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Solution to the relationship between men and women fundamentally is monogamous social norms

Women outnumber men so the men hypothetically have more sexual opportunity but that's not what happens. What happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity, a fairly large minority of men don't. The women are not happy because they can't find a committed relationship. It's bad for most of the men and the men who have all the sexual opportunity gets cynical

You are a young man and all the women are rejecting you. Who's got the problem? - It's not all the women, that's a bad road to go down. If all the women are rejecting you, it's you!

Your house needs a lot of work man. There's a lot of rot in the floorboards. The plumbing is leaking. The water's coming in. You're not the sage and Saint you think you are. There's so much work you have to do on yourself that it would damn near kill you to take a look at it, to do everything you possibly can

If enough people take responsibility for getting their individual life's together then we'll get wise enough so we won't let this process of political polarization put us back to the same places that we went so many times in the 20th century. I don't see another antidote for it. It's not political, it's ethical

The fundamental measurement of unit is the individual and the fundamental task of the individual is to engage in the process of humble self-improvement

When are you sick of yourself? - Well, that's when you're being useless and irresponsible for yourself and for your family and for your community. You're not even taking care of yourself. You can't sleep with a clean conscience unless you are psychopathic if you're not taking care of yourself. Adopt a little responsibility for yourself and you can sleep with the clean conscience. What happens if you'd opted full responsibility for yourself and then for your family?

Where is the meaning? - The meaning is in responsibility. It's a burden but voluntarily hoisted. It's the place of maximal meaning and the more responsibility you take the more meaning you have and that's the antidote to the catastrophe of life

What's the antidote to the tragedy and malevolence of life? - The answer is to put yourself in the zone of proximal development because that's where the maximal meaning is and that actually does prepare you for life. So the question - why think? - is well you think before you act and you act to put yourself in the zone of proximal development and you do that as an antidote to the catastrophe of life

How do you know when you are incrementally self improving?

Incremental self-improvement is the proper route. So how do you know when you're incrementally self improving properly? - The answer is it's deeply engaging. It's deeply meaningful. And the reason for that is you're actually adapted neurologically to identify the pathway of maximal incremental improvement

How to write a good essay?

Write an essay so that you can think and you think so that you can live properly. Write carefully, make sure that every single bloody word is a word that you want to use and you make sure the phrases that you put the worlds in are as solid as they can be. And you make sure the sentences are well constructed and that they're organized into proper paragraphs and the paragraphs are sequenced and the content of the thing matters and you put your soul into it. And you know when you've done that because it's gripping when you write. It's meaningfully engaging

Something that matters effects how you make decisions in your life. Well why does it matter how you make decisions in your life? - Because if you make some stupid decisions, you're going to increase the sum total of suffering a lot. You're going to do stupid things to yourself, you're going to do stupid things to other people and you're not going to be as good a person as you could be. So not only will you do stupid and terrible things but you won't have manifested the good in the world that you could have manifested

When writing an essay pick a topic that matters to you

How do you write a good essay? - Pick a topic that matters to you because if you are not writing about something that matters to you it's like you are not living something that's meaningful. It's wrong. You are not going to write a good essay because you are wrong write to begin with. It has to matter to you

Why write? - well, writing is a form of thinking. It's actually the most demanding form of thinking I would say

No one teaches kids these things in school

Kids have been educated for twelve years and no one had ever sat them down and said - okay what the hell are you doing and why and how are you gonna get there?
- Where do you want to go?
- Why do you want to get there?
- How are you gonna get there?
- How are you gonna mark your progress?
They've never walked them through that exercise.
If you walk people through that exercise just to get them to do that increases the probability that they'll stay on track by 50%. That's incredible

If you know that you're the one that can transcend your problems most fundamentally then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are

You have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it

Be honest with yourself about what you are doing

I don't know what to do

"I don't know what to do" - That's okay, nobody does. Go do something. Do the best thing that you can think of. Put the best plan you have into practice. It's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way but it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path and as you become disciplined you become wiser and as you become wiser you become able to formulate better and better plans so you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great and you start to implement it and then you accrue incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan and that enables you to fix the plan and so that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement as well

Meta rule - you have to discipline yourself

The rule might not be - "follow this rule!"
The rule might be - "you have to follow some rules!"
It's a meta rule - "you have to discipline yourself"
And the issue is how? That's not really the relevant question. You can pick a disciplinary path

You could be way better

You could be incompatibly better across multiple dimensions and in pursuing that better that's where you'll find the meaning in your life and that would give you the antidote to the suffering

Incremental steps to success

You take an incremental step and well now you can lift 55 pounds instead of 52.5 pounds. It's one step on a very long journey and it starts to compound on you. So a small step today puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step for the next day and you do that for two or three years. Man you are starting to stride!

Matthew principle

There's a statement in the New Testament, it's called the Matthew principle and economists use it to describe how the economy in the world works - "To those who have everything more will be given, from those who have nothing everything will be taken". It's like very pessimistic in some sense because it means that as you start to fail you fail more and more rapidly but it also means that as you start to succeed you succeed more and more rapidly

Your best strategic position is how am I insufficient and how can I rectify that. That's what you've got. And the thing is you are insufficient and you could rectify it. Both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough