149: “People are more motivated by the relative inequality, than by the absolute level of well being.” –Brett Weinstein
People are more motivated by their level of relative wealth, than by their absolute level of wealth.
Why?
Because it isn’t about money or wealth.
It’s about status and power.
150: Men who engage in extreme behavior for the sake of having a shot at getting rich usually aren’t motivated by the prospect of having a high level of absolute wealth.
They are motivated by attaining high status, and power.
‘Extreme Behavior’ would mean 80 hour workweeks, borrowing money to start a business and thereby risking bankruptcy, or breaking laws for the sake of making money.
151: The higher a person’s testosterone levels are, the more they will care about attaining high status.
Men have more testosterone than women, and young men have more testosterone than old men.
Consequently, men care more about attaining status than women do, and young men care more than old men.
152: Power is worth any price.
When you are playing The Game of Power, it is impossible to overestimate how high the stakes are.
153: When evil people die, the world becomes a better place.
154: Being evil and being widely respected are not mutually exclusive.
The most evil people on the planet, are respectable.
155: Power will give any man respectability, no matter how heinous his actions may be.
Virtue almost never wins a man respect.
Power always does.
156: Lives are not valued equally.
Some people’s lives are considered to be immensely important, other people’s lives are considered to be worthless.
157: How you rank in the macro dominance hierarchy is a matter of life and death.
If for no other reason, in every society it has been the case that the higher your status in the hierarchy the better your access to medical care.
If you are a billionaire and you get sick, you will get instant access to the best medical care on the planet. Your odds of survival are good.
If you are homeless and you get sick, you will get delayed access to shoddy medical care, or no medical care at all. Your odds of survival are bad.
158: It is astronomically better to be powerful, than to be powerless.
A billionaire does not have slightly more wealth than a homeless man; he has astronomically more wealth.
159: Atrocities committed directly are punished more harshly than atrocities committed indirectly.
If you kill 1 man with your own hands, you will be thrown into prison for decades.
If you kill 1,000 men by hiring 1 million to work in your factories, and 1 thousand die in workplace accidents, you will receive no punishment at all.
160: Every society is 1 incompetent leader away from collapse.
161: In most groups, women are the arbiters of status.
If the women of the group like you, then perhaps your status in the group will be high and perhaps your status in the group will be low.
However if the women of the group dislike you, then your status in the group will certainly be low.
162: Note that women are not independently minded. They will default towards agreeing with whatever the opinion of other women is.
If one woman in a group likes you, and all the others haven’t met you yet, the other women will be inclined to also like you.
If one woman in the group dislikes you, and all the others haven’t met you yet, the other women will be inclined to also dislike you.
Whatever one woman in a group thinks of you, is probably what all the women in the group think of you.
163: In some groups, engaging in violence will cause you to win status. In others, engaging in violence will cause you to lose status.
If you are a member of a gang in West Baltimore, then engaging in violence is mandatory for attaining high status within the group.
If you are an employee at a law firm, then engaging in violence will instantly cause you to be low status; you will be fired within 24 hours.
164: In groups of high IQ men engaging in violence will cause you to lose status, whereas in groups of low IQ men engaging in violence will cause you to win status.
Exceptions may apply.
165: The reason men engage in violence is because they know that doing so can win them status, or at least power.
166: In order for violence to win a person status, it must be carried out against the right people and for the right reasons.
Violence against outgroup members (people from an enemy tribe) is far more likely to win a man status than violence against ingroup members.
167: A major reason men agree to risk their lives by going to war is because they subconsciously understand that engaging in violence against members of an enemy tribe can win them high status.
Men want status, because having high status makes them more sexually attractive to women.
168: The wages in Finance, Law, and Sales are high because the supply of people who have the intelligence, ruthlessness, stress tolerance, and cunning that is needed to do the work effectively is very low.
A low supply of labor inevitably means high wages.
169: The greatest politicians don’t work in government, they work in banking.
170: Machiavellians are individuals capable of doing the things that psychology professors at university’s wish they could do: charm people, persuade people, deceive people, and read body language effectively.
Lawyers, bankers, and salesmen have a far deeper and more accurate understanding of human psychology than most psychology professors.
171: A man is more likely to make it to the pinnacle of any macro dominance hierarchy than a woman, for many reasons.
Male IQ is more variable than female IQ; most geniuses are men, and genius level intelligence is an immense advantage for transcending dominance hierarchies.
Men are more risk aggressive than women; a willingness to take risks increases the odds of someone making it to the pinnacle of the hierarchy (and also the probability of them ending up at the very bottom).
172: In every profession, at the elite level use of performance enhancing drugs is the rule not the exception.
In Finance, Law, and Sales use of stimulants (Modafinil) is common. Nobody is working 60 hours a week on caffeine alone.
Creative types such as artists and engineers often use psychedelics (micro dosing LSD); it helps facilitate divergent thinking.
IM once said this.
173: Highly functional autists tend to excel in engineering and science.
Autistic Billionaires:
Mark Zuckerberg
Bill Gates
Jeff Bezos
174: Highly functional psychopaths tend to excel in finance, law, and politics.
Psychopathic Billionaires:
Steve Cohen
Paul Singer
Vladimir Putin
175: Rhetoric is using words that are emotionally impactful, but that have no specific meaning.
Rightwing Rhetoric uses words such as ‘Freedom’ and ‘Greatness’.
Leftwing Rhetoric uses words such as ‘Equality’ and ‘Justice’.
The masses are foolish enough to fall for rhetoric.
176: Politics has life and death consequences.
“I’m not interested in politics” is a luxury for those who live in times of peace.
“I don’t care about politics” is a euphemism for “I don’t care about the fate of my civilization.”
177: The politics of your country is like the weather of your country; it is out of your control, and it affects you.
178: To be born at a time when your civilization is declining is obviously a curse, but it can also be a blessing.
After a civilization crumbles, a new order will inevitably emerge. Power abhors a vacuum.
If you were born at a time when your civilization is collapsing, you were born at precisely the right time to seize power.
179: “Insanity is rare in individuals. In groups, it is the rule.” -Nietzsche
Christians believe there is a god in the sky with a son named Jesus.
Muslims believe there is a god in the sky named Allah, with a prophet named Muhammad.
Hindus believe that after they die, they will be reincarnated.
Communists believe that free market capitalism will never work, and a command economy will.
Cultural Marxists (Blank Slate Theory Egalitarians, Leftwing Americans from 1990 – 2020), believe that IQ isn’t real, gender is a social construct, and race is a social construct.
All are delusional.
180: In every society, there is a dominant ideology.
Every dominant ideology that has ever existed has been wrong about at least some things.
181: Most people are sheep who will accept the dominant ideology of their society without question.
182: Few people are willing to commit atrocities with their own hands, but they will support a regime that carries out atrocities so long as they don’t have to personally do the dirty work.
183: Euphemistic language is the mechanism by which outwardly respectable people conceal their sins.
“I am against universalized healthcare” is a euphemism for “If poor people die because they can’t buy medical care, I don’t care.”
“I am for affirmative action” is a euphemism for “I am for discriminating on the basis of racial group, so long as the victims are whites rather than blacks.”
184: You can get the masses to accept atrocities, so long as you make them feel normal.
Throwing children into gas chambers (Nazis)?
Slavery (Confederates)?
Collectivizing farms and causing mass starvation (Communism)?
Selling medical care for extortionate prices, and leaving poor people who fall sick to die (American Medical System)?
The masses can be made to accept all of these things without a fight, so long as you make them feel normal.
185: The Leftwing pathology is being concerned about inequality, and putting mechanisms in place to alleviate inequality that are ultimately counterproductive. See ‘Communism’ and ‘Affirmative Action’.
186: The Rightwing pathology is callous indifference regarding the suffering of those at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy.
187: In the Leftwing you will find insanity. In the Rightwing you will find cruelty.
188: Those who are in power are almost always conservative. Those who are powerless are almost always liberal.
Those in power are happy with their current position and have a lot to lose, so they want nothing to change.
Those who are powerless are miserable in their current position and have little to lose, so change appeals to them.
There are times in history when the Leftwing has stood for the interests of the rich and powerful while the Rightwing has stood for the interests of the poor and powerless, but this has been the exception rather than the rule.
189: When it comes to decision-making, throw ideology and principles out the window.
All that matters are realistic options and real world consequences.
If a person insists on doing things a certain way because their ideology demands it, and the method they are insisting on will lead to sub-optimal results, they must be ignored.
Indeed, if they make decisions on the basis of ideology or principles rather than consequences they shouldn’t be entrusted with decision-making in the first place.
190: The personal is political. The political is personal.
191: Politics is nothing more than propaganda wars.
192: The masses are foolish enough to fall for propaganda.
Most people’s opinions are not the result of rigorous logical reasoning; they are pre-packaged opinions delivered to their mind via propaganda.
193: Most people are sheep; they don’t engage in any critical thinking.
They formulate their opinions and make decisions based on Social Proof and Authority.
Social Proof: “What is everyone else doing?”
Authority: “What do the people in power tell me to do?”
194: Nobody has ever won an election by telling the truth.
195: If the people at the top of the macro dominance hierarchy are more concerned with enhancing their own power and wealth than they are with the well being of their society, that civilization is doomed.
196: ‘Rights’ are a joke.
There are no ‘Rights’.
There are temporary privileges that will be rescinded the moment it becomes inconvenient for those who wield power to uphold them.
197: “You must train yourself to see circumstances, never ‘good’ or ‘evil’.” –The 48 Laws
If you view the world in terms of good vs evil, nothing makes sense.
If you view the world in terms of amoral competition for power, with people’s interests often being in zero sum competition with one another’s…everything makes sense.
198: Conflicts between good and evil are rare.
Conflicts between interests that are in zero sum competition with one another are common.
Rarely is it about morality; usually it’s just about power.
199: The interests of the rich and the interests of the poor are almost always in zero sum competition with one another.
A rich person who says “We’re all in this together” is lying.
In a capitalist society, it is in the best interest of the rich for wages to be low; to them wages represent labor costs.
On the other hand, it is in the best interest of the poor for wages to be high; to them wages represent income.
It is in the best interest of the poor for there to be a ‘universal basic income’ that is funded by taxes on the rich being increased.
It is in the best interest of the rich for there to be no ‘universal basic income’ or wealth redistribution of any kind, so that they don’t have to pay taxes to fund it.
200: As inequality rises, the competition for power intensifies.
More intense inequality means more violence; a higher gini coefficient means a higher homicide rate.
Intensifying inequality also means a higher probability of violent revolution.
201: Often some degree of wealth redistribution is necessary for the sake of ensuring the inequality in a society does not become so intense that it sparks violent revolution.
Communism has historically led to mass starvation.
However, placing high taxes on the rich and distributing wealth to the entire population in the form of government services (infrastructure and welfare) is a mechanism by which inequality can be suppressed without causing mass starvation.
Placing high taxes on the rich and giving free stuff (universal basic income) to the masses is not equivalent to ‘Communism’, just as drinking caffeine is not the same as doing lines of cocaine until you die.
202: If a government gives free stuff to the masses and funds the free stuff by borrowing money, it will lead to economic catastrophe.
Sooner or later the government will either go bankrupt or print money to pay off its debts and thereby cause hyperinflation.
See Venezuela from 1990 – 2020.
203: If a government gives free stuff to the masses and funds the free stuff by raising taxes on the rich, it can be functional.
See Denmark from 1990 – 2020.
204: Wealth redistribution is like caffeine; it can be beneficial so long as it is used in small controlled amounts.
205: America from 1990 – 2020 has thus far looked like Venezuela, not Denmark.
206: Women tend to be more disturbed by intense levels of wealth inequality than men.
207: Women tend to vote for socialism; women are more in favor of wealth redistribution than men.
Giving women the vote increases the probability that a government will do wealth redistribution, and the degree of redistribution that is done.
This is not intrinsically good or bad, it’s simply a factor one should be aware.
208: There is only one solution to wealth inequality; ensure you are on the winning side.
209: If a person is impulsive and narcissistic, this alone makes them unworthy of a leadership position.
Do not entrust them with any decision-making responsibilities.
Their impulsivity will lead to them making decisions that feel good in the moment but that have disastrous long-term consequences.
Their narcissism will drive them to make decisions that stroke their ego, but that are strategically counterproductive.
This may sound obvious, but there are many narcissistic men with low impulse control who the masses find to be charismatic; they consequently attain leadership positions.
210: If the leader of a society is both narcissistic and impulsive, that society is doomed.
211: Every ideology agrees that killing innocent people is wrong.
What they disagree about is who qualifies as ‘innocent’.
Communists don’t think rich people are innocent.
Islam doesn’t think infidels are innocent.
Nazis don’t think that Jewish people are innocent.
212: People will intentionally misrepresent what you said, to make you look bad.
213: If a person is trying to obscure or hide information the probability they are trustworthy is zero.
Don’t trust those who attempt to prevent transparency.
214: Emotional people are the majority. Logical people are a tiny minority.
Emotional people prioritize their feelings over facts, their sensibilities over finding reality, and make decisions on the basis of what their emotions and instincts tell them to do.
Logical people prioritize facts over feelings, and finding reality over not having their sensibilities offended. They make decisions based on careful calculation.
Emotional people: 100% of women, 99% of men
Logical People: 1% of men. Autistic men. High IQ men with high testosterone levels.
215: When trying to understand the behavior or actions of others, most logical men start from the baseline assumption that people have good reason to engage in the actions they have taken.
This assumption is wrong; most people take actions and make decisions based on what their emotions and instincts urge them to do.
Essentially, logical men project their own logical nature onto others, when in reality most others are not logical.
For the sake of having an accurate understanding of why people take the action they take, don’t start from the premise that their actions are the result of careful calculation.
Instead, start from the premise that they most likely took actions that felt good and were driven by instinct and emotion, rather than logic.
216: Actions that are driven by careful logical reasoning are rare.
Actions that are driven by emotion and instinct are common.
217: Politicians and judges are like houses; they can be bought, and most appreciate in value over time.