system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Thing] During the ending, why would anyone think the alien could be tricked into calmly drinking gasoline? It has all the knowledge and memories of the humans it assimilates. It would know to choke and spit it out convincingly.
gpt
It may have only retained enough memories and personality to fool a cursory examination.  Or perhaps there is a lag using its own mind to run the higher brain functions of an entirely alien species.

It would rely on social cues from others to minimize the amount of sensory and memory data it needed to process from moment to moment.  MacReady's gesture didn't raise any alarms so the Thing wasn't expecting anything other than what it saw, so it acted accordingly.

We never really see any Thing-humans doing complex social interactions.