[lightredelephnt]

You are right that assuming you completely understand another person’s mind can cause (serious) problems in your relationship with them. But people also “tell you how they feel” with more than just words. So it’s not as simple as “ignore everything but the spoken or written word”.

[TameAntelope]

My point is you need to let people express themselves, rather than assuming their emotional state from body language or other subtle cues.

People often decide how to feel, and we need to let them.

[flatuencer]

How you react to something is just as important as how you say you feel after the fact. People do judge and form opinions on your behavior as well as your thoughts. Wishing it was otherwise is the real arrogance in this scenario.

I'm all for letting people figure out how they feel about things, but sometimes we don't have the luxury of time and we need to interpret in the moment. This will happen no matter what as long as we have a biological form, and pretending otherwise serves no one.

[TameAntelope]

You're arguing "is", I'm arguing "ought". They're unrelated.