Few fads in the modern West are more disturbing than the sudden positive light shed on sexualities understood until recently as obviously unhealthy. For example, an adult male with more than just an idle fantasy of becoming a “woman” is no longer thought of in the mainstream as being confused and mentally ill. Instead, he’s given both cultural and medical support for his decision. The culture applauds him for his bravery, and a doctor injects him with estrogen. Similarly, an adult female, in her futile quest to become a “man”—for she will never truly become a man—is cheered on, by family, friends, and strangers alike, when she makes the obviously insane decision to schedule a double mastectomy.

A related pair of examples is (1) the cultural support given to adult males who, in their failure to come into their own as men, reject the traditional expectation of adult males being masculine, and (2) the converse cultural support given to adult females who, at their peril, reject womanhood and femininity.

After a century of socialist catastrophe, we find, strangely enough, that the essence of the socialist psyche—a way of thinking and feeling that I hope to give a clear explanation of in this essay—is still perfectly alive and well, though of course not as much in purely economic terms anymore. That is, the way of thinking and feeling of the kind of people who are susceptible to the socialist contagion is, despite the spectacular failure of socialism in the 20th century, unfortunately still very common. The spirit of socialism has grown weak economically (at least in comparison to how strong it was in the 20th century), but it’s still very strong elsewhere, viz. in feminism and social justice. Ultimately, the essence or spirit of the socialist, feminist, and social-justice psyches are all one and the same: All of those ideologies are built on the same foundation of sand: They’re all manifestations of the “denial of X nature,” whether the denial of human nature (i.e., what we all have in common) or the denial of male nature (i.e., what men all have in common) or the denial of female nature (i.e., what women all have in common). That is, all of those ideologies share the same fundamental article of faith: the faith in the “infinite malleability of man.” Just because you’re a man, or a woman, or white, or black, neither means that you are one way or another, nor means that you should be one way or another. Anybody can be anything. We’re all free to choose. The groups that we belong to don’t determine what we are or should be as individuals.

While traditional Western culture took into account racial, sexual, and many of the other fundamental differences between different groups of people, the modern West tries in vain to ignore or get rid of those differences.

That is: The West of generations past took seriously the differences in strengths, weaknesses, and proclivities among different groups. For example, being born male, they thought, “destined” you down a certain path in life, and being born female “destined” you down a different path. If a man acted like the stereotype of a woman, then he was told to man up. And if a woman acted like the stereotype of a man, then she would get the same kind of treatment, just in the reverse. But in the modern age, i.e. in the age of feminism and social justice, gender roles are no longer taken for granted.

Western culture has taken a degenerate turn as democracy has replaced monarchy in the wake of the catastrophes of the World Wars. Standards have fallen precipitously, with even the most justified and measured of criticism often being rejected out of hand for being “sexist,” “racist,” or otherwise socially unacceptable. For example, if a man proposes to in effect turn himself into a poor substitute for a woman, then you’re expected to at least nod along passively or if not cheer him on actively. Most importantly, you’re not allowed to ask what the underlying mental illness may be—for that, of course, would be “transphobic”—and you’re not allowed to give him the advice that, above all, he truly and desperately needs: the advice on how to bring his mental world into natural alignment with the unchangeable facts of the physical world (the relevant fact here being that he was born male). Ultimately, what he needs isn’t an injection or surgery but advice on how to live in harmony with the natural order.

Getting people to identify you as X is a powerful way of increasing your motivation to do what’s expected of X. That is, (1) signaling that you’re a certain kind of person will cause people to expect you to do certain things which are associated with those signals, and (2) such expectations will act as social pressure for you to conform to those expectations. For example, if you look like an intellectual then people will expect you to be an intellectual. They’ll expect you to have interesting or insightful things to say.

Thus, finding an identity which is associated with being the kind of person that you want to be, and then figuring out how to signal that identity, is a powerful way of getting even more motivation for being that kind of person than you already have.

There’s also the social motivation that comes from feeling like you’re part of a group that you respect, especially if you think of that group as being in conflict with another group. That is: If you feel like you’re part of an in-group, then you get extra social motivation. And if you feel like that in-group is on the side of good fighting against an out-group that’s on the side of evil, then you get extra-extra social motivation. To summarize: If your in-group is internally harmonious, with you playing a certain role for that in-group (which is in harmony with the other roles), and your in-group is externally in conflict with an out-group, then from that combination of harmony and conflict comes an intoxicatingly powerful source of social motivation.

1. An a priori truth is such that it’s impossible to conceive of anything contrary to it. For example, it’s a priori true that there’s one dimension of time, for it would be impossible to imagine more than one dimension of time—at least I can’t figure out how to do so. An a posteriori truth, on the other hand, is such that it’s possible to conceive of something (or more than one thing) contrary to it. Here gravity works as an example: It’s a posteriori true that gravity exists and does what it does, for it’s possible to imagine a world without gravity or a world with a different kind of gravity.
2. “Mathematics” starts out with its a priori axioms, and then in becoming “physics” it adds its physics-relevant a posteriori postulates. “Economics,” by contrast, stays “economics” through that same transition. (Note: “Axioms,” under my definition, are by definition a priori, which means that the phrasing “a priori axiom” is redundant. In the same way, “postulates” are by definition a posteriori, which means that the phrasing “a posteriori postulate” is redundant.)
3. However, analogous to the distinction between “mathematics” and physics” can be made the distinction between “praxeology” and “economics.”
4. Each axiom is either true or false—actually, it may be better to say that each axiom is either coherent or incoherent—in that each axiom is either (a) “fundamental” or not and (b) a priori true or not—i.e. coherent or not. The postulates, on the other hand, are chosen relatively freely, for a system of postulates can describe either reality or a hypothetical; a system of postulates, as long as each postulate is “fundamental,” can be a coherently counterfactual system made out of the minimal number of assumptions. Axioms, being minimal a priori assumptions, have no conceivable alternatives, whereas postulates, being minimal a posteriori assumptions, do have conceivable alternatives.
5. From the axioms and postulates come the theorems. From something “minimal” comes something “maximal.”
6. Mathematics is the pure logic of space and time, number and shape. In other words, mathematics is the a priori foundation of any a posteriori field involving space, time, number, or shape. What’s praxeology, then? I’d say that praxeology is the pure logic of action, i.e. the a priori foundation of any a posteriori field involving action. That is, mathematics is to physics (and some other fields) as praxeology is to economics (i.e., the study of money), linguistics (i.e., the study of words), etc.
7. Note, though, that with good enough notation people may start to think of praxeology as part of mathematics.
8. To use pure reason is to reason purely from the a priori. Mathematics and praxeology, then, are exercises in pure reason.
9. An impressive feat of redundancy: “The pure theory of action, i.e. praxeology, partakes of apodictic certainty, gets its truth a priori, and makes use of axioms only (with no postulates).”
10. Mises talks about the importance of using “imaginary constructions.” Interestingly, an “imaginary construction” is a counterfactual postulate.
11. Consider the distinctions between (a) “reason” and “experience” and (b) “rationalism” and “empiricism.”
12. An a priori truth comes “prior” to experience, and an a posteriori truth comes “posterior” to experience.

1. Consider the following proposition: “Cats eat mice.” How we can make more explicit the prediction inherent in that proposition? “If you see a cat and a mouse together, then you’re likely to see the cat chase and try to eat the mouse.” That conversion makes the proposition (i.e., the belief) “pay rent,” yes. But it doesn’t convert truth to utility—consider here the classic discussion with Jason about whether truth is ultimately just utility. After all, you may not care one way or another what happens when you see a cat and a mouse together. Utility only comes into play once you try to use the (purported) truth of the proposition that cats eat mice.
2. We must of course distinguish between speaking truthfully and speaking usefully.
3. People who are concerned above all with what’s useful for them in the short term—i.e., selfish, hedonistic people—are the least concerned with truth.
4. If you read the classics in multiple languages, write for posterity, and travel the world, then you’re more likely to find the truth than a monoglot who stays in one place and debates about current events. More abstractly: Truth is perspective-neutral. The people who are the most truth-oriented are those who take into account the widest variety of perspectives (e.g., different languages, different eras).
5. How we categorize is of course a matter of utility, and thus every proposition, no matter how supposedly wertfrei, will have snuck into it at least one utility-related implication. For example, consider the following proposition: “Lemons have seeds.” The word “lemon,” which is mutually exclusive with, say, the word “orange,” implies that there’s some kind of claimed utility difference between the range of phenomena 🍋 and the range of phenomena 🍊—a different kind of being may well not see the point in differentiating the two. That notwithstanding, though: Truth can be nevertheless untangled from utility because, e.g., the proposition “lemons have seeds” is true whether anybody cares about the indifference range 🍋 or not.
6. That is: The proposition “lemons have seeds” is the prediction that if you open a lemon, then you’ll find seeds. It’s a separate question whether anybody would care or not.
7. Some people check utility on a shorter timescale, and other people check utility on a longer timescale. Personally, I’m comfortable following a path of inquiry for months or even years without asking what I’m going to get out of it.
8. Purported truth: (a) A cat living in your house as the cause, and (b) the mice living in your house getting killed as the effect. Consider next the same purported truth except mixed with purported utility: (a) A cat living in your house as the means, and (b) the mice living in your house getting killed as the ends. The only difference here is between cause and effect and means and ends. If you don’t care whether there are mice in your house or not, then the proposition “cats eat mice” is a useless truth. But if you do care, and you want the mice gone, then that same proposition goes from a mere understanding of perspective-neutral cause and effect to cause-as-means, effect-as-ends.

1. Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Semiotics, by contrast, is the scientific study of anything symbolic, whether natural language or not. For example, linguistics doesn’t study the artificial languages of logic and mathematics, but semiotics does.
2. What’s the significance of the distinction in linguistics between “natural language” and “artificial language?” What about the related distinctions between “children” and “adults,” “natives” and “foreigners”?
3. To think like a linguist is to bring a logical or mathematical mind to the analysis of “intuition,” the structure of natural language being isomorphic to the structure of “intuition.”
4. In practice, linguistics is often the scientific study of folk physics, folk psychology, etc.

1. In using phenomenalism to check whether we’re using language meaningfully, there’s the problem of how we can be said to mean so much more than we ever actually think. For example, how can we be said to mean the whole range of color associated with the word “black” even though, practically speaking, we’d only think of a handful of particular shades when saying the word?
2. The answer is that the meaning of a word (1) isn’t to be found only in what’s immediately present—only in what’s immediately introspectable due to being present to the “mind’s eye”—(2) nor is it to be found even in the aggregate of all that’s been present or introspectable to the individual across time; instead, (3) it’s to be found in the group—in the aggregate of all that’s been present or introspectable to all of the individuals involved across time. If a language evolves a word, then that word is presumably a common-enough indifference range. If one individual asks for “coffee,” and then another individual gives them something different than what they actually thought of, but they’re nevertheless no less satisfied, then neither individual will find any reason to change to using a different word.

1. If you stimulate the economy, then some parts of the economy grow “bigger” at the expense of others growing “smaller.” Similarly, if you use a stimulant such as caffeine or nicotine, then some parts of the body (including some parts of the brain) grow “bigger” at the expense of others growing “smaller.” Stimulants, whether given to the economy or the body, don’t give extra resources; they only change the prioritization of the resources that are already there. But—and here I’ll let go of the economics analogy and talk only about health—that change in prioritization can grow some abilities at the expense of others. Rice, wheat, tea, coffee, and tobacco give me better mental performance for schizoautistic thought but my sexual performance doesn’t do as well. A diet of only meat, fish, and fruit, on the other hand, does the opposite for me: My sexual performance does well, but only at sacrifice of the great power of imagination needed to experience the world of books as if it’s right there in front of me. The here and now becomes more important than working “alongside” Hume, Mises, Hayek, Chomsky, and others.
2. “Taking” rice, wheat, tea, coffee, tobacco, and other drugs, drug-like foods, and drug-like drinks, is analogous to taking steroids. It’s undeniable that steroids make you stronger (despite not actually giving you any extra resources to work with), and it’s undeniable that in some sports not taking steroids puts you at a disadvantage. Some professional sports are such that you’d be inevitably selected out of the top of the sport unless you take the health risk. Caffeine, nicotine, and other nootropics are similar: If you care too much about your health to take the risk, then you’ll be at an intellectual disadvantage. You’ll be inevitably selected out of the top of the intellectual world.
3. Eating only meat, fish, and fruit, with everything being raw, would be ideal for physical health and performance. Doing so would be also be ideal for a kind of mental well-roundedness. Adding wheat, coffee, and other civilization-building psychoactives to that diet, then, would make for less robust physical health and performance but as a deal with the devil: You’d change your balance of mental abilities, becoming less well-rounded; some mental abilities would grow out of all proportion with others. If your presets are intellectual—which, incidentally, is true for both of us—then you’d become a better intellectual at the expense of becoming worse at everything else.

In modeling the regularity in human action or the human mind: It’s possible to (1) think in terms of an individual as part of a group. For example, you can say: “Japanese people are honest, and Mr. Takahashi is Japanese. Therefore, Mr. Takahashi is honest.” It’s also possible to (2) think in terms of the individual alone. You can say, simply: “Mr. Takahashi is honest.”

Interestingly, both of those ways of modeling regularity are such that the resulting propositions can feel suffocating. To use an example from my own life: As a white American who spends a lot of time in Japan, I find it frustrating when a Japanese person assumes that I’ll think or act in a certain way just because I’m a “foreigner.” Whether what’s attributed is positive or negative, it feels like being boxed in arbitrarily; my personality isn’t just an outgrowth of my nationality or race. But it can also feel suffocating even when the purported regularity is thought of as an outgrowth of you as a unique individual. Consider: If you want to put your past behind you, move on from it, and invent yourself anew, then most radical, and thus most useful in that regard, would be to move somewhere new and cut all of your old ties to the people from your past. The people around you knowing what kind of person that you’ve been up until now can trap you into staying like that indefinitely. Moving somewhere new can get you out of that trap.

If you model a person as part of a group, then you challenge their free will to deviate from the past pattern of action of the people in that group. You bind their future to the past of others. And even if you model the person as a unique individual, then you do the same thing, just according to their own past rather than the past of others.

Thus, any attempt at scientific description of the regularity in human action or the human mind is easily taken as suffocating to free will, i.e. binding of the future of action to the past.

1. To most Japanese people, a person who looks American is expected to be an “English-only extravert.” Thus, when a Japanese person goes out of their way talk to an American-looking person—well, at least a person who looks American to them—the selection bias is such that the Japanese person is likely to be looking for a stereotypically American interaction. Exemplified here is the general principle that outward signals of the kind of person that you are inwardly, whether choosable or unchoosable outward signals, bring into your awareness, systematically, the kind of people whose expectations would be disappointed if you’re not stereotypical in the regard expected. Being white or black; these aren’t choosable outward signals. If you’re a white or black introvert who can speak Japanese, then in Japan you’ll constantly run into Japanese people who are surprised or even disappointed unless you pretend that you’re somebody that you’re not. Your look pulls them in, but then what you’re actually like is unrelated to that.
2. Expectation is thus turned into social pressure, for the kind of people who want you to fulfill the expectation will be (1) pulled into interacting with you and (2) disappointed if you don’t fulfill that expectation, and the kind of people who don’t want you to fulfill that expectation won’t be pulled into interacting with you; the latter kind of people will be by default more hidden to your awareness than the former.
3. Words like “white,” “black,” “American,” “Japanese,” “man,” and “woman” can be charged with more or less identity, but words like “lightning” and “thunder” can’t. It would be useful to have separate terminology, e.g. (1) “man” as identity-laden and “adult male” as identity-free, (2) “Scotsman” as identity-laden but “adult male born and raised in Scotland” or “adult male with a Scottish passport” as identity-free.
4. Interestingly, a lot of the language used among feminists and in social justice involves stripping away the identity, e.g. “people with a cervix” as opposed to “women.”

The scientific or rational approach is one of pure description—insofar as that ideal is even possible—with any prescriptions being included only when laid bare as the descriptions that they must ultimately be. For example, when thinking scientifically or rationally it’s perfectly reasonable to give an argument of the following logical form: “X causes Y. You want Y. Therefore, you should also want X.” Whether X actually causes Y, and whether you actually want Y, are separate questions; they’re questions that can be debated. What’s important to emphasize here is simply that science doesn’t hide value judgments but puts them out in the open for all to see. You can describe a person’s value judgments, and in some cases you may even be able to tell them something about their value judgments that they’re not already consciously aware of. But science always does its best to untangle judgments of value from beliefs in cause and effect. The ideal of science is to offer propositions only in an ultimately purely descriptive way, whether or not any prescriptions are in turn logically implied.

That is, scientific propositions are always perspective-neutral in their formulation, though it’s of course possible for each person to plug in their own value judgments and then in effect get advice on what to do.

To be clear: It’s not that the scientific approach doesn’t let you tell people what they should do. It’s just that the scientific approach lays bare the logical steps of the argument; it untangles value from belief. It doesn’t preach: “Do X, for X is right and good.” Instead, it says (much more nihilistically than any preacher would): “If you want Y, then you should do X.” Science is a tool, and like any other tool it’s itself agnostic about what people use it for. More concretely, science is analogous to a knife in that, e.g., a chef can use a knife to cut an onion, yes, but a mugger can also use that same knife for a much different purpose.