Can we imagine other people complexly, and what stops us?

Axis: yes, with effort and exposure ... we mostly fail; others stay projections

John

date	change	position	video
2008-08-26	new	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
2008-11-06	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
2009-02-11	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	new	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

date	change	position	video
2009-09-15	new	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	new	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
2011-10-13	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
2012-02-04	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