my own. again, i can't help it. and i was being a little silly. i don't usually judge people. i'm happy if they buy anything! and most people are really nice. but it can be discouraging. i like to be surprised by people. and they don't surprise me that often. needless to say, it is not their job to surprise me.

and the people who wouldn't come in my store who have bad taste are just people who don't buy records. NPR people. people who like bad worldbeat fusion. chakra people. people who like bad drum n bass or bad dubstep. susan boyle fans. vegans.

Some people appear posers because they're newbies in some field of interest and haven't submerged deeply enough yet to distinguish themselves from that. I feel like people that want to brag about it are the ones accessorizing with something they think will make them look interesting to others. Yet sometimes even those people have real passion and will be embarrassed of themselves in hindsight, but they were excited that they had something to give them a sense of individuality.

NO. POSERS! REQUIRE! CORRECTIVE! ACTION!

http://s17.postimg.org/3zcxglen3/die_posers_die_2011_668x858.jpg

We live in a time when you're pretty much told from day one that you're not good enough, shouldn't like this, should like that, should be doing this, shouldn't be doing that.

So in this day and age I think you can maybe learn 2 things from somebody's habits:

- what they actually enjoy/resonate with - e.g. studying Eskimo culture, playing computer games, fishing, dancing, playing/following crown green bowling, trampolining, building lego, poetry, sleeping around, smoking, drinking, watching Teletubbies, listening to The Carpenters, pornography, buddhism ***

- what they are not naturally like but think they *should* be like - e.g. studying accountancy to get a lucrative career, reading recommended books to be perceived as intelligent and more knowledgable, weight training or martial arts to be perceived as tougher, running, playing/following football to be one of the lads, driving a BMW to be a "winner", following fashion so they are perceived as young and with it, being in a monogamous relationship, not smoking, not drinking, watching Hitchcock movies, listening to Metallica, Catholicism(e.g. because the wife's family is catholic)

Some people will be much more faithful to what they really like in their habits and others not. Many areas could fall under either category depending on the person. There will even be some overlaps in terms of should do/enjoy doing.
Rgeardless of all the exceptions, permutations, whatever, the point I'm trying to make is that I don't think what people are doing/reading etc necessarily tells you what they are like, but sometimes tells you what they *want* to be like, or at least feel they should be like.

*** disclaimer: those are *not* all the things I like, just a lot of examples I thought of.

it's always hard to figure out when you are being your authentic self, and when you are just trying to play the role of who you wish you were. this is because aspiring to be this other person -- this ideal self -- is a central trademark of your authentic self. also, in regard to what things are "pleasurable," there is a difference between immediate pleasures and more difficult pleasures... people who read difficult poetry or w/e questing after the latter are not necessarily faking it, even if at any given point what they *really* wish they were doing is watching porn and drinking sugary soft drinks.

The "authentic self" thing isn't that hard, but it does take practice.

i think there's usually a bit of mental tautology going on when we speak about adults acting "inauthentically". how many stamps do you have to collect before you're not just pretending to be a stamp collector? how many fist fights do you have to get into before you acknowledge that you're not just pretending to be a sociopath?

"We are who we pretend to be."

cf.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-cant-anyone-tell-im-wearing-this-business-suit,11185/

people who read difficult poetry or w/e... are not necessarily faking it, even if at any given point what they *really* wish they were doing is watching porn and drinking sugary soft drinks.

This person might conceivably read difficult poetry from 2-4 PM and then watch online porn from 8-10 (okay, realistically probably 8-8:15) PM, yes? It can be both/and?

sure

Maybe but surely it also depends on *why* the person is getting into the fist fights and stamp collecting. What are the driving forces behind those activities?
Are they doing it because they feel like it or because of other social/cultural drivers?
Maybe they're stamp collecting to impress a stamp collecting boss, or because there's a lot of money to be made doing it, or because somebody they want to be more like does it?
Perhaps they hate fist fights but are getting into them to defend an image they're sporting(e.g. haircut or Pavement t-shirt) because they think it's cool or will get them a particular girl/friend.
If they naturally like doing those things without any of those external drivers then yeah I'd agree that it's not about being a noob.

what is a "natural" motivation and what is an "external driver"? is it just pleasure -- like they get pleasure out of doing certain things and not other things? what about the fact that some people derive pleasure from being accepted by a community of likeminded people? how is this impulse less authentic?

"A person who wants to impress my boss" or "A person who does this thing to make money" are also types of ppl to be, though. It's not like every action we ever take is a key to our immutable self. It's fine to read a book because you think a certain kind of person reads that book--maybe you're someone who aspires to be someone who likes Updike. That's okay too. In some other area of life, you are something someone else aspires to be. It all works out.

I'm starting to come to terms with stuff like that. Always thought there had to be this static, unchanging self you had to stay true to, but who we are changes with the people in our lives, the moment we're living, the culture we're part of, etc. When you get down to it there doesn't seem to be much of this unchanging, authentic self aside from whatever the present moment is we're living, and that changes too.

It's hard to level with that when our culture tells us that we're supposed to be rugged, independent individuals who are expected to live above or apart from society in some way. It's like a message and an expectation that doesn't really match up with reality.

Yeah. Surprise.

spectrum and in orbit otm

Interesting ideas. I guess we all have very different ideas of "what someone's like". If your idea includes all the external influences then yeah obviously it's all going to be what they're like. That's not my idea of what a person is like though. It's what they're like plus what they've been changed into by external environment and circumstances.
In answer to what's natural movitation and what's an external driver: well to me it's simple - just what the person would really like to be doing(or enjoy doing) versus what they feel they ought to be doing. So Fred wakes up and it's a sunny day - he'd like to go and run naked outside, have a jump up and down on a trampoline listening to Britanny Spears and join a circus .... he ends up staying fully clothed, going to the supermarket, and studying an accountancy book.
Again, the community question really boils down to what your idea of what someone's like means. To me that's an external influence which could well make them behave in an unnatural way. If it's all one thing and that's a part of what they're like to you, then we've just got different ideas of what the question means.

I burnt down a church once so I could be more like Samoth, not due to my true desire to burn it down.

Geronibload your idea of what the person is like on the inside is begging a lot of questions. how do we know what somebody is like in any meaningful way except by what they do? if somebody says "in my head i'm a pirate captain" it would seem fairer to say they are a person who imagines being a pirate captain sometimes rather than that they are really a pirate captain on the down low. people's intuitions of themselves can also be mistaken. why is the wish or the daydream more authentic than the things a person does?

This seems like a civilian version of the "sellout" argument.

it's a version of the "i talk to lots of people at parties and do wild attention-seeking stuff because i'm secretly shy" argument

but tbh i don't really believe in the consistent authentic ongoing individual self, i just want to know what somebody who does believe in it thinks it looks like and how we can find out anything about it

external influences governing our behavior isn't inherently a 'bad' thing either. sometimes we need that outside voice to tell us that a certain aspect of ourselves is shitty.

I agree with Spectrum's take above.

i sort of believe in "authenticity", in that i think people can make authentic choices by maintaining an analytic distance from their environment, and trying to make decisions with as full a knowledge of the circumstances influencing their decision as possible. so in this sense, it's not about being true to some inner voice that always says the same things, but being discriminating about what voices to listen to. the "authentic self" is an always-changing self, i think, but one that at least aspires to live with a heightened sense of awareness.

Noodle,
While I agree it's hard to tell what a person's like other than through their actions, and who's to say if the dream is more authentic etc etc etc, those aren't the questions I was addressing. I was just trying to give my opinion on:
"How accurately can you tell what someone's like by, say, what books they like to read, what newspaper they habitually pick up, food, music, etc, etc?"

There's clearly a whole host of other debates to be had about the meaning of "what someone's like", whether there's a separate core self versus external influences, if influences can be good, but to be honest with you, I was just interested in giving my opinion on the original question. Debating this other stuff's like trying to catch a fart in a sieve and my head hurts already!

While a person's actions do reveal important facts about a person's thoughts and values, those actions must happen within constraints and limits that do not apply to one's thoughts and values.

You cannot even presume a consonance between a person's words and their thoughts, even though in theory these two will be more closely matched than any other pairing of someone's interior reality with external signs. It is especially important not to take the products a person consumes as a revelation of their inmost desires. Unless, of course, the person has an awfully narrow and stunted interior life.

you cannot presume a consonance between a person's thoughts and their thoughts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff%C3%A9rance

While a person's actions do reveal important facts about a person's thoughts and values, those actions must happen within constraints and limits that do not apply to one's thoughts and values.

You cannot even presume a consonance between a person's words and their thoughts, even though in theory these two will be more closely matched than any other pairing of someone's interior reality with external signs. It is especially important not to take the products a person consumes as a revelation of their inmost desires. Unless, of course, the person has an awfully narrow and stunted interior life.

otm

aimless is usually otm. usually

In conflicts with other people I've found it very useful to focus on their actions rather than whatever 'thoughts and values' they may or may not have, which seem almost unknowable really

I mention conflict there because 'we cannot know their thoughts and values' could be taken as letting Enemies off the hook, but in fact it's a good way to focus on the actual problem

I'm not articulating this very well, am I.

Person X comes along and steals all your stuff. This is bad, you don't want them stealing your stuff.

You can sit around thinking of what an awful soul they must have; but you can't know that.

They might be really nice on the inside. That option remains however bad their actions.

Neither 'they have an awful soul, fuck them' nor 'perhaps they're nice on the inside, and weep at the terrible things they do, I shd reach out to them' should be allowed to distract yr attention

from their actions.

I am drunk.

i make these kinds of judgments all the time and would be suspicious of someone who claimed not to

i think it works particularly well one way but not the other, in the sense that like the totality of your likes go a very far way in defining what kind of person you are, but it's not so reliable the other way, like you can tell if someone's a nerd if they like all kinds of nerdy shit but you can't say precisely what set of nerdy things a nerdy dude will like, not only because there's like an infinite number of nerdy things but also cause he'll have all kinds of dumb challops that he considers integral to his persona... and, like, the challops themselves are super revealing. take ilxors tastes in music for example, a lot of the pop trash we like is often in part a thinly veiled challop of oneupmanship over, like, corny indie dudes who only like the same indie rock bands as us, so you might conclude someone with ilxey tastes is above average self-regarding or judge-ey

there's an equal human impulse to return humanity to the depraved actor by understanding the dissonances between his soul and his works

xp

what % of your tastes can you account for from your environment, as expressing a fundamental, known element of yourself, and what % seem dislocated - loved but intangible and foreign to the self?

woah

do they have to sum to 100?

no way they can sum to whatever u want

ok are those three things? environment, fundamental element of self, intangible and foreign to the self?

two things but i don't have to take this 'thinly veiled challop of oneupmanship over a corny indie dude' that your stoneresque reflections on taste are superior to mine. if anything, i'd argue mine are even more thinly veiled and challopsy.

a lot of the pop trash we like is often in part a thinly veiled challop of oneupmanship over, like, corny indie dudes who only like the same indie rock bands as us, so you might conclude someone with ilxey tastes is above average self-regarding or judge-ey

speak for yourself, you don't know my life. everything i like is real. raw insight without the horse shit. no, i will NOT follow trolls. ilxor dot com. i live for this

xp hmmm i was actually legit trying to parse that & come up with an answer but having a hard time understanding any of your posts right now, tho tbf i didn't read the thread. also i see no reason we shouldn't be comfortable enough around each other to roll challops just fully unveiled

idk. some things i love and i've kinda sketched in the biographical details about why that is so. it has to do w/ what i heard growing up and the community i grew up in. or it has to do w/ some more intrinsic self-conception - who i am in the world - but still knowable and close. but some things i find repellent and i like them and some things seem completely at odds w/ any aesthetic or biographical truth i feel about myself and still they're amazing. or maybe it's all status games, biology, and capitalism. so i guess it was 3 different things.

Mordy, re the impulse to return humanity to the depraved actor - do you see this as a good impulse, or one we might want to curtail at times?

there's a story in the gemara about rabbi meir and his wife bruriah. she was considered a great scholar as well. one time she heard rabbi meir praying that his annoying neighbor dies. she taught him an interpretation of a verse in psalms that suggested we should pray for someone wicked to repent, not for their death.

their children died during the sabbath and she hid them from rabbi meir until she could comfort him. she asked him what the law was for someone who lent an object to someone else and asked for it to be returned. r' meir said of course they can ask to return it and then she showed the bodies to him. (ya know, god was the lender.)

they had a really tragic marriage tho. she once made fun of the saying that women are 'light-minded' and so he sent one of his students to seduce her and when he finally succeeded she killed herself in grief and he fled to babylon.

Fuck.

she taught him an interpretation of a verse in psalms that suggested we should pray for someone wicked to repent, not for their death.

I'm definitely for the former here.

Yeah but you cant make someone repent, but you can kill them handy enough.