I think two mistakes in your friend’s model. The first is simple over-correction—seeing one instance and believing that’s universal. The second is over-simplification, which is what you’re pointing at with this post. People are complex, and most social decisions are heavily context-dependent. Some people get away with things that others don’t. the very concept of “norm” is named for “normal”, and is about the median/center of a set of behaviors. Forgetting that people are actually on many distributions, which can have pretty long tails, is the error.
I think two mistakes in your friend’s model. The first is simple over-correction—seeing one instance and believing that’s universal. The second is over-simplification, which is what you’re pointing at with this post. People are complex, and most social decisions are heavily context-dependent. Some people get away with things that others don’t. the very concept of “norm” is named for “normal”, and is about the median/center of a set of behaviors. Forgetting that people are actually on many distributions, which can have pretty long tails, is the error.