I am charming; you are respectful; he is ingratiating. It's a loaded term, not a neutral one befitting the dispassionate pursuit of truth, aka discovery.

I found the second example of unions (the "ingratiating" one) easier to understand, because it was concrete, and therefore allowed me into the author's point of view, and had redundancy so I could easily confirm what I thought he meant.

Also, the fact that he admires courage makes me think we have similar values, and therefore, he is worth listening to. There exist extremely intelligent people who lack compassion and wisdom, i.e. foolish villains. I don't think their advice is going to be very helpful.

But the conventional behavior when meeting someone new is to act extra friendly

And now I show what sort of person I am: I read the above line and thought.. ohhhhhh... that's what I've been doing wrong (no, not sarcastic). I've also thought that people who act extra friendly on first meeting are really insincere. But sounds like it's standard communication protocol, and communication is improved by speaking a common language, so I really should start doing this. Thanks pg!