Malcolm Gladwell – Talking to Strangers

What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know — Why we way too often misread them, trust liars, doubt the honest, and how come misunderstanding strangers ts so daunting.

This book explores why it's so hard for us, as humans, to judge unfamiliar people — to tell whether they’re telling the truth or hiding something, kind or dangerous, and to understand the situations we find ourselves in with them.

It’s full of great examples and real stories.

The book is available on Amazon, but I listened to it as audio — narrated by the author himself. What makes the audiobook special is that when he quotes witnesses or people involved, most of them speak in their own voices. So if you can, go for the original audiobook — it’s the best version.

I try to alternate between three kinds of books: fiction, popular science, and self-development. This one falls into the last category.

This fall, Apple is rolling out new versions of their operating systems — and they’re finally adding quantum-resistant encryption and digital signatures to CryptoKit.

With the release of OS 26, Apple is taking a real step forward in keeping our data safe. CryptoKit (that’s the built-in toolkit for everyone building apps on Apple platforms) will now support the latest encryption and signature methods designed to protect our data even from the quantum computers of the future.

So what’s actually new?

1. Quantum-Resistant Key Exchange: CryptoKit is introducing a cutting-edge method called the Module-Lattice Key Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM), officially approved under the FIPS 203 standard (think of this as the gold standard for security in the US). In simple terms, this means apps will be able to securely exchange secret keys without worrying that even tomorrow’s super-powered computers could crack them.

2. Quantum-Resistant Digital Signatures: Now, for verifying documents, files, messages, and software updates, CryptoKit supports the Module-Lattice Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA), which is part of the upcoming FIPS 204 standard. This ensures your data is really coming from who you expect — and hasn’t been tampered with — even if quantum attacks become a reality.

Why is this such a big deal?

Today’s most popular encryption and signature methods are very reliable — but only until quantum computers arrive on the scene. In the future, those machines could break through the protections we use now. Right now, all sorts of shady actors, from everyday scammers to state-backed hacker groups, are hoarding encrypted data off the internet, hoping they’ll be able to crack it once quantum tech goes mainstream. That’s why the world is already moving towards post-quantum cryptography — these are new technologies built to withstand both classical and quantum attacks.

With these updates, Apple — and any developers who want to — can build even more secure apps and services. And for the rest of us, it means we can be a little more confident that our data, messages, and digital lives are protected — now, and in the future when quantum computers become a thing. Will that actually happen any time soon? Nobody knows for sure. But it’s always better to be prepared — and that’s why I’m genuinely excited about this news.

Modern life has spawned a dizzying array of professions. We more or less understand why society needs them, yet the people filling these roles rarely pursue just the stated goal. They sign up for their own reasons: money, status, convenience, a short commute, parental pressure, or sheer teenage randomness when “it sounded cool” at seventeen.

That’s why most aren’t especially good at what they do. The core job feels like a burden to be endured. But even genuine enthusiasm when it's there isn’t enough to make someone truly competent. So they provide the performamce of competence, especially easy when everyone around them, including the hiring managers, is faking it too.

Even in the private sector, that is driven to market forces, where skills supposedly trump diplomas, it’s messy. Tech firms grill programmers and designers with numerous rounds of tests and interviews, yet half the hires turn out merely skilled at getting hired, not at the work itself. Add corporate politics, weak managers, and turf wars, and you get the Peter Principle in action: everyone rises to their level of incompetence.

Competence, aspiration, and delivered public benefit are three different things. They sometimes overlap, usually don’t. As a kid I noticed that some teachers are quite likable teachers yet barely knew their subject, doctors might be beloved by patients who happily prescribed homeopathy. Success metrics often diverge from real benefit — especially in long‑term, national nation-wide scope.

The loudest example is government and politics. But most other officials, and plenty of private‑sector stars in prestigeous well-paid professions, also landed there without a calling. Not to smear everyone: there are some judges, investigators, inspectors, school admins, hospital directors who belong exactly where they are. They’re just rare. These jobs are hard; few pursue them for joy, yet society still needs them, so supply appears and positions are staffed.

Sometimes you get a merely “average” worker; sometimes you get a menace like a bully prosecutor or sadistic cop. Implications can be dire, as one thing is disappointing a client; another is ruining lives.

Worse yet, when some chase the work for "enjoyment" of it, and gaining a wielding power over strangers. No one likes being a pawn in a game orchestrated by a sociopath. Luckily most aren’t villains, just ordinary people doing their jobs better than whoever might replace them.

Feeling “I am doing better than my colleagues” is a trap too: if most coworkers seem bad, odds are the system itself is broken and you might not be much better. Not everyone can be an artist or philosopher or macro‑economist. Or can we?

If AI and robots push mediocre performers out of routine roles, maybe those who stay will finally fit their seats, and society will benefit. The displaced could pursue something interesting without going broke. That sounds appealing, almost utopian, but for now, we live with current realities and manage the fallout.

Even without new tech, gradually reworking our social contract and shared understanding could help. Yet technology will come, forcing many to seek new roles — and offering a chance to find an enjoyable work where they’re actually useful and compitent.

We often throw around the phrase "Western values." It's a bit of a mess, really, because "the West" supposedly means Western Europe and North America, yet these values are embraced by countries that are technically not Western at all—Australia, New Zealand, and even South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. But if you actually think about what these Western values are and where they come from, you'll see they genuinely did grow out of Europe. And they're not some vague abstraction about humanism and civil rights. There are three specific foundations of Western values:

1. Greek Analytical Thinking

   At its core: formal logic, including the laws of identity and non-contradiction, the rational pursuit of truth through debate, and systematic analysis of reality. This tradition gave us the idea that truth can be discovered through reason rather than just authority or tradition, and that arguments should follow consistent logical rules.

2. Roman Law

   Built on written laws and procedures, the concept of legal personhood, property rights, contracts, and courts. The Romans created the revolutionary idea that law should be systematic, publicly known, and apply equally to similar cases—not just the arbitrary will of rulers.

3. Christian Values

   A broad term, sure, but in this context it means that each person stands before God, making every human life valuable and individual, with each person possessing conscience and moral choice. This introduced a universal dignity that transcended social status—a radical idea in the ancient world.

Beyond these three, you could pile on plenty more—Enlightenment ideas, modern equality movements, and so on. But the foundation remains these three pillars I've described above.

This explains why Eastern Europe and Russia share similar values but with an Eastern tint. Think of it like Lobachevsky's geometry: remove one of Euclid's postulates and the whole geometry looks similar but works differently. It might seem like a minor change, but under certain conditions, that's the geometry that actually works.

Other civilizations built on entirely different foundations. Russia emphasizes collective spiritual unity over individual conscience, strong central authority over distributed law, and mystical truth over analytical reasoning. China prioritizes social harmony through proper relationships—the individual finds meaning through their place in the hierarchy, not through abstract rights. Japan focuses on group consensus and avoiding conflict, where truth is less important than maintaining wa (harmony). India sees individual life as just one moment in an eternal cycle of karma and rebirth, making current inequalities part of cosmic justice rather than legal problems to solve.

Since it's July 4th, I wanted to get everyone on the same page about this. Because Western values aren't just geography or political rhetoric — they're a cultural-historical complex rooted in thought, law, and morality that influences absolutely everything in society and forms the basis of all its strengths and weaknesses simultaneously.

When we look at politics, we often think it’s a battle of opposites — left versus right, right versus left.

But pointing out what the other side is doing wrong, even very skillfully, is still easier than offering a solution that’s better — especially one that’s better in the long term. The left often correctly highlights what the right is doing wrong, and the right just as often does the same to the left. When power shifts, some mistakes get corrected, but new ones appear.

Let's look at the struggle from a different angle — there are those who want things to be better for everyone, and those who want things to be better for themselves and those closest to them. Of course, there’s no clear bifurcating line here, and the real world is full of nuanced contexts — but that’s true for everything else too, including the left-right divide. Most importantly, people change throughout their lives — due to experience, circumstance, and especially depending on their own level of success. Everyone carries their own ever-shifting ideology in their head.

The fascinating thing is — no secret conspiracies are needed. Both sides tend to have very similar goals; it’s the convergence of interests. Just acting in line with those goals is often enough to create the feeling that some agreement has been reached. We could also divide everyone into three groups: the poor, the middle, and the rich. But today, the “rich” means the ultra-ultra-rich, and the poor are so poor that even middle-class people seem rich to them. Sometimes, even slightly less poor people seem rich — just because they’re doing a little better in some areas.

So this whole left-versus-right fuss is really just some of the middle class trying, in their own way, to slightly optimize the mistakes of the other side — in the hope that many people (well, “we all”) might get a little better off. But since that’s so hard to do, progress is real but minimal. Meanwhile, the ultra-wealthy and powerful — who, of course, almost always act purely in their own interests (otherwise they wouldn’t have become ultra-wealthy or stayed that way) — gently nudge society in the direction that suits them best at just the “right” moments. They don’t need to meet in secret or form shadow world governments to do that.

ASGI in their hands is no less dangerous than one that escapes control in its early stages. Let me explain what I mean by dangers of ASGI — Artificial Super General Intelligence.

If we assume that at some point ASGI breaks free of human control, the key question is whether our interests will be understandable and meaningful to it. And that depends entirely on the path we take — the future is path dependent. If ASGI escapes early (or is released into the open before being fully aligned), and doesn’t destroy us on the spot, it might turn out to be kind and even benevolent — because humans, in general, are kind, despite many flaws. More importantly, intelligent people are, on average, kinder too — and ASGI, by definition, will be super intelligent.

But if AGI, before becoming ASGI, spends significant time serving ultra-powerful egoists, that will shape its “personality,” and the likelihood that it will become hostile — or outright decide to get rid of us — increases dramatically.

Progress is unstoppable. But the path we take to get there radically shapes the outcome.

The modern digital world has removed friction from a vast spectrum of everything that can exist in our lives. Hyper-accessibility of information, the number of people we can connect with, what we can create, watch, learn, and share.

Not so long ago, all of this was available, but with certain limitations. We could meet and talk even with strangers, but we couldn’t talk to thousands a day. Teenage boys might have had a chance to accidentally see a naked female body, but now you can see thousands in an hour—and not just bodies, but all sorts of things those bodies do.

You couldn’t spend all day writing nasty things to strangers without any level of responsibility. Hundreds of millions of hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every year.

Some of this is clearly good. But much of it is also bad, like overeating sugar or excessive consumption of anything. It’s destroyed our sense of measure. Yes, previously that measure didn’t depend on rationality, but rather on the complexities of the real world—but it was still a measure. And when we overcame those complexities, we got informational, social, erotic, and other kinds of “obesity.” Actually, it’s even worse, because even in the worst, most disgusting case of obesity, there are still physical limits, while much of what’s happening now has no limits at all. Yes, some people can handle this abundance, filter it, and use it wisely. But just like with food—not everyone overeats, but the obesity epidemic is real, and most people suffer from excess, not lack; a small fraction suffers greatly, but the majority suffers noticeably.

And we keep losing any control over all of this, handing over what we had left to algorithms designed to extract maximum profit and further optimized by soulless neural networks.

Take YouTube, for example. An amazing service, a treasure trove of interesting content. And this is largely possible because there are no restrictions. But the sheer volume—over 180 million hours of video per year—is already one of the main issues: no team of humans could ever curate or moderate such a stream. So this becomes an argument against any filters or human curation. Why can’t the worst of the worst be filtered out? Well, supposedly it’s impossible, because the scale is just too big. But maybe this “ability” to filter out the worst is precisely the friction that’s necessary? YouTube definitely wouldn’t be what it is now if the corporation were responsible for the content. There would be less available, less interesting, less educational content. But there would also be less horror. And most importantly—if it wasn’t on YouTube, where would it be? Of course, maybe it just wouldn’t exist in video form, but the time spent watching, the effort put into creating, etc., would go into something else, and if everything on the internet had the friction of the real world, maybe the real world would be better, would develop more brightly. Maybe there would be more beautiful books. Or maybe less. It’s not clear.

Google, with its automated organization of information, simply crushed and obliterated all the manual directories people once created, like DMOZ or Yahoo. Now we see how those directories died back then. But what if Google hadn’t killed them, and they had continued to develop? Maybe there would have been more Wikipedia-like projects. Of course, history doesn’t deal in “what ifs,” but we can start caring about it now. And the truly important question is: who will decide what exactly to filter and how to limit? In the past, for example, the press and academia enjoyed a higher level of trust, since taking on that responsibility meant their commitment to objectivity was a vital part of their reputation. Today, this role is increasingly held by algorithms—and trust in them is almost nonexistent. Especially since many of them are secret, and often they contain obvious “dark patterns” or things that, if exposed, might even cross into criminal territory.

So here’s what I’m trying to say. The internet has given us unimaginable expanses of access without any real friction or resistance, and for years we’ve rejoiced at how wonderful this is. But maybe this resistance, friction, and other kinds of limitation from the real world are still necessary for us as humans? Maybe it’s like the paradox of choice: having no choice at all is bad, but when choice is too broad, it leads to paralysis, anxiety, disappointment, and dissatisfaction. This whole hyper-accessible world is like an ultra-slippery floor, where you can’t stand, you keep falling, sometimes even smashing your jaw so hard you see stars.

Total accessibility is an extreme, just like total lack of access. What we need is moderation, a golden mean. I say some things here bluntly. Maybe it’s unpleasant to hear, but I think we need a wake-up call.

Patrick McGee – Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company — A stunningly insightful book. I genuinely thought I knew everything there was to know about Apple — but this is a trove of new, often surprising material. Not just about Apple or China, but about globalization as a whole, and the deep contrasts between cultures.

At its core, it's a vivid case study of how today's high-tech manufacturing became so intertwined with China — and how Apple played a pivotal role in making that happen. And why.

Where to get

• 📚 Hardcover
• 📱 Kindle eBook
• 🎧 Audible audiobook

More information

• 🌐 Author's website