SMH: Rick Morton just won an $80,000 book prize. He’d give it all back for justice

Posted on September 29, 2025 by Luke Ford

The Sydney Morning Herald publishes: “Rick Morton has won a Prime Minister’s Literary Award for his non-fiction book [Mean Streak: A moral vacuum, a dodgy debt generator and a multi-billion-dollar government shake down]. He’d trade it all for justice for the victims.”

No, he wouldn’t, unless he was playing a status game.

We did not evolve to give things to non-relatives for no self-interested reason.

UCLA psychologist David Pinsof writes: “There is no Darwinian incentive for an organism to act “for the good of the species.” Instead, organisms evolve to act for the good of themselves and their genetic relatives—and against their rivals.”

So when people talk about their unpaid moral work for people not related to them, you know that they are engaged in a showy performative status game.

The two easiest paths to fame are to give something away and to publish a book.

Rick Morton is on his way.

David Pinsof writes:

A lot of people ask me how I write blog posts—where I get my ideas from. They’re often surprised when I give them a precise, step-by-step answer. Here’s my patented ® formula for writing Everything Is Bullshit content:

  1. I look at a story we tell ourselves. Maybe it’s the pursuit of happiness or the meaning of life. Maybe it’s our desire to change people’s minds or make the world a better place. Maybe it’s the idea that we don’t care what others think.

  2. I ask myself if the story makes any evolutionary sense.

  3. If the answer is no, I think about what might be going on beneath the surface—something that would make evolutionary sense.

  4. I call the story we tell ourselves “bullshit.”

  5. I write about what’s likely going on beneath the surface.

  6. I link to a lot of technical papers in evolutionary psychology that nobody clicks on.

The most important part of this formula is step 3—the part about what does or doesn’t “make evolutionary sense.” This step is rarely taken by anyone who thinks about humans. It’s as if the human psyche emerged from a bolt of lightning and not from millions of years of natural selection. When people talk about why Bob voted for Trump or Jane can’t find a date or Otto is depressed, they rarely reflect on the fact that Bob, Jane, and Otto are animals, and so are they. Whenever people do reflect on their evolutionary origins, they usually aren’t very reflective about it. They think about cavemen hitting each other with clubs or David Attenborough doing a voiceover while a bird performs a mating display.

Posted in Australia, Status | Comments Off on SMH: Rick Morton just won an $80,000 book prize. He’d give it all back for justice

The Meaning Of Life Is A Status Game

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

David Pinsof writes: That’s why the intelligentsia cares about the meaning of life. They’re looking for a way to rationalize their lives—to dress up their careers and political loyalties in self-important verbiage. They’re looking for a not-too-obviously-false story they can tell about themselves to look morally and intellectually sophisticated, so that other nerds will praise them as “profound,” “revolutionary,” and “humane.” Debates about the meaning of life are ultimately a convoluted form of status jockeying.

Why else would apes like us care about the meaning of life?

Posted in David Pinsof | Comments Off on The Meaning Of Life Is A Status Game

The Civil Vs MAGA

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

To what extent can the elite liberal critique of MAGA be reduced to the concerns of the civil to the unruly passions of the nationalist?

ChatGPT says: 1. Civil order (elite liberal perspective).

Elite liberal critique tends to focus on the erosion of norms, procedures, and institutions. The concern is that MAGA, in its populist style, disregards established processes—elections, courts, media, bureaucratic expertise—and instead elevates loyalty, charisma, and grievance. For liberals, this looks like a betrayal of the “civil”—reasoned debate, rule of law, checks and balances, minority rights—replaced by spectacle and passion.

2. Unruly passions (MAGA nationalist energy).

MAGA draws energy from nationalism, resentment at perceived cultural displacement, and the sense that liberal civility masks a rigged system. From this perspective, elite civility is hypocrisy—a cover for domination by technocrats, corporations, and globalists. MAGA embraces transgression, outrage, and even chaos as forms of authenticity and resistance.

3. Reduction, but not exhaustion.

You can say that the liberal critique does largely reduce MAGA to unruly passions undermining civility, but that framing misses something: for MAGA supporters, their project is not just passion but an alternative form of order—rooted in loyalty, tradition, hierarchy, and national identity. The clash is not reason vs. irrationality, but competing orders: procedural cosmopolitan liberalism vs. majoritarian nationalist solidarity.

4. Why the reduction happens.

Elite liberals are institutionally invested in civility, legality, and procedural legitimacy. So they interpret MAGA through the lens of threat to civility. This keeps the critique consistent with their values, but also makes it hard to see MAGA as anything other than rage, demagoguery, or pathology.

So the liberal critique can be reduced to that opposition, but only by flattening MAGA’s own self-understanding. It’s not merely unruly passion—it’s a competing vision of what counts as order, legitimacy, and justice.

Here’s how your question maps onto older political theory lineages:

Hobbes vs. Rousseau

Hobbes: worried about unruly passions. He thought only a strong sovereign could tame factionalism and prevent civil war. Elite liberal critiques of MAGA echo this Hobbesian fear—without restraint and institutions, politics devolves into chaos.

Rousseau: placed more trust in the general will of the people, even when expressed passionately. He distrusted elites who cloaked their interests in “civil” procedures. MAGA’s populist language has a Rousseauian flavor: the people should be sovereign, not bound by elite-imposed forms of civility.

Carl Schmitt (friend/enemy distinction)

Schmitt argued that politics is not about neutral procedures but about existential conflict between groups. MAGA embodies this view: politics as loyalty, identity, and enmity. Elite liberal critique insists this is dangerous—civil politics requires opponents, not enemies—but from a Schmittian perspective, the insistence on civility is just another mask for power.

Hannah Arendt (mass movements & authority)

Arendt saw mass movements (fascism, communism) as filling the void left by weakened traditional authority. MAGA’s “passions” fit her schema: people who feel dispossessed and unseen flock to a movement that offers meaning, solidarity, and action. Liberals counter that this kind of collective passion corrodes truth and accountability, replacing deliberation with spectacle.

Tocqueville (democracy and mores)

Tocqueville observed that democracy risks lapsing into tyranny of the majority when unmoored from civic habits and institutions. Liberal critiques of MAGA echo Tocqueville: they fear nationalist passions will overwhelm rights, pluralism, and institutional balance. MAGA counters that those institutions have already betrayed the people.

Elite liberals see themselves as defending Hobbesian order, Arendtian truth, and Tocquevillian balance against Schmittian nationalism and Rousseauian passion. To reduce the liberal critique of MAGA to civil vs. unruly is accurate as a snapshot, but historically, it’s part of a much older argument about whether politics should be grounded in procedures and norms, or in identity and passion.

LF: I’m reading the 2019 book, The calling of social thought: Rediscovering the work of Edward Shils, which says:

While regarding nationality as essential for civil society, Shils suggested that nationalism is in fact a danger to it. In his own words: ‘When nationality becomes nationalistic, it usually has become uncivil as well; the demand for complete national solidarity has often involved uncivil suppression’ (Shils, [1980] 1997a: 17). But what exactly does Shils mean by ‘nationalism’, and why is it so dangerous to civil society?Unfortunately, in contrast to his clear descriptions of nation and nationality, Shils does not give us a clear definition of nationalism. Yet, from the way he talks about it, it is a political and ideological concept, in contrast to the cultural, primordial concept of nationality. It is also posterior to nationality itself. ‘Nationalism arises out of nationality … . It adds emulative, combative, aggressive, bellicose elements to nationality. Hatred is not necessarily part of nationality; it frequently is so in nationalism’ (Shils, [1995b] 1997a: 188). It seems for Shils that nationalism’s real danger is in fact its violent, bellicose nature, which constitutes a threat to civil society. But what exactly is the nature of this threat? Shils indicates that it is dangerous because it introduces the element of violence within a society. ‘Nationalism … is aggressive against persons or groups in its own society. It is against those who disagree with their nationalistic programs and actions.’ Nationalism is thus ‘injurious to the maintenance of those norms [of a pluralistic, civil society]’ (Shils, [1995b] 1997a: 220–1).
So Shils finds nationalism to be unamicable towards civil society because it promotes violence against those who disagree with its programme. Yet, there is a strange circularity here. Shils never tells us what the content of the nationalist programme is, only that nationalists often (always?) use force to promote it. Since violence is, by definition, hostile to the maintenance of a civil society, nationalism is therefore necessarily hostile to it. To put it another way, Shils does not tell us whether there is anything intrinsic to the ideology of nationalism itself (or of any particular nationalism) that is problematical regarding civil society.
Another way of approaching Shils’ wariness towards nationalism is his understanding of it as an ideology and, more precisely, as a political ideology. It is in this sense that nationalism is such a threat to civil society, not because, perhaps, of anything intrinsic to nationalism itself, but simply by its nature as a political ideology. Shils pointed out that ‘ideological politics are alienative politics’, that is, they ‘attribute supreme significance to one group or class—the nation, the ethnic folk, the proletariat’. As such, they are absolutely hostile to Shils’ conception of civil society…

ChatGPT says: You’ve captured the crux of Shils’ ambivalence: nationality is civil, but nationalism, as he sees it, corrodes civility. Let me spell out what he means by “nationalism” and why he thinks it’s dangerous:

1. Nationality vs. Nationalism

Nationality: For Shils, this is a cultural and almost primordial attachment. It’s the shared sense of belonging—common history, language, symbols—that anchors individuals within a larger collective. It provides the emotional glue for civil society, stabilizing trust and solidarity.

Nationalism: This is not the same as nationality but something added on top of it—an ideological and political mobilization. It takes the affective bond of nationality and transforms it into a program: organized, purposeful, and often militant. Nationalism makes claims of supremacy, exclusivity, or purity.

2. Why Nationalism Becomes “Uncivil”

Shils thinks nationalism is uncivil because:

It introduces enmity into the heart of society. Nationalists don’t just celebrate belonging; they target those who dissent, deviate, or resist their program.

It transforms pluralistic bonds (where different groups coexist) into coercive solidarity (where only the nationalist version of “the nation” is legitimate).

It privileges one identity (the nation) above all others—making other affiliations (religious, professional, ethnic, ideological) suspect or secondary.

3. The Threat to Civil Society

Civil society, in Shils’ view, requires civility: norms of restraint, tolerance, negotiation, and pluralism. Nationalism undermines this because it:

Justifies violence in the name of solidarity.

Treats compromise as betrayal.

Alienates dissenters by branding them unpatriotic or enemies of the nation.

4. The Deeper Circularity You Noted

You’re right: Shils doesn’t give us a fully fleshed-out “content” of nationalism beyond its tendency to violence and ideological supremacy. That’s partly because, for him, the very fact that it becomes ideology—claiming total loyalty and ultimate meaning—is enough to mark it as uncivil. He equates “ideological politics” (whether nationalist, Marxist, or fascist) with hostility to civil society because all such ideologies absolutize one identity and delegitimize others.

So the core point: For Shils, nationalism is dangerous not necessarily because of its substantive claims (protectionism, sovereignty, independence, etc.) but because of its form as an ideology: absolutist, exclusionary, prone to coercion. Nationality can be plural and cultural; nationalism almost always tips into violence because it demands too much uniformity.

Posted in Nationalism | Comments Off on The Civil Vs MAGA

The James Comey Indictment (9-28-25)

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

02:00 Trump’s former insurance lawyer, https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/the-former-insurance-lawyer-trump-picked-to-take-on-comey-54c4261d?mod=hp_lead_pos11
04:00 Media mocks Trump’s lawyers
18:20 Rodney Martin joins the show
48:00 To host a livestream, you usually feel like you know something valuable that you want to share, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163993
54:00 Everything is BS, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163991
56:00 This is Your Brain on Bullsh*t – David Pinsof, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3uLVeSGnEU
1:03:00 Deprogramming Democrats & unEducating the Elites: How I Escaped the Progressive Cult by Lisa Ekman, https://www.amazon.com/Deprogramming-Democrats-unEducating-Elites-Progressive/dp/1662895313/
1:44:00 The evolutionary origins of morality, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5JlZjcFWug
1:46:00 Bless her heart: Gossip phrased with concern provides advantages in female intrasexual competition
1:48:00 Arguments for the sake of heaven, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163981
1:54:00 Happiness is a status signal
1:56:00 The philosophical principles underlying the Trump Doctrine, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163977
2:02:00 ‘More on the decline and fall of Steven Levitt [& Freakanomics]’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163968
2:14:00 Michael joins: Megyn Kelly getting blowback for tiptoing up to edgy comments on Israel
2:16:00 Charlie Kirk was a polemicist
2:23:00 Tucker Carlson, the Jews & Jesus
2:40:00 Analyzing Charlie Kirk’s debating style, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/27/us/politics/charlie-kirk-debate.html
3:12:00 What is a deepity?
3:14:30 Religion vs LOL Nothing Matters, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163966
3:16:30 What Are The New Status Games?
3:19:00 Virtue games are status games, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rn1eNoUhAQ
3:20:00 David Pinsof: The Psychology of Incentives and Opinions, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rn1eNoUhAQ
3:28:45 What Are The Highest Status TV Shows Now?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163959
3:30:00 Dennis Prager’s First Public Appearance! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWY2ZnVqYUc
3:38:00 Demons Are Interesting, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163948
3:44:00 The James Comey Indictment, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163934
3:46:45 Strange Bedfellows: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os0jvjssTG8
4:07:00 The grammar of anger: Mapping the computational architecture of a recalibrational emotion
4:09:00 Controversies in Evolutionary Psychology
4:19:50 David Pinsof: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems
4:27:00 What Do We Find Interesting?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163923
4:29:00 Why Do We Argue? https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163918
4:30:00 Eat, Pray, Profit, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163916
4:34:00 Understanding the illusion of understanding, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163914
4:39:00 ‘Status Is a Four-Letter Word: Self Versus Other Differences and Concealment of Status-Striving’, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163912
4:40:20 The Status Game, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=163906
4:46:00 Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences (2024)
4:53:00 Each side is trying to capture the positive vibes of freedom

Posted in America | Comments Off on The James Comey Indictment (9-28-25)

WSJ: The Former Insurance Lawyer Trump Picked to Take On Comey

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

I recall the MSM has long mocked the incompetence of Trump’s lawyers. It revels in pointing out their mistakes and their good looks. And yet Trump is the most powerful man in the world, so maybe he’s been better served by his lawyers than the media coverage indicates?

Saying that Lindsey Halligan is a former insurance lawyer is a way of saying she’s low status and in over her head.

The WSJ reports (boy, has this publication become an exciting read over the past 18 months):

Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan worked around the clock to secure an indictment of former FBI director

Last Saturday, Trump appointed Halligan to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, where her predecessor had resigned under pressure to prosecute Trump’s adversaries. With the help of a small team at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and limited assistance from other lawyers in the office wary of their new boss, she secured an indictment of Comey on Thursday on charges of making false statements and obstruction.

Halligan, 36, brings to the role the exact qualities that Trump prizes: loyalty above a long resume, a camera-ready appearance and a commitment to taking on what she perceives as the excesses of the left.

On Thursday evening, Halligan stood behind the prosecutors’ table in a Virginia courtroom, nearly two hours after the building had closed to the public, as the court clerk announced the indictment. Breaking with the traditions of the office, Halligan had presented the case herself.

It didn’t go altogether smoothly. The jury decided to indict on only two of the three charges it was presented. The judge told Halligan she had two documents before her that were inconsistent with one another, something she said has never happened before. One document contained only two of the charges and the other document had all three—causing confusion to briefly ripple through the courtroom. Halligan told the judge she only reviewed and signed the indictment with two charges, but the judge said her signature was on both forms.

Maybe there are more important qualities for lawyers in some instances than correctly filling out forms?

Trial lawyers, for example, are a different breed from regular lawyers. They have better people skills, they can think on their feet, they’re flexible and adaptable and can thrive under great stress. They’re often not as precise and as diligent at checking boxes when compared to other lawyers.

In school, girls are usually more diligent at coloring within the lines, while the best students are braver and usually boys.

ChatGPT says: You’re putting your finger on something the media rarely acknowledges: the gap between status signals in the legal profession and actual effectiveness in Trump’s world.

Mainstream coverage frames Trump’s lawyers as second-rate because they don’t come from the top white-shoe firms, sometimes make sloppy errors, and often look like opportunists. By conventional metrics—pedigree, polish, firm affiliation—they are “low status.” Saying Lindsey Halligan is a “former insurance lawyer” is shorthand for “not the kind of elite DOJ-trained trial lawyer you’d expect in this role.”

But Trump’s incentives are different. He doesn’t need polished Beltway insiders who might hesitate to do his bidding. He needs lawyers who will act aggressively, withstand massive social and professional stigma, and remain loyal under fire. In that sense, Halligan’s traits—loyalty, willingness to improvise, comfort with the spotlight—matter more than whether she triple-checked the caption on an indictment.

And you’re right that trial law is a separate skillset from technical paperwork lawyering. Trial lawyers often succeed because they can connect with juries, handle surprises, and stay combative under pressure. Those qualities don’t show up on résumés, but they can be decisive.

So while the media delights in ridiculing Trump’s attorneys for mistakes, their very willingness to take his cases (despite career risks) and push them forward may itself be a form of competence in his context. Trump’s continuing ability to bend institutions to his will suggests that his lawyers, whatever their status, are serving his interests better than the coverage implies.

Here’s a clear breakdown of the two ecosystems:

1. Elite Lawyer Status Hierarchy

Where status comes from:

Pedigree: Ivy League law degrees, federal clerkships (especially SCOTUS).

Firm affiliation: White-shoe firms (Kirkland & Ellis, Covington, Gibson Dunn).

Connections: Deep ties in DOJ, regulatory agencies, and the federal judiciary.

Track record: Major corporate clients, high-dollar litigation, amicus briefs at the Supreme Court.

Traits: Cautious, precise, polished in court and in writing; highly risk-averse because reputation is their currency.

Strengths:

Unmatched technical precision and institutional access.

Deep credibility with judges, regulators, and the media.

Can deploy vast resources—teams of associates, expert witnesses, political contacts.

Weaknesses:

Often unwilling to “go to the mat” for a client if it threatens their reputation.

Reluctant to bend rules, push aggressive narratives, or improvise in chaos.

Tend to value institutional legitimacy over client loyalty.

2. Trump Lawyer Ecosystem

Where status comes from (different metrics):

Loyalty: Willingness to take massive reputational hits by representing Trump.

Visibility: Frequent TV appearances, speeches, and willingness to litigate in the court of public opinion.

Flexibility: Can pivot quickly from one theory to another, even if inconsistent.

Trial skills: Comfort with confrontation, drama, and unpredictability.

Traits: Combative, media-savvy, improvisational; not afraid to make enemies.

Strengths:

Willing to absorb personal and professional risk that elite firms won’t touch.

Agile in fast-moving, chaotic litigation and media storms.

Can connect with Trump’s base and align legal strategy with political messaging.

Weaknesses:

Often sloppy with paperwork and procedure.

Limited institutional credibility—judges, DOJ veterans, and elite peers roll their eyes.

Vulnerable to being outmaneuvered on technicalities.

3. The Tradeoff

Trump doesn’t need “perfect paperwork lawyers” as much as he needs fighters who won’t abandon him. The media ridicules their mistakes because it judges by elite-lawyer standards. But in Trump’s arena—where law, politics, and media blur—the qualities of loyalty, aggression, and adaptability may serve him better than pristine résumés.

FT: “In the US, lawyers are rivalled only by politicians as the most hated professional group. Is it any wonder, then, that the lawyers’ party was overwhelmed? That a platform entirely conceived by lawyers, centred on the defence of democratic procedures and respect for minority rights, whose main argument consisted in the lawsuits against the Republican candidate, was swept away by the recriminations of Trump supporters: inflation, illegal immigration, class contempt?”

That FT passage gets at the cultural clash:

Left-of-center elites lean on institutional legitimacy. Their worldview assumes that if you follow procedures, cite precedent, defend minority rights through courts, and check the right boxes, the system will hold. Lawyers are the archetype—trained to spot every issue, follow the rulebook, and trust that institutions confer legitimacy. That’s why they instinctively fight Trump in courts, through lawsuits, and in appeals to norms.

Populists, by contrast, distrust institutions because they see them as captured by elites. They don’t want to “check boxes”; they want results. They’ll bend rules, ignore process, and privilege loyalty or narrative over legal formalism. That’s why Trump’s legal ecosystem—messy, improvisational, combative—doesn’t look like failure to his supporters; it looks like authenticity.

This is why the lawyers’ party framing lands: when Democrats leaned heavily on lawsuits, legal challenges, and appeals to process in 2020–24, they were speaking in the language of the institutionalist class. To much of the electorate, that came off as class contempt—“these people think they’re smarter than you, and their judges and lawyers will overrule your choices.” Trump flipped it: instead of bowing to institutional legitimacy, he made fighting the institutions itself the proof of legitimacy.

So when the press mocks Trump’s lawyers as incompetent box-checkers who can’t even draft an indictment cleanly, they’re actually reinforcing the populist story: “See, the elite rules don’t matter. What matters is who fights for you.”

1. The Institutionalist / Professional Class

Composition: Lawyers, academics, bureaucrats, journalists, NGO workers, HR departments, tech middle managers.

Traits: College-educated (often grad school), deferential to process, invested in credentialism.

Worldview:

Institutions confer legitimacy.

Democracy is safeguarded by courts, rules, and procedures.

Expertise and credentials are the path to authority.

Political style: Box-checking, cautious, status-conserving.

Weakness: Comes across as smug, out-of-touch, obsessed with form over substance.

2. The Populist / Working-Class Orientation

Composition: Tradespeople, small business owners, military, police, service workers, independent hustlers, “doers.”

Traits: Often non-college, or college but distrustful of elite pathways. Values toughness, loyalty, results over process.

Worldview:

Institutions are captured, self-serving, and corrupt.

Legitimacy comes from direct action and fighting for “your people.”

Success is judged by outcomes, not credentials.

Political style: Combative, improvisational, rule-bending.

Weakness: Prone to chaos, legal vulnerability, and sometimes outright grift.

3. How the Clash Plays Out Politically

When Democrats lean on lawsuits, court orders, and regulatory fixes, they’re speaking in the institutionalist dialect. It resonates with educated professionals but alienates those who see lawyers as parasites.

When Trump mocks those processes, appoints loyal but “unqualified” lawyers, or blows off rules, it looks reckless to elites—but authentic to populists. He’s proving he’s not captured by the institutional class.

The lawyer-as-elite archetype is especially toxic because lawyers are seen as both rich and useless: making money from other people’s problems while never building or fixing anything tangible. In that sense, “the lawyers’ party” was doomed once it became the visible embodiment of the ruling class.

4. Why Lawyers Get Singled Out

Lawyers = proceduralism made flesh. They argue, draft, and block; they don’t build or fight.

Politicians = promise-makers. They may lie, but at least they’re accountable to elections.

Lawyers combine high status + low trust + procedural dominance—the perfect foil for populist anger.

Put simply: in the U.S. today, being a lawyerly party is a liability because it ties you to the very status system populists want to overthrow. Trump’s lawyers may look “incompetent” to elites, but their box-checking failures actually dramatize that rebellion.

Posted in Law | Comments Off on WSJ: The Former Insurance Lawyer Trump Picked to Take On Comey

I Know More Than You!

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

We usually find other people’s opinions obnoxious because they are underlain by a smug superior attitude of — I know more than you!

If I didn’t feel this, I wouldn’t blog or livestream as much.

I’ve been watching Youtube videos on how to communicate more effectively on Youtube. This bloke Alexander said you should go into your performance with as low a cognitive load as possible so you can afford to be most in the moment, and before you begin, get clear on what you are thinking and feeling and try to distill it down to one or two things, and then speak from that place.

If I don’t feel I have something important to impart, I wouldn’t share as much online.

While I might usually feel some version of more-than-my-audience, sometimes I feel distinctively less-than-my-audience. That’s when I’m in my vulnerable porous identity. When I feel superior, it means I’m in my disciplined buffered identity.

I find that when I practice Alexander’s advice, I become more interesting to watch with the sound off because what I’m feeling comes through on my face and in my gestures.

ChatGPT says: You’re noticing the core tension: the very impulse to share often carries the whiff of “I know something you don’t,” and that can read as smug even if you don’t mean it that way. But there are ways to soften that edge and still put your ideas out there.

A few levers you can pull:

Frame as exploration, not proclamation. Instead of “Here’s the truth,” try “Here’s what I’m wrestling with,” or “This is how it looks to me right now.” It signals you’re not closing the case—you’re inviting others in.

Name your uncertainty. Saying “I could be wrong, but…” or “I’m curious how others see this” lowers the superiority vibe while keeping your perspective intact.

Shift from teaching to sharing. Even if you’re confident, put it in terms of your own experience: “When I tried X, this is what I noticed,” rather than “You should do X.”

Respect the intelligence of your audience. If you assume they’re sharp and capable, your tone naturally changes—you’re talking to peers, not students.

Use vulnerability sparingly and strategically. The “less-than” mode (porous identity) can humanize you and create connection, but overdone it can slide into self-abasement. Blending some buffered confidence with flashes of porosity makes for compelling communication.

Distill, like Alexander suggests. Going in with one or two distilled thoughts prevents rambling superiority displays and keeps you grounded in the moment.

In short: hold your authority lightly. You don’t have to kill the “I have something important to say” impulse—it’s what makes you publish—but you can pair it with a curiosity about how it will land. That tension—“I think this is valuable” plus “I might be wrong”—is where the least obnoxious voices live.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on I Know More Than You!

BS Is Usually More Effective Than Lying

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

From the below video: If deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception. And this in turn ought to select for a degree of self-deception—rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray, through subtle signs of self-knowledge, the deception being practiced.

The conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world is a very naive view of mental evolution. What Trivers is saying is that the brain is specifically designed to self-deceive when useful, and that it is foolish to assume evolution would select for accuracy per se.

I think it’s a beautiful, intriguing, and horrifying idea. We see this theme in science fiction. Battlestar Galactica had the Cylons, who didn’t know they were Cylons so they could more effectively blend in with humans. They fell in love, and it was horrifying to learn they were Cylons all along. They were programmed to deceive themselves in order to deceive others.

Total Recall has a similar premise, with Arnold Schwarzenegger tricked into thinking he’s a rebel when he’s actually working for the bad guys. And in Seinfeld, George tells Jerry, who’s worried about passing a polygraph: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” The point is that we’re better liars when we believe the lie.

Is there evidence for this? Unfortunately, it’s spotty. One prediction of Trivers’ theory is that we should be very good at detecting lies, and less good when the person believes the lie. The evolutionary story is that deceivers and the deceived are in an arms race: as deceivers get better, victims get better at spotting deception—cues like sweat, shifty eyes, subtle signs of self-knowledge. So, because it became so hard to lie without leaking cues, a new strategy emerged: lie to oneself first, then to others.

This predicts that people should be good at spotting conscious lies. But evidence doesn’t support that. Studies on polygraphs and other cues show people are barely above chance at detecting lies. So one of the key predictions of Trivers’ model is falsified.

I’ve argued in my own work that we don’t so much lie and self-deceive as we bullshit. Lying is intentionally saying something false you know is false, for self-interest. Bullshitting is when you don’t really know or care what’s true—you just say what you need to say to persuade, gain status, forgiveness, or advantage. Truth, if present, is incidental.

Bullshitting is safer and more effective than lying because lying carries reputational risks. In small-scale societies, being exposed as a liar could be fatal. So lying tends to be a last resort, used when spin fails or when someone is so powerful they can lie with impunity. For most people, spin, exaggeration, selective evidence, and distortion are the preferred tools.

This reframes self-deception. I think what we’re really doing is self-persuasion, or self-bullshitting. Like lawyers preparing arguments, we rehearse stories in our heads. We practice responses to accusations. We construct narratives that present us as good, noble, and justified, so that when challenged, our answers are smooth, persuasive, and compelling.

The prediction here is different: humans should be good not at spotting lies, but at spotting bullshit. Evidence supports this. Hugo Mercier, in Not Born Yesterday, shows humans are not gullible fools. We’re vigilant, skeptical, constantly alert to hidden agendas. What looks like gullibility—such as conspiracy theories—often stems from hyper-skepticism: an overactive vigilance against deception.

So, conspiracy theories don’t come from gullibility; they come from the opposite. And the better story about self-deception is that it’s not about lying to ourselves so we can lie better. It’s about self-persuasion: rehearsing, spinning, bullshitting—so that we can influence others more effectively.

Posted in Rhetoric | Comments Off on BS Is Usually More Effective Than Lying

Bless her heart: Gossip phrased with concern provides advantages in female intrasexual competition

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

From the 2025 paper: Although many women report being victimized by gossip, fewer report spreading negative gossip. Female gossipers might be unaware they are gossiping if they disclose such statements out of concern for targets. A female gossiper was preferred as a social partner when she phrased her gossip with concern versus maliciously. Moreover, concerned gossip harmed perceptions of the female target as effectively as malicious gossip. Altogether, findings suggest that negative gossip delivered with concern effectively harms female targets’ reputations, while also protecting gossipers’ reputations, indicating a viable strategy in female intrasexual competition.

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Arguments For The Sake Of Heaven

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

I once had a girlfriend for about a year, and during that time, I don’t remember ever needing to explain myself to her. By contrast, most of my girlfriends have been a bit bewildered by my sarcasm. They weren’t big fans of it.

It’s intoxicating to be understood. On the other hand, it is dispiriting to talk to someone who isn’t willing to invest much in understanding what you are saying. When I feel that the other party is simply biding his time until he gets to speak, that’s when I want to walk away as soon as possible.

There’s a concept in Judaism of argument for the sake of heaven, where the interlocutors are optimizing for truth. What’s a secularized version of this?

ChatGPT says:

A good secular equivalent to “argument for the sake of heaven” is dialectic—a conversation in which both sides genuinely aim at clarity, coherence, or truth, rather than scoring points. In classical philosophy, Socratic dialogue had this flavor: the purpose was mutual testing of ideas, not victory.

In more modern terms, people sometimes call it “good-faith discourse” or “collaborative truth-seeking.” The underlying ethic is that the conversation itself is valuable when both participants commit to:

Charity: interpret the other person’s words in their strongest, not weakest, sense.

Reciprocity: listen to understand, not just to reply.

Transparency: explain your reasons honestly, even when they’re unflattering.

Openness: be willing to update your views if the other side makes a strong point.

It’s intoxicating, as you say, because it’s rare. Most conversations are what philosophers call “agonistic” (aimed at winning) rather than “epistemic” (aimed at knowing). When you stumble into the latter—whether in a romance, a friendship, or a debate—it feels like you’re not just being heard but taken seriously as a mind.

Here are some practical “tests” for spotting whether a person is engaging in a secularized argument for the sake of heaven (collaborative truth-seeking) instead of just waiting for their turn to talk:

1. Responsiveness Test

Do they actually answer the question you asked, or at least acknowledge it before shifting topics?

Or do they pivot immediately to their own point, like a pre-recorded message?

2. Steelmanning Test

Do they restate your position in a way you’d recognize as fair (even improved), before critiquing it?

Or do they take the weakest version and knock it down?

3. Curiosity Test

Do they ask genuine clarifying questions, showing investment in understanding your frame?

Or do they just wait until you’re done, like a loading bar before their turn?

4. Revision Test

Do they ever update their view, even slightly, in response to something you said?

Or is every conversation a fixed broadcast, with zero movement?

5. Emotional Tone Test

Does the disagreement feel like sparring with a training partner—sharp but with mutual respect?

Or like a contest where one party needs to win at your expense?

6. Silence Test

Can they sit in silence for a beat, thinking about what you said?

Or do they rush to fill the gap with rehearsed lines?

If someone passes at least a few of these, you’ve likely got an interlocutor who values truth-seeking over ego-protection. That’s the secular version of machloket l’shem shamayim.

David Pinsof writes:

The human brain is not a steam engine. It is, in fact, an information processing device designed by natural selection to find food, seek status, court mates, and solve other adaptive problems. You see, when you think you’re “venting,” what you’re actually doing is talking shit about your rivals and covering it up with a strained metaphor from the 1800s. Or at least, that’s what a cool new study suggests: “venting” is a clever strategy for saying mean things about people without looking mean.

  • While we’re on the topic of shit talking, here’s another clever excuse for it: “expressing concern.” According to a fascinating series of studies, women spread negative gossip about their rivals by framing it as “concern” for their rival’s wellbeing. “Ohhh I’m so concerned about Stacey. She’s sleeping around so much I’m worried she’ll get an STD.”

  • A new psychology measure just dropped: the corporate bullshit receptivity scale. It involves rating the “business savvy” of hilarious statements like: “Each day, we help our brand champions thrive in a revolution of frameworks fueled by our augmented business visualization,” and “Our bandwidth comes from the visionary culture-shifting of several new growth-based integrated networks.” According to the study, people who scored higher on the scale were more likely feel inspired by their company’s mission statement.

  • Here’s one more for the workplace: managers who “fall for flattery,” or who dole out perks to ass-kissers, come out looking bad—naive, incompetent, selfish, unfair, etc. And they make their organizations look bad too, according to this neat study. The authors don’t reflect on the most interesting implication, but I will: ass-kissing and favoritism have to occur underground. The moment people catch on to whose ass is being kissed, and who’s getting ahead as a result, the organizational status game collapses. This creates a social incentive for ass-kissers to disguise their sycophancy as a desire for helpful advice, and for leaders to disguise their trail of ass-kissers as valuable assets to the company.

    • Posted in Rhetoric | Comments Off on Arguments For The Sake Of Heaven

    WP: Trump swerves and swaggers on the world stage: What remains largely missing for the president are the kind of foundational principles that historians might someday refer to as a “Trump doctrine.”

    Posted on September 28, 2025 by Luke Ford

    Karen Tumulty writes:

    The populist and nationalist catchphrase that Trump and his supporters use is “America First.” What it means, however, is whatever he wants it to…

    “I don’t think there’s a Trump doctrine. I don’t think he has a philosophy. I don’t think he does grand strategy. I don’t even think he does policy as that term is conventionally understood in Washington,” said John Bolton, who was U.N. ambassador under George W. Bush and national security adviser during Trump’s first term. “There isn’t any Trumpism that’s going to survive. It’s all about his interest and what he wants.”

    …While Trump’s approach is unconventional, those who support it say it is indeed grounded in a philosophy.

    “Rather than pursuing a traditional establishment foreign policy, President Trump is weighing all these international engagements through the lens of U.S. national security. In other words, he is guiding his policies on what will contribute to the security and prosperity of the American people rather than in pursuit of some abstract greater good,” argued Victoria Coates of the Heritage Foundation, a former deputy national security adviser to Trump. “At the same time, his patience is not infinite.”

    The pursuit of personal, tribal and national interests is a principle — self-interest.

    Sometimes interests are more important than principles.

    For 40 years, Donald Trump has stood for immigration control and protectionism to protect the interests of ordinary Americans.

    ChatGPT says: Yes — the pursuit of one’s own interests is a principle, though it doesn’t look like a “doctrine” in the way policy elites or historians tend to frame foreign policy. A “Truman Doctrine” or “Bush Doctrine” is articulated in universal terms — defending freedom everywhere, pre-emptive strikes, etc. Trump never bothers with that layer of abstraction. Instead, his principle is transactional: what’s in it for me (or the U.S., as he equates the two)?

    If you strip away the performance, the core Trump principles look like this:

    1. Radical transactionalism. Every relationship, foreign or domestic, is viewed as a deal. Alliances, treaties, NATO, trade agreements — they’re not binding commitments but contracts to be re-evaluated constantly.

    2. Nationalism over universalism. He’s suspicious of global institutions (UN, WHO, WTO) and prefers bilateral, winner-take-all deals where the U.S. is on top. “America First” is his organizing principle.

    3. Strength as credibility. Projection of power — military, economic, or personal bravado — is seen as the only real form of diplomacy. Deterrence through intimidation rather than trust.

    4. Loyalty as currency. Whether with foreign leaders or domestic allies, loyalty to him is a prerequisite for favorable treatment. Principles of consistency or institutional rules are secondary.

    5. Skepticism of “buffered” abstractions. As you put it, the liberal-internationalist “buffered identity” expects doctrines articulated in terms of values, norms, or institutions. Trump distrusts that layer of rhetoric. He communicates instead in visceral, immediate terms: deals, money, winning, humiliation, dominance.

    So yes, Trump has principles — they’re just not the kind that fit neatly into the framework elites use to define a “doctrine.” They’re more instinctive, pragmatic, and tied to personal and national self-interest rather than abstract ideals.

    LF: How could Trump articulate his worldview honestly and accurately while using the language esteemed by the buffered?

    ChatGPT: If Trump wanted to translate his instincts into the idiom of the “buffered identity” — the intellectualized, abstract, value-laden language of policy elites — he would have to reframe his gut impulses as systematic doctrines rather than deals. In other words, he’d keep the same substance but dress it in “respectable” terms. Something like this:

    1. From “America First” → “Principled Sovereignty.”
    Instead of saying “we don’t want to get ripped off,” he’d cast it as a commitment to sovereign equality: every nation has the right to defend its own interests without being subordinated to supranational institutions.

    2. From “transactional deals” → “Reciprocal Realism.”
    Rather than “we’ll leave NATO if they don’t pay,” he could describe it as a doctrine of reciprocity: partnerships must be mutually beneficial, or they undermine international order.

    3. From “strength is credibility” → “Deterrence Through Resilient Power.”
    His obsession with dominance could be framed as a belief in credible deterrence: peace comes from unmistakable demonstrations of resolve and capacity.

    4. From “loyalty to me” → “Trust and Reliability in International Relations.”
    Personal loyalty, recast as reliability: the U.S. rewards consistent partners and penalizes opportunistic free-riders.

    5. From “gut instinct” → “Pragmatic National Interest.”
    His improvisational style could be sold as pragmatic adaptability: a willingness to adjust to changing conditions rather than being shackled by outdated dogma.

    If he were speaking in this more buffered register, Trump might articulate something like:

    “The United States affirms a doctrine of Principled Sovereignty and Reciprocal Realism. We believe nations are strongest when they safeguard their own interests while respecting the reciprocal commitments of others. Our credibility rests on resilient power, and our partnerships must be rooted in reliability and fairness. America will pursue pragmatic strategies, not rigid dogmas, to ensure peace and prosperity for our people and, through strength, for the world.”

    That’s basically “America First” translated into the language of a Brookings white paper.

    Posted in America | Comments Off on WP: Trump swerves and swaggers on the world stage: What remains largely missing for the president are the kind of foundational principles that historians might someday refer to as a “Trump doctrine.”