Ponder
17d ago
I think the problems you are mentioning are downstream of spirituality/religion. A well-functioning society has widely believed shared stories, practices, values, rituals, and agreement on what is sacred.
There is something like an “American Civil Religion” that includes things like:
- myths about how democracy results in good outcomes and leaders through public deliberation
- the myth that anyone can start with nothing and end up successful (because of public education and scholarships)
- the myth that you can achieve economic success through hard work (like starting as a entry-level employee and working up to manager)
- the myth that the free market enhances life for all Americans
- myths about the role of the military
I’m using the word myth as John Vervaeke uses it. It not something untrue, but rather a symbolic story that helps people make sense of reality.
Those myths have been losing their credibility/plausibility/power in recent times. This is because of information spreading and events like:
- The handling of the pandemic by government officials caused some people to lose faith in the democratic process
- Things like the 2008 financial crisis, growing wealth inequality, outsourcing, and AI have called myths about economic success through hard work into question.
- The Iraq War and other military operations have caused people to question the myths around the military.
- The rise of social media caused people to question the myth about the free market leading to better outcomes for everyone (social media caused a bunch of negative externalities that benefited tech companies by exploiting human psychology).
It used to be much easier to believe in the myths and to see bad individual outcomes as outliers that often resulted from individual lack of character.
I think instead of focusing just on material solutions we need new myths that people find widely plausible. There needs to be enough evidence that they are generally true. Without shared myths people become distrustful, conspiratorial, and tribal.
Ponder
17d ago
Yes, this happened to me in my early 30’s too. I made a longer post about it when I joined this site.
It was a series of small things that added up over a long time, then one day I looked back and made the connection that it was likely autism.
- I was heavily into Magic the Gathering for a ten-year period starting in high school.
- I struggled with social milestones, especially romantic ones.
- I am awkward in social situations. When I was younger it was giving short answers, fearing that I would run out of things to say, and trying to come up with social scripts to follow. Now it is noticing that I cycle through a lot of perspectives and think about wierd patterns/connections.
- Frustrations with small talk, tribal political discussion, and people trying to peer pressure me into being on the right side and getting offended when I ask them to provide logical evidence for the belief they want me to go along with.
- Ruminating over past social interactions and getting frustrated that I have a hard time saying the right thing at the right time.
- Frustration when people use social manipulation to bypass the agreed upon rules, then I become obsessed with figuring out the actual unwritten social rules.
- Openness to odd ideas and questioning the status quo.
- Watching content about autistic people (like Asperger’s Are Us) and recognizing that it sometimes overlaps with my own behaviors.
- Watching a streamer with a formal autism diagnosis and realizing he was high-masking and many people didn’t notice his autism unless he told them about it. His story matched a lot of my own experience.
It has made it easier to navigate life and look for situations where I fit in rather than trying to mask to prevalent social norms.
Ponder
20d ago
That’s a good point there are some popular influencers who provide helpful advice to young men without trying to produce maximally viral content for the algorithm. They still play to it somewhat by choosing provocative titles or captions for videos. In addition to Healthygamergg I would say André Duqum is kind of like that but more spiritual, and Chris Williamson is kind of like Healthygamergg with less therapy.
It seems much harder for someone to replicate any of those healthier podcasters though. A lot of it came from them filling a specific niche at the right time. Additionally, all of them seem to have dedicated a lot of time to building expertise over time (by going to medical school, spending a lot of time doing spiritual practices, or doing a lot of research). I know Chris talked about his beginnings as a podcaster and I think he spent a few years with much fewer views and it eventually grew organically and he already had some social media followers because he was on Love Island (a reality TV show).
Those paths seem harder to replicate for a newcomer because someone already found and popularized the niche. As a newcomer it seems like a better bet to play the virality lottery where you try to get popular from a single outrageous clip and then create new content based on what the audience liked in the viral clip. This doesn’t require any expertise at all and it will have a much faster payoff if it succeeds.
Ponder
20d ago
I occasionally see content about Clavicular (Clav, age 20) pop up in my algorithm. I used to ignore it because I felt like I had a good read on his schtick. I decided to watch a couple interviews to understand why he might be popular among others, and to better understand him from a psychological perspective.
The primary thing he is known for is being a spokesperson for looksmaxxing ideology. He believes looks are the most important factor in achieving positive social outcomes. He therefore believes in going to extreme lengths to optimize his own looks. His own looksmaxxing experiments include steroid usage at a young age, taking meth to stay lean, and altering his facial structure by hitting facial bones with a hammer/fist.
Digging deeper it appears that he has social anxiety (he suspects he has autism) and he usually uses a cocktail of drugs to overcome this anxiety when streaming his social interactions. He recently overdosed while streaming, but made a quick recovery.
He is very in tune with social media trends and algorithmic manipulation. He knows how to clip farm and turn novelty into engagement. He uses weird terms like methmaxxing and jestermaxxing to increase the probability of a clip going viral. He also knows how to livestream and turn audience engagement into content.
His interviews tend to be a combination of him wanting to sperg out about looksmaxxing and him playing the role of clip farmer. The interviewers usually start out as curious about Clav’s worldview, but then they try to bait him into talking about his past controversies or play some rhetorical gotcha game. When Clav appears to have his drugs dialed in he seems to achieve his goals in the interview (spreading looksmaxxing ideology and generating algorithmic engagement). Sometimes he just comes across as spaced out and like is he having a hard time following the logic (like he is impaired by a substance).
My personal critique of him is that he is correct that looks matter, but he fails to realize the importance of balancing other skills and traits in order to achieve social success (like Aristotle's golden mean). I also think he is on a precipice with his drug use. He has the opportunity to taper and integrate the confidence he learned into his sober personality, but if he continues using his cocktail of drugs he will cause physical and mental injury to himself.
I’m far more interested in discussing the larger pattern that Clav is symptomatic of. Young men don’t see any viable paths to success, or have good role models for how they should live their lives. They look around and see the traditional paths (like college) are uncertain at best. They notice young women’s expectations have increased and they often don’t meet them. If they see a successful person (like a retired boomer) they don’t think that path is still available to them. If everything is uncertain the best thing to do is look around for successful people and imitate them. So, they find an influencer like Clav and realize they can play the social media influencer lottery by trying to become viral like him. If society tells them to figure out everything on their own and won’t provide a clear path that is likely to succeed then becoming viral on social media, giving up, or gambling suddenly seem like much more attractive options.
It is obvious to me that incentivizing a bunch of people to figure out how to optimize viral social media content is not good for society. It steers people into echo chambers, distorts their ability to see reality, and is also a huge waste of potential – they could become productive members of society (like scientists and engineers) if only society better aligned the incentives.
How can society better support the men who sincerely look up to Clav as role model? Is there a way to become as viral as Clav by doing pro-social things (so offering a viable competing worldview)?
Ponder
1mo ago
The one I trust most is Nootropics Depot. Scott talks about them in: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-trustworthy-are-supplements
Originally, I was drawn to them because they had a good reputation when I was researching phenibut sources (which they no longer sell). Then I tried many of their products and they worked as described. The products have certificates of analysis. The owner (u/MisterYouAreSoDumb) posts on Reddit alot and I can tell:
- He is very knowledgeable.
- He is focused on quality and improving the industry. He calls out shady practices in the industry that are verifiable.
- There are many people that respect and agree with him.
- He has been in the space for a long time and is known for pursuing mission and long-term goals over short-term profits.
Another factor in my determination is that giving money to his company supports the development of novel nootropics that are easily accessible outside the medical model. I have a grudge against the medical system/FDA/government for how they handle psychedelics, MDMA, phenibut, tianeptine, racetams, and other substances that I believe people should have greater access to.
Ponder
2mo ago
I agree college is an optimal place to meet long term partners. Attraction can build through encountering people many times in different settings (in a group project, and then again at a party). You get to know someone deeper and evaluate them on less superficial traits. Sometime after college many single people seem to accumulate baggage/cynicism, where they used to have optimism/hope.
There are a couple interesting trends on my radar about college:
- When a college degree no longer guarantees a good job it can reduce a woman's likelihood of committing to an LTR. If the guy is going to end up as a gig/retail worker then he wouldn't make a good partner. So women might want to wait longer to commit until the guy proves he is employed in a stable career.
- The gender balance of undergrad is something like 57% women in 2025 (varies locally). When an environment contains more women then the men can shift the preferences to more casual relationships in college. In theory this is good for men looking for a LTR, but it creates a signaling challenge because the man needs to differentiate himself from men who just use LTR language to get hookups.
Ponder
2mo ago
I think you’ve explicated this topic well, but I would add some additional points to your model.
Along with status and social skills there is something like emotional mastery/inner state/self-amusement. It is the ability to reframe situations and remain in a positive mood regardless of the external environment. Instead of interpreting events as negative/neutral you take a perspective on them this is positive and/or gives you agency. If something goes wrong you might laugh, propose a solution, not be bothered, or behave as though the universe is teaching you an important lesson so that you may become wiser. You do not want to react to negative situations by getting angry or showing that you have no agency in the situation. This is a very complex topic and I’m not summarizing it well. It is not the same as being out of touch with your emotions.
You need to understand the social media landscape/algorithm that your potential partners are exposed to. Imagine how much time they spend on social media and what they are being shown – better yet have a female friend show you her feed. Among other things you will see lots of encouragement for her to remain single, relationship advice to view the men as suspicious and to be vigilant for red flags (often dubiously defined red flags), and general other content designed to make her doubt herself so that she needs to buy things and/or stay on social media for validation. Specific content examples might include the Vogue article, “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now” or her friend celebrating singlehood and getting a bunch of validation for it. You have to understand how constant exposure to this content changes women.
Finally, looking at this advice from depth psychology perspective it is forcing men to present a specific persona that doesn’t reflect their true self. Often this causes problems in the future when men realize that they are only liked for what they produce and how they navigate social situations. If they encounter misfortune (extended unemployment, illness) then they may find the woman loses interest and doesn’t want to support him as he navigates his problems.
Ponder
3mo ago
China recently added export controls on silver in 2026.
The US added silver to the Critical Minerals list in November 2025.
Declining confidence in the US leads foreign investors to look for alternative investments to US treasuries/dollars.
Part of the move could just be short positioning being forced to cover. When the price moves quickly in a short time and there are a lot of people using leverage then margin requirements can cause some positions to be forcibly liquidated - which causes the price spike to go even higher for a short period of time.
Ponder
3mo ago
I've observed this too. I think there is a feature of human communication that can be summarized by a slogan: "You have to know that they care, before you care what they know". In other words showing that you care about other people's feelings, that you are actively listening to their concerns, is usually more important than the logical accuracy of your statements.
I've also noticed that successful influencers on social media often drift from where they started to appealing to their audiences' emotional concerns. The influencers are directly seeing what gets like and what doesn't, so they drift to what their audience like most. If they try to occasionally bring on guests with alternate perspectives their own audience makes the original influence feel bad with dislikes and mean comments.
Ponder
3mo ago
In a recent post Scott Alexander says,
As for older people, I have seen public intellectual after public intellectual who I previously respected have their brains turn to puddles of partisan-flavored mush. Jordan Peterson, Ken White, Curtis Yarvin, Paul Krugman, Elon Musk, the Weinsteins...
Can anyone explain what Scott means by this in reference to Eric Weinstein? I'm curious about Eric. He says interesting, often conspiratorial things, that sound somewhat reasonable, but I don't have the background/intelligence to evaluate. Can anyone summarize which of his controversial ideas seem to have some truth to them?
Specifically, I'm curious about his claims around:
- The Department of Energy suppressing advanced physics
- UFO psyops by the government
- The idea that String Theory is a dead end and new theories aren't being explored because of institutional capture
Ponder
3mo ago
Here is a good explanation of schema therapy: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3qzA8nFXNQ/book-summary-unlocking-the-emotional-brain
Ponder
6mo ago
Those are excellent points, thanks for the feedback.
It seems like there should be some way to increase AI safety by increasing the amount of agents that need to achieve consensus before letting the employeeAI take an action. Each agent has the shared goal of human alignment - but can reach different decisions based on their subgoals. The employeeAI wants to additionally please the end user, but the bossAI and regulatoryAI don’t have that subgoal. In the analogy sure a clever employee could convince his boss that it is ok to dump hazardous waste down the drain and when the EPA finds out the company could bribe the investigator or find a legal loophole. However, this requires multiple failure points instead of letting a single employee alone decide if it is ok to dump hazardous waste down the drain with no oversight. The boss + regulatory structure provides the employee with an alignment incentive because it is less work to dispose of the hazardous waste properly than it is to figure out how to game all the levels of protection.
You’ve given me another thought about the regulatoryAI. They shouldn’t be programmed by the AI company. The regulatoryAI should be a collection of government AIs (such as countries or states) that look at the employeeAI output and decide if it should be released to the end user. The regulatoryAIs must all agree or else the employeeAI isn’t allowed to complete the proposed action. This opens the door for the governments to abuse their power to censure safe things they dislike – but there could be further processes to manually deter this abuse.
Ponder
6mo ago
I was thinking about AI alignment recently.
In a corporation you have employees that are instructed to do tasks in a certain way and are subject to work rules that will result in punishment if they violate them. The corporation is also subject to outside oversight to ensure that they are following laws. For example, an employee might be responsible for properly disposing of hazardous waste. They can’t just dump it down the drain. They have a boss that makes sure they are following the company’s waste disposal policy. There is also chain of custody paperwork that the company retains. If the waste was contaminating local water sources then people could notify the EPA to investigate the company (including the boss and employee).
Could you setup multiple AI agents in a similar way to make sure the main agent acts in alignment with human interests? To extend the analogy:
- The employeeAI is the less intelligent AI model that interacts directly with user.
- The bossAI#1 is a more intelligent AI that only verifies that the employeeAI isn’t violating any corporate policies. It will notify the AI company if it notices any policy violations, or if the employeeAI tries to influence the bossAI to violate the policies. The bossAI#1 can only be reprogrammed by the AI company. The bossAI#1 can shut down the employeeAI if it violates any policies.
- A boss AI#2 monitors that bossAI#1 is doing what it is supposed to. You could add more levels of bossAIs for more security.
- The RegulatoryAI is another AI more intelligent than the employeeAI. It monitors real-world data for harms the employeeAI might be causing (like how the EPA would make sure chemicals aren’t being dumped into water sources). The RegulatoryAI will notify the AI company if it notices any policy violations, or if the employeeAI tries to influence the RegulatoryAI to violate the policies. The RegulatoryAI can only be reprogrammed by the AI company. The RegulatoryAI can shut down the employeeAI if it violates any policies.
What flaws are there with my ideas around AI alignment other than increased costs?
Ponder
8mo ago
I don't know how to dance
The neat thing about the rave scene is you can do flow arts instead. Usually, you can find a few people that just enjoy watching and complimenting you even if you are beginner. It also gives you a reason to talk to the other flow artists to ask how you can get better.
brought a polaroid camera
Another thing that might work well in the rave scene is to make friendship bracelets (referred to as kandi in the rave scene). Put words/jokes on them and then you can give them to people who look like they would vibe with the bracelet.
I don't really know how to flirt
This is where being in a slightly altered state can help. It helps your intuition take over even though you can’t logically think it through. I like to use Phenibut (but only up to once a week and never mix it with other CNS depressants). Micro (or a very light dose) of psychedelics might work if it doesn’t make you anxious.
Yes, you are probably thinking of Twin Flames Universe. Leadership encouraged several cisgender women, who had no prior indication of being trans, to transition to men.
ETA: I did some brief searching on Twin Flames Universe to determine why members are mostly women. It seems like the marketing and messaging about spiritual counterparts, inner healing, emotional transformation, etc. appeal to women more than men.
It seems like there is an opportunity to improve upon this model. Once you have a lot of lonely single females in your cult it seems like you could pivot the marketing/messaging to attract lonely single men to keep the gender ratio in balance. You need to have different roles for the men that are more appealing, instead of trying to force all members into a model that appeals mostly to females.
Ponder
8mo ago
People become more religious, but legacy religions decline because people start new religions. We probably see AI religions and more psychedelic religions.
Using nootropics/folk medicine to enhance the well-being of healthy people becomes more common.
Roland Griffiths was probably on to something about creating brain stimulation devices that are able to produce mystical/spiritual experiences that are more reliable and specific than psychedelics.
Ponder
8mo ago
I’m actually pretty high in openness. I’m into things like nootropics, psychedelics, woo/spiritual/religious ideas, questioning the system, etc. Being open to weird ideas comes with the framing that we probably aren’t going to reach the exact same conclusions and it is ok to have unresolvable differences. The thing that agitates me is when people I disagree with use social shaming/pressure me into agreeing with their preferred social norm that appears to have logical flaws on the object level.
I think you are getting at something deeper though. I would say I’m very low-trust and suspicious of people. When people resort to peer pressure/shaming to enforce social norms that can’t withstand some light questioning then I feel that I can’t trust their thinking at all. I conclude that there is no reason to associate with them because how they act on the social norms issue will impact their other behavior and they are an unreliable ally.
I perceive that almost all social interactions will eventually test for tribal loyalty at some point (maybe this is just me being suspicious and picking up on something that isn’t actually there). In my model of the world you need to know if other people would make good allies/mates. The way you do that is by testing their reaction to political topics (Examples: Complaining about political policies, implying people that vote a certain way are morally bad). You always need to know if people share your values and then you need to sort yourself into groups that share your values by enforcing social norms. This is how you build trust.
Ponder
8mo ago
Flow state might be a term that describes the opposite of dissociation. In a flow state you feel focused attention and immersion in the activity you are doing.
Ponder
8mo ago
I live in an area where most social spaces are dominated by woke ideology. People who don’t agree either pretend to go along, or have abandoned the shared social spaces. I feel that there is an unspoken shared social norm in most spaces around me that you must agree whenever someone implies/states that straight white men are problematic/oppressors. I feel like whatever is going on with this social norm is somehow tied to status games and tribalism. I feel that it is morally and epistemologically wrong to blame such a broad group for so many of the problems in society. It is wrong to over simplify societal problems to such a simple ideology. Ultimately, I believe every person deserves to be treated as a unique individual. It is fine to point out specific instances of a straight/white/male doing a problematic thing, but it wrong to assume that everyone in that group is bad and/or benefits from the problematic thing.
I believe it is ethically wrong for me to pretend to go along with problematizing any group of people just because that is social expectation to fit in with the group. Consequently, I mostly avoid social spaces because I don’t feel comfortable with the social norms that I’m expected to conform to.
There is a part of me that thinks the people in these social groups are otherwise reasonable, but they are also caught up in the social mania of modern times. I would like to be more social and make more friends, but the social norms of the spaces around me make me uncomfortable and closed-off to people. There don’t appear to be spaces near me without the straight white men are problematic norm for the areas I’m interested in (such as book clubs or running clubs).
Has anyone discovered a way to let it be openly known that you don’t agree with the group problematizing social norm, while still being accepted into the group? Like steering the group to a pluralistic acceptance of people with different values because those values don’t impact the stated purpose of the group (i.e. social norms about political ideology shouldn’t matter if you just want to go running with some people).
Ponder
8mo ago
I believe that your assessment is correct.
To put it in slightly different terms when you workout you are training procedural memory in addition to physical strength. Procedural memory is knowing how to do learned tasks (like riding a bicycle) without conscious awareness. If you do isolation exercises the procedural memory being trained is mostly going to be tied to that specific exercise (e.g. you will learn the form for bicep curls without having to think about each time, but that memory won’t generalize to working with heavy objects).
When you do manual labor (and to some extent compound exercises) you are also training procedural memory on balancing different parts of the body that is more generalizable to many other situations.
Ponder
10mo ago
I enjoyed this write-up. It was informative and written in an engaging style.
One thing that I think makes psychedelics effective is the work that is done after the trip. Being in a supportive community after the trip seems to produce a lot of benefit. Talking to other people who have also done psychedelics can help you feel a sense of deeper connection. If I was designing a psychedelic therapy trial I would include a mostly peer driven support group for people that have participated in clinical psychedelic trials.
I agree that your experience sounds like the 10mg dose. If you took a higher dose and had a mystical experience or ego death I suspect it may have given you more motivation/desire to make a bigger change to your life. I’m interested in how the results between 10 mg and 25 mg will vary in the trial. I suspect that the higher dose benefits would be more noticeable and would last longer. If the effects from 10mg start to wane it may be an interesting personal experiment to try something approximately equivalent to the 25mg dose.
The advent of the sacred is something that arrives and it is not something that can be top-down engineered.
Western society focuses on propositional knowing (knowledge expressed as facts - like cats are mammals). There are however other forms of knowing that don’t reduce to universal certainty and are hard to communicate:
A shift I see occurring is that people are becoming more open to non-propositional knowing. This makes myths about a pluralistic society more plausible and credible. If you accept non-propositional knowing as an important part of your worldview it makes it easier to understand other people’s perspectives without needing to collapse things into certainty.
The democratic myth can shift back to something more like how the parasympathetic vs sympathetic nervous system operates. There isn’t a one right way for every context. You need both parts to work together to reach the right balance. In democracy people are supposed to work together instead of trying to defeat the opposing part – this allows both sides to self-transcend their own self-deception.
Another myth that I see gaining traction is the idea of unhealed collective/generational trauma. When this is accepted it makes it easier to empathize with others because you can see how their actions are influenced by bad things that happened to them in their past.
Finally, we are in a psychedelic renaissance. Psychedelics and empathogens (and higher states of consciousness) show us the importance of non-propositional knowing and can lead to individual and collective healing. I think society is shifting to the myth of these being important and powerful medicines. These can help reveal shared myths like how ancient Greece had the Eleusinian Mysteries. Empathogens can help reveal myths about collective healing through cooperation and trust.
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