Intriguing concepts but also some disturbing parts

As always, well written and highly readable. But I am dissatisfied with the conclusion. How do we best talk to strangers? "What is required of us is restraint and humility." Sure. We need to acknowledge that strangers are complex and that we have no clue whether they are telling the truth or lying and that we certainly can not read their intentions from their facial expressions or actions. That's the humility part. The restraint part is recognizing all of that and not assuming we have a clue. But what Gladwell fails to do is actually give us a template of how to talk to strangers.
The phenomenon at the center of Talking with Strangers is that, uniquely in modernity, we no longer live in a village or tribe where we know most of the people we interact with. Based on solid psychology, Gladwell explains that most humans have a default reaction to trust strangers. When we don’t we rely on what Gladwell refers to as transparency—the idea that one’s inner self is revealed by facial gestures or body movements.
By no means does the reader have to agree with all that Gladwell says. However, his ability to build evidence leading towards a persuasive conclusion on how we should act towards with one another is a good example of how popular science should be conducted. You can disagree that aggressive policing is being applied incorrectly or that alcohol consumption is a key factor in the rise of date rapes. But then you have to criticize Gladwell’s ideas and evidence. While he’s not writing a peer-reviewed paper, the ideas in this book are amenable to scientific criticism.