Not too many people get to the core of it, but there's been a public attitude shift about capitalism and money. It happened after I started getting very critical vocally - years after (I know, probably a silly hipster attitude). For me, harm to the biosphere was the central proof that something is wrong with the system. There's a lot of analysis, but I don't think you can get around that. This system the free marketeers believe in so strongly seems inextricably linked with degradation of the habitability of Earth for most of its species, including humans.

That was in the public consciousness, but many voices denied the link, even though when you look at the data, it punches you in the face over and over and over. You can't miss the connection if you look with an open mind, and it's difficult to refute in clear intellectual/scientific conscience. Even countries that are doing really well (it seems, environmentally) show this same link between money flow and degradation.

Then some studies came out. A different kind of study. Results that had been lurking in smaller studies got citations and more attention.

There's a link between having a less understanding, more mean-spirited personality and making money. And on the other hand, there's a link between empathy and making less money. Maybe we all kind of knew this in the backs of our minds, but it's easy to half-know something and move on. Maybe it wasn't true. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe we were flattering ourselves, or on the other side of the fence, maybe people were just jealous or weak.

Except that's a robust finding. Agreeableness is closely linked with empathy, helping professions, lower income, etc. And low agreeableness is linked with higher income.

A spate of articles came out declaring capitalism to be the most empathetic of all systems. Some might have been fooled by the pleas, but to someone aware of this research thread, the motivation behind - and the sophistry used in - the articles was crystal clear. This was apologism and a subtle form of gaslighting, or else it was just plain delusional projection from people who were good at arguing and writing, and could make these maneuvers and contortions seem legitimate and reasonable. No, free market capitalism is not ultra-empathetic. Face evidence, don't contort it.

Other findings were coming out around the same time about hubris syndrome - what one might call the toxic overconfidence of many leaders - and its close relative and likely its main underlying mechanism, a tendency for humans to lose empathy as they rise through the ranks of social hierarchy.

Not only was making lots of money associated with being a comparatively mean person, but gaining social status tended to make people meaner, or at least more insensitive.

These are associations, not unavoidable fates - it's possible to be a good person in a position of leadership, or to accumulate wealth in good ways - but experiments show there's a mechanism. It's something deep in human nature that we have to work to counteract.

It just doesn't make the traditional hierarchy look very good, does it? Any of it? Throw in the fact its ways seem deeply patriarchal and colonial. I may have just shot the notion of "the best of all possible systems" in the head, and it wasn't difficult (except it was, because scientists spend careers asking questions and figuring out how to answer them reliably, and this little chat is a brief, breezy consolidation of many careers' worth of work).

But we still aren't all on the same page yet, nor are we clear on how to fix the fundamental interactions of capitalism, ie, of economic life.

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There were other events and forces. The Great Recession, the popularity of Bernie Sanders, the election of Trump, and the pandemic all put arrows in the chest of the traditional creed - the idea that freewheeling capitalism is wonderful and we all just need to suck it up, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and go from rags to riches if we don't like what we see or experience.

But as with full acceptance of LGBTQIA+ people (definitively a natural variation, not a choice), legal cannabis (much less harmful than believed, enforcement was ineffective and racist), etc, science worked in the background to update what was known, and then public opinion slowly caught on.

You can know before other people if you take an interest in new science.

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I do have some thoughts about how to fix the basic interactions, and I wish I were part of a community working on this. 

The problem with controversy is that people think you're a bad person for making an argument on any side that isn't theirs. You're automatically suspicious for not simply falling in line and making arguments that ADVANCE their cause. If you aren't ADVANCING whatever a person feels their cause is, they will likely see you as the OPPOSITION.

Most people even think this is the right way to be. This is how you get things done. You pick a side and argue for that side. That's the game you play.

Except it's the game that makes people groupthinky and eventually prejudicial. Fight hate with hate? Fight prejudice with prejudice? That seems to be the usual thinking.

If you're the kind of person who makes arguments for (and against) every side or idea in a debate, you quickly notice this weird neuroticism that causes people to be unable to argue for anything but their chosen cause.

That isn't how you think well. That's a way to get delusional.

There are few things stranger than being called presumptuous or conceited for saying what's true.

Of course, I think we have to agree that not everything that's true is appropriate, useful, or even safe to say at all times to all people. But I really try to give everyone truth points. If it's true, it doesn't matter how much I don't like it or wish you could have said it better or at a better time - you get points for saying something true.

I'll even give you some points for spouting utter bullshit, as long as it really seems to me that you believe what you're saying.

I'm not sure what's difficult or weird about this. If you try it, you might like it.

I don't believe someone's confidence gives an accurate measure of their value, and I also don't believe that it's only their responsibility. People who are marginalized or abused will typically suffer a blow to their confidence. To put that on them and rate them as worthless (or worth less) is primitive and disgusting.

How did we get to the point where caring about other people's thoughts regarding us equates to inauthenticity? It doesn't.

I care what you think, and that doesn't make me dishonest or pathetic. Actually, I just balance it another way. I care, but you're not going to push me around (without my agreement), because I have a solid reality check and I know manipulation and delusionality when I see it.

I think many people protect themselves by "not caring what anyone thinks" (kind of a lie, but they're free to lie to themselves or take a breather or keep things private). But you don't have to protect yourself on that level. You can manage any fallout another way - by using your reason.

I guess if your sense of reason is weaker, it can really help sometimes not to care. But if you have a strong enough sense of reason, you can care - you just apply a reality check and make your own decisions as you have every right to do.

I think my problem is I run on hope, and whenever that runs out, I'm hopeless. And I'm very disinclined to lie to myself even for the sake of hope and running.

So it's hope or nothing, but the hope has to really be believable, or it's nothing.

I think ever since turning 40, I have felt vaguely yet definitely more than before as if I am leaving this world. You grow up thinking there's all this stuff out there, all this future for you. Over time, you can start to realize you will never have a future. The future you were going to have is behind you, and before you, there is nothing - almost like leaving Earth behind you on an endless voyage. You were attached to this place, but there is only so much you will ever see, and that horizon is diminishing, now, not growing.

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To make it concrete, what is the point of learning things? Now when I forget, I wonder whether I'll ever bother to remember again. Will I need that information after all? Maybe I have spent my life learning things I will never use. I have hoarded all this material, and it is beginning to rot inside me, without having seen any use.

Sometimes I wonder if empathy is less about some basic biological facility involving others and more about a simple kind of imagination. Can I imagine that that would be me?

If you lack imagination, you find a bunch of reasons that isn't you, and so your brain doesn't really engage.

If on the other hand you find it easy to imagine that it could be you, then your brain absorbs more about the situation, more of the signals and cues, and spends more time reconstructing what that might feel like and how one might get there or get out from there.

Sometimes I wonder if people who lack empathy aren't just... rejecting the possibility that they could be someone else. And since they don't see it as possible, their brain doesn't waste time on building the experience.

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For all I know, I could have another life in which I go through every experience you have. We might all live each other's lives. These are the sorts of hypotheticals I find it easy to imagine. I cannot say with 100% certainty that I - my window of subjectivity - will never experience what it's like to be over there, where you are, in your brain, this moment.

When I empathize with someone else, it's a little like humoring the possibility that I'm looking at myself in the future. I can do that with anyone. I'm able to suspend disbelief.

Now, I do also feel things without making an effort to imagine. But it's much less. I specifically imagine what it must be like for others, and if I didn't, I could only go on their immediate facial expressions and tone and so on, and how those make me feel, what flavor they seem to have.

Updates await

Sometimes it's important to believe that breakthroughs are possible. How else do you make one?

And it's important to see that they are common. Personal and societal breakthroughs happen all the time around us. To disbelieve in the possibility of a breakthrough is a little unfounded. I think we should assume that problems can be solved eventually, even if we have no idea how, currently.

To me, this is an improvement on the classic idea of faith.

What is truer?

Personally I think the secret of true love is that it's friendship. If you truly love someone, you will care about them however they decide to spend their life, whoever with, etc. It doesn't have to be some great extravagant caring. It can just be caring. If your caring is unconditional, then I see that as true love.

Their loss, too!

I've never liked the expression "Their loss!" Now of course, fair enough - you have every right to use harmless words you like, and it's a frame of mind, but... it's still pretty presumptuous, isn't it? Saying this is such obvious persuasion, I can't be fooled by it. The expression doesn't work on me. At all.

It feels egotistical and try-hard to say "Their loss!"

But eventually I realized I have no problem with "Their loss, too!" At least that admits the premise, which is that you feel a sense of loss. Trying to put all of that on the other person, as if it's only their loss (which they might not feel at all) and not at all yours, seems ridiculous. But "Their loss, too!" passes my filter.

Peacekeeping

There are times when it's useful to yell, useful to insult, even useful to fight. If your philosophy is "never express anger" or "never offend anyone" or "never cause any harm," then that might possibly work for you, but it is not a complete philosophy that can or should be followed by everyone.

Peacekeeping interventions can include real fighting. Maybe it's *usually* true that "the best defense is not to offend," but sometimes that is not enough, and at such a moment either you need to defend yourself actively or someone else needs to step in for you.

Most people are not particularly trained to win at debate or physical combat. I think the normal approach is to be confidently assertive, avoid unnecessary confontation or offense, and then use emotional (or eventually social and legal) warfare if trust is broken enough. That's what I observe a lot.

Normal people do try to debate, but they aren't good at it. Especially where logic and evidence and uncertainty enter the picture, people tend to fall off a cliff; instead of working with hypotheses and evidence, they just get opinionated, repetitive, defensive, emotional, etc. So because they aren't very good at the logical/evidentiary/epistemological/dialectic game of debate, they'll stick to just sharing or venting, and if they feel that's failing, they'll then fall into yelling, insulting (mocking, ridiculing, etc), or, eventually, if it goes that far, threatening (legally, etc) or physically fighting.

Yet people aren't really trained to fight physically (or legally or logically), so they have more than one reason not to want to go there. The threat/risk of harsh eventualities, though, works under the surface to make people more emotional.

To put it another way - the fact I'm pretty sure I could knock most people out if we got into a fight, I believe, has a tendency to keep me calmer in a debate. I do not want to have to knock you out. Really, I do not. And I am not physically threatened by your anger, etc. At least... I think those are somewhat true statements, and probably more than for many other people.

I believe that if we follow a good debate process, one or both of us will arrive at the right answer, or a better answer than before; I trust that system and that process. Meanwhile, I have the experience to say that I would probably win in a physical fight with most people. So that's another kind of trust. These are two threats many people feel that I mostly do not feel. Logical debate is not threatening to me. Physical fighting is not that threatening, in some sense, either (in the relative sense that I have experience from martial arts).

So... I stick to the debate process as much as the other person is willing and I have time and energy for. Where discussions turn into fights (heated arguments, I mean), usually the other person is getting too emotional and reactive. They've decided that ad hominem attacks are appropriate; they're going after my character, trying to make me feel bad. I might have sounded condescending, impatient, or annoyed about something, and it's understandable that this might upset them, but then they will tend to go into this escalation. They'll start attacking and insulting me, even though I actually did not do that - they just didn't like my tone. Sometimes I'm the first person to "use tone," sometimes the other person. But that should not lead to an escalation. It's only human that we sometimes get emotional. That shouldn't be generalized too much or too readily into an insult that calls for emotional retaliation.

One core skill of good debate is filtering out tone, more or less - you monitor it as a clue, say, as to whether someone might be biased, unwilling to change their mind right now, passionate, or maybe just not ready to continue talking about this. An unpleasant tone is a good reason to step away from a conversation, when it makes you uncomfortable. It is not a good reason to attack someone. Not at all. That's the mistake so many people make.

Just avoiding that one mistake would prevent many heated arguments.

I guess I'm just trying to point out some very common misapprehensions people make in discussions, arguments, and other conflict.

Sometimes anger and fighting *are* necessary, but actually, I do not think most people get this right (ie, the when and how). I think people misuse yelling, threats, emotionality, and physical force. Those all have their place. And as I'm trying to indicate, I have quite a bit of training and practice as to where that place might be. It is not that I'm so accepting of people and so compassionate, etc, because I cannot fight. I am very capable of fighting verbally or physically. But most of the time when people want to shift into fighting like that, it is not called for.

They feel it is, and they are getting carried away so they also think it is, but it is not. The escalation is not called for.

My confidence that I could win in a fight, oddly enough - knowing that I could really hurt someone - seems to make me even less interested in hurting them emotionally. Hurting someone emotionally is a power play. It's often an expression of insecurity - I feel threatened by you, am not sure I could really beat you - so I am going to hurt you, emotionally, to let us both know that I am not just a pushover.

That's how people use emotional hurt. And sometimes it is even called for. Most of the time, though, I believe it is not, and people are enacting a kind of insecurity.

As a kid and teenager, I did martial arts—Taekwondo and a little Hapkido—with my brother. Class would start with a ritual and a meditation, then basically a set of stretches that have something in common with yoga. And then all the exercises, drills, forms, sparring, etc—we'd do this two or three times a week for about ten years.

Something happens on days when I'm more connected with my body—if I stretch, move, sweat. I like the idea my body is getting stronger, more practiced, more agile. When I forget about all this, my mind suffers somehow and I don't even know why. It's this weird unsolveable problem. What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me is that I'm not using my body. I'm letting my body rot as if I have some additional lifetime for it, just around the corner—a corner faster approaching because of this attitude.

I don't know why it's so difficult for me to remember this when I need to, but when my mood is crashing severely and I'm seeing no value in continuing to live, I'm usually going to feel better and more purposeful than usual after the bounce. But in the moment it feels eternal and incorrigible. It's a sort of spontaneous pre-inspiration Hell.

People get so caught up and locked into the fact someone intentionally did something bad. Humor me for a moment. On some level: so what? Have you ever done something intentionally and then realized it was a mistake? Did intention make it not a mistake? (We can debate using the word "mistake" and settle on "error," if you like. Did intention make it not an error?) If you realize it was a mistake later, then there's good in that - you learned something. On the other hand, if you don't realize it was a mistake, or you don't or can't grok it enough emotionally to care, then that's a brain difference between you and someone who would.

Isn't it?

If you disagree with me so far, this is probably your fulcrum - your best pressure point for making the opposite case. Maybe it isn't a brain difference, always. Indeed, maybe. But then what is it? Moral soul? I think that's the hypothesis. (And sometimes - I think science has proven - it definitely is a brain difference. So: only sometimes, or always? That's the open question. And if not a brain difference, then what? And what would that mean?)

The average person believes that intentional bad behavior is evil that deserves or demands punishment (kick that bad "moral soul" in the teeth), especially if the wrongdoer lacks the capacity to really feel the error. Yet the more someone lacks the capacity to feel their error, the less relevant or useful punishment is, not the more. What becomes most relevant - and is the most relevant always, anyway - is intercepting/neutralizing/containing threats. You don't need hatred to react to Chernobyl or Fukushima or a hurricane or earthquake or tornado or hungry lion escaped from the zoo. You just do what's necessary like the wise, caring, strong person you are.

This is blindingly obvious to me and I've spent most of my life quietly shaking my head at the average person's moral attitudes.

I genuinely believe those are backwards. Many of y'all might have some spiritual/mental/emotional growing to do.

As do I. As do I. (And maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing probably not. Try to disagree. You'll have trouble if you're intellectually honest. I won't have to give you trouble. It'll be there. That's how reason works.)

It's ok. I'm not a judger and not a hater. I like that about myself. I'm at peace with it. I find it works.

And YMMV, I know. I accept that my knowledge and insights are finite and might not apply to everyone. But I do know stuff about psychology and I did grow up in an abusive family situation and I do take an interest in research on this topic. So there's a decent chance that my take is more, not less, informed than the average person's take that I'm disagreeing with here.

My take can, from a casual glance, be mistaken for sociopathy or amorality. But it is neither. I intensely feel the importance of others' subjective experiences and I do have a heart and do value morality, even without any sort of religious creed I believe in to tell me that I must. I do feel. And I do feel for others. And I consider empathy incredibly important and valuable. But I do not turn that around and monolithically, self-righteously detest those who lack it. I can understand that, too. And I think understanding is very important. It helps in the long run, if you're doing it right.

A thing not always mentioned about mental conditions is that they can be medicated. Then a person may look normal, sometimes even feel normal. Occasionally a condition is basically cured. But the person never becomes someone who never had that experience. And rarely is a condition actually cured. A person with ADHD and a person who appears normal thanks to medication are in very different scenarios. But the latter may be an elaborate surface, or a clothesline barely still hanging. Sometimes we walk around as scarecrows. Oh, look, it's a semblance of Homo sapiens!

How to Blend

When you make a music mix, and you really care about the sequence flowing well, there are two skills that help tremendously. They both depend on recognizing that a song you like is not at its best here (regardless of how you feel about it, how much you admire it, how well you might think it works in theory); you know it's dragging the gestalt down, putting a snare in the fabric. So when you see that snare, you either 1) let go of the song entirely, because it isn't suiting the mix, or about equivalently you toss it on the backburner for another time, or 2) you find a great transition song that helps lead the previous song into this one, so that this one shines at its best.

I'm better at the 2nd. It's easier for me to find good transitions than it is for me to let go of things entirely.

Sometimes this means that song A not quite leading well into song B becomes like 10 or 20 songs in between A and B, as I try to get B to sound really good after something.

As for the core skill of recognizing whether a song actually fits, I break it down...

First, I play the previous song in its entirety. Ideally, actually, I play the 2 or 3 previous songs in their entirety, back to back, with no interruptions. And I pay close attention and feel as much as possible. (Um. Cannabis can really help. Just saying. And using a service with advertising can really get in the way. Paying for Spotify makes it 50x easier for me to come up with good sequences. It doesn't seem intuitive that a small thing would help that much, but for me it does.) At this stage, I am usually hyperfocusing on the music above all else. (Lyrics and video are distant second and third concerns. Music is music, and I'm very music-centric. Hey, I love music. I don't listen to music for lyrics or pictures. Those can be nice, even great, but lyrics aren't music and pictures aren't music.)

Second, I listen to the song in question carefully and assess whether I actually WANT to listen to all of it, and beyond just THAT, whether I think it sounds at its BEST. If I want to skip the song right now, it's in the wrong place. (Going back and forth comparing positions, hearing the same songs over and over and over and over, adds a real layer of challenge. Am I sick of this song because I've started playing it 20 times today, and listened all the way through maybe 7 times, or do I want to skip to the next track because this one is not in the best position to shine? I have to err on the side of assuming the latter. That's part of the secret. If I've heard a song 20 times today and NOW, in THIS position, it sounds awesome and I want to listen all the way through again, I've hit the nail on the head. Bingazzimo!)

Third, I assess beginnings and endings. How do the first few seconds land after the previous song? If it's jarring, that might be ok (strong contrasts sometimes work), but it might also suck. Anything jarring is important to pay close attention to. If the song sounds great in its entirety and the lead-in from the previous song is just *chef's kiss*, then I will be very reluctant to let go of this pairing. Two songs that, back to back, sound like one piece of glorious music - that's what this is all about - that's what I'm looking for all the time, so when I find it, I boost it.

Fourth, I pay attention to the story arc of the sequence. What impression do the lyrics give? What tale is being told? How are the lyrics in this song affected by the lyrics in the songs before it? How will it affect the lyrics in the songs after it? Most of the weighing I've described in previous paragraphs is purely musical (though lyrics will work their way in at the edges of consciousness). At this stage, I put the music aside for a moment and pay full attention to the story. Am I embarrassed to let this story arc see the light of day? And if I'm embarrassed, is that ok? Is it expressive and interesting? These are my main concerns now.

Fifth, I make sure that the audio availability and quality and the visuals and the video's theme are all working for me. I'll find the link with the best quality of sound and image, and if applicable, the video I enjoy the most and find the most fitting here in the sequence. Sometimes a great song has to be dropped because there's no YouTube link, or the quality is just not up to par, or (very occasionally) the video is just too off-putting. For the latter, sometimes it's enough to move the track to later in the sequence (given that I'll usually have finished and shared most of the sequence up to this point already, later is still an option, but earlier isn't).

That's basically my process. I keep at it until I'm really happy with a stretch of songs... or, sometimes, until I'm happy enough and kind of fed up and just ready to move on.

I try to keep in mind the idea that every song should be something I'm overjoyed to share... the kind of thing you keep playing over and over, and you're just desperate to find someone else who enjoys or would enjoy it, because you want to share your sonic passion. So my ideal is that every song I include is that level of "amazingly, irrepressibly good." An earworm. An anthem. An era.

In practice, I let too many less-giddying songs into the mix. Or I let songs into the mix that I have once upon a time felt so intensely about, but not really recently; I know that I can feel that way about them, so I assume others can; I figure if I get the song to fit nicely, it could be someone's favorite song of the week, even though it isn't mine anymore. Those compromises may not be good, or maybe they're ok or good but not great. So I try to avoid them, but I will accept some of them to keep things moving, to get great songs to transition into each other. So there's an aspect of using songs I'm less currently passionate about as filler, but I'm aware of that possibility and try not to include any filler at all.

When I'm having trouble finding the next song in the sequence - nothing seems to fit after it that well - often what it takes is just plain discovering a new song I'm in love with. The next time I hear something I'm desperate to share, I find there's a good chance it will fit perfectly, or at least very well, after the problem song I've been trying to figure out how to follow up. It's almost as if the problem of "What song goes next?" takes up residence in my head, and I go about my life for a few days or weeks until something captivates me. Even if I wasn't thinking about the problem or that song, I think sometimes I'm really captivated by a song because it's sort of the next evolution in the story I'm telling.

I don't know how other people make mixes. But that's how I do.

Oh, maybe there's one other thing to mention. I love to mix genres. That's kind of built into my musical assessment. If I can put a piece of classical music (obscure or famous, doesn't matter) next to, say, a repetitive piece of electronic game music (obscure or famous, doesn't matter) and get it to work fantastically, then I'm overjoyed. The bigger the contrasts or leaps, the better, often. But what takes priority is that the mix actually works. So often I will follow up a song with a similar-enough song to continue some sort of mood and groove. But that is only - strictly only - when I want that mood or groove to continue. As soon as I'm the least bit tired of the mood or the groove, I'll change it - and as drastically as I feel like. I feel no obligation to suit an audience's expectations, and, actually, given the choice, I'd prefer to upend them delightfully.

A concept structures sensation. We tend to see concepts as abstract or virtual or constructed and in a way they're all of these, but they're also self-organizing patterns in brain activity and in the similar flows throughout the universe.

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Ripples bubbles swirls and matrices

Sometimes I think we underestimate how actually "natural" our raw experience is. It's easier to think of brain activity like an operating system. But we grew in place like plants. Our thoughts and feelings are more akin to plant fragrances.

I'm sure I've offended a bunch of my friends. Hasn't everyone? People still seem to be pretty nice to me in general. Sometimes I wonder if everyone's like, "Ooooh, that Harlem is so crazy. You have to tread carefully. Be nice." But overall I think that isn't true. It's more like people tell me things are ok when I'm nervous or worn out or angry or all three. But usually they don't seem to know or care which I'm feeling, and I don't make it their business. So everyone thinks I'm chill (usually), because I am (usually - hey I have a high tolerance), unless I'm venting about something systematically wrong or feeling like my life is over and life was never good. You have to push to see my anger, or I have to trust you so much that I'll tell you what frustrates me.

I learned a lot about Trump supporters well before his political career, simply from my mother. Trump supporters have delusions - sometimes it's within the normal range of delusionality, and it just happens that those particular delusions support a faction. But other times the delusions are more extensive and pervasive. My mother, a recently reformed Trump supporter, is delusional in multiple ways.

I... am not, partly because I learned from her - the very hard way - how delusions work, the ways they cannot be corrected (even though you think that should really work), and how to make sure you are not being delusional yourself.

If you want to help a delusional person see better, do not - do NOT, really truly DO NOT - attack them. They will not gain a single thing from that except that you do not like them or have their best interests in mind. Attack them and they will trust you 0% and discard or discredit everything you say. That's a lot of how delusions work. You even have to be super careful sometimes when you think you're being innocent. Even simple, mild, friendly contradictions can trigger delusional people.

And - I should say again - basically everyone has delusions. But some of us know how to hunt them down.

The Republican Party today is a political party made up of people who are more susceptible to delusions than others. This does not mean that the Democratic Party has no trouble of its own with delusions.

But I think one thing we can all learn is that politics and delusions are closely connected. Many of the things we feel most strongly about are based on intangibles, hearsay, the preferences and rhetoric and assumptions of our peer group, and so on. We feel strongly - we feel so valiant about feeling strongly - to make up for the fact we don't actually fucking know.

This is one of the absolute core dynamics in, and problems with, politics. We get super worked up about stuff we don't actually know. Not in every single case; some people out there do know some things for sure. But if you see someone worked up, chances are they don't actually know. They are making many, many, many assumptions. Maybe they're partly right, and they're taking the evidence of partial rightness as a blank check to spew a lot of other stuff that just sounds right to them at the time.

Don't we all do this? I might be doing this myself right now. Hm. But the thing is, I do have a process. It's something I've worked very hard to develop and hone.

It depends on getting willing to doubt yourself and others and feel uncomfortable but not defensive (in other words, be vulnerable) and look for the real, solid, factual common ground and go from there, cautiously. If you're preoccupied with anyone's confidence or how you look, that's getting in the way. Put solid facts front and center, doubt them anyway, and build out from the least dubious ones, remembering that you're kinda guessing but in an educated way. It sounds shifty, but it's the best process. Seek information, facts, expertise. Don't be egotistical about it. Don't assume you know better than anyone else. Don't go down twenty rabbit holes and think what you've pieced together must be right because you're special for the twenty rabbit holes. The world is made of facts. Start with facts, but vet them. Use your imagination. Play. Discuss. Keep returning to facts. Don't dismiss things out of hand. Pay attention to inconvenient arguments that annoy you. Those are often gold, even when they aren't ultimately sound arguments. The fact you're annoyed and don't have a great answer and you want to get dismissive is a red flag. Don't be like that. Learn more, instead. Thank the argument that made you want to dismiss it because, if you're honest, you actually felt kind of bested for a second. Whether that point is right or wrong, it challenged you. Pay homage to that by learning more.

It's something I learned from talking to my mother: how not to be delusional.

And we are not taught this in school, apparently. Nor is it emphasized in politics.

It really should be, though, because politics is rife with inflamed feelings in search of evidence.

If we could, as a culture, as a species, as a globe, learn to hunt down each other's and our own delusions and bring them to light in the most helpful, compassionate way, many problems that seemed unsolvable before might begin to go away.

It's a hope. That's the best I've got right now.

I have a complex about confidence - what old-school psychologists used to call a complex. And I know this. It isn't a surprise to me or anyone.

It isn't that I entirely lack confidence, or don't know what it is, how to boost it, how to be reasonable about it. Actually, in some ways I'm very good with confidence. That's because I'm happy to question it, almost eager to. I'm quite comfortable with being knocked down and torn to shreds - insofar as anyone is, which is not that comfortable, of course. But it's a kind of discomfort - a willingness to go out of the comfort zone - that I do embrace, embrace so regularly it's almost all the time.

Willingness to go through unpleasant emotions and self-questioning is a kind of confidence, whether it looks confident or insecure to others.

At the same time, we shouldn't call everything good "confident" and everything bad "insecure." There's a sort of unfalsifiability in this whole confidence game we talk. Premise A: Confidence is good. Premise B: Insecurity is bad. Conclusion: If it's good, it's confident, and if it's bad it's insecure.[1]

So we get stuff like "Actually, really confident leaders are humble." Why? Because being humble is good, and everything that's good is confident. See the fucked up logic we all pass off as sensible? Or maybe I'm not portraying it in HD. I don't know. That's how these discussions often sound to me, though. People worship confidence to the moon. So you find someone who's too confident. What about him? Oh, no, that's not confident, that's actually insecure. OK. Then you find someone who isn't confident but who is actually pretty great. What about her? Oh, no, she isn't insecure, look how far out of her comfort zone she is! OK, sure, but she has imposter syndrome; isn't that insecure? Oh, no, imposter syndrome isn't insecure, imposter syndrome means that you're brilliant and can't see it. OK. But... isn't that actually not an accurate definition of imposter syndrome, and if you're brilliant and can't see it, isn't that a lack of confidence? Oh, no, not at all. I mean, look at anyone brilliant, and they've gotta be confident to get there.

And so it goes, round and round in circles, because the logic is, actually, fucking circular.

Do you see why I have a complex? Because I insist on questioning what people confidently say, even if I am the one confidently saying it. Why do I do that? Because it fucking works. Because it makes me smarter. It makes what I say more reliable - even if, at the same time, the questioning and insecurity and discomfort I endure and sometimes show others very clearly makes them lose respect for me and stop listening to me. (This drives me up the wall and contributes to my complex about confidence.)

In my experience, disregarding confidence and usual attitudes about it has been a huge help in making me a more accurate thinker. Which... should be a reason for confidence, I suppose. And it is, sometimes. I am not against confidence. I am against being stupid about it. And unfortunately everyone is stupid about it, so it sounds as if I am against confidence, and resentful of people who have more of it than I do. And that is possible, but I really try for that not to be situation. I am not a very jealous or very resentful person at all. (And I make additional efforts.) If you are not harassing or harming me or others, we are good. Jealousy is not a problem; when I'm jealous of people, I admire them. I'm very much a live-and-let-live kinda guy, and I love that about myself and haven't the slightest intention ever of changing it.

And just that last statement you might call confident, because it seems good. But isn't it, maybe, overconfident? In which case it's insecure?

One day, I think that instead of the word "confident" we will have about 20 words meaning different things that we are currently all bundling under the one word. Then I will no longer have a complex about confidence, if I'm still around :)

[1] If you remember some basic logic from school, this argument is neither sound nor valid.

I don't like to take pictures of people, because they pose and I feel awkward and then nothing is natural or artistic.

If someone hands me a phone to snap their happy group, I don't mind; I'll take half a dozen, hoping one will be half-decent. So it isn't that I lose a sense of connection. I like that they're having fun and trusting me to capture the moment. It's that my style has never been about posing.

It's one reason I'm not photogenic. I prefer to pretend I'm not being photographed - and that means most photos come out unflattering, I guess.

The phoniness of holding a smile expressly for the camera - it makes me squirm, even when I enjoy it and hope the photo turns out well. I avoid photo ops.

And I avoid putting people in those photos by not trying to take them. Almost all my photos are of plants and streets and skies and waters and oddities.

Sometimes I get photos of people who don't know or don't care that I'm photographing. But I try not to be a voyeur. I feel strange about a photo showing a stranger enough they could be identified. So I'm not trying to take photos like that, either.

Humans are primates. Primates are social.

Primates have evolved a particular tendency to cheat. We look at others and how they're feeling, and we unconsciously guesstimate that this has to do with their value in the group.

This is quite literally imprecise, inaccurate, and unfair, yet like many biases, fallacies, and prejudices, it's a shortcut that can work some of the time. That it can sometimes work is used, when it's questioned, to justify all the times it doesn't. The usual term for this kind of response is "rationalization."

One adaptation to this unconscious, apparently evolved bias is to tell everyone that they should be confident. If they aren't confident, we say, then they will be mistreated. If they are confident, they will much more often get what they want in society and life.

And so most people adopt this confidence ethic and do what it takes to seem and feel confident. Even if they're reluctant at first, when they see how well it works, they're converts.

But it goes a step further. This isn't just helpful advice for getting by in an imperfect world. And the faults of the people who unfairly mistreat the unconfident aren't just brushed aside. No, it's worse.

See, because confidence is now an ethic, you are seen as shirking your psychosocial duties if you are not doing whatever it takes to seem and feel confident.

In other words, the rationalization for mistreating unconfident people just got worse. Now we're not only ignoring the unfairness of the primate cheat that looks to how a person feels to tell us their value in the world. We're also saying that if you don't respond to that unfairness by "working on yourself" until you are confident, then everything that happens to you as a result is your fault.

I'm not sure why this was obvious to me in 2nd grade when two or three of my classmates spent a while berating me for my lack of confidence as an explanation for why seemingly everyone in the class - including, frankly, them - seemed to dislike me.

It was obvious then, the cognitive mistake they and society were making.

And it's obvious now.

Why am I one of so few who can see this clearly, still?

Am I wrong, or are people rationalizing a bias en masse and blaming the wrong group for the problems it causes?

(Balancing refutation point: yes, research shows that insecurity can put up defense mechanisms and heighten biases. Meanwhile, limited confidence, or humility, or self-compassion reduces one's defensiveness and so increases the accuracy of certain kinds of perception, simply by helping with openness. And so there may, arguably, be a responsibility of some kind - adjusting, however, for mental health difficulties - to adopt this relatively objective frame of mind where possible. But it's an oversimplification to call modest confidence more objective across the board; every frame of mind will be good at some sorts of patterns. And in any case, to police others' mental states through social mores is dubious at best. We can give advice without judging those people who can't or won't follow it. The inside of everyone's mind should be as free as possible from external prohibition.)

How about instead of unaccountably avoiding or ignoring people who seem needy, desperate, insecure, or creepy, you tell them specifically what you're perceiving?

And how about instead of getting insulted and badmouthing a person who tells you something like this, you thank them and think about it?

When people complain about narcissists, they're usually (without realizing it) complaining about the other 3 parts of the dark tetrad: machiavellian, psychopathic, sadistic.

It's ironic. Narcissistic, by itself, is the least objectionable of these, yet it gets by far the most airtime.

That's weird.

Maybe we should fix that.

Something you learn when teaching is that most people do not remember most of what they hear. Even when someone appears to understand, even when they're able to apply what they've just learned and solve problems correctly, they will most likely forget. Often a week later they have little to no memory of it. I've often been told by a student that this is the first time they're hearing something I told them the week before. It isn't my memory versus theirs; I have notes as well.

You should factor this in when you call people insensitive or mean for not understanding your life or the struggles you face.

You should also factor this in when people tell you about things they face. In all likeliness, you will not understand or remember much of what they tell you unless you make specific efforts.

Pet peeve: "one of the better [...] ever made." This I'm sure sounds sophisticated to the person who wrote it. But to me, it just sounds like mincing words. If it's "one of the better," it's probably "one of the best." If it isn't, don't say "ever made."

Reviewers have a habit of saying "one of the better" when they don't want to lose credibility by geeking out. The aloofness could work, but when you send mixed messages like mutilating "one of the best ever!" into "one of the better ever!" you lose credibility with an unforced language error.

If more or less anyone else would say "one of the best" and you're saying "one of the better," ask yourself if your words will end up sounding churlish or like a backhanded compliment. Downgrading enthusiasm doesn't automatically upgrade your status or discernment, especially when doing so flips the message on its head unintentionally.

If you want to say something more refined than "one of the best," how about changing more words than just "best" to "better," hm?

Sometimes I wonder what's distinct about my approach to life. After all, I feel... out of alignment with how things are usually done. And of course it is no one thing that defines anyone. I'm a person, not an idea.

But here's one effort, in a nutshell:

I believe there is a game humans have evolved to play. Largely it is a social game based on instincts about hierarchy and trust and what to believe.

I believe many of these instincts are out of date and have a tendency to hold us back as a group and even as individuals.

I don't have a word for this belief, but let's call it anti-instinctualism, or psychosocial skepticism.

To look at one aspect of it in practice, I feel I am not very "successful" because I don't believe in the metric. I could be living my life for material and social success, and if I were, my life would look radically different; I choose otherwise. Others see me as not very successful and assume I am trying and failing to succeed on that level. Even I have a tendency to believe that, in that I have the usual human psychosocial quirks. When I have access to money, I feel better. When I am broke, I feel worse. A smile from a pretty person can change my afternoon. When others agree with me, I feel good. When others disagree with me, I feel bad.

When people talk about "not caring what anyone thinks," I think they are also trying to get past this primitive hierarchical psychosocial programming we've all inherited.

That isn't the way I prefer to think of it, but I understand.

I think my skepticism runs deeper and is more nuanced.

It is, for example, why I refuse to unfriend people when friends get in fights. No one's insults or punches will be reversed by a Facebook unfriend from me. I am skeptical of the common, impassioned assumption that ostracism is the best move for virtual bystanders. I think in most cases it does nothing useful, only cut off lines of information and reinforce preexisting attitudes. If someone gave me evidence contradicting this, I would look into it with fascination and would quite likely change my view. But people don't, because they are not operating on evidence, it seems. It seems they are operating on instinct - instinct that I consider outdated and all too often unexamined.

Those are a couple examples of "psychosocial skepticism."

I don't think our evolved instincts are good enough. I think we need to look at them more carefully and more often and talk about them better.

That's a way I'm different, and even a reason I might seem "off."

For me, "doing my best" means second-guessing and often disagreeing with what seems unexamined and harmful, even if it seems to upset others that I pull on these threads. I believe - rightly or wrongly - that I am helping, in my own little way, to make the world a better place.

I often wish I had a different message than whatever it is I'm saying that day.

But something I've learned is that we don't necessarily choose our messages. Often they seem to choose us.

What is making you uncomfortable for everyone's overlooking it?

Now, did you choose that?

If you're quite wrong about it, did you choose to be quite wrong? Was that your preference? Did you know?

The best we can do is try to disprove what we have to say.

This is odd because it means that when we have something to say, we go through a process to shut ourselves up first.

If it's worth saying, not everyone agrees yet.

If not everyone agrees yet, someone's mistaken.

If someone's mistaken, that could be you.

If it isn't you, then you've got something to be grateful for, and a reason not to be too shitty to someone mistaken.

All this seems perfectly obvious.

Oh, I exaggerate: I also have some questions and am not sure.

There is a kind of Zen to maintaining unsureness over everything.

Any time you stand up, you know you could fall down. Any time you take a breath in, you know you might never breathe in again. These are not too threatening. You recognize them so often that they're commonplaces.

There's this culture of people dating and then never talking to each other again, or at least treating each other as if they are less than real people.

I understand there are several reasons for this. It isn't some random configuration of habits that occurred senselessly. There are times when this makes sense.

However, I just do not think that way myself. I don't feel that way. I find it very difficult to accept a worldview like that.

I get attached to people quickly, and I care about them, and I always will.

There is no one I've dated - and no one I've wanted to date - who I would decline to talk to, or not genuinely wish a wonderful life.

That's me, I guess. Maybe I've also been lucky.

I just do not - nor will I ever - see people as disposable.

We often think of a gut feeling as for or against, but let's be honest, our guts often tell us two or more things at once. We think A is a great idea (our gut is saying so), but our gut has doubts and thinks maybe B is better and A is a big mistake.

Whichever way we go (assume there are only two), we can say "I knew this was a good idea!" if it works well and "I could feel in my gut that it wasn't right" if it doesn't.

There's a bit of an optical illusion.

The illusion comes from superstitition - from the idea that our gut, or our instincts, or our intuition, or what have you, knows the right answer ahead of time, and we just have to read the tea leaves of the soul correctly to know.

That ain't how it works.

Listen, we don't actually know ahead of time.

We're gadgets with multiple sensory inputs and multiple processing centers in competition for attention and access to the controls.

ANYTHING we decide, some of us had other ideas.

ANY TIME we are right, some of us had doubts, though those areas may have been asleep.

When we got things wrong, some of us could have told us so, but they might not actually have understood any better.

If more people understood Bayesian statistics, fewer people would believe in the Bible.

How does that work? Well, see, I don't know who wrote the books of the Bible, really, and neither do you. We weren't there. We have to take the hand-me-down credits at face value, or we have no idea at all.

But let's go back a few thousand years to the time of nomadic goatherders, etc. We're in a loose group of people united by - something. Family, tribe, you know, style of fur clothing, etc. They get into arguments and fights and people steal things and have sex with each other's mates and get jealous and hit each other over the head and whatnot. We need rules.

What are you going to tell them?

You probably do something like what you do with kids. You can't do this. You can do that. You must do that. WHY? Because... I said so. SO? Well, all right. If you behave, then... THEN WHAT? ...then you'll get some ice cream. WHAT IF I DON'T? Get ice cream? You will. NO, DON'T BEHAVE. Then you'll get eaten by the kickibocaca. WHAT'S THAT? You don't want to know, trust me. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ONE? Of course I have. BUT YOU GOT AWAY, SO IT CAN'T BE THAT BAD. Oh, you think you're so smart? Ha. Well, look at this scar. THAT'S OBVIOUSLY A SNAKE BITE. No, that's a kickibocaca bite. But don't even get me started, there's also the ... and the ... and the ...

You get the idea. People make crud up. We can guarantee that humans were making up rewards and punishments for their kids thousands of years ago. And we can guarantee that some invented or superstitious rewards and punishments worked their way into the earliest laws.

So when the first books are written, and they include some of those earliest laws and moral codes, what would we EXPECT to find in them?

Of course. We already have a good idea. You would expect to find ossified stories for children to get them growing up to follow the law, which would have developed from those early beginnings.

Given that we WOULD TOTALLY EXPECT for early books to have EXACTLY THIS TYPE OF CONTENT, how remarkable is it, actually, that an early book like the Bible has this type of content?

Bayesian statistics, looking at the above, if you could put some decent numerical estimates on probabilities, would say "It's very unremarkable that this book has this kind of content."

So when you ask the question "How likely is it that this book was actually not written by humans, but rather handed to them by a being that sounds to me like a fairytale but maybe actually does exist in reality?" the answer is "EXTREMELY FUCKING UNLIKELY."

And if we all were comfortable with Bayesian statistics, we'd all know it.

But when atheists-to-be come to the realization that the Bible must have been written by humans, they are actually, in my opinion, doing Bayesian reasoning informally in their heads. This is not surprising. While it sounds fancy and sophisticated and abstruse, brains have been shown to rely heavily on Bayesian processes. So basically, if you're smart about how you look at the Bible, your brain will naturally suggest what is almost certainly the truth: it is not holy in origin. 

I don't like to be boring (if I can avoid it; God help me), but sometimes you can take the dullest topic, write about it in detail, polish it later with a bit of humor, and what seemed like a terrible "scribble op" becomes a solid piece. Poems can work this way. Essays. Almost anything.

Honestly I have no trouble understanding why people off themselves. None whatsoever. Sometimes I have significant trouble understanding why most people continue. Sometimes I object to what goes down in this world so much that I feel tarnished by sticking around in it. That's probably irrational but it's a way I've often felt. If you really can't understand suicide, think of it as a protest vote. Think of it as walking out of a movie that you think really sucks. Think of it as disgust with what you've been force-fed—or what you've chosen to eat—and making yourself throw it all back up. Think of it as an abortion that happens years late. Suicide is self-abortion as a means to get away from what's intolerable in the world. I can't not understand it. Maybe I was destined for it. Or maybe I simply understand. There's a lot I understand. I wish I didn't understand this, but I do.

I try to avoid what I think of as the catholic fallacy. The term is inspired by—but not a comment on—the Catholic Church, as it's a very human error. Hence I didn't capitalize. (More on the name in a moment. Maybe you can think of a better one! Also, it's possible I read this phrase somewhere, but Google turns up nothing.)

The error is in confusing the implications (or possible implications or even misinterpretations) of a statement with the statement. Referring to the Catholic Church might help our brain tissue hook into the idea's kernel, by way of the Church's historic stance that the masses can't handle the truth (given the sparsity of education back then, this makes some sense), and the appointment of authorities to filter it for them. "The Bible is the truth but we can't really trust you to understand it, so you need us to explain it. And actually, go ahead and listen to us whenever you're in doubt." [Offensive continuation: "Also, do what we say or you'll burn in Hell. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. We didn't make the rules! God loves you infinitely; it's all for your own good. Oh yes, absolutely. Even eternal 'torture,' as you put it. That doesn't make sense? It doesn't have to make sense! The ego of thinking it should make sense! Shame on you!"]

The mental health and mass shooter debate is a good example of this "catholic fallacy."

That is, when someone picks up a gun and shoots themselves in the head, we all know that's a mental health issue.

When a person picks up a gun and shoots someone else in the head—someone innocent who really didn't deserve it and had no choice in the matter—this should, by most any measure, be an even worse mental health issue. (If the person then shoots themselves in the head, it seems unambiguous.)

Yet we can't trust you with the truth, so we're going to say it isn't a mental health issue.

The fact most mass shooters have not been diagnosed with a condition does not prove that they had none. How many people go undiagnosed? And how many conditions haven't been adequately named, described, or understood yet? Here the eventual behavior strongly suggests disorder. If going out in a blaze of fury killing as many people as possible for no reason isn't "insane," what is?

The fact OCD (etc, etc, etc) has nothing to do with shooting people does not prove that mass shooting has nothing to do with mental health. (It doesn't even particularly suggest that. Many mental health issues are drastically different.)

I understand the social and legal considerations (the need to avoid unfair and damaging stigma and prejudice, or on the other end, to avoid encouraging or excusing violence), but those do not and cannot replace science. Allowing them to would be an example of what I'm calling "the catholic fallacy." Brain tissue seems to produce, and certainly mediates, behavior. Diseases of behavior fall under psychology, neurology, and mental health.

 

To give a different example of "the catholic fallacy," if you're late for work and spent 30 minutes in a traffic jam when usually it's 10 minutes in a traffic jam, then that is a factor in your lateness, regardless of whether someone feels you ought to be allowed to use it as an excuse or not. To blot out the traffic as "just an excuse" and somehow not real or worthy of any consideration is "the catholic fallacy," because objectively it was a factor. Its existence and its implications should not be confused for each other. Maybe you could have left earlier. Maybe you could have checked Google to see traffic conditions. Maybe you could have called ahead. Maybe maybe maybe, yes, but it was a factor, and "excuse" or "not an excuse" on some very basic level ceases to carry relevance and becomes a matter of opinion. Science is concerned with facts and factors, not "should" or "excuse." To confuse the two areas is the catholic fallacy.

To put all this in a nutshell—to sum the fallacy up—it's "You can't handle the truth; therefore it isn't true." Or "Someone else might get the wrong idea; therefore I will insist the truth isn't true and yell at people who speak it." Or "This is a possibility for all I know, but I don't like the way it looks to say so, so I will deny it and believe my denial."

"Catholic" means "universal," so I'm generalizing from that meaning and not trying to grind an axe with religion (the historic inconsistency I pointed out above seems fair to mention in passing, but I'm not judging people themselves for believing things that I think don't make sense). Again, maybe you have a better term. This is related to "political correctness" or "hypercorrectness" but need not involve either. It homes in on a specific and common logical error. "Out of the universe of all people, someone's gonna misunderstand." And that's true. But it doesn't change the truth.

As time passes, the list of details to know about your body gets longer and longer. Same about your mind, less visibly.

When you're a kid things just heal, and you know they will and rely on it.

As an adult you become aware of all the things that won't ever heal, or only so slowly that it's an incredible nuisance.

They pile up like notches on a calendar stick.

As you age, your mind fills up with things wrong with your body. Things to watch, things to remember, things to keep an eye out for. Things to fix, but maybe they can't be fixed. Things to try to endure. Slowly, "getting to know yourself" turns into a long list, a body map, in fact, of fractures, pains, dysfunctions, weaknesses, fears. Your mouth is not a mouth, it's a topography of chips and dents and ulcer-prone spots and odd what's-thats and places food gets stuck and festers until you floss.

That's just a mouth, and barely half of one. It goes on and on, and you hope it keeps going on, but it keeps getting worse, and you wonder why you would hope for that descent to endure. You take it near infinity and imagine a football field, a mountain, a moon, a planetoid of proprioceptive and other defects, all compounding, all gelling into habit, yes, I remember that, and that, and that, I know how to mitigate those pains well enough for now, and here come more, and more. Do you see? You become an architecture of lonely perils, of "character" up the wazoo.

I've never understood the point of cleaning dishes if you don't actually clean them. It seems to me that incompletely washing dishes is a complete waste of time, energy, water, and soap.

My tendency is the opposite—I wash things by hand, usually, and take too much time, energy, water, and soap. But some of that's covering (or uncovering) for people who leave 3 of 4 dishes they breathe on and sweat over caked in layers of slime and breakfast mud of sundry hues. How is it justified? "This sure beats diarrhea anus!" How can you face that on the other end when you're pouring clean water for tea?

Maybe I seem too careful, but when I'm done washing dishes, they're clean. You don't have to wash any of them again.

If you leave all that fossilized eating, the person who comes after you, the one unfortunate enough to notice what you've done, will now have to put more effort into cleaning before than after, even if they are extra-careful normally.

Seems... uh, dumb. Yes. Quite dumb?

If you aren't going to clean the dishes, own up and just don't. Stop faking!

At least that way we'll know where the dirty dishes are: NOT in the cupboards and drawers, but in and around the sink, ready for someone who will de-dirt them, rather than waste time, energy, water, and soap looking like they're doing something they aren't doing.

Honestly, it amazes me that I feel the need to say this.

No, I'm not exaggerating. You think I'm being a prima donna. You think I'm spinning a tall tale for your amusement. You do, don't you?

Some people—apparently a surprising number—are happy to look like they're washing dishes, instead of actually washing them, because I guess every few dishes they might accidentally get it about right.

So they'll convince themselves that they just missed a few, when in fact it's the opposite: they just cleaned a few, and missed most.

Sigh. I guess people have other things on their minds and we all in our own way become creatures of habit and that's how this kind of bizarro-world stuff happens.

People often lack empathy about empathy, which seems ironic. Not everyone is as well-endowed as you. Aren't you so wonderful, and aren't they so scummy.

I care a lot about empathy, and I'm a fairly empathetic person, and that isn't an act, as I think sometimes people believe it to be; but I find that attitude I described small-minded, gross, and prejudiced.

With all that empathy of yours, you can't even, like, use it properly?

Sometimes I find people least empathetic of all about other people's level of empathy.

Do you really believe that you chose all that?

Have you ever, say, aced a class that you worked hard at? If you hadn't studied, you would have done poorly or failed. Right? So you earned a good grade. But if you'd been someone else, you could have studied twice as much and still failed. Huh. And we also know that many people who realize they aren't good at something put in even less effort than average... given that they will (they believe) never be any good at this. (It can naturally start to feel like throwing good money after bad.) Meanwhile, someone else could have aced the test without any perceptible effort.

Are you seeing the connection?

Empathy is a skill like every other skill in existence. Some people are great at it, seemingly naturally. Other people suck at it, despite a lot of effort. And most people are somewhere in a very big and complicated space between those extremes. (I would recommend the following: try to get over it and be a little less judgy. But now that I've given you the message as clearly as I can, it's up to you.)

There's a lot of talk (and sometimes from me) about whether things are weak or strong. But... it's subjective. Is it weak or strong to go through migraines? It's both. It's a defect. It's something wrong with me. If I could change my DNA (or reverse the damage if it came from hitting my head sometime as a toddler - for example, who knows, maybe the time I rode my tricycle down a flight of stairs and fell on my head - or maybe the time I ran out of the bathtub, slipped, hit my head on the sharp corner of the sink counter, bled all over the place, and had to get stitches) so that I didn't get them, I would. Sure, it could be unhealthy to walk around everywhere thinking "I'm defective. There's something wrong with me." There's something wrong with all of us, though. Evolution is a process of one defect after another. We're all massive conglomerations of typos, some of which are essential.

The things that make us weak can also make us strong, and the other way around. It isn't strictly one or the other. In fact it may be a mild/naive form of gaslighting to insist "This *is not* weak. It is *strong*." I mean, without metrics, these are opinion words. When you give an opinion, you should be aware it's an opinion and someone else will have another, and that isn't evil, it's just natural.

I'm sure - there's no question in my mind - that some of my greatest and most useful qualities are seen as weak, defective, annoying, stupid, or wrong by others. But when it's useful over and over, it is also a strength.

Migraines have taught me many things, not only about pain and suffering and perception, but also about brain chemistry and communication.

It isn't badass - I think - to suck it up and take the pain when the pain comes from a self-reinforcing inflammatory cascade - a feedback loop. A migraine is almost exactly like feedback from a mic on a PA. It's this needle-sharp, hot, almost (with the migraine, it literally is) nauseating crack down the calcium-phosphate crystal of your skull and your soul. That's kind of how it feels. Like a needle through your eyebrow, behind your eye, into your brain. Just left there, radiating. The pain leaks into the bridge of your nose, across the top of your head, into your neck at the atlas vertebra, sometimes your jaw and teeth. It doesn't have to be that bad to drive you slightly crazy. Nauseating pain that persists mercilessly is much worse than the same pain for a moment. It's more what it does to the pit of your stomach and your sense of the decency of the world than what it does to your actual pain receptors, somehow, though when the pain subsides, there's often relief to the point of euphoria.

So it's a thing I learned that just because pain isn't obviously physically damaging anything, it is actually not good, and trying to push through it with willpower can weaken rather than strengthen you. Pain has psychological effects, and when you let that inflammatory feedback run - like the mic feedback - without interrupting it, it grows and grows until it reaches some saturation point (you hope - but you really don't want to find out how high that point can be, because when you think you know, it can go higher). The longer you let a migraine run this time, the more easily you'll get the next one. And the more it'll affect your mental clarity, too, and probably your cardiovascular health. That isn't badass, really. That's something to avoid.

Writers like to cut through the cruft and say it right, preferably in a few words that feel like talking at its best.

When non-writers write or edit, they puff everything up. They want it sounding respectable and accomplished.

Banish that instinct.

Cut the shit and say it right, in words that feel like talking at its best.

ADHD is a lot less of a problem when your mind is in good working order otherwise. Sometimes I'm honed to one idea for hours or days, almost no interruption. Other times I'm doing 4 or 5 things at once, interleaving them. Both take presence of mind.

If I'm forgetting why I opened a new tab or walked into the room, if I want to die, if I need to call someone but I feel too stammery - that's all going to destroy progress and leave me feeling like a large pile of permanently unsorted laundry forgotten in a basement near Chernobyl.

I'm often too egotistical to read books, apparently. That is, I go for a walk with my headphones on, audiobook loaded. Should be easy enough. Press play. Don't press stop. But if I start at all, I often stop within a minute or two, because my thoughts keep pressing and I prefer them now. Some I write down. This is one. I never pressed play today.

As a writer I stand against this sense that words are supposed to be puffy, serious, professional, impressive. I hate that.

I write as naturally and simply as I can. People who aren't writers inevitably will reverse my work and try to make me sound like everyone else.

They don't seem to realize that "everyone else" sounds pretty awful to me, and that's exactly why I removed all the cruft that they're trying to put back for heaven knows what reason.

Ah, yes, I was briefly lying—I almost forgot the reason: to be puffy, serious, professional, impressive. I hate that.

Dopamine, GABA, serotonin, adrenaline, noradrenaline, anandamide, endorphin/enkephalin, dynorphin, acetylcholine, BDNF/NGF, glutamate, histamine, adenosine, oxytocin, melatonin...

It's a unique thing in history that many of us have a decent idea what these feel like.

Of course, it isn't the actual chemicals we feel, but the neural systems they set off.

Our brains are hives of neurons secreting pheromones, essentially. The pheromones are as much about how to connect as where to fly.

When women talk about and swoon over a guy's "confidence," they mean his calm feeling that he easily can and will go and get laid with someone else. Or get/accomplish whatever else he wants. It can certainly be other kinds of confidence, too, but I'm taking out a magnifying glass, here. Virtually everyone is really confident about some things, so when a person is labeled "confident" or "unconfident" in this setting, it's often situational.

So if a guy is busy with other aspects of life, or choosy, or both, and isn't playing the game as it was played in the wilderness, then he will quite likely not be getting laid, and will not feel on that basic instinctual level that he seems all that great to a new person who seems great, or that it's that easy at all to just go out and get sex and affection. And so he will not seem confident this way, especially when he thinks he has found someone worth his attention, and feels she is really special and he doesn't want to mess things up. This uncertainty/hesitation will be unattractive, and he may very sadly find himself avoided by the women he's interested in.

By those women specifically, and specifically because he's interested in them. Women he isn't interested in may still be crazy about him, seemingly because he isn't interested in dating or sleeping with them, but then again, maybe also because he has lots of good qualities. And if he can read people, he can see this pattern all too clearly, but it doesn't help him. Noticing may only make things worse.

This is to some extent (possibly a very large extent) because we have been removed from the naturalistic setting in which these instincts evolved. The way women and men evaluate each other for mating, on an emotional level, which is the level we make many of those decisions on, has scarcely changed in a million years.

When he actually just plain wants someone, she makes herself scarce... Because he wants her and she can sense it... Because he doesn't seem to feel confident around her. She will never tell him this.

This will make him feel not only undesirable but also eventually creepy. He'll have to ask himself if he's getting avoided because he's scary. Worrying about that actually makes a guy tend to seem creepy if he didn't seem that way already. Women generally do not provide feedback on this unless it's extreme, so he is left guessing. He feels she doesn't understand. But he isn't even sure what she's thinking, and she won't tell him, so how can he know? All he knows is that this is somewhat excruciatingly predictable, and it's because he likes her that she's avoiding him. That's clear. The exact "why" or what he can do about it may be totally unclear. That just doesn't seem fair. You feel more affection toward someone than toward other people, and that person treats you like a pariah.

So, in effect, from his point of view, now he's getting prejudged for the fact that he tends to get mistreated for the fact he has feelings. Good feelings. Feelings of peace, love, and understanding.

Do you see any hints of toxic femininity in this?

Yes, there are also hints of toxic masculinity in it. That's serious and needs to be addressed fully. Absolutely, and as a top priority. But statistically, more crimes tend to have been committed by black people. To assume a black person is a criminal is a prejudice. Prejudice is social toxicity.

-

Ghosting a guy because he seems unconfident or seems to have feelings is toxic when that's what all the women are doing to him (and other men like him). He can "up his game" like most guys would, but to him this may feel manipulative, dishonest, or both.

You think you have every right yourself, and safety first, and girl power, and everything.

But when you put it all together and watch how the pattern plays out in people's lives - when you realize that you are participating in (unnecessarily painfully and unclearly via ghosting, dishonesty, etc) pushing down the kinds of guys - or kinds of attitudes from guys - that women keep complaining they don't see enough of - then you have to admit to some toxicity here.

It's one thing for you to fail to respond to a guy's message. It's another when it seems like that's all he's ever known.

Admit to that toxicity.

You make men feel ostracized when they have done nothing wrong.

Regularly. Like it's putting bread in a toaster in the morning. Like it's nothing. Like it should be normal and expected.

You ostracize men who care because they care.

You make them feel like they don't exist to you or are acting like axe murderers. And from their perspective, the reason is that they felt you were special. That's why you're treating them that way, in their eyes. And it is. That's why. If you had a specific problem, some glaring error the guy made, you could tell him. But you don't. Ever. Not this kind of guy, the kind who would listen, who would love to hear any word from you. You treat him as if he doesn't exist. He has no idea what you're thinking or whether he did something wrong. Or he has a thousand ideas and can't tell which it is, and is having a secret emotional meltdown because this keeps happening, and he's trying to be more than decent and hide this from you, even though it's your fault.

Admit to that toxicity.

Or you can go on gaslighting and blaming all of this on men all of the time. Rather than some of it some of the time. Or much of it much of the time.

The dynamic is also yours.

The idea that belief itself - in absence of or against evidence - saves you in the eyes of God seems circular and contrived, and frankly like a sometimes very dangerous misconception.

It is a false moral. That is not good.

Yes, faith can be helpful. We don't have all the answers. There are times - many times - we must go on and do our best, despite forces against us, despite not knowing.

That is true, and confidence often helps us function and keeps us feeling ok or better than ok, which is generally good.

But to elevate that to an absolutist moral in ways it cannot sustain, and without any real evidence that you should -

Not good.

Socially destructive in the long run, also.

I know it isn't intended that way.

But faith-as-salvation is a false moral that can have severe negative consequences.

When people want to disapprove of an activity, one common strategy is to make a big show of NOT understanding it.

I've never found this very useful.

By proving to someone that you don't understand their motives/feelings/actions/words/beliefs/thoughts, pretty much all you're doing is saying, "Hey, I'm really stupid, you should listen to me." They make sense to themselves. If you can't figure that out, it makes you look dim. (Dim at best, and hypocritical at worst.)

???

Ok, I understand that you do not want to give the appearance of condoning or excusing what is not actually acceptable or tolerable.

There are other, better ways to go about this, though.

Also, and against what I just said, I will acknowledge that there MAY be situations in which a show of NOT understanding IS effective.

However, I haven't seen much evidence of this myself, nor does anyone seem interested in pointing to such evidence, nor does this approach align with my understanding of human minds from life experience with family abuse, a degree in psychology, and many years of teaching one-on-one.

I have seen things work, and well. But acting willfully ignorant by NOT understanding is not something that seems to work, in my experience. It increases bitterness all around and solves nothing.

If you believe that a show of NOT understanding is effective, show me the evidence, and explain where/when it might be effective, and more effective than any alternatives.

I'm open to this, but I just don't see it approached with any objectivity. I see a cultural, perhaps evolutionary bias in the direction of dehumanizing those we wish to scold.

Unless you have a good, evidence-based argument for that, count me out of it.

I think my methods are far better.

Which is a blunt way of saying what I've been saying different ways for many years.

If we're relying on evidence and some form of the scientific process - this is maybe what makes people feel threatened - then the best idea WILL win.

We just have to keep talking, analyzing, and testing... and give every hypothesis a fair shot.

People try to bend the stakes to (emotionally? persuasively? abusively?) help their favored idea or moral.

But you don't need to do that. Accurate statements eventually win, just naturally.

I think we've all seen situations where the lie prevails. And that's part of the fear. Communist Russia. Nazi Germany. Many debates, probably.

But if people are trained to analyze ideas right, accurate statements will prevail.

"Magna est veritas et praevalet." It's in the Bible. I wish people understood it.

"The truth is great and it prevails."

It's usually quoted in Latin because actually it isn't in all versions of the Bible... it's a disputed line, ironically.

It might be the truest damn thing in the whole book.

When you write essays as a habit, you find yourself going over the same topic again and again and again. It's sometimes quite nauseating. If the writing is prompted by problems out in the world - and in yourself - it's also exhausting. You are constantly facing down the opposition party in your mind - the representatives of prejudice and misconception or whatever it is you feel you must rail against. And you face them down with nothing but words on a screen, and words, often, that no one but you will see. It feels futile.

It's like being caught in a boxing ring in front of all the arrayed cameras, only you have no skill at boxing. You are modestly armed with an expensive toothbrush. If you land any blows, the footage will be deleted. And there is no crowd. They are a laugh track played backwards and further modified to sound like screams of disapproval whatever you do. That's approximately what it feels like to write. Yet some people just keep going, keep writing, and after a while, they'll have some versions of their thoughts that they feel might stand up to outside attention and turn a mind or two in a newer, better direction.

How much money I'm making has almost never in my life been a reliable indicator of whether I thought I was doing much good, or the right kind of work for my talents and sense of purpose.

For me it's an irrelevant signal, like static from the other room.

Yes it's important to make money. But the money gradient field is, I think, incredibly deceptive.

The work that aligns most with my purpose in this world makes not a cent, because I'm too ahead of the curve, and I'm not a one-man PR show.

(It should be noted that ADHD and depression both alter your sense of motivation, and can force you to evaluate and reevaluate very carefully what you're trying to do here while alive. Someone else's laundry is not on that list, though you like doing laundry and could take on a task like that. It's just not on the list, so you aren't putting it in the list. No one's asking. That's good. You don't need hard "no" too often, you just chase your highest purpose in this world. That's plenty to attend to. You don't need distractions. There are plenty already. And you weave a big net - ideas of all kinds zing into that net, and you set them free, like fish you don't want to hurt. In setting them free, you bring them to life, or at least keep a record of them in a journal. See how it works?)

I am basically a spider waiting for ideas.

One lands. TWING-G-G-G-G...

In 2nd grade, everyone in the class disliked me. They ostracized me because the funny guy in the class decided to mock me until everyone turned against me, because he resented my quiet smarts. He was always getting into trouble. Many times a day. Whenever the teacher got mean to him, which seemed like every time they addressed each other, I felt bad for him. She seemed to be missing something. She was being a bitch. Not too badly, the way you might expect from a teacher getting interrupted. But the thing is I understood the moment he started his mockery campaign against me: this was his life. He wasn't just beeing cheeky and should shut up. This was his everyday. This was a world in which the teacher was generally a bitch to him, and probably many other adults were similar. Sure, he was laughing out of turn, and making jokes the students found funny and the teacher didn't. That's an incredible life skill right there. He just needed to hone it. And when was he going to do that? Not under her watch. So he rebelled.

I wouldn't have used those words, but in the moments of embarrassment as I wondered if and why he had something against me, this is what I understood. And I knew that I was better at this sympathy business than he was, most likely. And that was a thing and also not exactly his fault.

But yeah, from that moment he got everyone in the class to dislike me for the rest of the year, give or take two girls who half-heartedly defended me or wanted to be my friend, respectively.

If you are sure that you are on the right side of an issue, prove to me that you didn't get there by blind luck. Show me the thought process. Show me why you're so convinced, if you can.

Show me that you recognize holes in your point of view. They're always there, even in 2+2=4. If you don't see them, that's a problem. (Is 2 apples plus 2 oranges 4 potatoes? No? What about 2 apples a thousand years ago and 2 apples today, is that 4 apples you can eat? Hm. What about 2 apples here and 2 apples in the backpack you left at work? Can you juggle 4 apples right now? Not exactly? Thank you, we have some provisos after all.) Show me that you are seriously considering complexities and other arguments that don't agree with your conclusion. Show me that you aren't above provisionally disagreeing with your position, or hearing a challenge to it in good faith.

To prove a thing, start by allowing it to be very much in doubt. Let any and every criticism fly. Invite tomatoes of criticism to be thrown. Throw some of the tomatoes at this thing yourself. Next, squeeze out most of the doubt by fair, transparent, reliable methods. Don't cheat by shutting out disagreement or shitting on people who don't fall in line. Let the best idea win in a free exchange; show that one idea wins naturally because it has the advantage of accuracy.

That I respect.

The rest? I respect the people, I respect that they have opinions, but I think the opinions are farts in a breeze.

I spent a good 5 years in various Christian schools as a kid.

I'm not a believer, but I'm agnostic and sympathetic - even if my outspokenness might have sounded harsh here and there.

One day in 6th grade, like so many other days, I didn't have my homework. And it was already a backlog. But I didn't bring in the backlog. Needless to say, I was very anxious about this, and was dreading having to tell my teacher, Mrs. Evans (who, incidentally, I consider one of the best teachers I've ever had).

She was not happy. In fact, she sent me next door. To 5th grade.

So I sat in a carrel against the righthand wall in 5th grade and worked on my backlog, feeling somewhat humiliated.

While I was there, the teacher was teaching the class about Charles Darwin.

She attacked his character. He wasn't really that smart. He'd been a bad student in school. He wasn't a genius. He was more of a flunky. He was lazy. No wonder his theories didn't add up.

And so on.

Soon, the class were engaged in cracking jokes about how WE weren't monkeys, HE was a monkey, ha ha ha ha. One person would joke, and the others would laugh. And that would spur on more.

And it occurred to me - I'd had the same insight the first day of school in Kindergarten when kids made fun of my British accent - that this was part of the mechanism. This was part of how they deluded themselves.

I wasn't an expert. I didn't know FOR SURE that this teacher was deluded and Darwin was right.

But you know what I did know?

I knew that the way they were critiquing him was utter garbage and had nothing to do with the issue.

"The internet’s tailored social media feeds and algorithms have herded us into echo chambers where our own views are cheered and opposing views are mocked." 

People conform in an effort to seem normal, trustworthy, and good. When you challenge the crowd, you can easily seem abnormal, suspicious, or bad. So people often don't.

This is something I became acutely aware of in 2nd grade. That year I was, I'm pretty sure, the most disliked person in my class.

It started when the class joker launched a campaign of picking on me. He was jealous of my quiet smarts, which the teacher quietly approved of, whereas he was constantly getting into trouble and looking like a buffoon. That's what I intuited the first time he openly and somewhat meanly mocked me - before that, I thought he was funny and sympathized when he got in trouble. But he had something against me, and within a week or two, he'd gotten basically everyone in the class against me.

Admittedly I threw some insults back, but one kid against the whole class is kind of a lot, and he had started it and persisted in it. I was not interested in attacking him, but he was interested in attacking me.

The irony is that I was more compassionate toward the people who disliked me than vice-versa. But crowds don't like being told they're wrong. They want you to respect the fact they all agree. Even if what they agree on is that you suck. If you act like they're all stupid, they'll fucking hate you, at least until the individuals and climate mature a bit.

On the last day of school I asked this boy Nick, who I'd made friends with on the first day, what happened. "I thought we were friends," I said. "What happened?"

He seemed to gloat with contempt and jumped into an "EVERYONE knows you're..." and then stopped. He looked confused.

"I'm what?" I asked. He was silent. "Not COOL?" I finished.

We never spoke again.

He'd been that other guy Jake's right-hand man when several boys ambushed me on the playground, leered at me in a circle, and threw a football in my face, leaving my ears ringing. It was a Nerf football, but it did make me lightheaded, and I saw stars. Another time, Jake and Nick ran by, Jake closer, close enough to touch my hand with a wet feeling. A little stunned, I looked. He'd left a booger on my left hand, on the webbing by the thumb. I just never did anything like this to any of them, nor did I want to. His rationale was, apparently, according to what he yelled in passing, "Whoever smelt it dealt it!" It seemed as if he was dealing it and I was smelling it.

So after the football in the face, with my ears still ringing and my head still a little dizzy, I tried to understand why they all felt so justified. They clearly did, somehow. What was that look of contempt on Jake's and Nick's faces, and the others'? What were they getting revenge on me for? What had I even done?

And via various clues, I made sense of it. I challenged them collectively. Yet I wasn't cool and fun about it, I was shy and down on myself, a signal they could rationalize as inferiority. This latter related to a helpful tip from Nicole, the girl who sat next to me later in the year, and who was the only person who (half-heartedly) defended me, and was almost a friend. I was (this comment from someone else was true) "having a hissy fit" because I was so upset about struggling with cursive letters. They looked terrible, I felt awful. But she pointed out that many people were struggling, and some might even think I was doing well, and if I was beating myself up about it out loud, how did I think that would make THEM feel? This was an incredibly astute and useful comment.

In general, I was a naysayer, a critic, a skeptic, contrarian. Yet not cool, but rather - introverted, shy, perhaps insecure. Yet still enough of an oaf to be bold against a group. It's the clash of those two things that people can really hate. Bragplaining is one example of that kind of inferior/superior clash, and how unpopular it can be.

It was the same kind of thing that got Socrates executed, I later learned. "I am the gadfly," he liked to say. "I know that I know nothing," he would say, and then he'd claim to be the smartest man in Greece. He'd question people in ways they didn't know how to answer, but rather than admitting ignorance, they'd often get defensive or deflective. He claimed to be smarter because he didn't do that, because he could see through the illusion of their sure knowledge, and of his own. That's admittedly a little inflammatory. But hatred? That's frankly a downright stupid response, and anyone offended by that comment probably deserves to feel offended.

And my tendency to react in such a way - by actually saying something like that, because it's probably true - is exactly why I was deeply unpopular in 2nd grade.

I told people they were being stupid when they were being fucking stupid, and mean to boot.

They fucking deserved it. Morons ganging up against one shy kid with a sense of compassion for them. Morons unable to identify their own animalism as the cause.

Fucking idiotic. Then blaming me.

Oh yeah, I had a part in it.

The part I had in it was fighting back but not sinking quite to their level. Exactly the part I would still take today, though I'd use better methods.