I don't have a solid answer, but the only pattern that I have found is life experience. It sounds stupid but it is the only thing that I know of that gives us the reference point to know what is likely true and what is likely not. So, for example, before I ever went into sales, I thought people were rational and they made all of their purchases rationally. Then, when I went into sales, I learned that people run on very small pattern loops (or scripts as another person here put it so well) and if what you are selling matches the expections of their script they will buy it. Then, I had the luck to start a business or two. Before I started a business I believed ALL of the leftist bullshit that we discuss here. I believed in unions, I believed in a livable minimum wage, I believed firing people was a crime against humanity and so forth. Then, when running businesses, what I learned is that employees are not employees or even human. Employees are actually parasites leeching off of you. For example, you know what is the best way to ruin productivity of an employee? Give him a raise. I swear, you give someone a raise and something happens psychologically and they settle and produce less. You want to increase productivity? Reduce their pay. You want stuff to not get stolen? That's not a thing, there is no such thing as staff giving a fuck about you. Not a single employee understand that most businesses barely make money and if they do they are only a blip away from failure. And so on. If I were to summarize it, it would be something like this: You know how a magician knows like 30 or 40 magic tricks? Those are grifts. Learning the first grift is hard. Learning the second grift a little less so. But eventually, you learn 30 or 40 and you see patterns everywhere. The trick to knowing when you are overanalyzing something is to learn as many grifts as possible so that you can become a seasoned grifter and see the patterns. Most conversations that suffer from overanalysis are done so by well meaning individuals that just don't have enough experience (don't know enough grifts) to have a feeling for when it's over thinking it. I'm not saying that a seasons grifter cannot be fooled. I'm just saying that like an accountant that can walk in and look at the books and know immediately if something is being cooked, or a lawyer that looks at a case and knows immediately who is lying, people examining specific situations need to practice to get the feel for what is probably true or not. My apologies, that is the best that I can do to put that into words. It's the first time I've had to try and write it down.