The greatest evolutionary ill of the human mind is its ability to forge profound attachments from nothing, then grieve their loss without ever having possessed them, heartbreak for someone who never loved us, longing for times, and places that we never belonged to. I've never known of a stray dog to be stroked once and spend eternity whimpering for this random gentleness, but I've known hundreds, thousands of people who remain in love after a single, innocent kiss on the cheek.

Everything that now appears debased and worthless to us will be redeemed and made beautiful on the last day, we will be guided to heaven precisely by that which we despised the most. What soul is vast enough to understand that "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." Psalms 118:22, nothing, or nobody easy in this life is worth our time.

Your misfortune is that you are not cruel enough, just as your misfortune is that you are not tender enough --- neither monster nor saint, neither blade nor balm. You suffer the great misery of being nothing in particular.

True virtue and kindness are not about loving everyone, but rather hating nobody, "Grace" is not a grand, sloppy embrace of every sweating, cruel wretch, but the capacity to stare at impulsive human evil with the intent of forgiving it --- you're not a saint, you're just not a beast.

The most profound teaching of Christianity is that "True evil can only exist in a soul that was once good, not in a spirit that has been wicked for all eternity." It's the tradition of believing that without Agrippina's influence, Nero could have been a saint.

To believe that virtue cannot heal evil, but merely fight it, is the antithesis of Christianity. Every single religion teaches that good must destroy the bad, Christ teaches that love can be so pure, so radiant, that evil will yield of its own accord, confounded and ashamed.

Within 10 seconds of meeting an autistic person, strangers rate them as awkward and lose interest in getting to know them. Show those same strangers only a written transcript of what was said, with no audio or video, and the bias completely disappears.

Learning about this really changed my life drastically for the better. I just decided that neurotypical people weren't my problem and I didn't care about attempting to interact with them. Immensely liberating. You can also decide the other way if you want, and take an interest in decoding their social rules if you think that will be rewarding. But either way it helps to know this.

To get generally good at social performance --- conversation, flirting, sex --- is to fall into a trap that disguises itself as self-improvement. The moment the encounter shifts from offering yourself unconditionally to "what should I say to get them to..." the offering becomes conditional, and the conditional offering optimizes for filtering people in rather than out.

Consider sex. The man who is generally good at sex impresses on the first night, and the impression carries weight for weeks or months. But the skill is doing structural work that liking itself was supposed to do. When the appeal of being a sex god runs out, nothing remains to hold up the connection. The virgin who likes someone and is liked back is awkward at sex on the first night, the fifth, the twentieth. But they both keep going because they enjoy each other's presence. The skill grows out of the wanting, with each other, rather than substituting for it. They become good at sex with this one person, which is the only kind of good at sex that matters.

Optimizing for being generally good is optimizing for locking in people who are lukewarm about you, leading to certain ruin. Not being good generally is locking in fewer people, but the ones who do are those that genuinely want to spend time and grow with you. Thus, it is better to be specific and spiky. Talk about what actually interests you unashamedly, don't pre-edit because you think it'll be weird, just be yourself, unironically. This will put off many people, but the unfiltered connections that remain will be stronger, because they're built on a foundation of unconditional truthfulness.

What matters in life is not autistic information optimization, but individual honesty. An honest moron is infinitely more useful than a dishonest genius, and factual accuracy, memorization of facts and dates does not correlate in any way with personal integrity.

The short answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study for tests --- which is a much more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid --- and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger is tougher than Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong: Tiger is tougher than Mickelson and because of that he works harder.

I want my OWN person, no matter if it's platonic or romantic, I want someone who thinks of ME first, every friend that I would is my closest has a friend that's closer to them than me. I WANT SOMEONE JUST FOR ME ONLY

Most humans have never done a task complex enough for them to appreciate the complexity of the tasks that AI can accomplish.

A popular hypothetical scenario is one where everyone in the world starts to get superpowers at the same time. Recent advances in AI are sort of like that. I feel like those superhero awakening scenarios never contend with how many people would deny powers exist altogether.

Why do highly intelligent creatives sit inside and jerk of all day?

I've started to date a guy with autism and omggg, I love it so much!! We've been together for almost a month and oh my god. Guys. He's so literal. I love it. He just says what he thinks, it's wonderful. He cracks me up. When we're cuddling in bed I can just feel him start to be done with it and then he'll be like "okay I'm done cuddling now" and gets out of bed. Absolutely cracks me up. And then he just!!! He just says things and they're so true!! I type really silly and exactly like I speak and I can be like "i lovedddd hanging out with you!!! Let's do it again soon!! :3 :3" and he's like "yes, I'd like that." And ughhh I LOVE IT!!! Straight to the point!!!