The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from the final episode of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, don’t subscribe because it’s over!

The Mind Killer

157 - The End of the End

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community for ONE LAST TIME…

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23 days ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Now that the greatest and best news show ever made is ending, many of you are probably asking yourselves “where am I going to get my news from?” Here’s my suggestion: don’t. If you aren’t already following the news, don’t bother.

I started a news show because I am a sicko and I enjoy reading about news and politics. It’s fun. It’s engaging. It’s how I enjoy spending my free time. It’s not because it’s actually important to be “well-informed” or to know what’s happening in the world. That is not important. National and international news almost never has much of an effect on your daily life, and when it does have an effect, you’ll hear about it soon enough.

If you’re a sicko like me, or if you have a job where you need to follow the news, or there’s some other reason why you have a particular need to know what’s going on, I’m going to guess that you already have a wealth of other news sources that you follow, so this advice isn’t for you. But if your primary source was, up until now, the Mind Killer podcast, then you’re probably safe to live in blissful ignorance of all the stupid things happening around the world.

Instead of following the news, consider starting a new, more rewarding hobby. I recommend cooking. It’s ridiculously easy to level up your cooking skills so every day you’re eating something more delicious than you could get in most restaurants. Or what about gardening? If you get serious raised beds, you can do it without all the bending over, crouching, and kneeling, which is the worst part. Or watch football! It’s all the tribalism and excitement without any real-world stakes whatsoever. Or do something that’s fun but doesn’t accomplish anything, like video games. Or gooning. I hear the kids are into gooning these days. And that’s probably a better use of your time than paying attention to whatever shitty thing Donald Trump, or our shitty future president, did today.

The only thing being well-informed actually matters for is voting, but as David often reminds us, voting is irrational on an individual level so you don’t have to do that either. But if you want to, it’s usually pretty obvious who the better choice is, and you can figure it out in like 20 minutes by Googling or asking your LLM of choice who is more aligned with your values. And if you still don’t know, follow my blog at livingwithinreason.com. I’m sure I’ll issue some kind of endorsement in major elections. And if not, you can check my tweets or just DM me.

If you actually want to stay well-informed in a way that might make a difference, follow your local news. You might be able to affect things in your town, so that’s where you should spend the most attention if you want your voice to matter. Or don’t, because you probably won’t affect anything there either and most of the time the news just makes people angry.

Either way, you don’t need the Mind Killer! Of course it was an incredible podcast and gave you hours of entertainment and it was the only place for thoughtful analysis of current events, but aside from the Troop Deployment section, I doubt you learned anything that improved your life much. My advice is, if you don’t enjoy following the news, don’t worry about it. Just live your life.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 155 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

155 - Liberation Day is Canceled

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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2 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

The 2026 winter Olympics ended last night, and it was awesome. One of the reasons is that sports are one of the last bastions of meritocracy in modern society. You can’t win by knowing the right people, saying the right thing, or having the right look. It doesn’t matter who your parents are, whether you’ve got the right demographics, or how many people follow your Insta. Outside of a few isolated controversies (looking at you, French judges), you win by being the best. And it’s inspiring to see the people who are the best at what they do get showcased for a couple of weeks. These people are amazing and they are doing amazing things. Half of the ski & snowboard events involve crazy people launching themselves as high in the air as they can, and doing ridiculous combinations of spins, flips, and grabs before landing on their feet.The other half involve falling as fast as possible down a mountain while staying in absolute control. The ice skaters are all doing quadruple spins and backflips. There’s an event where cross country skiers propel themselves across a snow-covered arena for over two hours. In a couple events, speed skaters start in a big pack, and sometimes they collide and multiple skaters get taken out! There’s an event where people dive headfirst onto a bladed sled and careen down a mountain at over 90mph. It’s incredible.

It’s also fun to root for America, because America is the best, and America kicks ass at sports. In the past two weeks, America won more gold medals, and more total medals, than any country except Norway. And Norway doesn’t count because they made up like half of these events to be things only they do. China didn’t even finish in the top 10 (pathetic!). American athletes embody the best values of our country - individualism, excellence, and ingenuity.

Of course it’s just a bunch of silly games, but what is life if not a series of silly games? So I say enjoy it. Indulge in a little bit of harmless tribalism. Watch some impressive people do impressive things. Feel some national pride for once in your miserable life. It’s fun! And it’s good for you. Go USA!

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 154 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

154 - Hooray for Markets!

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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2 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Healthcare costs too damn much. Everyone knows it, but nobody knows what to do about it. But recently we’ve gotten a great example of how drug prices can come down fantastically in a short amount of time. Specifically, you make consumers pay for it.

The thing about GLP-1 drugs is that most of the time, insurance won’t cover them for weight loss. While GLP-1-induced weight loss tends to improve health and save insurance companies money over the long run, they still tend to view weight loss drugs as elective and thus not covered under most plans.

I first got a prescription for semaglutide in 2023, but I didn’t start taking it until 2025 because the price was too high. Novo Nordisk was charging about $1,300 for a one-month supply. I do not have a spare $1,300 to spend every month on what’s mostly a vanity project, and my insurance wouldn’t cover it, so I passed.

Between 2023 and 2025, people caught on that these drugs were basically a silver bullet for weight loss. They got wildly popular, and competitors entered the market. Eli LIlley developed and released Tirzepatide, but that just changed the situation from monopoly to oligopoly, and the price was still out of control. What really changed things is that compounding pharmacies exploited a loophole in the drug patent system which allowed them to make their own drugs and sell them for much cheaper. Gray-market suppliers also started selling peptides “for research purposes” so people could mix their own. Suddenly instead of $1,300 per month, I was able to get a six-month supply for that price. Now the situation is even better, as competition has forced Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to lower their prices. They both recently signed a deal with the government to make name-brand Wegovy available for $200/month and Mounjaro for $300/month on trumprx.com (or so they say. I tried to check and the site refuses to load). That’s less than ⅙ of the cost I was quoted 3 years ago. The invisible hand of the market worked out to benefit the consumer yet again!

The reason this doesn’t happen with other health-related goods and services is that consumers never pay for them. Insurers do. And insurers aren’t the ones making the purchasing decision. So you get into the situation where the consumers of healthcare don’t really care what it costs, and can’t find out even if they do care. So prices stay mysterious, consumers are extremely price-insensitive, and costs keep increasing.

The GLP-1 situation shows us that there is nothing magical about healthcare which exempts it from normal market dynamics. If consumers are charged a legible price for it, they will do the normal consumer thing, comparison shop, and generally follow a demand curve. This probably doesn’t apply to life-or-death medical care, but let’s be real, most healthcare spending is not life-or-death. So if we want to lower costs, we need to end the system where the person making the purchasing decision isn’t the same person paying the cost. I’m not sure exactly how to do that, but I’m sure the eggheads could figure it out if they really tried.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 153 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

153 - ICE Storm

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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2 months ago · 1 like · The Mind Killer Podcast

I know it’s cool and based and edgy to say things like justice, the rules-based international order, honor and integrity in our representatives, and anything but the Nietzian will to power are fake and gay. And to some extent, that’s true. International and political norms are in some sense polite fictions that get violated all the time. But they’re also ideals, and we’re all better off when our leaders feel at least a little obligation to follow them.

Trump is ruining that. When he does things like pardon the January 6th rioters, random fraudsters, and people who pay into his crypto slush fund, it shows he doesn’t even feel any need to maintain the pretense that it’s anything but a corrupt exercise of pure power. People point to things like Biden pardoning his son or Bill Clinton pardoning his campaign donors, and say it’s the same thing. But it isn’t. Those were corrupt pardons, but they were embarrassing and damaging, which is why they did them right before they left office. The fact that Trump does his corruption out in the open and receives no punishment for it is a meaningful difference.

Ideas matter, and the idea of America matters. It matters that America will defend its allies and never use our military force against them unprovoked. It matters that the President doesn’t tell the Justice Department who to prosecute. It matters that the Fed is independent and often does the opposite of what the President wants. It matters that law enforcement shows their faces. It matters that political allies and even family members of the President can be prosecuted by his attorney general. It matters that the President isn’t open to obvious bribery. It matters that he is polite to other world leaders.

Trump has destroyed all of that. Both in the eyes of the rest of the world, but even more importantly, in the eyes of Americans. Americans now expect our leaders to be crass, corrupt, fraudulent buffoons, and won’t demand anything different in the future. That’s Trump’s real legacy, and it’s a tragedy.

My friend Cyn has written a post disagreeing with me on whether women should ask men out. Her main points are ones I’ve heard many times before. Read the whole thing if you want the full argument, but here’s the one-sentence summary of each:

1. Asking men out filters for men who are passive and/or don’t really like you

2. The wrong initial approach can doom a relationship

3. Not every relationship starts with an “ask out” moment

Point 3 is the easiest to address. If you manage to get into a relationship without anyone doing any asking out, that’s great! You do not need to ask anyone out unless you’d like an additional relationship. My advice to ask people out is only for those seeking relationships or other romantic and/or sexual connections. If it “just happens” for you, that’s wonderful, but it is not the common experience. Usually someone has to take the initiative.

Point 2 is baffling to me. I know everyone likes a good meet-cute story, but it really doesn’t matter. If you find yourself on a date, then congratulations! Your strategy was successful! As long as you didn’t do it in a way that was deceptive or otherwise going to cause problems later, it doesn’t really matter how it happened. The date is where you do the actual discovery about the other person. If the date goes well, neither person is going to care how it came about. I know there’s a persistent myth that the wrong approach can poison the whole relationship, but I don’t know where it comes from or why anyone would think that.

Your Filter is Broken

Point 1 is the real issue. It’s true that if you ask people out, you’re giving up a filter, though I doubt it’s a particularly valuable one. It’s true that there will be some correlation between a person’s willingness to ask you out and how much they like you, but it’s a pretty weak correlation.

First off, you’re not really filtering for men who like you. You’re mostly filtering for men who ask out a lot of women, like Brangus:

At one point, not that long ago, I was asked to speak on a panel for people with body counts over one hundred. At one point I was asked some question I don’t remember, but I asked all of the women in the room to raise their hand if I had ever hit on them. Approximately every woman I had ever met before that day raised their arm.

Brangus is great! But when he asks you out, it is not an indication that you are a unique, special snowflake. As he says, you “play the numbers.”

But more importantly, there are a lot of reasons a person might decline to ask someone out. In fact, Cyn gives several in her post! It’s ironic that she lists all of her reasons why she doesn’t ask men out, but assumes that a man who doesn’t ask her out simply isn’t that interested. And that is, of course, because she doesn’t directly address the elephant in the room: gender essentialism.

The Filter Cuts Both Ways

Cyn claims that if women ask men out, they will often end up with men who are passive, cowardly, or don’t like them very much. But that’s a symmetric problem. If it’s true, then if men ask women out, they will often end up with women who are passive, cowardly, or don’t like them very much. Thankfully, I don’t believe that either is true.

Cyn’s reasoning rests on the assumption that a man who likes a woman will ask her out, but a woman who likes a man simply pines in silence (or gives a few subtle-but-deniable hints so she can tell herself she’s being “yin” which is ~totally different~ from being passive1). But, of course, that’s ridiculous. It’s not the 1950’s anymore. Women can and do ask men out all the time, and very large numbers of men are reasonably apprehensive about expressing sexual interest outside of dating apps ever since doing so imperfectly got declared a reason to socially shun someone. Aside from that, there are still many reasons why a man might not ask a woman on a date despite being interested. In the modern world, in-person asking is no longer the norm.

A First Date Doesn’t Imply a Second

Cyn claims that she used to ask men out, but she ended up with a string of men who said “yes” but weren’t particularly interested in her. But the relationship persisted because they were too passive to break up with her. I notice I’m confused. She yada-yada’d the important part! How did she go from asking a man on a date to being in a relationship with him that would necessitate a difficult breakup? That’s the part of the process to address.

I want to be clear about something: I’m only advocating asking people on dates. Asking a person on a date in no way obligates you to start a relationship with them or to be the only one taking an active role. If you go on a date and your date doesn’t seem that interested in you, just don’t go on a second. Finding out how you relate to each other is what the date is for!

Courage is a Virtue

I’ve read dozens of defenses arguing why it’s Right and Good that women rely on subtle signals instead of just asking, and they almost always strike me as cope. The real reason is pretty obvious: cowardice. Asking people out is hard. It requires vulnerability, agency, and courage. It can make things awkward. It can lose you status. People (men and women) who don’t have to do it to get dates mostly don’t, despite the fact that they would probably have better outcomes if they did. It’s uncomfortable, and people tend to stay in their comfort zones if they can.

There is one exception: being passive is a strategic move for women who are very into traditional gender roles. While the overwhelming majority of men are fine with being approached, there is a certain type that will be off-put by it. If you’re looking for a relationship that reflects midcentury gender roles, it’s best to stick to those roles. Of course, if you’re reading this blog, it’s very unlikely that you actually want that.

So my advice for both men and women remains: if you like someone, ask them on a date. Don’t play silly games where you send subtle signals and hope they’ll pick up on them. Don’t try to do too much filtering before your first date. If someone is available and you think you’d enjoy a date with them, that’s all the filtering you need. Do the real evaluation on the date.

What Is the Actual Disagreement Here?

This is what Cyn describes as “not asking men out”:

My current relationship started like this: we were introduced at a party. We talked. I asked if he wanted to find a quieter room upstairs to keep talking. We did. He initiated a kiss. After that there wasn’t really an official “ask out” - we just texted, we knew we liked each other, and things progressed from there.

10/10 no notes. Though that seems pretty yang for a person who describes her approach as yin. By my scorecard, asking to go find a quieter room is the functional equivalent of asking a person on a date. It’s like asking someone up for coffee, so I’m not even sure we disagree. You don’t literally have to say the words “do you want to go on a date with me?”

The point is to take responsibility for things happening. You don’t “set the table” and wait for the other person to act. If things aren’t where you want them, you act to make them different.

Sometimes You Don’t Know

My advice to ask people out is for situations where you want to go on a date with someone. Cyn makes the point that attraction for women is often reactive. A man being very into a woman can make her more attracted to him. As with most things phrased in gendered terms, it applies to both men and women. And that’s fine! If you don’t know if you would enjoy a date with someone, then it’s perfectly reasonable not to ask them on a date. Personally, I ask very few people on dates because it’s rare for me to meet someone I like. But when I do like someone, I ask her out (and you should too).

But sometimes you don’t know how you feel about someone, but an expression of interest can push them over the line.

Human romantic preferences aren’t static rankings. They’re more like differential equations - functions that include a term for how much the other person likes us.

If you genuinely don’t know how you feel about someone, I lean toward just asking them out and seeing what happens. But if you’re truly on the fence, it’s also fine to wait for them to take the initiative. If their interest and enthusiasm could push you over the edge from “no” to “yes,” then it’s the right move to wait for them to show it.

UPDATE (1/30/26):

Sympathetic Opposition has written a post agreeing with Cyn and disagreeing with my position. She goes into a number of reasons why the stable marriage problem is different from real life, all valid. It convincingly argues that women looking for marriage need to be choosier than men, largely because of biological realities. But the main point of the article is the same as Cyn’s - that who does the asking is an important filter.

She also goes through a number of circumstances where it does make sense for a woman to ask men out. The key paragraph is this one:

You should expect asking a man out to be more likely to work if you have lower transaction costs: if it’s easier for you to date multiple people at once, easier for you to break up with people, if you rarely get hung up on a man.

These are not personality traits. You are not born with them. These are skills that you can develop. I know because I had to develop them! In my adolescence, much like most boys, the idea of asking a woman out was terrifying. It was equally terrifying to reject a woman who expressed interest. The transaction costs of starting or ending a relationship were huge. The solution was courage.

As I grew up, I had to learn that a woman accepting a date wasn’t a reliable indicator of her interest. I had to learn how to tell if a relationship was developing in a direction I liked, and how to end a relationship early if it wasn’t. I had to learn how not to idealize a woman just because we were dating, and not to get tunnel vision. Women can learn these skills too! And the ones who do typically have more success, or at least avoid the failure mode where they get “stuck” in a relationship with an unsuitable partner.

UPDATE (2/5/26): Cyn has written an additional post. See my response in the comments.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 151 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

151 - Bullshit Trump News

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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4 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

If you’re on Twitter, you know that one of the favorite pastimes on Twitter is complaining about the “for you” feed, which is the one where you get served an infinite scroll of algorithmically chosen content. People complain about it constantly. “It’s goal is to make you angry” they say. “It only gives you content that upsets you” they say. “The algorithm is your enemy” they say.

These people are telling on themselves. The algorithm rewards engagement. It’s showing you the content that you engage with the most. When you reward rage-bait with attention, you get more rage-bait. If your feed is full of garbage, it’s because you keep interacting with garbage. My “for you” feed is great, because I only engage with content I like, so it gives me content I like from people I like.

The thing is - this is not just a twitter thing. It’s how all of life works. Whatever behavior you reward in the people around you is what you’ll get more of. If you reward people being calm and reasonable, the people in your life will be calm and reasonable more often, and you’ll attract people who like being calm and reasonable. If you reward histrionics, you’ll get more histrionics.

My friend Paola recently wrote a very good blog post (if you’ll ignore the evospych) about how a lot of mental health issues develop as a way of controlling one’s environment. If the only way to get someone to care about you is to kick and scream, you will (often not consciously) kick and scream when you need someone to care about you. If you’re the other person here, the play is to never create that situation. If you genuinely care about someone, make sure you demonstrate that care before it gets to that point. And if you don’t care, don’t jump into action just because they’re upset. It’s not your responsibility to “be there” for every person who is throwing a tantrum.

Your social life operates by the same algorithm as your social media. Whatever you give attention to, you’ll get more of. So make sure you’re giving your attention to the content you actually want.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 150 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

150 - Artisanally Crafted Phonemes

Wes and Eneasz are joined by Will Eden to keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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4 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Pronatalism is big these days. Everyone is trying to urge young people to get married and have families. And almost all mainstream thought on this issue is that to encourage family formation, we should encourage people to stay together once they’ve started dating. Breakups are bad according to the conventional wisdom. What they want people to do is settle for the person they’ve got.

The problem is that’s backwards. Falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy is not virtuous. I know a lot of people who want kids but are in danger of aging out of that being possible. Every single one of them is in this position because they wasted their younger years on a partner who was not right for them. They stayed together far too long because people told them things like “relationships take work” or “compromise is key” or “there’s no settling down without settling for.” Predictably, it didn’t work out, and they can never get that time back. Other people had kids with a partner, but split up later and wish they had picked a better matched coparent. The common theme here is that they stayed with their partner too long when they knew they should leave, and ended up investing their time, energy, and resources in a relationship that didn’t pay off.

Meanwhile, the people I know in the best relationships, who feel happiest and most fulfilled, have refused to settle. I’ve had several friends who set out to find a spouse. Some of them did serial monogamy, dating one person at a time, and sticking with anyone who seemed ok, even if they didn’t inspire strong feelings or treat them the way they wanted. Predictably, none of those people are married. My most successful friend just dated as many people as possible. She was very liberal with first dates, and often had a new first date every day. But she would only schedule second dates if she felt drawn to a person. She ended up finding her husband in under six months. My theory is that by exposing herself to so many people, it was easy for her to recognize it when she found a really good match. She had so much experience meeting men that she instantly noticed the man who wasn’t like the others.

Traditionally, the ideal is to only date one person. You marry your high school sweetheart and you’re a virgin on your wedding day. But we’re not stuck in that world now. Thanks to modern communication technology, there is an abundance of potential dates. You don’t have to settle for a person who isn’t what you’re looking for. But the dark side of abundance is that there’s often a “grass is greener” effect, where you imagine a checklist of (often superficial) traits you’re looking for in a partner, and you’re never happy with anyone because you think your perfect partner is just a swipe away. And you don’t have enough experience dating to know what actually matters and actually makes you happy. The way to split the difference is to actually date a lot of people. Get a truly visceral sense of what your dating pool is like. Develop an intuitive sense of what you like and don’t like. And when you realize someone isn’t right for you, break up. Then when you meet a person who stands out of the pack, you’ll realize it and hang on to them.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 149 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

149 - Steven & Ross Return!

Wes is once again joined by Ross and Steven keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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4 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

It’s basically common knowledge at this point that The Kids These Days are terrible students. Every week there’s a new essay by a teacher claiming that kids are showing up to class without knowing anything or kids not willing to do the work they assign. By some reports, kids are graduating with A’s in math, getting into prestigious schools, and not even being able to do elementary school arithmetic. The latest is a viral Bluesky rant that kids aren’t even reading the syllabus, following guidelines, engaging with material, or meeting deadlines. All the usual suspects are, of course, blaming smartphones, because smartphones are an easy target. In a few years, you’ll be reading the exact same takes but it will be blaming AI instead.

The tell comes in the next skeet. Bleet? Blueberry? Whatever they call them now. The nonbinary professor says “We keep adjusting our goalposts, trying to meet students where they’re at.” Well, hey, genius, I can’t imagine why the kids aren’t willing to do the work you keep assigning if you keep “adjusting your goalposts.”

I was a great student. I got mostly A’s in high school and college. But I always did the minimum amount of work possible. I did my homework in class. I never studied. I didn’t read the assigned books. You know why? Because it’s boring, and it wasn’t necessary for good grades. The standards were low enough that I could get good grades without putting in much work, so I didn’t put in much work.

Then I went to law school, and you can’t get away with that shit in law school. I didn’t even try, because my professors made it clear in class that we were expected to do the assigned reading, and we wouldn’t be able to follow if we didn’t. So I did the assigned reading. My first semester, I didn’t study enough for my criminal law final and got a C-. The next semester, I studied more and got much better grades.

If Kids Today aren’t willing to do schoolwork, it’s because you lowered the standards so much that they don’t need to. If kids aren’t willing to do the reading or engage with the material, why are you passing them? Just give any kid an F who doesn’t learn the subject matter. I guarantee you that you’ll see improvement.

Of course, the real solution is to stop making school so fucking boring and lame. Every educator in the country should be required to take a few classes on scienceisweird.com to learn how to teach in a way that makes kids actually want to learn. Kids love learning! They want to know things! They are naturally curious about the world! If you think they don’t, show a 4yo a few episodes of Numberblocks. It’s an amazing show that gives each number a personality and shows how different numbers interact with each other. That kid will know more math watching a few hours of Numberblocks than they will by spending six months in preschool. Want kids to read? Assign them books that don’t suck. It’s not a secret what books kids like. Just give them those books! Stop teaching them that reading is something you force yourself to do for “education.”

But if you’re not willing to do that, the least you can do is stop complaining that kids are only willing to put in the minimum amount to get good grades. Throughout history kids have always been putting in the minimum amount to get good grades. The only new thing is that you, the teachers, are afraid to give them anything less than an A, let alone fail them. So shut the fuck up.

In the pre-modern world, there was no social contract, police force, or court to enforce property laws. People owned only what they could protect. And for women, that was not much. Any woman who amassed significant resources was in immediately danger of having those resources taken by the first man who passed by. Even if she had a man to protect her, men were constantly out hunting or foraging, leaving women at home and vulnerable. In the eternal game of “makers and takers,” evolution optimized men to be takers and women to be makers. Men can be productive, of course, and many are. But in the ancestral environment, men had the option not to produce anything and instead appropriate resources produced by others. One of the most masculine societies in history sustained itself almost entirely through theft. That was not an option open to women.

Women are built for ongoing productivity. While men had the option to amass wealth created by others and live off of it, women’s strategy, by necessity, focused on continuous production. When you have no option to hoard resources, you’re forced to produce what you need and consume it immediately to minimize the chances of anyone else taking it. Even women’s biology is built to be productive. During pregnancy, women produce a placenta to feed their unborn child that is literally kept inside their body where nobody can get to it, then expelled as soon as it’s not needed. After pregnancy, women continuously produce extremely nutritious milk - a very valuable resource - to be fed to their children every few hours. Ignoring this biological imperative is painful and can be dangerous. Women’s bodies literally force them to be productive.

Culture is downstream of environment and biology. It is a feminine virtue to be self-sufficient and continually produce resources. Men can have value by amassing large fortunes, which is why 85% of the world’ richest people are men. We naturally respect these men, due to the realities of biology. Rich women don’t get a similar level of respect. Can you name the richest woman in the world? I can’t. But I bet you can name a good handful of the ten richest men.

This has observable consequences. Women absolutely dominate service industry jobs (despite being substantially less than half of the labor force) - the type of jobs where products are created continuously. Finance - a field that creates nothing but merely appropriates wealth created by others - is overwhelmingly male.

This extends to the personal. Women find men attractive when they’ve gathered large amounts of resources, regardless of how they did it. In fact, historically, the most attractive thing was for a man to inherit his wealth without producing anything. Men can be successful and loved even when entirely dependent on the produce of others, because that is not where their social and cultural value lies. By contrast, men find women attractive when they are highly educated and accomplished, showing that they can be productive and self-sufficient.

Could we destroy all this and flatten the sexes? The practical differences are lesser in the modern day. We now have police, courts, and a social contract that means women can hoard wealth and don’t need to continually produce. There are far fewer roving bands of ruffians who will steal everything you have if you can’t physically defend it. Resources can be stored in banks and locked homes where they are largely safe to keep.

And yet the instincts remain. We’ve been programmed by millennia of evolution to demand competence from women. It remains the case that almost any man can overpower almost woman and take whatever property she has with her.

For a woman to be productive is beautiful. To learn skills in the service of this work is noble. The pursuit of these ideals makes the world a more beautiful and romantic place. Lives filled with striving after virtues are richer.

[Evo]Psych!

If you haven’t noticed by now, the above section was complete horseshit, and written as a parody of my best friend Eneasz’s defense of gender normativity. It’s meant to illustrate that a sufficiently motivated person can invent an evolutionary story to explain anything. And hey, it’s plausible! Why do men prefer highly educated women? Why is it considered so high status for a man to live off his inheritance? How did women in the ancestral environment defend their resources? Nobody knows! So we’re free to make up any dumb story we want! After all, everything about how our brains work must have had an evolutionary advantage at some point, so there’s got to be an explanation for everything.

My most fervent hope, reader, is that you’ll think of this essay next time someone tries to explain gendered behavior with references to “the ancestral environment” or “evolutionary programming” or other such foolishness, and you’ll recognize it for what it is - a work of fiction.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 148 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

148 - News You Can Fight About

Eneasz and David are both being whiny babies, so Wes is joined by Ross and Steven to keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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5 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Sycophancy. It’s a big topic right now. Everyone is worried about AI’s being too sycophantic. Egirls are constantly inundated by sycophants. There’s a real problem where the rich and power…

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The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 147 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

147 - The Shutdown Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Wes and Eneasz are once again joined by Jimmy to keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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5 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

There’s been some internet discourse recently about Philly, and people tend to agree that it’s got a lot of A-list features. We’ve got amazing architecture, world-class restaurants, a walkable urban core that’s also not a traffic nightmare, a fantastic park system, championship sports teams, revolutionary history, museums and culture, access to the rest of the Northeast corridor, and great people. What we really need to be a top-tier city are high-paying jobs.

By the time you’re hearing this, Zoran Mamdani should have been elected mayor of New York, promising a millionaire’s tax, a higher corporate tax, and higher property taxes in affluent neighborhoods. At the same time, California voters are planning to place a proposal for a one-time 5% wealth tax on the ballot next year. Of course it will only be a one-time tax. I’m sure voters will be satisfied just doing this one time.

So billionaires - if you’re looking for a new home, or even better, a new place to locate your corporate HQ that’s not California or New York, might I humbly suggest Philadelphia. The finances make sense. We’ve got lower corporate taxes and no plans to raise them. For individual taxes, both Pennsylvania and Philadelphia have a legitimate flat tax on income of under 7% total - much lower than NYC or California. And Pennsylvania is a purple state, so you don’t have to worry that the socialists are going to take control and seize the means of production.

And we need you! As I said, what Philly really lacks are high-paying jobs. If you move your businesses here, we’ll actually appreciate you! Not like those ingrates that are currently taking you for granted. We’ll welcome you with open arms and we’ll be rooting for you to succeed.

So if you’re fed up with being underappreciated and exploited by your current location, consider moving to Philadelphia! You won’t regret it

And hey, if you’re a real risk taker, there’s always Camden!

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 146 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

146 - Jimmy Meet World

Wes and Eneasz are joined by Jimmy to keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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6 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

The usual dating advice tells people to cultivate an “abundance mindset.” It’s a way of encouraging people to take rejection gracefully because there are, as they say, plenty of fish in the sea. Each individual connection is low-stakes because there are lots of lots of potential dates out there.

For some people, maybe that’s true, but for more discerning people it doesn’t really work that way. Personally, there just aren’t that many people out there I can date. Once you get past the ordinary criteria like age, sex, and location, I’m only interested in dating people who are nonmonogamous and not looking for a primary. I also won’t date anyone who believes that dating or sex comes with extra unspoken obligations. She has to share my sense of humor, at least somewhat. She has to value honesty, reason, and equanimity. She has to be brave and independent. We have to be attracted to each other. We have to admire one another.

Those women are not abundant! I’d say they are one in a million, but that’s probably far too high of a ratio. When I meet someone who is a good match for me, I do not try to manufacture an abundance mindset. I know how special she is.

You might argue that this is personal to me, and that most people have a much bigger dating pool, but I’m skeptical. Doesn’t everyone want to date people who share their values and fit with their lifestyle? Monogamous people start with a larger dating pool, but the stakes are even higher if you’re looking for one person to exclusively be with forever. In that circumstance, it’s important to be even pickier about compatibility.

My advice is to adopt the opposite of an abundance mindset. Realize how scarce your best matches are, so don’t assume any potential partner is a good match until you actually know. Don’t invest a lot of your hopes and dreams in someone until you get to know them and find out if they’re truly a good match. That will do the main job of abundance mindset, which is to prevent you from being desperate, but it also has the benefit of being accurate.

The other benefit of adopting a rational scarcity mindset is that it lets your partners know how special they are. Few people find it inspiring to be with someone who views them as just one of many interchangeable options. People want to be with someone who recognizes and appreciates what they uniquely bring to the table. We all want to be loved for the things that make us who we are. Don’t trick yourself into developing an attitude that communicates the opposite.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 145 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

145 - Shutdoooooown! Or Did Trump Bring Peace to the Middle East?

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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6 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

It’s well documented how LLM’s are pretty bad at giving you interpersonal advice because they always take your side. If you tell Claude about a conflict you have, it will reassure you that you’re totally in the right and the other person is being unreasonable and crazy. They’re like most therapists this way. They want to keep you coming back, so they’re going to tell you what you want to hear. And what most people want to hear is “you’re so right; that other person is being a total jerk.” There are already tons of stories out there about people wrecking their relationships because they were trying to use an LLM as a therapist, and it refused to ever suggest that they might be the problem. For that matter, there are plenty of stories about human therapists doing the same thing.

But unlike with therapists, LLM’s don’t remember your previous conversation, so you can use that to your advantage. Go ahead and get that sweet, sweet validation. But after you do that, open up a new chat and tell it the story again, but this time, tell it you’re the other person. Even if you bias things pretty heavily, it will still try to take your side and explain your actions in a sympathetic way.

Sometimes, in my law practice, I provide mediation services. And the key to resolving a conflict in mediation is getting the parties to see things from the other person’s perspective. A big part of my job as the mediator is trying to figure out what each party actually wants, especially if they’re being cagey about it. If you can get to the actual needs each party has, you can much more easily craft a positive-sum solution. But it’s hard when you don’t have direct access to that. LLM’s can help by giving a steelman for the other person’s actions. Maybe it’s not completely accurate, but it will at least give you an idea of how the other person is probably interpreting their own actions. It’s much easier to be sympathetic if you have a third party giving you a sympathetic explanation.

So make that sycophancy work for you! Instead of wrecking your relationships, use its bias to help strengthen them and encourage you to feel sympathy. Your conflicts will go much better.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 144 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

144 - Bummer Time

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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7 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about banning phones in schools, and I hate this whole conversation. First off, I hate it because there’s an underlying assumption that school is good and paying attention in school is a good thing, which is highly questionable. But mostly I hate it because of how everyone talks about kids as if they are NPC’s with no agency and no preferences that matter even the slightest bit. The conversation is all about how we stuff as much information into their heads as possible, and almost nobody even brings up the idea that the kids themselves might have opinions.

The other thing is that everyone jumps right from the premise that phones are distracting to the conclusion that they need to be banned. Which is crazy. Banning things ought to be a last resort, after you’ve tried everything else to deal with the harm. Bans are awful. They have serious costs. When you ban something, you are, by definition, denying people what they want and forcing them into a situation they didn’t choose. With adults, we intuitively understand that, which is why we don’t ban all bad things. Lying is legal in most situations. Cowardice is legal. Cheating on your wife is legal. Hate speech is legal. Moving to Kansas is legal!

Banning phones teaches a kid a number of lessons:

1. You are my enemy. I cannot trust you and I should do everything I can to undermine you

2. The way to get what you want is to amass power and use it to dominate your opponents

3. My preferences don’t matter to anyone in authority

4. I can’t be expected to control myself. I am weak and I need to be protected from my own choices

There’s also the issue that once you ban something, you have to enforce the ban, which necessarily requires a hyper-vigilant police state to be effective. Or else you enforce it inconsistently, and everyone learns that your rules are arbitrary and don’t need to be taken seriously.

Honestly? Banning phones in class might be worth it. They are distracting! They’re mostly incompatible with paying attention. If teachers were using class time well and teaching worthwhile skills, it would probably make sense to ban them. But I hate the whole conversation because I have yet to see anyone acknowledge any of the real downsides or even make any baby steps in the direction of viewing children as people.

If we’re going to be talking about this, let’s at least mention that bans come with a ton of side effects that we probably don’t want, and try to actually address that.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 142 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

142 - More Boat Touching

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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8 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Scott Alexander introduced the idea of the “scissor statement” in his short story “Sort By Controversial.” The idea is that there exist some concepts that are so extraordinarily divisive that they have the potential to alter world history. The thing about these statements is that nearly everyone sees their position on them as blindingly obvious, a position that any decent person would have, but roughly half of the populace are diametrically opposed to the other half.

I don’t encounter too many of these out in the wild, but recently I’ve been seeing some commentary on Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program, or “MAiD.” This is a program by which Canadian doctors will assist people in committing suicide. When it started it was limited to people whose death from disease was imminent, but was later expanded to include other people with incurable physical diseases experiencing an irreversible decline. In 2027, the practice is scheduled to expand to people whose only underlying condition is mental.

To me, this is obviously, without a doubt, a good thing. It is horrifying to me that a person would want to die with dignity and we wouldn’t allow it. The MAiD program has lots of safeguards, including a 90-day waiting period, to make sure people aren’t acting impulsively. But if some has an enduring, consistent wish to die, as much as I agree with Eneasz that death is bad, forcing people to live is worse. I read my friend Amanda’s review of Two Arms and Head and couldn’t believe anyone would think the state should try to prevent this guy from ending his life on his own terms.

And yet, when other people talk about it, they find it obviously, without a doubt, a travesty. They’re horrified that doctors, whose number one priority is “do no harm,” are using their medical knowledge not to save, but to kill. Most people recognize that it can be appropriate in certain circumstances, but are scandalized by statistics like - and I’m quoting a recent piece in the Atlantic:

As of 2023, the last year for which data are available, some 60,300 Canadians had been legally helped to their death by clinicians. In Quebec, more than 7 percent of all deaths are by euthanasia—the highest rate of any jurisdiction in the world.

I don’t know how to handle this. While I find it tragic that so many people want to end their lives, I don’t actually know how this compares to the unassisted suicide rate (and nobody does, because lots of suicides get classified as other things), and I would never respond to that by trying to deny people their chosen ending. But other people feel the exact opposite. They see these statistics and can’t believe that Canada is allowing it. The title of the Atlantic piece is “Canada is Killing Itself.”

What is the reconciliation here? I honestly have no idea. It seems intractable. If you have ideas, let me know

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 140 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

140 - You're Welcome

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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9 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

There’s a popular view of relationships whereby the only way they’re successful long-term is to put obstacles in the way of ending it. A twitter friend recently described it this way:

Blocking the exits is important, everything I’ve seen in life tells me that people mature at the rate they must, and the downside of having options is that you don’t have to fully cope with your separateness

This is a very common attitude. When people in popular culture talk about the keys to a lasting relationship, they talk about commitment. They act like it’s normal to want to leave your spouse and it takes extraordinary measures to stop you from doing it.

This sounds insane to me. Good relationships don’t work that way. Whether it’s romantic, employment, social, or otherwise, the most important thing in any relationship is to have healthy boundaries. The thing that makes something a boundary is that you’re defining for yourself what you will and will not put up with. You can’t have good boundaries if you don’t feel free to leave. Leaving is the ultimate recourse if your boundaries are not respected. You can’t have boundaries without it.

Far from creating good relationships, blocking the exits perpetuates bad relationships. When the exits are obstructed, people stay in relationships that aren’t good for them. They feel stuck. They feel like having boundaries isn’t an option. In my family law practice, you can’t imagine how many people I’ve met who felt like they were trapped in a life they didn’t want, but had no legitimate escape from. I’ve met very very few who ended things and later regretted it.

If people want to leave, there should be as few barriers in their way as possible. Some gentle encouragement may be appropriate to prevent people from making rash decisions or falling victim to "grass is greener" styles thinking, but overall the exits should be clearly marked and always available.

I also want to stress that my criticism is limited to how we view so-called homewrecking. Other bad things are still bad. The ethics of sexual consent still apply. Especially in a situation as emotionally fraught as an affair, partners should make sure everyone enthusiastically consents. If your model of the wife would want you to refuse (and especially if she’s previously indicated that she would want you to refuse), the virtuous thing to do is to refuse. Taking advantage of a moment of weakness to talk her into sex is still scummy. If she’s been drinking, or taking drugs, or otherwise in an altered state of mind, and her sober self would want you to refuse, you should refuse. All of those things are bad to do irrespective of whether she’s cheating or not, and are especially unvirtuous to do in an infidelity situation, as the stakes are higher than usual. Infidelity is not an excuse not to care about your partner.

Those considerations aside, the conversation I’m trying to have is about what people see as the ethical duties of the parties in different situations. (I’m a moral non-realist so I view people’s ethics as equivalent to personal preferences, but they are still interesting in that capacity.)

My original theory was that people value monogamy more than other things a couple might agree to, and I think the results bore this out pretty well. I got many comments about the value of monogamy, how we need it for society, and how it’s Right and Good for promises to be monogamous to have a privileged position over other promises. I (obviously) disagree with that take, but I find it to be a consistent position.

I also identified a number of other areas of disagreement that I find interesting to explore:

People view autonomy differently than I do

Throughout the conversations, it became clear to me that my disagreement with a lot of people had nothing to do with monogamy or honesty and had everything to do with our views on paternalism and agency. Many people made comments to the effect that I should turn down the wife’s request because it would ruin her life and she would regret it later. That argument doesn’t sit well with me because I strongly value autonomy.

One of the few things that makes me apoplectic with rage is when people make decision on my behalf that I’m perfectly capable of making myself. If you think I’m making a mistake, it’s fine for you to think that, or even say that, but it’s not ok for you to deny my ability to make that decision for myself. You don’t know my life. You don’t know the situation I’m in. What looks like a mistake to you could make perfect sense if you had all the information. Or maybe your risk tolerance is different from mine. Or maybe you don’t understand what my goal is. The only one qualified to make that decision is me, and I resent any effort to force me into a different decision “for my own good.”

Likewise, a load-bearing part of my opinion in the OP is that the wife is the only one qualified to decide if she’s making the right decision. Unless she’s asked for my help keeping her monogamous commitment or there’s some other reason why her decision-making capacity is in doubt, refusing on her behalf is infantilizing. I don’t know her situation. You don’t know her situation. She could be in a situation where cheating is the best option. Speaking of which….

People view the typical cheater differently than I do

Most respondents implicitly assumed that the cheating wife was doing something not just wrong, but obviously and egregiously wrong, to the point where she should be categorically condemned. They seemed to be picturing a woman in a good, loving relationship that’s just stepping out because she wants an evening of fun and doesn’t give a shit about her husband. I’m sure that happens sometimes, but that is not the person I picture when I think of a cheating wife.

Most women do not want to cheat on their husbands. For it to get to the point where she’s actively propositioning me, something deeply wrong must already be going on. When I try to imagine the typical cheating wife, I picture someone in a desperate situation who thinks cheating is the best of a slate of bad options. Maybe she wants to be honest, but her husband is abusive and beats her when she brings it up. Maybe she’s stuck in a sexless marriage, but stays for the sake of children and is losing her mind without some kind of physical connection. Maybe she feels ugly and disgusting, and only stays with her husband because she’s convinced nobody else on Earth will ever want her, and a night of feeling sexy and wanted will restore enough of her self-worth to make necessary changes. Maybe she desperately wants out, but her life is wrapped up in a coercive subculture that strongly discourages leaving. Maybe her husband cheats all the time. Maybe she’s just incredibly lonely and craves a moment of genuine connection with another person, and can’t get that in her marriage.

Some followup polls suggest that people are much more supportive of breaking promises when circumstances suggest the promise was coerced or otherwise not fully voluntary. People were almost universally supportive of me secretly driving a former child bride to visit her sister in defiance of a marital agreement, and (in a Jacob Falkovich poll), supportive of a woman having sex with a closeted lesbian in defiance of a promise to her parents.

My impression is that the modal cheating wife is not someone in an otherwise happy and functional marriage who just want to get her rocks off. Research on this question is mixed, with most studies finding infidelity is linked to low marital satisfaction, but one survey of Ashley Madison users finding that

affairs were not primarily motivated by poor dyadic/marital relationships, their affairs did not seem to have a strong negative impact on their relationships, and personal ethics did not play a strong role in people's feelings about their affairs.

None of these studies seem particularly well done (the first one is just a survey asking people if they’re likely to cheat; the second one surveys Ashley Madison users, which is inherently suspect and subject to huge sampling bias), so I’d be interested in seeing more data about this. Anecdotally, the stories I’ve heard about cheating, especially by women, reflect what I’ve written above, but I’m very open to changing my mind if there is better data.

People value sex and intimacy much less than I do

As the charity example showed, most people will support assisting/enabling a wife to break a promise to her husband if it’s for a good cause. I’m sure a lot of the difference is that people think breaking the “no charity” promise is likely to cause less harm than sexual infidelity, but some commenters confirmed that the difference to them was that in the charity example, unlike the infidelity example, good is being done to offset the badness of the dishonesty.

I ran a few followup polls to see how people felt about different situations. People seemed very comfortable with me giving chocolate to a wife who has an agreement with her husband not to eat it, whether it’s part of a BDSM dynamic or not, or being alone in a room with a woman who told her husband she wouldn’t do that. They were also very supportive of me taking a divorce client in secret, even if it would absolutely crush her husband and tear apart her family

So far, these differences are consistent with either the idea that sex is worth little or that sexual infidelity causes greater harm than other broken commitments. So I asked a couple of other questions directly involving sexual infidelity. Supermajorities were comfortable with me selling condoms to a man who intended to use them to cheat on his wife and, in what I found to be the most interesting result, a sex worker taking a monogamously married client.

I find this result somewhat baffling. This suggest that in my original hypothetical, 2/3 of people would think I’m morally in the clear if I said “I’ll do it, but only if you pay me.” As far as I can tell, the functional difference between the two situations is that in the OP I’m getting “paid” in sex and the sex worker is getting paid in money. It’s very hard for me to see how the latter is better than the former.1 If anything, hiring a sex worker is worse because it’s not only cheating, it’s secretly spending family money!

My only explanation for this is that about 1/3 of people think enabling cheating is ok for pleasure, 1/3 think it’s not ok regardless, and 1/3 think it’s ok to do for money, but not for pleasure. To those people, I say this:

An evening of intimacy is a precious and singular experience. While not every experience goes well, the right one can be transcendent and life-changing. Even if it doesn’t lead anywhere, it can be a treasured memory that all parties keep for the rest of their lives. One of the saddest parts of this discussion for me is hearing people talk about sex as if it’s tawdry and cheap, and results only in paltry physical gratification. I see immense value in novel sexual experiences, and I think a lot of the disagreement here is that people don’t see giving up that opportunity as much of price, whereas I see it as far more valuable than $1,000 to charity or whatever a typical sex worker is getting paid. It can be truly priceless.

People see a huge difference between cheating and attempted cheating

People pointed out that what tends to happen when a person breaks a monogamous commitment is extensive heartbreak, families torn apart, and ruined lives.

There was an assumption from a lot of people that if a relationship ends, that’s tragic, and it would be much better if the couple stayed together. I was somewhat surprised by the number of comments which seemed to take that as an implicit premise. From my perspective, if a wife is actively attempting to secretly cheat on her husband, a breakup seems like a good outcome, regardless of whether she’s actually successful.

In my original 2012 post, I said

once the proposition has been made, the harm has already been done. By turning down the proposition, you're turning a cheater into merely an attempted cheater. Is that really any better? To my mind, it is not. When someone attempts to cheat, the betrayal has already occurred. By preventing the "actual" cheating, all you're doing is perpetuating the fraud that they are in a monogamous relationship. You're actually doing more harm to the relationship by turning down the cheater, because you're making it easier for both of them to pretend no betrayal actually happened. Chances are, unless you tell (more on that later), the other partner will never know about it, so most of the effect will be on the cheater. You're just making the cheater feel less guilty and less likely to come clean.

I still find that reasoning compelling. When a person tries to cheat, but fails, the partners are no longer in a monogamous relationship. From a consequentialist perspective, it’s far from obvious that the “attempted cheating” situation will turn out better than the actual cheating.

We’re LIVING in a SOCIETY

The most compelling argument was made by several people, but said best by @surlygopher:

I believe “high trust” societies have benefits & that we all have a shared duty to enact at ways to help nurture & maintain high trust societies & if anyone tries to undermine societal trust, we should say, “that’s bad, I don’t want a part of it.”

The argument, as I understand it, goes that, regardless of one’s personal ethics, homewrecking is taboo in our society, and breaking any taboo, especially if it predictably causes harm to someone, damages the social fabric. It causes people to trust their fellow community members less, which wears away at all the benefits of a high-trust society. If I go around sleeping with married women, monogamous people will not just distrust me, but will have less trust in general, and start seeing everyone as a potential threat.

I find this argument very compelling, and I think it’s a good and sensible reason to refuse an invitation to enable cheating. My problem with it is that it’s a fully general argument against ever trying to change things. Lots of different societies have had taboos that we now rightly consider to be fine. Just in the US, things that were previously considered taboo society-wide included being gay, interracial marriage, hiring the Irish, getting divorced, playing that new-fangled rock & roll music, men with long hair, women wearing pants, premarital sex, and like a million other things that we now consider somewhere between fine and actively good. At various points in history, people could (and very often did!) reasonably make the argument that doing any of those things damaged the social fabric and contributed to a low-trust society.

The way to thread the needle, I think, is to Be Nice, At Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness. The way I interpret this is to advocate for the social rules to change, but to be nice and follow them until enough people agree to change the rule. When it comes to enabling cheating, that means I will defend the practice, but not participate in it myself, at least until/unless the wider culture becomes more tolerant of it.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 139 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

139 - We're All Doomed

Wes and Eneasz are joined by Liron from Doom Debates to keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

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9 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Thirteen years ago, I wrote a blog post claiming that if someone in a monogamous relationship offers me sex, it’s not my responsibility to turn them down because they made a foolish promise to someone else. That’s between them, and I don’t think it’s my job to enforce their promises that had nothing to do with me. Predictably, I did not get a lot of support. Even in sex-positive communities, that sort of thing is frowned upon. Polyamorous communities, in particular, engage in a kind of respectability politics where everyone goes out of their way to talk about how great monogamy is and how we’re no threat to it at all, mostly as a bid for acceptance. So it was no surprise when, this morning, I asked the following question on Twitter:

A married couple has both agreed to strict monogamy. Idk why. Wife comes to me and asks me to give her oral sex, and not to tell Husband. I do it (and also encourage her to tell Husband). What I've done is:

The choices were very bad, kinda bad, not bad, and good. Over 80% said very or kinda bad. Less than 5% said good. When I’ve discussed this in the past, I’ve argued that people react this way because, even in nonmonogamous communities, we can’t shake the idea that monogamy is sacred. We give it a special privilege in our society, even though I think, for most couples, strict monogamy is outdated and harmful. A lot of people disagree with that as well, and claim that no no no, it’s not that monogamy is important, it’s that any agreements between couples are important, and we should respect and support all of them. I think that’s bullshit, so Last week, I asked Twitter the exact same question, but with one detail changed:

A married couple has both agreed that neither will give to charity. Idk why. Wife comes to me and hands me $1,000 cash, and says please send it to the Against Malaria Foundation, and not to tell Husband. I do it (and also encourage her to tell Husband).

The responses were reversed. Less than 30% said it was bad. 36% said it was actively good, and another 36% said not bad. These results strongly reinforce my view that most people’s discomfort with being, as they say, an “accomplice to cheating,” has little to do with holding all agreements sacred and everything to do with holding monogamy sacred.

Look, I have no problem with your monogamy agreement. Your kink is not my kind and that’s ok. I want you to make whatever agreements you want between yourself and any partners who are into it. But I am not in charge of enforcement. If you have a trad relationship and your wife isn’t supposed to be alone in a room with another man, I’m not going to leave the room if she walks in and strikes up a conversation. If you have a power exchange kink, and your wife isn’t allowed to earn money, I don’t recognize your authority to tell me I can’t hire her as my babysitter. So if your particular brand of power exchange involves giving each other control over your sexuality, that’s great for you! But I, personally, don’t value monogamy. I think it’s a mistake for most couples. And I think it’s a huge mistake to embrace it on a society-wide level. So I’m not going to take responsibility for enforcing an agreement that I don’t have positive feelings about.

If you disagree, that’s great, and I’m happy to talk about it. But I’m guessing your disagreement is about the value of monogamy, not about whether third parties should be expected to enforce relationship agreements in general. So let’s talk about the actual disagreement.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 137 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

137 - The Waymo of the Body

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

Listen now

10 months ago · The Mind Killer Podcast

Earlier this episode, we covered one way GLP-1 inhibitor drugs might become less expensive. Ironically, I planned this troop deployment before that happened, but now it’s an even better idea. GLP-1 drugs are amazing. Before they were on the market, I did a lot of writing about how, for most people, losing weight over the long term was nearly impossible, and when it did happen, it had questionable health benefits.

GLP-1 drugs have changed all of that. They reliably result in weight loss and the weight loss reliably results in health benefits. They’re amazing. The problem is that they’re extremely expensive. The pharma companies that make them charge over $1,000/month for the recommended dose. It’s simply not an option for most people. For a while, they were cheaper thanks to an FDA-declared shortage. When there’s a shortage, compounding pharmacies are authorized to make the drug off-patent and sell it for much cheaper. But earlier this year, the FDA declared the shortage to be over, so everything is back to full price. There are ways to get the active ingredients and mix the drugs yourself very cheaply, but that’s not something most people are going to be willing to do.

Earlier, we covered how the FDA could authorize cheap imports through Canada, but that’s not really an ideal solution because it screws the pharma companies, which I don’t want to do. These companies did the world a great service by developing these drugs, and it’s good market incentives for them to get paid. So here’s an idea: the US government should simply buy the patents and tear them up, allowing any company to create and market generic versions. The actual cost of producing the drugs is next-to-nothing, so without the government-enforce oligopoly, prices should drop to a point at which insurance companies won’t have a problem covering them.

It will be expensive, and it should be. We want the pharma companies to be rewarded for their innovative drugs, but even a payoff of tens of billions is basically pennies to the federal government. And it’s not like the pharma companies can charge whatever they want. I think the government should make a global deal with both Eli Lilly, who makes tirzepatide, and Novo Nordisk, who makes semaglutide, but they don’t have to. If Eli Lilly is being uncooperative, we can just buy the Novo Nordisk patent and flood the market with cheap semaglutide, which is the last thing Eli Lilly wants.

No matter the price, it’s likely to save the government money in future spending. The government desperately needs to cut the cost of health care. The population is aging, and the government is often stuck with the bill through Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare is about 15% of the federal budget, and Medicaid is another 9%. Remember that in addition to weight loss, GLP-1 drugs seemingly cause all kinds of positive health outcomes, both directly and due to reduced obesity. Lots of people have run the numbers, and last I checked increasing access to semaglutide or tirzepatide could save trillions in future health costs.

Donald, make a deal! This is your whole thing! Think of the grateful population when you take their medication cost from $1,200 to $50/month. Think of all the people finally meeting their weight loss goals, and saying “thanks, Donald!” Think of how much hotter all the women will be when they can slim down at will! You can do this. It will be your greatest legacy.

The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 134 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast

The Mind Killer

134 - What If the Pig Was All Bacon?

Wes, Eneasz, and David keep the rationalist community informed about what’s going on outside of the rationalist community…

Listen now

a year ago · 2 likes · The Mind Killer Podcast

Last week, I took Roxie to a thing where they strap you into a harness connected to bungee cords and let you jump on a trampoline. It’s awesome. You jump like 20 feet in the air. Kids love it.

While she was jumping, there was another kid there jumping whose mom spent the entire time berating and belittling him. It was surreal. Every time the kid didn’t jump perfectly straight, his mom would scold him for not doing it right, and kept repeating “you don’t listen.” I have no idea what her problem was, because the kid was jumping exactly how you’re supposed to, and he was seemingly having a great time.

This is not an isolated incident. My most popular tweet ever is about how Roxie’s school tried to close the playground for ten minutes before the kids went inside because if the kids are allowed to run around and play before school, they won’t be “ready to learn” or whatever.

Adults just seem to have a reflexive anxiety response to kids having “too much fun.” Sometimes, kids get reckless and do dangerous things, or aren’t careful and break stuff. That’s a real thing. But it seems like most adults, and especially parents or authority figures, have developed a Pavlovian response where if kids are enjoying themselves, they need to put a stop to it before it gets out of hand.

I just want to send the message that kids having fun is a good thing. Kids should have fun. And if you’re reaction to kids having fun is to try to stop them from having fun, then congratulations. You’re now a cartoon villain. You’re the person you hated when you were a kid.

Instead, maybe try encouraging kids to have fun! Take delight in their laughter and let their smiles bring joy to your soul. Or just take a Xanax. But either way, leave the kids alone. They’re not the ones with the problem.