1. When met with Roissy’s ideas (and the ideas of other thinkers like him), many people have the intuition that such ideas ultimately just help men fake the signals of high status. Instead of going through the trouble of actually becoming high status, which is not only attractive to women but is correlated with other things as well, Roissy and his followers just make a study of the trappings of the stereotypically high-status man. The resulting action is more simulated than real, i.e. more of the form of the high-status man than the substance. Such ideas are good only for getting empty proxies. Young women, who are still naïve, may be manipulated into attraction, but women with more experience dating will be able to see through the empty proxies to the reality underneath.
2. One counterargument is that the system of proxies may be broken. If you don’t agree that your confidence as a man should come from what most men get their confidence from, then a circumvention of that system of proxies may be in order. Being directly attractive, rather than depending on a culturally evolved, indirect route to being attractive, makes it easier to think independently. It makes it easier to opt out of the social game.
3. Success in the modern social and economic systems is badly aligned with success in primal attraction and sex.

1. Logic as a field of study is concerned with the question of what implies what—more precisely, the question of what kinds of propositions imply what kinds of propositions—and logic as a tool (e.g., the notation) makes it easier to figure out and keep track of what implies what.
2. To be a logical person is to be good at taking logical implication into account. You don’t let mutually contradictory beliefs take up residence in your head, for example. But in using the tools of logic in order to be logical, there must be something that you’re being logical about. It’s misleading to talk about reducing mathematics to logic because mathematics isn’t just about what implies what or making tools to help with that. Mathematics is about what implies what when thinking about number, shape, space, and time. That is, logicism is misleading because logic is only about how to think; it doesn’t say what to think about. Mathematics does use that kind of thinking, i.e. the logical kind of thinking, but for the purpose of certain kinds of inquiry. In short: Mathematics isn’t just logic. Mathematics is logical thinking about certain things; viz., it’s the pure logic of number and shape, space and time. It’s everything that can be figured out about those concepts. It’s the (precisely formulated) a priori substratum of any a posteriori field making (precise) use of those concepts, physics being the most obvious example.
3. According to Mises, logic, mathematics, and praxeology are the a priori fields. To that I’d add: If mathematics is the pure logic of number, shape, etc., then praxeology is the pure logic of action.

It’s possible to use a category, as associated with a word, only for the purpose of establishing joint attention on a referent—a fundamental aspect of communication to be made clear shortly. For example, let’s say that we’re watching a tennis match on television and I want to tell you who I’d prefer to see win. I may say to you: “I’m cheering for the red-haired player.” The fact that the player that I’m cheering for has red hair may have nothing to do with why I’m cheering for them. It may be nothing more than a useful way to contrast that player with the other player, assuming of course that the other player doesn’t also happen to have red hair. In fact, just pointing, without describing anything at all about the player, could be equally useful: “Who do I hope wins? That player 👉.” Either way, there’s joint attention established on the same referent. We both know who I’m referring to.

If I tell you that I’m cheering for the red-haired player, then I use that category (i.e., “red-haired”) in an expendable way. With joint attention established, the category can be forgotten about. But what if I tell you that red-haired people have a higher pain tolerance on average than people of other hair colors? The category “red-haired” is no longer expendable. It becomes core to what I’m trying to say, no longer just a means to an end.

The continuum from maximally concrete to maximally abstract is related to:

1. How narrow the category is vs. how wide it is
2. How easy it is to capture the thought in a moment of imagination vs. how difficult that is

The meaning of the word “apple” is more concrete than the meaning of the word “fruit” because (1) categorically speaking, the former is more narrow than the latter—there are fewer possible-to-imagine sensory complexes deserving of the word “apple” than possible-to-imagine sensory complexes deserving of the word “fruit”—and (2) it takes just a moment of unimaginative thinking in order to visualize an apple, with more effort needed, though of course not all that much effort ultimately, to visualize fruit. An apple is… 🍎. Done. But fruit? 🍎 and 🍊 and 🍌 and… It’s not obvious, at least at first glance, when to stop cycling through sensory complexes before we should be satisfied in making sense of the meaning of that word.

#1 and #2 seem connected, though, in that narrower-category words often seem to be easier to capture in a moment of imagination. “Apple” is narrower-category than “fruit,” and it’s easier to visualize too.

Two definitions:

1. In reductionistic simplification (which is the kind of simplification that comes more naturally to the stereotypically masculine mind), some of the parts of the whole are kept without change or simplification and others are taken away entirely. For example: In the evolution of katakana, 加 was simplified to 力. The left part of the kanji was kept (at 100% resolution), and the right part was taken away (i.e., put to 0% resolution).
2. In holistic simplification (which is the kind of simplification that comes more naturally to the stereotypically feminine mind), none of the parts of the whole are taken away—well, at least fewer of the parts are taken away. Instead, the whole is taken as a whole, and kept as a whole, with the simplification being a matter of decreasing the resolution in an overall way. For example: In the evolution of hiragana, 守 was simplified to す. With enough imagination, squinting at the former can blur it into the latter. That is, “defocusing” blurs the shape into something of lower detail, and then “refocusing,” with stylization added to the result, brings back something sharply focused and aesthetically good, but now with a more manageable amount of detail.

Few fads in the modern West are more disturbing than the sudden positive light shed on sexualities understood until recently as obviously unhealthy. For example, an adult male with more than just an idle fantasy of becoming a “woman” is no longer thought of in the mainstream as being confused and mentally ill. Instead, he’s given both cultural and medical support for his decision. The culture applauds him for his bravery, and a doctor injects him with estrogen. Similarly, an adult female, in her futile quest to become a “man”—for she will never truly become a man—is cheered on, by family, friends, and strangers alike, when she makes the obviously insane decision to schedule a double mastectomy.

A related pair of examples is (1) the cultural support given to adult males who, in their failure to come into their own as men, reject the traditional expectation of adult males being masculine, and (2) the converse cultural support given to adult females who, at their peril, reject womanhood and femininity.

After a century of socialist catastrophe, we find, strangely enough, that the essence of the socialist psyche—a way of thinking and feeling that I hope to give a clear explanation of in this essay—is still perfectly alive and well, though of course not as much in purely economic terms anymore. That is, the way of thinking and feeling of the kind of people who are susceptible to the socialist contagion is, despite the spectacular failure of socialism in the 20th century, unfortunately still very common. The spirit of socialism has grown weak economically (at least in comparison to how strong it was in the 20th century), but it’s still very strong elsewhere, viz. in feminism and social justice. Ultimately, the essence or spirit of the socialist, feminist, and social-justice psyches are all one and the same: All of those ideologies are built on the same foundation of sand: They’re all manifestations of the “denial of X nature,” whether the denial of human nature (i.e., what we all have in common) or the denial of male nature (i.e., what men all have in common) or the denial of female nature (i.e., what women all have in common). That is, all of those ideologies share the same fundamental article of faith: the faith in the “infinite malleability of man.” Just because you’re a man, or a woman, or white, or black, neither means that you are one way or another, nor means that you should be one way or another. Anybody can be anything. We’re all free to choose. The groups that we belong to don’t determine what we are or should be as individuals.

While traditional Western culture took into account racial, sexual, and many of the other fundamental differences between different groups of people, the modern West tries in vain to ignore or get rid of those differences.

That is: The West of generations past took seriously the differences in strengths, weaknesses, and proclivities among different groups. For example, being born male, they thought, “destined” you down a certain path in life, and being born female “destined” you down a different path. If a man acted like the stereotype of a woman, then he was told to man up. And if a woman acted like the stereotype of a man, then she would get the same kind of treatment, just in the reverse. But in the modern age, i.e. in the age of feminism and social justice, gender roles are no longer taken for granted.

Western culture has taken a degenerate turn as democracy has replaced monarchy in the wake of the catastrophes of the World Wars. Standards have fallen precipitously, with even the most justified and measured of criticism often being rejected out of hand for being “sexist,” “racist,” or otherwise socially unacceptable. For example, if a man proposes to in effect turn himself into a poor substitute for a woman, then you’re expected to at least nod along passively or if not cheer him on actively. Most importantly, you’re not allowed to ask what the underlying mental illness may be—for that, of course, would be “transphobic”—and you’re not allowed to give him the advice that, above all, he truly and desperately needs: the advice on how to bring his mental world into natural alignment with the unchangeable facts of the physical world (the relevant fact here being that he was born male). Ultimately, what he needs isn’t an injection or surgery but advice on how to live in harmony with the natural order.

Getting people to identify you as X is a powerful way of increasing your motivation to do what’s expected of X. That is, (1) signaling that you’re a certain kind of person will cause people to expect you to do certain things which are associated with those signals, and (2) such expectations will act as social pressure for you to conform to those expectations. For example, if you look like an intellectual then people will expect you to be an intellectual. They’ll expect you to have interesting or insightful things to say.

Thus, finding an identity which is associated with being the kind of person that you want to be, and then figuring out how to signal that identity, is a powerful way of getting even more motivation for being that kind of person than you already have.

There’s also the social motivation that comes from feeling like you’re part of a group that you respect, especially if you think of that group as being in conflict with another group. That is: If you feel like you’re part of an in-group, then you get extra social motivation. And if you feel like that in-group is on the side of good fighting against an out-group that’s on the side of evil, then you get extra-extra social motivation. To summarize: If your in-group is internally harmonious, with you playing a certain role for that in-group (which is in harmony with the other roles), and your in-group is externally in conflict with an out-group, then from that combination of harmony and conflict comes an intoxicatingly powerful source of social motivation.

1. An a priori truth is such that it’s impossible to conceive of anything contrary to it. For example, it’s a priori true that there’s one dimension of time, for it would be impossible to imagine more than one dimension of time—at least I can’t figure out how to do so. An a posteriori truth, on the other hand, is such that it’s possible to conceive of something (or more than one thing) contrary to it. Here gravity works as an example: It’s a posteriori true that gravity exists and does what it does, for it’s possible to imagine a world without gravity or a world with a different kind of gravity.
2. “Mathematics” starts out with its a priori axioms, and then in becoming “physics” it adds its physics-relevant a posteriori postulates. “Economics,” by contrast, stays “economics” through that same transition. (Note: “Axioms,” under my definition, are by definition a priori, which means that the phrasing “a priori axiom” is redundant. In the same way, “postulates” are by definition a posteriori, which means that the phrasing “a posteriori postulate” is redundant.)
3. However, analogous to the distinction between “mathematics” and physics” can be made the distinction between “praxeology” and “economics.”
4. Each axiom is either true or false—actually, it may be better to say that each axiom is either coherent or incoherent—in that each axiom is either (a) “fundamental” or not and (b) a priori true or not—i.e. coherent or not. The postulates, on the other hand, are chosen relatively freely, for a system of postulates can describe either reality or a hypothetical; a system of postulates, as long as each postulate is “fundamental,” can be a coherently counterfactual system made out of the minimal number of assumptions. Axioms, being minimal a priori assumptions, have no conceivable alternatives, whereas postulates, being minimal a posteriori assumptions, do have conceivable alternatives.
5. From the axioms and postulates come the theorems. From something “minimal” comes something “maximal.”
6. Mathematics is the pure logic of space and time, number and shape. In other words, mathematics is the a priori foundation of any a posteriori field involving space, time, number, or shape. What’s praxeology, then? I’d say that praxeology is the pure logic of action, i.e. the a priori foundation of any a posteriori field involving action. That is, mathematics is to physics (and some other fields) as praxeology is to economics (i.e., the study of money), linguistics (i.e., the study of words), etc.
7. Note, though, that with good enough notation people may start to think of praxeology as part of mathematics.
8. To use pure reason is to reason purely from the a priori. Mathematics and praxeology, then, are exercises in pure reason.
9. An impressive feat of redundancy: “The pure theory of action, i.e. praxeology, partakes of apodictic certainty, gets its truth a priori, and makes use of axioms only (with no postulates).”
10. Mises talks about the importance of using “imaginary constructions.” Interestingly, an “imaginary construction” is a counterfactual postulate.
11. Consider the distinctions between (a) “reason” and “experience” and (b) “rationalism” and “empiricism.”
12. An a priori truth comes “prior” to experience, and an a posteriori truth comes “posterior” to experience.

1. Consider the following proposition: “Cats eat mice.” How we can make more explicit the prediction inherent in that proposition? “If you see a cat and a mouse together, then you’re likely to see the cat chase and try to eat the mouse.” That conversion makes the proposition (i.e., the belief) “pay rent,” yes. But it doesn’t convert truth to utility—consider here the classic discussion with Jason about whether truth is ultimately just utility. After all, you may not care one way or another what happens when you see a cat and a mouse together. Utility only comes into play once you try to use the (purported) truth of the proposition that cats eat mice.
2. We must of course distinguish between speaking truthfully and speaking usefully.
3. People who are concerned above all with what’s useful for them in the short term—i.e., selfish, hedonistic people—are the least concerned with truth.
4. If you read the classics in multiple languages, write for posterity, and travel the world, then you’re more likely to find the truth than a monoglot who stays in one place and debates about current events. More abstractly: Truth is perspective-neutral. The people who are the most truth-oriented are those who take into account the widest variety of perspectives (e.g., different languages, different eras).
5. How we categorize is of course a matter of utility, and thus every proposition, no matter how supposedly wertfrei, will have snuck into it at least one utility-related implication. For example, consider the following proposition: “Lemons have seeds.” The word “lemon,” which is mutually exclusive with, say, the word “orange,” implies that there’s some kind of claimed utility difference between the range of phenomena 🍋 and the range of phenomena 🍊—a different kind of being may well not see the point in differentiating the two. That notwithstanding, though: Truth can be nevertheless untangled from utility because, e.g., the proposition “lemons have seeds” is true whether anybody cares about the indifference range 🍋 or not.
6. That is: The proposition “lemons have seeds” is the prediction that if you open a lemon, then you’ll find seeds. It’s a separate question whether anybody would care or not.
7. Some people check utility on a shorter timescale, and other people check utility on a longer timescale. Personally, I’m comfortable following a path of inquiry for months or even years without asking what I’m going to get out of it.
8. Purported truth: (a) A cat living in your house as the cause, and (b) the mice living in your house getting killed as the effect. Consider next the same purported truth except mixed with purported utility: (a) A cat living in your house as the means, and (b) the mice living in your house getting killed as the ends. The only difference here is between cause and effect and means and ends. If you don’t care whether there are mice in your house or not, then the proposition “cats eat mice” is a useless truth. But if you do care, and you want the mice gone, then that same proposition goes from a mere understanding of perspective-neutral cause and effect to cause-as-means, effect-as-ends.

1. Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Semiotics, by contrast, is the scientific study of anything symbolic, whether natural language or not. For example, linguistics doesn’t study the artificial languages of logic and mathematics, but semiotics does.
2. What’s the significance of the distinction in linguistics between “natural language” and “artificial language?” What about the related distinctions between “children” and “adults,” “natives” and “foreigners”?
3. To think like a linguist is to bring a logical or mathematical mind to the analysis of “intuition,” the structure of natural language being isomorphic to the structure of “intuition.”
4. In practice, linguistics is often the scientific study of folk physics, folk psychology, etc.