Can we imagine other people complexly, and what stops us?
Since 2008 John has said it is very hard to imagine others as they imagine themselves; stories, poetry and listening help him, and in 2025 he still called the effort worthwhile. Hank has urged understanding people complexly since 2009 and in 2016 called it really hard yet what the world needs; labels, brief comments and tribal instincts get in the way.
Axis: yes, with effort and exposure ... we mostly fail; others stay projections
Concept: perspective-taking
Positions by date: 69 records in 69 videos. The position was refined (2023, 2024), never reversed, in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-08-26 | first on record | John argues that the narrating Holden's story makes readers listen, empathize and realize he is a person in the same way that we are. | The Catcher in the Rye, Part 2 00:03:15 |
| 2008-10-17 | restate | John says Paper Towns is about people misimagining each other, and that it is very difficult to imagine another person as they imagine themselves. | Vital Status Report from NYC 00:00:29 |
| 2008-11-05 | restate | John says Paper Towns' characters fail to find Margo because they see only reflections of themselves, and that poor political discourse results from failing to imagine what it is like to be other people. | On Loving One Another or Dying 00:02:24 |
| 2009-02-10 | restate | John argues that imagining someone as more than a person (Edward Cullen-izing, Alaska-izing, Margo-izing) does them and ourselves a profound disservice. | Paper Towns Tastic Question Tuesday 00:01:22 |
| 2009-03-08 | restate | John argues intimacy leads to empathy: he cares more about people he knows than distant strangers, and must train his 'caveman brain' otherwise. | PEEPS for Bangladesh 00:01:15 |
| 2010-09-20 | restate | John holds that reading stories is a way into seeing other people as we see ourselves. | Life Is Like Pizza 00:03:23 |
| 2010-11-11 | restate | John says studying history requires imagining what it was like to be a French peasant, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette or Robespierre. | REIGN OF TERROR: The French Revolution, Part III 00:04:22 |
| 2014-02-11 | restate | John closes by toasting imagining others complexly, in place of relishing celebrities' downfalls. | A Middle Aged Man 00:03:29 |
| 2014-04-22 | restate | John says Americans especially imagine Africa monolithically as poor, undeveloped and other, though it is a continent of vastly different nations. | Understanding the Central African Republic 00:00:04 |
| 2014-04-29 | restate | John warns readers not to extrapolate from a few people in one community to slums or India in general. | Influence, Airports, and the Nerdfighter Book Club 00:02:05 |
| 2014-06-10 (said on 2014-06-07, implied) | restate | John says people who don't live in slums imagine those who do monolithically, while the book reveals their diversity of class and status. | Our Old Friend Complexity: Behind the Beautiful Forevers 00:00:45 |
| 2014-09-09 | restate | John argues there isn't just one Ethiopia: its poverty and its rising students, doctors and farmers are all real, against the one-place stereotype of Africa. | Going to College (in Ethiopia) 00:03:12 |
| 2014-12-23 | restate | John says Paper Towns is about how imagining others as less or more than human hurts us, and that our incomplete imaginings of each other shape our lives. | Agloe, New York 00:01:44 |
| 2015-03-10 | restate | John says he really feels the Paper Towns movie is about learning to imagine others complexly. | Travel Tips (and Paper Towns Movie Updates) 00:02:05 |
| 2015-03-17 | restate | John says it is humans' official responsibility to imagine the world around us as complexly and interestingly as we can. | What Are Paper Towns? 00:02:46 |
| 2015-04-14 | restate | John says that, in turn, it is very hard to feel that the photographers are actual people who, as Whitman put it, contain multitudes. | A Long Good Day 00:01:37 |
| 2015-04-28 | restate | John says putting people on a pedestal, failing to imagine them complexly, is tremendously destructive, and the film captures the characters' failures to imagine each other complexly. | Is the Paper Towns Movie Like the Book? Thoughts on Adaptations 00:02:07 |
| 2015-06-09 | restate | John says he dehumanizes people by imagining them as less complex than himself, and that acknowledging each other's complexity leads to better lives. | What Does It Mean to Be Human? 00:00:52 |
| 2015-07-28 | restate | John says Paper Towns is about the challenge of understanding that other people are as complex as you are, which the publicity machine makes harder by commodifying everyone. | Paper Towns, Agloe, and Touring: Thoughts from (Many) Places 00:00:37 |
| 2016-03-08 | restate | John insists Aida and Majeeda have rich, complex lives that aren't mere tragedies: warm kids who joked, played with their little brothers and taught him a Syrian hide-and-seek. | Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp 00:02:07 |
| 2016-05-10 | restate | John says it is very hard, if not impossible, to bridge that empathy gap. | On Pain 00:01:46 |
| 2016-06-07 | restate | John says he cannot really imagine the refugees' experiences of war and dislocation, but we still need to know they are real. | Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp 00:01:37 |
| 2017-01-24 | restate | John says he still hasn't learned that when he wants to roll his eyes, he should be alive to the possibility that the object of his disdain is more complex than he imagines. | On Motivation 00:02:17 |
| 2017-01-31 | restate | John says it is hard to imagine people complexly, especially when told to fear them, but he has found listening helpful. | Understanding Trump's Executive Order on Immigration 00:07:02 |
| 2017-03-07 | restate | John says the conversation must instead start by seeing refugees as people with individual stories who love their families and want them safe. | Hoping for an Airport Reunion: One Refugee Family's Story 00:04:28 |
| 2017-04-18 | restate | Invoking 'This is not a pipe', John says this is his life but not all of it, and if he remembers that about himself, maybe he can understand it about other people. | Framing 00:02:14 |
| 2017-08-22 | restate | John admits he pays more attention to crises in distant Europe or Australia than elsewhere because people there feel close to him: he watches them on YouTube and reads their Reddit posts. | The Causes of Cholera 00:03:24 |
| 2017-10-03 | restate | City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence follows refugees in Dadaab camp over many years; a difficult book without easy answers, it shows that refugee stories are human stories. | Let's Talk about Books 00:01:57 |
| 2017-12-26 | restate | Leave in 2017 the notion that the avatar is the person; remember that everyone we meet online and off is fighting battles we don't know about. | LEAVE IT IN 2017 00:02:37 |
| 2018-02-20 | restate | John says that when your friend runs for governor you realize politicians are people, even the billionaires and the Kennedys. | When Your Friend Runs for Governor 00:03:13 |
| 2019-09-24 | restate | John also needs poetry because it helps him imagine other people and their experiences more complexly. | I, Too, Dislike It 00:01:40 |
| 2020-07-07 | restate | Fiction is a way out of himself: John sees even spouse, children and brother in his own context, but Robin, Maya and Andy aren't his anything, and seeing through their eyes is magic. | You're a Rock Star 00:01:27 |
| 2020-09-29 | restate | John says the real trick of living among other souls as valuable and multitudinous as your own is to really listen to another's answer and believe in their experience as fully as our own. | How 'bout Yours? 00:01:32 |
| 2021-04-06 | restate | John doesn't know what it is like to be a teen or twenty-something today; he can listen and try to empathize but can't know it from the inside. | How Do You Do, Fellow Kids? 00:00:29 |
| 2022-01-11 | restate | His first three books were about failing to imagine others as full persons; it interested him because as a teenager he often failed to imagine others complexly, and he saw it in the culture. | The Fault in Our Stars - Ten Years Later 00:00:29 |
| 2022-03-29 | restate | John restates it: even with strangers he assumes goodness unless strongly shown otherwise, because almost everyone is trying their best and sees their own actions generously. | An H of G 00:00:58 |
| 2022-04-05 | restate | So John tries to remember, with famous people, that they may be having a bad day and are under a lot of pressure in public. | Celebrities I've Met and Whether I'd Vote for Them??? 00:02:55 |
| 2022-05-03 | restate | John says stories also invite us into other lives and help us understand the richness and complexity of people who aren't like us. | My Religion and My Banned Books 00:01:56 |
| 2023-02-28 | refine | John says he can't know what it's like to be a bird or to have someone else's pain, but he can listen to people when they tell him of their pain and believe them. | Empathy and its Limits 00:02:47 |
| 2024-12-10 | restate | John says tuberculosis speaks to his recurring theme of how we imagine and misimagine each other: we see our own lives as complex and multitudinous but imagine others' lives simplistically. | On Writing 00:03:08 |
| 2025-06-03 | restate | John says trying to shrink the empathy gap through imagination turns out to be a worthwhile endeavor, even in 2025. | My Lies 00:03:18 |
| 2026-02-03 | restate | John says he can't reach across the aisle: the other side won't hear him, he hears only their most outrageous takes, and he extrapolates them to everyone, hardening his silo. | Does the truth still matter? 00:00:58 |
| 2026-05-05 | restate | John says those who have never been to Kono must bridge the empathy gap other ways: through imagination and believing people's stories, even through a screen. | Noted Brother Hank Green 00:03:14 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-06-23 (said on 2009-06-22, implied) | first on record | Hank says Nerdfighters try to understand other people as they wish to be understood, complexly and with depth. | Fighting the Flame War! 00:02:54 |
| 2009-09-15 | restate | Hank says the brothers talk about understanding others complexly but sit at screens; we need to spend time with people as different from us as possible. | Internetless in Maine 00:02:06 |
| 2009-10-28 | restate | Hank says watching people's YouTube videos makes him care about them, and few Congolese videos make it harder to understand those people complexly. | We Win When Everyone Wins 00:02:38 |
| 2011-06-23 | restate | Hank says using one-word labels as markers to categorise people ('gay people/Christians/atheists are all like this') is really dangerous. | Do You Believe in God? 00:02:32 |
| 2011-10-12 | restate | Hank says humans are orders of magnitude more complicated than electrons yet we still categorise ourselves and each other; he would want to know far more about a person than one label before judging. | Coming Out and Sperm Spikes 00:01:20 |
| 2012-02-03 | restate | Hank says going outside our comfort zone is the only way to understand other perspectives; without that we start to hate each other. | An Awful Lot of Touring 00:02:33 |
| 2012-07-13 | restate | Hank warns that reading Fahrenheit 451's people as real invites seeing others as TV-brainwashed drones, which dehumanizes people we know nothing about: there are no mindless drones. | An Army of Mindless Drones 00:02:26 |
| 2015-06-19 | restate | Hank says every person is complicated and impossible to fully understand, so judging someone from a 25-word comment is wrong. | 19 Ways to Not Suck on the Internet 00:00:47 |
| 2015-10-02 | restate | Hank says people seen online and in the news seem less nice than those met in real life, so talking to strangers gives a more accurate picture of people. | Awkward Stranger Conversations 00:02:00 |
| 2016-03-11 | restate | Hank says we now see the opposition monolithically and negatively, can live without knowing anyone who would vote the other way, and stay in bias-affirming filters, thinking opponents ignorant or evil. | The Politics of "Parks and Rec" 00:03:07 |
| 2016-07-15 | restate | Hank says he can never fully understand that experience, but he can listen, be open and do some research himself. | On Lives and Mattering 00:01:21 |
| 2016-10-07 | restate | Hank calls John's 'imagine others complexly' a distillation of what the world needs: really hard, but doing it makes him feel and be better; their company is renamed Complexly partly to help others imagine complexly. | Changing Our Business a Bit 00:01:45 |
| 2016-10-21 | restate | Hank says it is really important to imagine politicians as people, even when serious issues make a plain conversation with a candidate feel hard to justify. | Coming Out, Goats, Government, and Attack Ads with Denise Juneau 00:07:35 |
| 2017-08-18 | restate | Hank also thinks tribalism is innate: we find it much easier to empathise with people who are like us, however we define that. | What I've Been Thinking About 00:02:13 |
| 2018-07-27 | restate | Hank, a definite environmentalist, says kids' shows need villains, but applied to real-world issues the villain becomes a straw man for someone real: a caricature. | Why Environmentalists Hate Captain Planet 00:01:17 |
| 2018-12-21 | restate | Hank doesn't know what he expected thieves to look like, perhaps because he had dehumanized what a thief was in his head. | The Psychology of Package Thieves 00:00:29 |
| 2020-02-14 | restate | Hank adds that he cannot truly know the other person's story. | Ending The Great Airplane Seat Debate 00:03:04 |
| 2020-05-01 | restate | Hank felt he was no longer in his own story but in the young visitors', an extraordinarily minor character in their road trip: the guy who painted the other half of the ball. | I Need to Get Myself Away from this Place 00:02:40 |
| 2021-03-26 | restate | Not every mom has the same money and free time, and people understand the world differently: some see fast food as simple and tasty, others as cruel garbage. | Why I'm Worried about 2021 00:00:00 |
| 2022-04-15 | restate | Hank says learning more reveals complexity: fossil fuel workers see themselves not as Darth Vader supervillains but as people who keep your house warm and refrigerator cold. | Are You Stuck in The Sad Gap 00:01:28 |
| 2022-08-19 | restate | Hank suggests that leaders who must listen to millions are mostly big bags of well-meaning worry, trying to do right when the right thing is never clear. | What if a lot of the Cynicism is Unjustified??? 00:00:00 |
| 2022-10-28 | restate | Hank says research backs Tranel: people see themselves as about 60-40 on issues but see opponents as 100-0 on everything. | I'm Changing the Way I Think About Politics 00:02:15 |
| 2023-12-15 | restate | Hank says the drifting apart of languages is one of the greatest barriers to human cross-cultural empathy. | Cat...I Farted. 00:01:00 |
| 2024-04-19 | refine | Hank says that writing a woman's perspective without having been one, you will get things wrong, so it is great to have people read the book before publication and give feedback. | I Closed My Boob in a Door 00:03:47 |
| 2025-07-04 | restate | Hank says that seeing such comments, most people think all Fox News viewers, all Republicans and half of Americans think this way: imagining a group, we assume all its members believe the same things. | This Graph Changed My Life 00:01:28 |
| 2025-08-29 | restate | Hank says this reminds him that we all move through subtly different worlds: two people in the same circumstance have different experiences, which is obvious but hard to remember. | Does Anyone Else Have This? 00:02:26 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).