💻 Technology Aug 5, 2026 · Daniel Moran

Psychology says people who say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ without thinking twice usually learned it so early and so thoroughly that politeness stopped being manners and became something closer to instinct, like breathing out before breathing in

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Psychology says people who say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ without thinking twice usually learned it so early and so thoroughly that politeness stopped being manners and became something closer to instinct, like breathing out before breathing in
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I said thank you to an ATM last week. Out loud. In a bank lobby in Bangkok, to a machine, which had just handed me my own money after a small administrative pause. Nobody heard me except possibly the security guard, who has seen worse.
That was the moment I got curious about it. I didn’t decide to say it. There was no gap between the money arriving and the words leaving. My reflex fired before my thought did, which is a strange thing to notice about your own mouth.
Turns out this is the en

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