Rationality and Genuine Behavior

This post unifies the core perspective of Variety and Existential Duality into one, and further extends them by providing a stronger link between them. Furthermore, I don't assume any prior knowledge of my memetic posts: you can read this post without having read anything else before, and no specialized knowledge in any field is required. Game theoretic arguments, inspired by evolutionary biology, psychology, and economic theory are hidden behind intuitive notions most of us immediately recognize.

I will start by asking you some rhetorical questions.

Would you ever sleep with someone you weren't attracted to just because they wanted to? Would you ever love someone just because they loved you?

Probably not, so let me take it further.

Would you keep going out with someone because they were attached to you, and you knew they would get hurt if you left them? Would you stop having sex with someone because their ex disapproved? Would you avoid approaching an attractive person because they may disapprove? Would you change your values and beliefs to gain acceptance by others?

If you are like me, the answer to all these questions are unhesitatingly "no". The underlying perspective I want to present to you has a name: rational self interest, and it is based on the fundamental premise that the only thing that truly matters is personal happiness. (An observation made by Yusha.p long before we joined this community.)

The problem is that most of us lose this fundamental notion of life quality.

We are taught that we must conform to some principles that are positively labelled as altruistic, kind, considerate, or modern. We learn that classical gender views are obsolete. We learn that we should not care too much about looks or economic status in a partner because it is shallow. We learn that it is unfair for us to demand of others what we do not live by ourselves.

If we look for friends that are more altruistic than we are, we are labelled egoistic (with negative connotation). If we look for girls that are less promiscuous than we are, we are labelled mans chauvinistic.

But who said we all should to have preferences towards that which is closest to ourselves? By that logic, I should prefer men over women, or at least women which are masculine in both appearance and personality. Girls should then have preferences towards girls (I think that's nice too), or at least towards feminine girls.

With the perspective that equality no longer means having equal value, but rather, equal preferences, it becomes increasingly difficult to relate to reality, for the obvious reason that the perspective has little to do with how brains function. It also ignores everything we know in modern psychology, but yet we are called "old fashioned" when we understand that human instincts simply don't change because some fucking politician, journalist, or writer thinks it ought to. Even the idea that whatever is "right" for one person must be "right" for everyone else flourishes across this community.

Fuck that nonsense. It is an illusion, created by yourself to retain a dream of endless possibilities for everyone, no matter how or where they were born, how little resources they have, and how shitty their lives have been. The only problem, is that it's complete bullshit. Most of us know it when we look through the curtains of our so called modern culture, but we choose to turn away as soon as we see it. Why? Because it hurts. If the very foundations by which they have built their world view breaks, their reality will break. Reality, as in, the actual, physical world we live in, is no longer that beautiful, peace loving, community of little humans singing together and all helping each other out, like it so many times is in the end of a cheesy Hollywood movie about love and romance. To be honest, the very idea that the world would be such a place for me to live in makes me wanna puke.

Worst of all, is that it turns us into cowards, with fear of disapproval, fear of (social) rejection, and ultimately, fear of being the people we want to be.

People don't say "I have no feelings for you anymore" when they want to break up, they come up with all possible kinds of excuses, in the pretence that we are being considerate for not being "brutally honest" towards our partners, when in fact, it only has to do with our fear of dealing with social conflict.

Guys don't dare to approach attractive women in bars and clubs that they wish to approach, in the pretence of being busy, too drunk, too sober, not interested, or needing to go to the bathroom, when, as we all know, it is about fear of rejection.

We are afraid to look for qualities in others what we cannot give them because we fear they may perceive us as being unfair. We are afraid of not being accepted for what we want. But why the hell would I only look for qualities in others that I already possess? How much fun would I have interacting with myself? How much would I learn from interacting with myself? Close to nothing.

I have a better idea.

How about we stop giving a shit about what our culture - or anyone else's for that matter - say we should feel about certain things? How about we stop caring about investing so much energy into emotions about how the world ought to be? How about we drop all "should be"s from our minds for a while, and direct all that emotional energy into ourselves instead? How about we all find out what we, as individuals, want, and then do whatever it takes to get it? You are promiscuous but want someone who isn't? Look for someone who isn't promiscuous but wants an experienced partner. There is no need for some bullshit ideal of "same rights, same preferences for everybody". One thing I definitely don't want, is a girl that is like me. I am looking for girls that are more emotional than me, kinder than me, and think I am the greatest thing that has ever existed. As Yusha.p puts our common preference: when girls are gay, it's alpha, and when they are alpha, it's gay.

There are probably those who disagree with my preferences, and they can go fuck themselves. We live in a democracy, but my mind is certainly not one. You don't have a vote for what I should feel or want. I am the only rightful holder of that power, for the simple reason that my free will is exerted on myself. Similarly, others don't control your mind, and so they don't get to vote on what you should or shouldn't feel or want. However, with freedom over personal thought and feeling, comes personal responsibility for our actions, we are to take both blame and pride over the consequences of our own choices.

I promise you - you are not important to the rest of the world. It doesn't need you, it did fine for millions of years before you were born, and it will do just fine when you are dead. The only meaning life will ever give you is the one you choose for yourself, the one you want.

Ethical objectivism, founded by the philosopher Ayn Rand, states that rational self interest is in the best interest of society itself. Although interesting, I make no such assumption here. I don't claim that rational self interest is for the best of humankind. I just don't care whether it is or not. It's fine if others do though, I just don't. That is what I am rightfully entitled do - choice over my own thoughts and actions, and I choose my own dreams before those of others.

Well, at least most of the time... There is a problem with rational self interest, and it is love.

Imagine a world without love. Presumably, all humans would act in a manner consistent with rational self interest, as described above. In particular, the emotion of attraction is calibrated towards choosing the best partner possible.

Experiencing an attraction of 8 for someone, you would want to have sex, but whenever you would encounter someone who made you feel an attraction of 9, you would prioritize that new person, possibly leaving the older one behind. With only attraction, we would be entirely driven by the supply-demand economics of sex.

Now, imagine a new scenario. Let us say you have found two attractive twins, which are equal in every respect, except for one: the first twin selects partners according to the rational supply-demand driven self interest above, whereas the other one does not. Instead, the second one has an involuntary "error" which works to your advantage: it makes her estimate you as more important than you are from her rational perspective.

Both twins experience an attraction of 8 towards you, but the second one has another mechanism that will guarantee she will not swap you for someone whom she would be more attracted to. In other words, the first twin, being entirely rational, would swap you for a 9, whereas the second one would not.

Everything else being equal, the second twin provides you with a benefit that the first doesn't, and hence the irrational twin becomes more compelling to you by rational standards. Furthermore, that benefit may seem to be at the second twins own expense: the second twin may envy the first for being able to make such rational choices whereas the first twin would consider the other one to be "rationally handicapped".

But the irrational twin is more attractive to you, and hence, she does better at attracting you! She has a benefit over her twin sister, which does a worse job at attracting you, although she is the more rational one.

The conclusion so far is that irrationality can provide people with a benefit over rationality.

This is presumably how love came to evolve: as an involuntary "error" to the rational emotion of attraction (which is entirely calibrated towards evolutionary fitness).

Let us look at two examples.

We don't want friends who rationally compute whether it would be worth helping us at times where we really need it. This wouldn't be considered "friendly" by most people's standards, for understandable reasons. Exchanging services and bargaining is a great way of reaching an equilibrium of supply-demand, but that equilibrium is not what people want friends for. Friends are supposed to provide a benefit beyond an equilibrium that is suboptimal to our personal needs, and the solution is to want friends that have an irrational bias towards us. And of course, they expect us to have an irrational bias towards them too.

And we certainly don't want a partner that has rationally concluded that we are a beneficial. As we've seen, rational computation of expected gain is as far from love as you could possibly come. The last thing we want to see, is that our partner is rationally considering leaving us for someone they don't even know but find more appealing than we are, at least in that moment. That would clearly indicate that our partner has no feeling towards us, no matter what the relationship is about.

Rationality, by this definition, is what we do because we believe it provides us with benefits. In this sense, altruistic acts can be rational: buying a girl dinner in hopes of having sex for example. Irrationality, or non-rational behavior, is the cost of doing something with no expected return profit. All acts of altruism that would never be acknowledged are examples of irrational behavior. For example, if you were to help someone far away, and you knew that person would never know it was you, so you could not even in theory be rewarded with an expected gain, is a perfect instance of irrational behavior.

What's interesting about irrationality is that it also provides the irrational person with a benefit (as in the examples with the twins). And this observation is what it all comes down to: irrational behaviors can be very attractive.

People aren't attracted to others whom are rationally computing what is in their own best interest in every moment. That's why most girls dislike guys who consciously use techniques to attract them. The discomfort girls experience when a guy is rationally trying to pursue them into thinking or feeling a certain way stems from the motive of self interest it reveals. There is no guarantee that what's in the guys best interest coincides with the girl, and in practice, it never does completely (what a wonderful world that would be!). So there is every reason for a girl to be skeptic towards guys that behave a little too rational.

One way girls detects whether a guy's self interest may be brutally rational (at their expense) is to see whether they are having fun together in the moment or not. The more they are both in the moment, the less skepticism. Another way is through shit tests: the more he would bother to take shit, the more it reveals an underlying rational motive to go through this shit.

By definition, rational behavior has incentives of self interest; irrational behavior is what goes beyond that.

I personally fall in love with girls that are very emotional, rather than logical, because signs of rational self interest in our relationship is unattractive, to say the least. Likewise, girls that have been attracted to me have always responded very positively to any signs of irrational behavior: spontaneously traveling miles to see them (because they know I am missing them), putting a lot of effort into creating personal gifts for them (because I am wasting more time and energy on her that is rationally needed to sustain our relationship), spending a lot of time talking on the phone when we are apart, when I have other things to do.

They become happy precisely because they know I am doing something that I would not do for anyone else, and that something is a cost in terms of time, energy, or resources.

And such is the existential duality of life: we logically perceive the world in terms of rational self interest, we choose friends and lovers, at first somewhat rationally, but our as our bonds grow, so does our irrationality.

If you think this only applies to girlfriends, think again. All relationships between people have a certain amount of irrationality.

Even when a girl has a one night stand, chances are she does so because she believes the possibility that it could develop into something more still exists. This could be because she has picked up ambiguous signs of irrationality from your side. Whether her uncertainty is legitimate or not doesn't matter, what does is that it may very well be what still keeps her around.

There's no doubt girls in any form of sexual relationships are looking for development: either towards more connection, which requires more signs of irrationality, or towards a break up. Very rarely do girls try to sustain casual sex indefinitely, that is, as an equilibrium.

Giving value to everyone cannot create this level of attractiveness because it is either rational (there is an obvious gain and so the motive is self interest) or non-selective irrationality. Irrational behavior needs to be directed towards the people you want, otherwise, there is nothing attractive about it. People don't want to be treated like everyone else by those they like. They want to have a special place, one that is recognized through directed irrationality.

This is why buying drinks doesn't work on girls you don't know. The drink is meant to simulate an irrational behavior (wasting more resources than is rationally in your best interest), but it doesn't come across that way. From her perspective, you are a guy and she is a girl, you are in a meat market, and you buying her a drink is not at all irrational - it is completely consistent with rational self interest, since she most definitely considers herself worth more than the few bucks you put into buying that drink.

Ironically, if you knew the bartender at got drinks for free, and passed on one to her, it would no longer seem as rational - there could possibly be an element of irrationality in that behavior - and that uncertainty may actually make her more curious.

Genuine behavior captures the notion of "behavior-motive congruency": when we are rationally computing how to fake irrational behavior, and fail, our behavior is non-genuine. And because humans have evolved extremely sophisticated ways to detect behavior-motive incongruencies, it is actually more costly to fake congruency than to actually have it for real (known as the handicap principle in biology). Believe your own lies and others will too, some say, but there is also another possibility: believe your own truths and others will too.

Note that purely rational behavior can be attractive, even when considered somewhat "cold". What matters is that we are genuine about our rational motives. Rationality is attractive because it is rational, so don't pretend to be irrational when you're not. By being honest about when we are rational, it becomes obvious when we are irrational, and hence, our genuine behavior - both rational and irrational - becomes attractive, honest signals of our true motives.

It's not be the best way to get laid as often as possible, but it is the best way to get the ones who can and will make us the most happy. And that, without even trying too hard.

Any comments and reflections welcome.