My son is a police officer, a patrolman and he said he learns a lot just watching people he comes into contact with and listening to what they say rather than talking all the time to them. He will ask a question and then watch and listen to their reactions, their body language and he has learned to figure out who’s BS’ing and who’s telling the truth or just nervous.
He said there is one officer on their department who honestly believes anything he is told. Says you could hold him up through the mail.
yes observing can give many clues its a learned tool of good officers..the more interviews or interrogations one does the better one usually gets at discerning deception.
It sounds like your son is predisposed to learn from, and make comparisons with, his experiences. In the old days a candidate for graduate school, especially in the hard sciences, had to have a good report on the results from taking the Miller Analogies Test (click here). maybe he would like to see if his self-assessment (and yours) might match up with this artificial yard-stick.
Our current problem with the committes designing high-level "educational" cirricula are starting to consider eliminating this test that supposedly measures a person's ability to think critically. Don't you wonder why that is?
May your son continue to develop his wisdom as you have described.