Taleb on Surprise

"For rewards, be predictable; for punishment, unpredictable."
~~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Intelligence

Tell someone something they already believe, and they'll think you're smart! On the other hand, say something surprising, which doesn't mesh with their prior assumptions (as truly intelligent people often do), and they'll think there's something "off" about you. Most people really don't like to be surprised, but intelligent people are often surprising.

Explaining Human Sociality

We are biologically wired to repel the unclassifiable. So if you’re not a type - if you speak, act, and think in surprising and unscripted ways - you will confuse and irritate, regardless of benevolent intentions.

Judgement:

Everyone judges all the time. Can't avoid it.

Creative (i.e. unique) people get judged particularly wrongly, because nobody understands what they're shooting for. This is why most people maintain an easily-familiar persona.

Mistaking Fogginess for Deafness

When unsurprising things are said, that poses less of a challenge for sluggish brains (this is why we instinctively speak in predictable ways with babies and very young children).

Humor and Humorlessness

We love comedy because it provides a safe, manageable dose of surprise; the thing we fear; the disruptor.

Surprising Behavior Breaks Things ("An exploration of Groucho Marx, computer hackers, beta testers, Banksy, and Kali the Goddess of Death"):

Most channels of action in this world are established with the expectation that they'll be used in certain prescribed ways. Builders anticipate the potential range of actions, and they build to accommodate them. They also try to anticipate "edge cases" - the surprising and unconventional behavior of a small portion of the public. Of course, no one can anticipate all edge cases. Surprisingness, by its nature, is hard to anticipate.

If you do surprising things, you will tend to break things, because things are not made to withstand (much less accommodate) surprising behavior. If you rename your computer's innermost system kernel file to "I Love You", your computer will probably behave erratically. If you attach scramjet engines to your Dodge Dart and accelerate it to 5000 mph, the airbag system is likely to cause more harm than good. And so on.

Most people are not creative, so stuff doesn't break for them as often. Things generally work in a diverse society because most people are surprisingly unsurprising, and so most behavior is anticipatable.