psychology

• our moods don't believe in each other
• people should think less about what they think they should think, and just think at all
• empathy is a measure not a target
• ideas aren't things you are. they're things you have and can play with
• people are insecure and fickle because evolution is insecure and fickle
• disgust responses don't map directly onto reality, but they do reveal territory
• the idea that we are a collection of several agents seems fake, but seems slightly less fake than the idea that we are a single agent
• change of perception is not the same as perception of change
• if your plan requires that people "just" do something, the plan will fail
• people will do what they know until they know what to do

social

• some worldviews are their own punishment
• all interesting people are disagreeable, but not all disagreeable people are interesting
• the world is made up of artists, autists, and everyone else
• nuance isn't fungible, and you can have too much of it
• don't resent others for your own limitations
• it's easy to make a new status game out of hating old status games
• people want most the information they will learn the least from
• it's better to be cute around smart people than it is to be smart around cute people
• empathy is the necessary ability to be manipulated by others
• teenagers know something children don't know, and adults end up forgetting
• courage is in shorter supply than genius
• people tend to be communists in the same way that they're bisexual
• some people generate more heat than light
• people can't be convinced by lies or by truth, but only by what they want to believe
• people are communists because they hate the rich not because they love the poor
• don't stand at the top of the bell curve and look down on the lower parts

philosophy

• happiness = someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to
• it is more important to learn meanings than definitions
• happiness is orthogonal to success which is orthogonal to potential
• sometimes more flowers means less roots
• don't judge a book by its cover, but by the shop it's sold in
• the purpose of freedom is to make others free
• depth is not free
• if it's not a "hell yeah" it's a "hell no"
• if you can't fix your brakes, you should at least make your horn louder
• my beliefs do not require others to also believe
• it's better to violently disagree than to disagree violently
• nothing human makes it out of the near future

relationships

• women have a sense of the world looking in that they fail to dissolve, and men have a sense of the world looking out that they fail to dissolve
• there is no such thing as an unobserved woman
• men have to qualify themselves, women have to disqualify themselves
• guys ask "what does she look like?", girls ask "what does he do"
• "young love" isn't about the age of the people, it's about the age of the love
• speed dating used to be a weird last resort, and now it's the norm
• brothels aren't for single people, they're for married people
• don't end up with someone who used to be pretty but was never interesting
• the more invested into the wedding, the less invested into the marriage
• some people know each others passwords because they trust each other completely. other people don’t know each others passwords because they trust each other completely

culture

• its not less shallow to replace material objects with experiences
• the frequency of something in your environment shouldn't dictate whether you like it or not
• religion is a system composed of deep denials of shallow truths, and secularism is a system composed of shallow denials of deep truths
• as negatives dwindle, they dominate; as positives swell, they diminish
• intolerance can’t be impure; tolerance can’t be pure
• if there's something that needs to be done first thing monday, do it friday night
• people don't want to make better choices, they want to make shit choices and then complain about shit outcomes
• modern movies use stories to tell special effects