You say hi to a person. Maybe they say hi back, maybe they don't. If they don't, then leave them alone. If they do, say something else. That's "escalate a bit".

Of course you can't read minds, that's why you use things like language.

Of course the risk is high. You will get rejected a lot. So what if you bother them a bit? The chance you bother them a bit might be high, but the impact is low. It's not like pascal's wager where the risk of being wrong is eternal damnation. The impact of being bothered is basically nil.

How do you think people met before, in the decades between the industrial revolution and the internet?