Malcolm Gladwell:

What I learned about our encounters with strangers is that we're in too much of a hurry, that we seize on what available evidence is out there and jump to conclusions, and we are probably not as aware as we should be about how many mistakes we make in that process.

Every time you meet someone new, there is a thrill of anticipation. You're presented with a puzzle, which is, who is this person, what do they want, what are they like, what motivates them?

It's easy to create the illusion of intimacy and create the illusion that you understand the person that you're talking to. But you should be careful, because you probably don't.

When a judge confronts a defendant in an attempt to decide whether they should be given bail or not, how good are they at making that judgment? They're trying to predict, is the person so dangerous that they shouldn't be released, or so not dangerous that they should?

And what you discover in that moment is that judges do a very bad job of that. And that's because they're human beings, and human beings doing a bad job of summing up in a one-minute confrontation with a — between a defendant and a judge. The judge doesn't nearly have enough material to make a reasonable and accurate assessment.

I think we should be aware that an awful lot of what we consider to be conflict in the world is not conflict. It's misunderstanding.

The story of Sandra Bland may be the most heartbreaking of that series of high-profile encounters between African-Americans and law enforcement.

She's the young woman from Chicago who is in a small town in Texas and pulled over by a police officer. She was distressed, and he thought she was dangerous. Those are two extremely different emotions with very, very different consequences.