New Name; Yin/Yang Logic/Feelings; Other Apes; Autonomous Robotic AI; and Proper Anecdote

… Well, if you’re going to change something, you best do it quickly.

And so I have. I won’t bore you with the details, but the previous name of the newsletter wasn’t thought through very well. Whether, or not, that’s the case now, welcome to The Swagger anyway.

swagger.freetheanimal.com

The 2nd change is that you may have noticed this is coming to you, not on its regular Tuesday, but Thursday. For reasons that, again, I won’t bore you with, the actual and potential length of a 5-article newsletter transmitted over email primarily, argues for splitting it in two. So rather than 5 articles once per week, it’ll be three articles twice per week. That’s one additional article to write, but splitting the task into two makes 6 total articles feel easier than 5 if that makes any damn sense. With that, I get a lot more length flexibility, should I go lengthy. It’ll also be easier to toss a Free Bonus! article in the mix, like today.

So, each Tuesday and Thursday morning NYC time, you’ll get 1 free practical knowledge article geared to be substantial, and two articles behind the Premium Subscriber Paywall. Premium subscribers end up with the additional article each week (thanks for the steady inflow of 1 Starbuck Subscriptions), so a total of 2 substantial articles per week for the free-is-best crowd, and 100% more for the get-what-you-pay-for crowd.

This Thursday:

1. The Yin & Yang of Messaging With Logic or Feelings
2. Free Bonus! “Just Like Other Apes”
3. We Have Autonomous Robotic AI And You’ll Be Blown Away (I thought this was years off; it’s here)
4. How to Make Anecdotes Proper and Relevant (different than just, “my story”)

1. The Yin & Yang of Messaging With Logic or Feelings

In the first issue of this newsletter in its current configuration, one article was entitled What Five Months of Hyper-Dating in Thailand Has Taught Me About Female Psychology. Probably most people saw that and thought, ‘oh, bragging, again!’ and who could blame them? But remember what I said. The articles for this newsletter are to be in some good measure, practical knowledge stuff…stuff you can actually use. So in this case, while the backdrop might be bar girls or freelancers in Pattaya, Thailand (and not always), I assure you that the lesson(s) gleaned will be measurable in such a way that they’ll play in Peoria. Right there in your home town. Main Street.

This serves as kind of a follow-up to that, and I’ll start off by admitting two things. Number one, I’ve been wrong all my life about this one thing I’m about to reveal to you. And number two, the girls have been right all along. I don’t know how I missed it. I guess it’s the inherent built-in arrogance of being a man, and they’re just women.

I think the banter back-and-forth, kind of poking fun or ribbing on our idiosyncrasies, is healthy. It serves to always keep in mind that we are very different. But just because we’re different, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn or observe the sorts of techniques the other side uses, evaluate them as techniques or methods, and even experiment with them to see if they work better for us.

So that’s exactly what I did. I’m going to lay it out for you, but let me explain what I mean. It’s not a revelation to say that, largely, women tend to think, evaluate, judge, and solve for feelings and emotions, and then they might backfill with reason. They decide based on their feelings, and now it’s time to backfill with reasons and some logic—if they’re inclined to account for that.

That’s what men are supposed to do from the get go: A is A and B is B, and A plus B equals C, therefore 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; ergo, such and such a chain of logic, a hierarchical chain, eh voilà! And if you do it right, you can reduce all of it to reality, and you can point to it, and you can pat yourself on the back because this is true, correct, and by damn, it’s right.

So then, when you get into a conflict with your girlfriend, spouse, significant other—whatever you call them—you say, “Ha ha ha, she’s wrong, and I can prove it,” and you go down the line, and it goes in one ear and out the other. You’ve used the wrong language. You’ve used your man-to-man language, not the woman-to-woman language.

So, if you want to get across…and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this and how unbelievably powerful it is. … I’m going to tell you the trick that really makes it work, unbelievably.

First, you have to learn their language, and the language is simply to talk in terms of feelings. So rather than say, for example, “Well, you did this, and this, and this. You said you would do this, but you did this,” and so on, and these are all objective facts—you’re unassailable, you’re right—but the thing is, now you’re accusing her of doing something wrong, and this is exactly what she did wrong, and she needs to account for that, make amends for that, correct her behavior, or undo that, or whatever it is.

Instead, use three words, and you still have all those facts behind you. All and everything you say is:

“I’m not happy.”

And you leave it at that. You don’t elaborate because it doesn’t matter what’s technically, logically, rationally, or reasonably right or wrong, or what event happened, or what fact occurred. You’ve just told her that you’re not happy, and she can’t dispute that. If you’re not happy, you’re not happy. She can say, “I don’t care,” but that doesn’t get you anywhere and presumably, there’s a relationship so you’ve got to get somewhere.

So if she wants something to be resolved, to move forward, she has to figure out how to either make you happy or assuage those feelings in some way. And if she’s a good woman, she’ll probably figure out what it is she did and what she needs to undo or whatever.

In other words, it gets all the way back to what you were trying to do with your whole logical layout in the first place. Do you see what I’m getting at?

… No, I don’t just use one simple phrase to express discontent. When I’m not happy, there are numerous creative expressions of feelings and emotions that one can use instead of plainly stating, “I’m not happy.” You could say, “I was hoping for something different,” or, “I don’t really like that.” You might express, “This doesn’t feel right to me,” or suggest, “I’d feel better if…” You get the idea.

However, it’s important to note that you don’t have to completely abandon reason, rationality, and logic. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that women operate solely from a place of emotion. They’re calculating, too; they’re just masters at emotionally charged communication. By playing on their battlefield, they’ll recognize that they’ve been mathched or outplayed because they understand how ultimately weak it is from a factual reason standpoint. Yet, it’s very powerful at the same time because you’re dealing with another human being, and human beings are emotional creatures. Regardless of what’s right or wrong, if a person is not feeling good about something, and it’s someone we care about, we tend to empathize with their discomfort.

Let me give you an example. Imagine two women who are friends have some sort of dispute. They hash it out in whatever way they do. Now, picture it’s you and this woman—whether it’s your wife, girlfriend, or whatever—and the material nature of the dispute is exactly the same. You did the exact same thing to her as her friend did. But instead of hashing it out like she did with her friend, she acts differently towards you, perhaps pouting, or even shedding a tear or two. Why didn’t she just hash it out with you like she did with her friend? Because she knows emotional appeals can be effective. That’s why.

So, you have two choices when it comes to employing rationality and logic in these emotionally charged conversations. You can either honestly tell them how you’re feeling, using emotional language to convey your authentic feelings rather than analytical language, or you can choose to be manipulative about it. Considering this black hat usage gives you insight into when women are using their “feeling language.” It helps you discern whether they are being “white hat”—in other words, honestly expressing their feelings—or whether they’re being manipulative.

This insight to understanding will help you identify when they’re probably fucking with you, and not in a good way.

2. Free Bonus! “Just Like Other Apes”

I’ve been having a little fun in that fucking Facebook place recently. Not too much. Simply trying to re-grow a few followers and get some synergy flow back with the whole social media thing. Very measured in terms of time spent. Same with X, really. To the extent people give up time on social media to socialize in real life, I’ll be a happy camper.

So, essentially, what all this amounts to is that things are pretty much where I left off some years ago when I deleted everything. In the health and diet sphere, same topics, same arguments, all the same bullshit—it’s just that the players are lots of new people who think these revelations were discovered about 2 weeks ago. I’ve been dealing with a few of them and my lead article in #2, You start burning fat immediately, is a result of one of those discussions.

Another is this idea advanced by may low-carb and keto diet peeps, and most if not all carnivore diet people, that we’re primarily meat and fish eaters because there wasn’t much vegetation to be had. It’s a bogus claim on its face, but whatever.

A Facebooker, Matt Talley, summed it up nicely.

So I followed it up by sharing it and introducing it as follows:

That got picked up by someone else and shared, and then there was some comment action and the usual carnivore crowd coming to tell us there’s just not much evidence that early humans ate plants that much.

… And so, I detected yet another thing that the carnivore diet crowd does…

3. We Have Autonomous Robotic AI And You’ll Be Blown Away

(I thought this was years off; it’s here)

I suppose I will have to be patient for people to become more aware of the developments in artificial intelligence, AI. One day, they might say, “Wow, Richard, you were right all along,” but they would quickly realize that I had actually downplayed its capabilities. Despite understanding how powerful large language models are from my personal experience with them, I recognized their limitations. We discuss ideas and concepts, and even if they were fully conscious, their utility would be as limited as that of a brain in a vat.

For example, consider Stephen Hawking’s unparalleled contributions to theoretical physics. His brilliant mind was confined to a body that was otherwise unresponsive, yet his intellect remained of tremendous value. Similarly, while robotics technology has made significant strides and has been around for a long time, replacing much of the manual labor on assembly lines, these robots are typically stationary and programmed to perform specific tasks. They are not autonomous. This is akin to a self-driving car on a fixed track, capable only of accelerating and braking within a limited set of predefined conditions.

However, we’ve progressed to the point where self-driving cars can navigate traffic, pedestrians, and unforeseen obstacles, making split-second decisions not based on any app or database. Their safety record is already substantially better than that of human drivers on average. But imagine taking it further: envision an autonomous robot with the equivalent physical capabilities of a human being—four functioning limbs, ten fingers, ten toes, and a multitude of joints allowing for an impressive range of movements and grips. The complexity of mimicking the full range of human physicality in a robot is a monumental task.

Additionally, to operate such a machine, you need not only the ‘brain’ hardware that can process this information instantaneously but also software so sophisticated that it can improvise and handle any situation it encounters. This level of AI would need to be capable of not only following instructions but also adapting on the fly to any new challenges.

Now, I invite you to watch this brief video to see the current state of affairs. We still have a long way to go, but I am astonished by how far we’ve come in both the dexterity of robots and the ability of AI to comprehend, execute, and even self-evaluate tasks. Prepare to be astounded.

You can read more about it.

4. How to Make Anecdotes Proper and Relevant

(different than just, “my story”)

Personal anecdotes are an interesting phenomenon, especially when we delve into areas that are scientifically studied, such as health and diet. Health and diet affect people in different ways, and individuals have diverse experiences. These experiences can occur in non-interventional settings or during an intervention.

For instance, when someone participates in a study, they contribute to the collection of data through their experiences. Notably, many studies rely on self-reporting. Participants, whether they are following a diet or taking a drug, are asked questions like “What did you eat?” or “How do you feel?” The answers to “What did you eat?” can range from truthful to untrue, while responses to “How did you feel?” can be exaggerated, for better or worse. Only when a drug’s side effects are pronounced enough to be diagnosed independently of an individual’s account do we obtain high-quality data.

In other words, observational studies, or those involving self-reporting, are largely collecting anecdotes. Consider online debates where people share their experiences, whether their own or those they’ve learned from others, firsthand or through platforms like a blog. When we had numerous people commenting on various topics and trying out different things, reporting their outcomes, what we were seeing was self-experimentation.

The way to acquire reasonably high-quality data is to identify a group adept at personal or self-experimentation. They have conducted many documented self-experiments and reported their findings meticulously, even if not always perfectly. Over time, any sloppiness in reporting tends to be mitigated, particularly if there are significant effects. From my own experience with self-experimentation, I acknowledge that there can be confounding factors. It’s challenging to determine the true cause of an outcome when multiple factors are at play.

In closing, it’s important to note that people often dismiss anecdotes outright. However, this dismissal usually aligns with their own biases. By disregarding anecdotal evidence, they are not championing objectivity; rather, they are selectively upholding their pre-existing views. Thus, while anecdotes should not be taken as definitive evidence, they should not be discarded without consideration, as they can provide valuable insights into individual experiences.

… That’ll do it, and I’ll see you back here next Tuesday for more Swagger.