(PS: I don’t have a problem with women at all. Perhaps just the opposite. The only problem I have had in my relationships is always the same: I work harder than anyone else until I burnout and it tends to ruin my relationships because I become emotionally numb and my significant others feel powerless to stop me from exhaustion. … You see, I know how to seek therapy and learn from it like anyone else. đ It’s late in life but I don’t intend to repeat that cycle. đ )
Humans develop narratives to justify the siezure or evasion of incentives. The study of history in the absence of those incentives is a story of human creative will – while in the presence of those incentives, a story of adaptive utility.
In the study of history it is too oft overlooked that some civilizations consistently choose narratives poorly and some choose better. Because the narratives are capable of persisting error. And foundational narratives most capable of persisting error.
Hence the near impossibility of chanigng a civilization the farter from the natural law it has evolved through the accumulation of narratives in support of poor choices.
Someone has asked me to stay on message here: My friendships with women are usually some sort of mentorship, alliance, or working together on something. It’s in this context that the friendship evolves into trust and from trust into the exchange of insights and ideas, concerns and questions. At least for me, the primary motive, is to obtain insights from empaths that my rather systematizing neurons fail to sense, or grasp. Women are awesome. đ
You Err. Trump’s strategy is obvious, simple, and consistent. That you fall for it by failing to recognize it is both a statement of your psychological maturity and his strategies efficacy. P has strategic value and trump always preserves a relationship necessary for negotiating. Ukraine in nato has strategic value regardless of Russia. Z has no strategic value. Russia is dying on this hill. So if it cannot be brought along strategically then Europe can and must pay to drain Russia the rest of the way. Meanwhile Trump will seek maximum detachment, preserving future opportunity with Russia upon its collapse; shut down Iran quickly or use Israel and the kingdoms to do so; and try to temper China long enough for the CCP to replace Xi this fall, while repatriating strategic industry faster than china’s population and economic collapse lead to the usual repetition of the Dynasty and Bad Emperor problems. Xi is trying to purge the military of opposition and launch his war before he’s evicted ceremoniously from his role. Not that we can ensure the next Bad emperor is any better in china or russia. And Trump is trying to purge the corruption in the Federal bureaucracy, the woke movement from society and academy, and prevent the collapse of the dollar because of national debt at the same time. He is not the first president to do such a grand restructuring. He is at least the fourth. And if you do not grasp this necessity, its urgency, his (team’s)) strategy, and why these restructurings are necessary, as well as why our constitution permits it, and why we have not had a chang in government since its inception.
A difference in judgements. There are those of us who were not indoctrinated, systematize more than empathize, and have agency more so than fear. THere are those who were indoctrinated, empathize more than systematize, and have more fear than agency. Additionally some of us are foolish and see the other end of the spectrum as wrong rather than different, and some of us that are foolish and cannot comprehend the other end of the spectrum. But there are some who can understand the opposite end of the spectrum and who also feel compassion for their need for security versus agency. Peterson is smart enough and moral enough, systematizing enough yet empathic enough, to recognize that people below a certain level of intelligence, a certain level of systematizing, and a certain level of agency, literally cannot function without faith. And some of us, who have studied world religions, easily recognize that the folks at the bottom who are christian live better lives than the folks at the bottom in every other religion or every other secular frame. We might also recognize that one can treat god as outside the universe, of the universe, a product of the universe, or a product of man within the universe – but as long as we identify the same moral laws, the manner of the existence of god is immaterial TO OTHERS. Likewise we can see Jesus as god, jesus as the product of god, jesus as the product of the laws of the universe which he perceives as god, or jesus as a teacher who understands the laws of the universe and teaches to the faithful and those who need faith in the name of god. We need not agree on the origin of god or the origin of the teachings of jesus to obey the. laws of jesus, god, and nature. If they are the same then they are true regardless of their origin.
(Diary) My female friends are utterly amazing, and a positive influence on my life. And I disagree that men and women can’t be friends. There just can’t be any meaningful attraction (eros) there. If that’s both unwanted and off the table, and both of you get what you give, it’s wonderful. Especially when you’re on the extreme end of the male cognitive spectrum, such that female social insight appears like a superpower. đ I loved women. I loved the playful dance between men and women. In my generation we liked each other. And I’m sad for the present and especially urban generations who have turned sex differences into interesexual warfare. It’s partly due to the marxist-to-feminist-to-woke cult’s evolution, and partly the male counter-revolution against it. But it’s also part of the disappearance of the possibility of the one income family, the cost of the educational diploma mill, the expansion of white color clerical work during the age of computers, and of course, the industrialization of relationships through social media treating it as shopping rather than seeking opportunity to adapt to one another, the end of liability for interference in or termination of a marriage, with it’s common property, child support, and alimony – all of which I expect to end by the beginning of the next decade. In fact, given that list its amazing we aren’t going extinct through lack of reproduction. Wait… we ARE.
(Diary) When your ex calls you up to berate you as a means of asking you to rescue her from another set of iffy decisions.
Men must choose between treating them as children or crazy. At least as children they’re forgivable. If crazy the only solution is walking away and no contact.
Q: A husband and wife are in an ‘argument’ because he doesn’t anticipate what she’s thinking and he says she needs to express her thoughts. Can you break this down into first principles?
A: Curt Doolittle’s Natural Law GPT Says
We can decompose the marital dispute you’ve describedâwhere the husband expects explicit communication, and the wife expects implicit anticipationâusing Natural Law’s first principles and epistemological commitments.
Here’s the analysis:
I. First Principles Action Requires Incentive: – All behavior is acquisition. – All acquisition demonstrates interest. – Cooperation Requires Reciprocity in Demonstrated Interests. – Cognition Operates via Prediction and Disambiguation. – Speech is Testimony. – Truthful speech is a performative warranty under threat of perjury.
II. Causal Chain of the Conflict
1. Cognitive Division of Labor (Sexual Dimorphism): – Women evolved to manage social harmony through high-context, emotionally intuitive communication (implicature). – Men evolved to manage external threats and production through low-context, propositional communication (explicit instruction).
2. Different Strategies of Coordination: – The wifeâs implicit expectation (“You should know what I feel”) reflects evolved female strategy for emotional calibration via mutual awarenessâcontingent on visible cues and social signaling. – The husbandâs explicit demand (“You need to say it”) reflects male optimization for efficiency, clarity, and conflict avoidance by reducing ambiguity through propositional speech.
3. Conflict Emerges from Asymmetric Grammars: – The wife is operating in a feminine, high-context grammar: trust and understanding are inferred from empathic anticipation. – The husband is operating in a masculine, low-context grammar: trust and understanding are earned through explicit negotiation and declared intent.
III. Operational Breakdown Component
IV. Decidability via Reciprocity
The disagreement is undecidable without mutual adaptation to a shared grammar of coordination. The conflict arises from:
1. Asymmetric Demonstrated Interests: She demonstrates emotional need for proactive attention. He demonstrates pragmatic need for explicit instruction.
2. Irreciprocity in Expectations: She imposes a cost of constant emotional vigilance without compensation. He imposes a cost of emotional labor outsourcing without mutuality.
V. Restitution via Operational Solution
1. Institutionalize a Shared Protocol: Mutual agreement on what must be spoken and what can be assumed. E.g., âI will try to anticipate, but you must inform me when itâs critical.â
2. Reciprocal Commitment to Disambiguation: She practices explicit signaling of emotional state. He practices proactive questioning and checking for context.
3. Testimonial Correction: Move both parties toward truthful speech under performative warrant. Replace mind-reading with inquiry, replace emotional withholding with disclosure.
Conclusion: The conflict reflects an evolved cognitive and communicative asymmetry. Resolution requires both parties to converge on a mutually intelligible operational grammarâtransforming the marriage from adversarial guessing into reciprocal coordination. This is the institutionalization of empathy via decidable speech.
Every time I relocate around the world I need to recreate a friend network. Prosociality and all that nonsense. đ And moving back to the northwest has repeated the process – a process that was extremely difficult in rural New England, especially after the ease of Moscow, Kiev, and L’viv.
But the more you develop the system of making friends, the more you develop a sensitivity to whom you want to.
Of course, it’s much easier with fellow execs, business people, tech folks, intellectuals and artists. But the same is often true of people who’ve born life’s responsibilities with at least moderate success. It gives them a self confidence that suppresses the neuroticism that drives most people to undesirable behavior.
In general all my close friends are hyper-moral, somewhat humble, limited in need for attention from others, and interested in human nature or the intersection of human nature with tech, economics, or politics and geostrategy. I’m actually ‘allergic’ to the majority of immoral peers for whom cunning has replaced ethics.
On the other hand my female friends tend to be interested in the intersection of human nature and marriage, family, relationships, and if I am lucky, the arts or even better fine arts. (I’ve been lucky twice in two long term relationships with women in the fine arts.) The arts are where sociology, psychology, and ideas meet in a language that women find natural to them.
The Secret: Don’t want anything other than seeking to understand the other person, sufficiently to find some way to improve his or her quality of life – even if its simply through attention, recognition, and reinforcement. And speak the truth and only the truth.
I’ve built a number of new friends here already and one of whom I sure will be life-long. I also contacted three of my female friends with whom I’ve built a familial relationship of mutual consideration and care. Men and women can be friends. As long as there is no physical attraction, only friendship. Something that’s never been a problem for me, but I can’t attest to the challenge faced by others. So I touch base with these women I respect – and who I can count on for a woman’s advice when needed (which I find priceless).
And I realize, perhaps near death experiences may cause a radical change in valence, but I value my friends, especially my female friends and exes, and am thankful daily for having shared some of this precious life with them.
Hopefully this encourages someone to consider something useful. đ
As an absent father married first to his businesses, I must attribute that credit to my wives. But for all the manners my children do have – more normative in manners, and more kindness rather than proper manners – they are still in part products of their generations, and like most Millennials and Gen Z, the vestiges of our former lesser aristocracy lost, and as such, they are weak. I love them. Proud of them. But they are ordinary.
