Scott Alexander examines why some people struggle to acknowledge others' preferences that deviate from social norms, drawing from personal experiences and psychological theories. Longer summary

Scott Alexander explores the difficulty some people have in acknowledging others' preferences, especially when those preferences deviate from social norms. He recounts personal experiences with a B&B couple ignoring his friend's introversion and his grandmother dismissing his girlfriend's dislike of presents. Scott suggests this behavior might be more common among older, very nice people, possibly due to historical social conformity pressures or cognitive inflexibility. He compares this to common cognitive biases and emotional reasoning errors, and proposes that people who 'take ideas seriously' might be better at respecting unusual preferences. Shorter summary