Saying what I truly think publicly hasn't worked out well for me:
I moved to a new city last year and contacted the local team of the competitive sport that I play, asking to join practice. I went to a couple of practices but then some woman "stalked" my social media presence (where I wrote stuff like "I believe there are exactly two genders"). She took the most spicy quotes and sent them to all local teams.
Now I'm ostracized from all these teams.
Obviously these people are retarded but I still regret posting that stuff under my true name rather than anonymously. I really loved playing that sport.
I have always avoided FB and similar social media. While I lack the knowhow and don't know if this is even possible, but can you wipe clean all your personal posts? And if you feel the need to post stuff like this (or follow more conservative people/sites), can you create a new and more anonymous FB/social media account for this?
I've been pseudonymous online for a reason. I see no upside to associating nearly anything online with my real name, and always the chance that I'll be the Main Character on Twitter for a day for some dumb arbitrary reason, and then if any potential employer googles me they'll find that day.
TGGP, I totally agree. I don't get why people out themselves with their real names. Then again, I don't get all the posing on IG and elsewhere either. In a way, I'm glad I don't get (or am not into) any of that. No FOMO here, especially because I value my privacy.
I’m neither embarrassed nor ashamed of anything I write on social media, so I have no problem using my real name. If you write what you believe is true then that is your defense. And if you write explicitly to provoke then, well, you’re a jerk, and you can fairly be said to have earned whatever reaction you get.
An activity I did in my 30s that I wish I had done as a teenager was trying to get strangers to sign a petition allowing a candidate (me at the time) to run for office. It forces you to go up to a huge number of people and ask them for something, knowing that any one person is likely to reject you and you are doing all of this in a way that is socially approved of because it's literally written into the law.
>while there is virtually zero downside to trying to talk to any attractive stranger you see
You can quickly become known as the guy who hits on anyone. Then your social status drops to nothing, and no woman will date you. Like the high school guy who was working part-time in a mall, and used PUA methods, hitting on girls every day. When he finally found one who'd date him, she cancelled when she heard that he was a "shark", doing this to anyone.
There is also another downside. The human psyche can't take that much rejection. And hitting on girls constantly, knowing you're making them uncomfortable when you approach them in the street, will make you feel dirty. You are bothering people. You are bothering fifty girls to get a date with just one. It would be much better to meet someone through social activities and social circles. Most people meet a girlfriend through their own friends. But PUAs didn't talk about the importance of having many friends, because most of the audience didn't want to hear that. It was beyond their ability.
>Why is social anxiety so common, when fear of flying isn’t? I’m convinced it is because society tells us the former is natural and inevitable, while ignoring the latter.
Because people need to fly, and often. Also, there are at least two kinds of fear: Physical fear and social fear. Social fear is far stronger. People will go out in war and die rather than risk social ostracization.
> You can quickly become known as the guy who hits on anyone.
Having grown up in a small town, I can see that Hanania is only partially right. If you live in a metro area, you can, if you choose, operate among a vast number of people with whom you have no reputation. Small towns, workplaces, and circles of friends and professional peers are more like the villages of old. But notice that the PUAs advocate approaching women in places where one is not personally known, where there are vast numbers of people, public spaces and in particular dance clubs.
This is true. Women love the fact that you have selected them and aren't just throwing darts at a board. PUA is mostly imbecilic garbage (Strauss was also a hack who doesn't mention in his book that the first thing out of his mouth while hitting on chicks was 'I'm a reporter from Rolling Stone.' Social Proof in action.)
If you have trouble with women Red Pill yourself with Tomassi's Rational Male series, get in shape and dress better. Quit all pron and video games. Pron is emotional cancer for men.
Learn to make friends with everyone, starting with yourself and the world will open doors you never new possible. Also, don't be a creep.
> You can quickly become known as the guy who hits on anyone.
Though this can cut both ways. I've heard of guys who make skeezy comments to literally every woman they meet. This actually works out OK because they gain a reputation for it and the women accept it as just an amusing aberration. Though if I understand it correctly, they have to do it to *every* woman, so no woman pegs it as a particular come-on.
I agree that the norm sucks. I have followed a strategy similar to yours but it has some key differences which I’ll share in case people feel heavily put off by what you’re writing. I overcame a drug addiction as well as bipolar disorder, and I remember people having that judgmental language as intending to help, but not actually helping. That was better than the victim narrative, though, which actively made the problems worse by proving me with a set of excuses and reasons not to try. But at least I felt cared for, which built my trust in them.
Telling someone to “man up” will only work if they already believe they ought to do so. Otherwise it just makes them think you’re an asshole, which makes them less likely to consider the rest of what you have to say.
What ended up helping was the concept of Satan.
A lot of the approach you share expressing makes sense if you imagine there’s some “adversary” trying to make your life miserable by making you scared and anxious. Imaging an adversary helps muster the internal aggression response to fight the adversary, rather than project that aggression outwards. In traditional terms, this is the utility of a belief in Satan as real: it provides an outlet for healthy contempt which is directed entirely at an incorporeal being.
Absent that internal outlet for contempt, I think we are likely to direct concept towards real actual people, which ends up making us feel worse. And that external contempt is easy for people on the outside to see as being fundamentally bad. I can imagine people reading this and thinking, “wow, so my choices are to be anxious and afraid or to be a belligerent judge mental asshole. I choose anxious and afraid.”
If you are thinking this way, please, perhaps consider there is an alternative whereby you see everyone as suffering, and you seek to alleviate that suffering, starting with yourself and then hopefully with others.
Thanks for this. I am 25, and i have been improving on this over the past two years. I had a major surgery in my early 20s that set me back and impeded my progress.
Anxiety really can be so crippling to the point that it impairs your general productivity. I would be at home in my apartment. I try to read whenever i can, but often the negative emotionality would get in the way.
And even though I was always fairly right wing, i come from a family that believed in—and at times had sent me to—therapy (jewish), so i bought into some of the mental health garbage without much thought.
This stuff is such poison to young men. I only wish I had tried adopting this philosophy sooner. So much time, and so many opportunities were wasted
“To put it in stark terms, if you are a single male, every time you see a woman that you might be interested in dating and you don’t at least talk to her, you have failed on a moral, intellectual, and spiritual level.”
This in particular is masterful and touches on a feeling ive long felt whenever I fail to approach (which has been almost always)
I agree. This was the most impacted part of the article. There's alot of information, decent vernacular, but this part make me think more than the rest. And in reality it's accurate. Every missed attempt.. unfortunately is a failed attempt
Alright boys, what do you think the three or four forbidden topics are?
I'm guessing one them is guns. RH had a twitter thread of things he loves about America, and guns didn't make the list (though the death penalty did). Now there are lots of countries that practice capital punishment, but America and America's Hat are the only places where an ordinary citizen can purchase and take home a handgun in one day. So it seems odd to exclude them from the "uniquely masculine aspects of American culture" list.
If RH doesn't reply to this comment, assume he's a closet gun controller. 😜
He has touched on Israel briefly a couple times, and anyway he self describes as Palestinian which is already a trigger for very pro Israel types; given his generally anti war stance he’s not exactly cultivating a neocon audience anyway so I doubt that’s one of them. I also think he’s been pretty open about his attitudes towards race generally and his belief in genetics as destiny, so I already just assumed he was aligned with the bell curve way of thinking. So I doubt either of those are it.
My guess: Human biodiversity (differences in intelligence and personality across race and sex), un-PC social observations about race and sex (cf Tweets about interracial couples), belief in eugenics (a commenter below referred to a "based take", I suspect this is that abortion is eugenic); these are all quite controversial and repelling to conservatives, not to mention friendly libertarians like Bryan Caplan. I don't think Hanania actually cares about Israel/Palestine.
I suspect Hanania started out as a rationalist libertarian and then became somewhat "red-pilled" on race and feminism by alt-right type people. The latter views cannot be talked about in polite company or even on Substack, but are hinted at through various Tweets.
Haha, not bad! But I would think if u handed RH an AR15 at the range he would be converted within 30 minutes. The lack of gun discussion is curious tho...
RH obviously hates God/religion. He hasnt really kept that secret. Whatever. He can have his aesthetically gross transhumanism faith. As long as he isn't all up in your face about it ;)
I also don't think his followers care if he hates Israel. Maybe he has financial backers that do, idk.
Animal rights is slowly creeping into his twitter feed. Strange position to take since human brains literally evolved by consuming animal flesh. It's integral to being human and enjoying life, not some flaw in need of a technological solution. Also "eat the manufactured lab meat sludge" or become a weak, malnourished vegan soyboy is unappealing to cons AND normies. He may not be ready to fully, publicly embrace this idea.
It is extremely sloppy to conflate animal rights and vegetarianism. They are not the same thing. I eat meat. In order for me to eat meat animals must be killed. I do not consider this unethical. Nature operates this way, and if it did not entire ecosystems would quickly collapse.
I do, however, consider it deeply wrong to gratuitously torture an animal for the entire six months of its life in order to raise it for food. The routine infliction of unspeakable agony on billions of animals will someday be a feature of contemporary life that will baffle future generations.
Please do not turn a decent interest in reducing the suffering of helpless animals who are wholly dependent on human mercy for the alleviation of their misery with vegetarianism, a legitimate but altogether different thing.
Fair enough. I was thinking specifically of a tweet where RH seemed aghast at the number of livestock slaughtered daily. But on a yearly basis it amounts to around 1 cow for every 12 people per year and 1 pig for every 3 people per year which doesn't seem excessive.
I'm also interested in minimizing animal suffering and most of my family's meat is wild game. But when it comes to livestock, we have to acknowledge tradeoffs. The yield/efficiency loss from banning "factory farming" means either more ecological destruction for wild animals (using more land to produce less food) and/or less affordable food for poor and middle class people. Not sure where or if the right ethical balance can be determined. I made a joke about cultured meat but it might actually help alleviate some concerns for many except the hardcore activists.
Those are good numbers to know. They do help bring perspective to the discussion.
You are absolutely right to point out the tradeoffs, and I would agree that these two (ecological effects and food costs) are the most important ones. Ideally we balance these things out through the combined action of culture, commerce, and statute enacted by elected legislatures. Unfortunately there appear to be essentially no regulatory restrictions at either the federal or state level - that weigh the scales on behalf of the animals. This situation is unsustainable. I don't pretend to know how much cost American consumers would be willing to bear to reduce animal suffering, but I am sure it is more than zero, the amount they are now paying in the absence of any regulation at all.
I recall him saying he assumes that any children he has would be raised Christian. Arab Christians sometimes take their religion seriously as a quasi-ethnic marker distinguishing them from other Arabs.
Where did he say that? He has an Arab Christian background but he also made weirdly pro-Islam tweets around the time of Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. At one point I thought he would convert to Islam 😂
Although reading it now he says "The Christian faith does not mean that much to me", before the bit about his descendants being more likely to be Christian than to have the views he personally considers more important.
I love how clearly you write-- it's so fun to read, even when I disagree with you.
"Why is social anxiety so common, when fear of flying isn’t? I’m convinced it is because society tells us the former is natural and inevitable, while ignoring the latter."
No way! It's just that it isn't actually as scary to fly as you surmise it should be evolutionarily. It *should* be scary to go 50 mph on a train, evolutionarily speaking, but it just obviously isn't.
Same thing? Trains should be scary from an evolutionary perspective but it’s not because we treat them as normal. They shouldn’t be as scary as planes because you’re not taking off and landing and being high in the air. I think if you put a train or airplane in front of a primitive tribe they would be scared to get on. But if you showed them a lot of other people going on planes and trains their fear would go away because people mimic the behaviors and emotional states of others.
This experiment has already taken place: the anthropologist Kenneth Good married a woman from the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon and brought her to live in New Jersey; when she saw cars she ran off, terrified. I believe she actually thought they were wild animals. Another anthropologist, Dan Everett, took some of his friends from the piraha tribe, also in the Amazon, to a large Brazilian city; they were afraid to cross the street, pronouncing the cars ‘scarier than jaguars.’ Point is, if you haven’t been conditioned to accept modern transportation as normal, of course it would be innately terrifying.
It didn’t work out, shockingly…The podcast snap judgment did an episode about it called Yanomami mami if you want to hear it from him. On the piraha, check out Dan Everett’s book ‘don’t sleep, there are snakes,’ which is fascinating although you won’t like the blank slatist part of his thinking.
More exactly, the experience of flying on a modern jet isn't very close to anything in nature, so it's not so good at triggering instincts. As various experiments have shown, people much more often develop phobias toward things that were dangerous in our evolutionary past (snakes, dogs) than modern dangerous things (autos).
That’s a smart distinction, maybe I was too quick to assume it was natural to be afraid of flying. Skydiving is a better analogy, but it still works because I think most people can get used to it if they have to. A roller coaster might be the best analogy of all.
I think this is one of the key reasons Mormons tend to be successful. Getting the door slammed in your face in the mission time after time teaches bravery.
Although I'm glad it helped you, pop-evo-psych is mostly garbage. The field of evolutionary psychology is based on highly questionable assumptions: the truth is that no one knows what our evolutionary past looked like, what sorts of social arrangements there were a million years ago, or whether a trait like "fear of high-status individuals" is even genetically well-specified enough to be operated on by the forces of natural selection. Simple caricatures of "tribespeople" f***ing and fighting paint a crude, animalistic and fundamentally flawed portrait of human nature. You can reject blank slatism without falling into evo-psych's story about an evolved nature: religion and literature provide a much richer and more correct understanding of human nature. [C.f. https://www.hallpike.com/wp-content/uploads/some-anthropological-objections-to-evolutionary-psychology.pdf]
But none of this is to say that I disagree with the main point, that fear is a powerful emotion, our modern lifestyles lack real danger, so our predisposition to be fearful is irrational, unhelpful, and must be overcome.
2 thoughts on the notion that addiction is a disease. 1 AA uses the phrase as a mantra yet its solution is more Maoist then APA. So they are using a "soft metaphor" as they get on with the business of the 12 steps which assumes and fosters agency. 2 The metaphor becomes "hard" and evolves into junk science when used by practitioners who have become parasitic on the war on drugs and are a piece of the justice system. These profiteers are the true believers. The therapy they provide as an alternative to being locked up is really just another form of punishment and outcomes are entirely secondary. This is where addicts are convinced they are hapless sufferers and the chemo they are forced to endure includes constant monitoring and infantilization. In this case, language and practice combine to create a thoroughly dishonest and compulsory regime of punishment-therapy, similar to the treatment Soviet dissidents received in the era of international scientific socialism.
It is this second model that has seeped out into popular culture. Of course, the non-judgmental aspect of the narrative is what leads, but lurking in the shadows are the mitigation techniques of life-long pharmaceutical prescriptions, attention-seeking as a sensitive and thoughtful type and ready excuses and apologies for behaving like a child.
Addiction is a symptom. All drugs of abuse involve alteration of dopamine neurons. Rat Park experiment shows us that use of these drugs is to compensate overwhelmed stress systems. Because of this, improvement of environment can eliminate dependence.
Good application of exposure therapy tenets, but add the caveat of 'does not apply when struggling with trauma.' And I mean literal trauma symptoms - hyperventilation/panic attacks, flashbacks, dissociation, startle response, vomiting, nightmares, etc. The logic needs to remain there 'yes you're going to be nervous when approaching a pretty girl,' but when someone's version of nervous is too debilitating you have to pause and significantly regulate your body Before the exposure, otherwise you'll make it worse, as the 'worst' thing that happens will be more than nonchalant rejection, it'll be your own body and mind punishing you harshly.
Confidence and anxiety are def context/domain specific. I’m most at ease and confident at my local gym because I’m jacked and high status there. The best job interview I’ve ever had happened when I got the call mid workout.
To encourage intellectual development, a tutor should give problems to the student that challenge them but that they can solve. This will stretch them without discouraging them. I would think a similar tactic would work for anxiety reduction.
> Because in our evolutionary prehistory, if you saw an attractive woman, there was a good chance she was partnered with the strongest man in the tribe, and if he didn’t like you talking to her he’d hit you over the head with a club and you would die.
No. We're a social species. If you saw an attractive woman in your own social group, you'd already know who had dibs on her and how hard he was.
I can believe that it might be very difficult to talk to a woman who's claimed by a stronger man. Although that's not something I've ever personally felt.
But on that theory, you should be very keen to talk to a woman who's unclaimed, or who's claimed by someone you know you can whack if necessary. Getting someone else's girl pregnant while she stays someone else's girl is the sort of win that evolution really loves.
In any case, while you might be nervous of the consequences of openly introducing yourself to a woman, it shouldn't be hard to do it secretly. *He* might object if he found out. But why would *she* sic her boyfriend on you just for giving her options?
Great stuff. File this under, “ articles I wish I had read 20 years ago” 😂
Did you read THE GAME 15 years ago? I re-read it recently: https://theredquest.wordpress.com/2022/01/06/reading-the-game-the-original-by-neil-strauss/ and had a different reaction to it than I did on the first reading.
Evolutionary biology and psychology are beautifully politically incorrect, which is part of what makes them so useful to anyone who might dive into those fields: https://theredquest.wordpress.com/2017/07/30/evolutionary-biology-underpins-game/
Saying what I truly think publicly hasn't worked out well for me:
I moved to a new city last year and contacted the local team of the competitive sport that I play, asking to join practice. I went to a couple of practices but then some woman "stalked" my social media presence (where I wrote stuff like "I believe there are exactly two genders"). She took the most spicy quotes and sent them to all local teams.
Now I'm ostracized from all these teams.
Obviously these people are retarded but I still regret posting that stuff under my true name rather than anonymously. I really loved playing that sport.
The woman who stalked you is the one who needs to be ostracised.
That's a prescriptive statement for others rather than a descriptive one.
I have always avoided FB and similar social media. While I lack the knowhow and don't know if this is even possible, but can you wipe clean all your personal posts? And if you feel the need to post stuff like this (or follow more conservative people/sites), can you create a new and more anonymous FB/social media account for this?
I've been pseudonymous online for a reason. I see no upside to associating nearly anything online with my real name, and always the chance that I'll be the Main Character on Twitter for a day for some dumb arbitrary reason, and then if any potential employer googles me they'll find that day.
TGGP, I totally agree. I don't get why people out themselves with their real names. Then again, I don't get all the posing on IG and elsewhere either. In a way, I'm glad I don't get (or am not into) any of that. No FOMO here, especially because I value my privacy.
I’m neither embarrassed nor ashamed of anything I write on social media, so I have no problem using my real name. If you write what you believe is true then that is your defense. And if you write explicitly to provoke then, well, you’re a jerk, and you can fairly be said to have earned whatever reaction you get.
An activity I did in my 30s that I wish I had done as a teenager was trying to get strangers to sign a petition allowing a candidate (me at the time) to run for office. It forces you to go up to a huge number of people and ask them for something, knowing that any one person is likely to reject you and you are doing all of this in a way that is socially approved of because it's literally written into the law.
>while there is virtually zero downside to trying to talk to any attractive stranger you see
You can quickly become known as the guy who hits on anyone. Then your social status drops to nothing, and no woman will date you. Like the high school guy who was working part-time in a mall, and used PUA methods, hitting on girls every day. When he finally found one who'd date him, she cancelled when she heard that he was a "shark", doing this to anyone.
There is also another downside. The human psyche can't take that much rejection. And hitting on girls constantly, knowing you're making them uncomfortable when you approach them in the street, will make you feel dirty. You are bothering people. You are bothering fifty girls to get a date with just one. It would be much better to meet someone through social activities and social circles. Most people meet a girlfriend through their own friends. But PUAs didn't talk about the importance of having many friends, because most of the audience didn't want to hear that. It was beyond their ability.
>Why is social anxiety so common, when fear of flying isn’t? I’m convinced it is because society tells us the former is natural and inevitable, while ignoring the latter.
Because people need to fly, and often. Also, there are at least two kinds of fear: Physical fear and social fear. Social fear is far stronger. People will go out in war and die rather than risk social ostracization.
> You can quickly become known as the guy who hits on anyone.
Having grown up in a small town, I can see that Hanania is only partially right. If you live in a metro area, you can, if you choose, operate among a vast number of people with whom you have no reputation. Small towns, workplaces, and circles of friends and professional peers are more like the villages of old. But notice that the PUAs advocate approaching women in places where one is not personally known, where there are vast numbers of people, public spaces and in particular dance clubs.
This is true. Women love the fact that you have selected them and aren't just throwing darts at a board. PUA is mostly imbecilic garbage (Strauss was also a hack who doesn't mention in his book that the first thing out of his mouth while hitting on chicks was 'I'm a reporter from Rolling Stone.' Social Proof in action.)
If you have trouble with women Red Pill yourself with Tomassi's Rational Male series, get in shape and dress better. Quit all pron and video games. Pron is emotional cancer for men.
Learn to make friends with everyone, starting with yourself and the world will open doors you never new possible. Also, don't be a creep.
> You can quickly become known as the guy who hits on anyone.
Though this can cut both ways. I've heard of guys who make skeezy comments to literally every woman they meet. This actually works out OK because they gain a reputation for it and the women accept it as just an amusing aberration. Though if I understand it correctly, they have to do it to *every* woman, so no woman pegs it as a particular come-on.
I agree that the norm sucks. I have followed a strategy similar to yours but it has some key differences which I’ll share in case people feel heavily put off by what you’re writing. I overcame a drug addiction as well as bipolar disorder, and I remember people having that judgmental language as intending to help, but not actually helping. That was better than the victim narrative, though, which actively made the problems worse by proving me with a set of excuses and reasons not to try. But at least I felt cared for, which built my trust in them.
Telling someone to “man up” will only work if they already believe they ought to do so. Otherwise it just makes them think you’re an asshole, which makes them less likely to consider the rest of what you have to say.
What ended up helping was the concept of Satan.
A lot of the approach you share expressing makes sense if you imagine there’s some “adversary” trying to make your life miserable by making you scared and anxious. Imaging an adversary helps muster the internal aggression response to fight the adversary, rather than project that aggression outwards. In traditional terms, this is the utility of a belief in Satan as real: it provides an outlet for healthy contempt which is directed entirely at an incorporeal being.
Absent that internal outlet for contempt, I think we are likely to direct concept towards real actual people, which ends up making us feel worse. And that external contempt is easy for people on the outside to see as being fundamentally bad. I can imagine people reading this and thinking, “wow, so my choices are to be anxious and afraid or to be a belligerent judge mental asshole. I choose anxious and afraid.”
If you are thinking this way, please, perhaps consider there is an alternative whereby you see everyone as suffering, and you seek to alleviate that suffering, starting with yourself and then hopefully with others.
Thanks for this. I am 25, and i have been improving on this over the past two years. I had a major surgery in my early 20s that set me back and impeded my progress.
Anxiety really can be so crippling to the point that it impairs your general productivity. I would be at home in my apartment. I try to read whenever i can, but often the negative emotionality would get in the way.
And even though I was always fairly right wing, i come from a family that believed in—and at times had sent me to—therapy (jewish), so i bought into some of the mental health garbage without much thought.
This stuff is such poison to young men. I only wish I had tried adopting this philosophy sooner. So much time, and so many opportunities were wasted
“To put it in stark terms, if you are a single male, every time you see a woman that you might be interested in dating and you don’t at least talk to her, you have failed on a moral, intellectual, and spiritual level.”
This in particular is masterful and touches on a feeling ive long felt whenever I fail to approach (which has been almost always)
I agree. This was the most impacted part of the article. There's alot of information, decent vernacular, but this part make me think more than the rest. And in reality it's accurate. Every missed attempt.. unfortunately is a failed attempt
Alright boys, what do you think the three or four forbidden topics are?
I'm guessing one them is guns. RH had a twitter thread of things he loves about America, and guns didn't make the list (though the death penalty did). Now there are lots of countries that practice capital punishment, but America and America's Hat are the only places where an ordinary citizen can purchase and take home a handgun in one day. So it seems odd to exclude them from the "uniquely masculine aspects of American culture" list.
If RH doesn't reply to this comment, assume he's a closet gun controller. 😜
Immigration is one of them. I think he’s pretty much in agreement with Bryan Caplan that open borders = GOOD.
Are you against deporting blacks? If you are why are opposed to more immigration?
Racial differences in IQ is #1. He definitely read The Bell Curve as a teen.
Israel and all the associated stuff.
He has touched on Israel briefly a couple times, and anyway he self describes as Palestinian which is already a trigger for very pro Israel types; given his generally anti war stance he’s not exactly cultivating a neocon audience anyway so I doubt that’s one of them. I also think he’s been pretty open about his attitudes towards race generally and his belief in genetics as destiny, so I already just assumed he was aligned with the bell curve way of thinking. So I doubt either of those are it.
Agreed, Hanania is way more controversial than Murray. Not even close.
My guess: Human biodiversity (differences in intelligence and personality across race and sex), un-PC social observations about race and sex (cf Tweets about interracial couples), belief in eugenics (a commenter below referred to a "based take", I suspect this is that abortion is eugenic); these are all quite controversial and repelling to conservatives, not to mention friendly libertarians like Bryan Caplan. I don't think Hanania actually cares about Israel/Palestine.
I suspect Hanania started out as a rationalist libertarian and then became somewhat "red-pilled" on race and feminism by alt-right type people. The latter views cannot be talked about in polite company or even on Substack, but are hinted at through various Tweets.
One is transsexualism, because he tweeted that he wrote an article about it but wouldn’t post it unless Musk bought Twitter.
Another is abortion. People who haven’t been to his meetups cannot even comprehend how based his take on that is.
Could Israel be another?
Haha, not bad! But I would think if u handed RH an AR15 at the range he would be converted within 30 minutes. The lack of gun discussion is curious tho...
RH obviously hates God/religion. He hasnt really kept that secret. Whatever. He can have his aesthetically gross transhumanism faith. As long as he isn't all up in your face about it ;)
I also don't think his followers care if he hates Israel. Maybe he has financial backers that do, idk.
Animal rights is slowly creeping into his twitter feed. Strange position to take since human brains literally evolved by consuming animal flesh. It's integral to being human and enjoying life, not some flaw in need of a technological solution. Also "eat the manufactured lab meat sludge" or become a weak, malnourished vegan soyboy is unappealing to cons AND normies. He may not be ready to fully, publicly embrace this idea.
It is extremely sloppy to conflate animal rights and vegetarianism. They are not the same thing. I eat meat. In order for me to eat meat animals must be killed. I do not consider this unethical. Nature operates this way, and if it did not entire ecosystems would quickly collapse.
I do, however, consider it deeply wrong to gratuitously torture an animal for the entire six months of its life in order to raise it for food. The routine infliction of unspeakable agony on billions of animals will someday be a feature of contemporary life that will baffle future generations.
Please do not turn a decent interest in reducing the suffering of helpless animals who are wholly dependent on human mercy for the alleviation of their misery with vegetarianism, a legitimate but altogether different thing.
Fair enough. I was thinking specifically of a tweet where RH seemed aghast at the number of livestock slaughtered daily. But on a yearly basis it amounts to around 1 cow for every 12 people per year and 1 pig for every 3 people per year which doesn't seem excessive.
I'm also interested in minimizing animal suffering and most of my family's meat is wild game. But when it comes to livestock, we have to acknowledge tradeoffs. The yield/efficiency loss from banning "factory farming" means either more ecological destruction for wild animals (using more land to produce less food) and/or less affordable food for poor and middle class people. Not sure where or if the right ethical balance can be determined. I made a joke about cultured meat but it might actually help alleviate some concerns for many except the hardcore activists.
Those are good numbers to know. They do help bring perspective to the discussion.
You are absolutely right to point out the tradeoffs, and I would agree that these two (ecological effects and food costs) are the most important ones. Ideally we balance these things out through the combined action of culture, commerce, and statute enacted by elected legislatures. Unfortunately there appear to be essentially no regulatory restrictions at either the federal or state level - that weigh the scales on behalf of the animals. This situation is unsustainable. I don't pretend to know how much cost American consumers would be willing to bear to reduce animal suffering, but I am sure it is more than zero, the amount they are now paying in the absence of any regulation at all.
I recall him saying he assumes that any children he has would be raised Christian. Arab Christians sometimes take their religion seriously as a quasi-ethnic marker distinguishing them from other Arabs.
Where did he say that? He has an Arab Christian background but he also made weirdly pro-Islam tweets around the time of Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. At one point I thought he would convert to Islam 😂
I was thinking of this:
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/is-wokeness-a-paper-tiger
Although reading it now he says "The Christian faith does not mean that much to me", before the bit about his descendants being more likely to be Christian than to have the views he personally considers more important.
I love how clearly you write-- it's so fun to read, even when I disagree with you.
"Why is social anxiety so common, when fear of flying isn’t? I’m convinced it is because society tells us the former is natural and inevitable, while ignoring the latter."
No way! It's just that it isn't actually as scary to fly as you surmise it should be evolutionarily. It *should* be scary to go 50 mph on a train, evolutionarily speaking, but it just obviously isn't.
Same thing? Trains should be scary from an evolutionary perspective but it’s not because we treat them as normal. They shouldn’t be as scary as planes because you’re not taking off and landing and being high in the air. I think if you put a train or airplane in front of a primitive tribe they would be scared to get on. But if you showed them a lot of other people going on planes and trains their fear would go away because people mimic the behaviors and emotional states of others.
This experiment has already taken place: the anthropologist Kenneth Good married a woman from the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon and brought her to live in New Jersey; when she saw cars she ran off, terrified. I believe she actually thought they were wild animals. Another anthropologist, Dan Everett, took some of his friends from the piraha tribe, also in the Amazon, to a large Brazilian city; they were afraid to cross the street, pronouncing the cars ‘scarier than jaguars.’ Point is, if you haven’t been conditioned to accept modern transportation as normal, of course it would be innately terrifying.
Hadn’t known that. Fascinating!
Can’t believe the guy married a Yanomami woman. Talk about getting a trad wife!
It didn’t work out, shockingly…The podcast snap judgment did an episode about it called Yanomami mami if you want to hear it from him. On the piraha, check out Dan Everett’s book ‘don’t sleep, there are snakes,’ which is fascinating although you won’t like the blank slatist part of his thinking.
Similarly, we hurtle down roads in huge metal boxes at 70 mph with small straps on our shoulders.
Yes I know women who are afraid to drive on highways, even knowing everyone else does it.
More exactly, the experience of flying on a modern jet isn't very close to anything in nature, so it's not so good at triggering instincts. As various experiments have shown, people much more often develop phobias toward things that were dangerous in our evolutionary past (snakes, dogs) than modern dangerous things (autos).
That’s a smart distinction, maybe I was too quick to assume it was natural to be afraid of flying. Skydiving is a better analogy, but it still works because I think most people can get used to it if they have to. A roller coaster might be the best analogy of all.
I think this is one of the key reasons Mormons tend to be successful. Getting the door slammed in your face in the mission time after time teaches bravery.
Although I'm glad it helped you, pop-evo-psych is mostly garbage. The field of evolutionary psychology is based on highly questionable assumptions: the truth is that no one knows what our evolutionary past looked like, what sorts of social arrangements there were a million years ago, or whether a trait like "fear of high-status individuals" is even genetically well-specified enough to be operated on by the forces of natural selection. Simple caricatures of "tribespeople" f***ing and fighting paint a crude, animalistic and fundamentally flawed portrait of human nature. You can reject blank slatism without falling into evo-psych's story about an evolved nature: religion and literature provide a much richer and more correct understanding of human nature. [C.f. https://www.hallpike.com/wp-content/uploads/some-anthropological-objections-to-evolutionary-psychology.pdf]
But none of this is to say that I disagree with the main point, that fear is a powerful emotion, our modern lifestyles lack real danger, so our predisposition to be fearful is irrational, unhelpful, and must be overcome.
2 thoughts on the notion that addiction is a disease. 1 AA uses the phrase as a mantra yet its solution is more Maoist then APA. So they are using a "soft metaphor" as they get on with the business of the 12 steps which assumes and fosters agency. 2 The metaphor becomes "hard" and evolves into junk science when used by practitioners who have become parasitic on the war on drugs and are a piece of the justice system. These profiteers are the true believers. The therapy they provide as an alternative to being locked up is really just another form of punishment and outcomes are entirely secondary. This is where addicts are convinced they are hapless sufferers and the chemo they are forced to endure includes constant monitoring and infantilization. In this case, language and practice combine to create a thoroughly dishonest and compulsory regime of punishment-therapy, similar to the treatment Soviet dissidents received in the era of international scientific socialism.
It is this second model that has seeped out into popular culture. Of course, the non-judgmental aspect of the narrative is what leads, but lurking in the shadows are the mitigation techniques of life-long pharmaceutical prescriptions, attention-seeking as a sensitive and thoughtful type and ready excuses and apologies for behaving like a child.
Addiction is a symptom. All drugs of abuse involve alteration of dopamine neurons. Rat Park experiment shows us that use of these drugs is to compensate overwhelmed stress systems. Because of this, improvement of environment can eliminate dependence.
Good application of exposure therapy tenets, but add the caveat of 'does not apply when struggling with trauma.' And I mean literal trauma symptoms - hyperventilation/panic attacks, flashbacks, dissociation, startle response, vomiting, nightmares, etc. The logic needs to remain there 'yes you're going to be nervous when approaching a pretty girl,' but when someone's version of nervous is too debilitating you have to pause and significantly regulate your body Before the exposure, otherwise you'll make it worse, as the 'worst' thing that happens will be more than nonchalant rejection, it'll be your own body and mind punishing you harshly.
Confidence and anxiety are def context/domain specific. I’m most at ease and confident at my local gym because I’m jacked and high status there. The best job interview I’ve ever had happened when I got the call mid workout.
Null hypothesis is you simply aged out of it.
That’s a terrible hypothesis, people don’t just grow out of being the most socially passive person in the room to the least passive.
I've observed some teens go through some pretty wild puberties...
It sounds like he matured out of it.
But maturation isn't an automatic result of getting older. Usually it takes some work.
To encourage intellectual development, a tutor should give problems to the student that challenge them but that they can solve. This will stretch them without discouraging them. I would think a similar tactic would work for anxiety reduction.
> Because in our evolutionary prehistory, if you saw an attractive woman, there was a good chance she was partnered with the strongest man in the tribe, and if he didn’t like you talking to her he’d hit you over the head with a club and you would die.
No. We're a social species. If you saw an attractive woman in your own social group, you'd already know who had dibs on her and how hard he was.
I can believe that it might be very difficult to talk to a woman who's claimed by a stronger man. Although that's not something I've ever personally felt.
But on that theory, you should be very keen to talk to a woman who's unclaimed, or who's claimed by someone you know you can whack if necessary. Getting someone else's girl pregnant while she stays someone else's girl is the sort of win that evolution really loves.
In any case, while you might be nervous of the consequences of openly introducing yourself to a woman, it shouldn't be hard to do it secretly. *He* might object if he found out. But why would *she* sic her boyfriend on you just for giving her options?