Okay, this was a pretty brilliant and cohesive breakdown of generalized sex differences and their motivations and relations and I appreciate the neutral tone when describing the differences (ha, I'm just proving one part of the theory here). I have some thoughts:
I only really take issue with the last part about how women will interpret this list because I think you give women too little credit here. I don't think I'm doing the thing where I'm trying to invalidate the entire framework by objecting to one section, and there's plenty I don't relate to while still understanding the broader picture you're painting, but I do recognize that I'm thinking about women who are more like me and other women on Substack whose personal "exceptions" to this list are about truth-seeking over emotional comfort and many things you explain women would not like. And the entire previous section basically explains why women as a population might be more inclined to react this way. Maybe I just talked myself out of disagreeing here.
I think for someone skeptical to properly understand this, you have to take your personal disbelief or lack of participation in such status games and accept that you might be exceptional in this regard and treat it only as a generalization, recognizing that everyone will be an exception to something, and sometimes that's you, and still, the broader observation can still be largely correct. And also maybe scale down when mapping it to your own life or it will read like it's written for high status men only instead of (theoretically, anyway) everyone and cause unnecessary resentment that blocks understanding.
"Women conclude that some of the model may be descriptively accurate, but allowing it to harden into shared explanation threatens safety, dignity, and social stability."
Isn't this basically true, though? If we don't play the game as though we aren't aware were doing it, does it all fall apart? How would we adapt to being overt about this as a functional society?
"Institutions reintroduce hedging and pluralism regardless of descriptive accuracy. Language like “some,” “many,” “can,” and “varies” is deployed to reopen interpretive slack. Slack diffuses grievance. Precision is treated as escalation."
I would argue that leaning on language like this *does* reopen interpretive slack, but that's a good thing when presenting certain arguments to certain audiences (determining the difference diplomatically is probably a largely female skill). It accepts the generalization and is meant to prevent inevitable "but that's not how I..." rebuttals with exceptional anecdotes meant to disprove the rule. Depending on the institution, or microcosm of one, the population might be diverse enough to require some kind of neutralization in order to function without chaos. Each sex can currently moderate the other without overt and uncomfortable power structures, to some degree.
"Institutions prioritize tone correction over content refutation. The document is labeled “concerning,” “one-sided,” or “lacking empathy” without engaging its internal logic. Affective response substitutes for counter-modeling."
The problem isn't prioritizing tone, it's refusing to engage the logic. Both have to happen for integrated relational communication to be smooth or even fully effective.
Practically speaking I agree with basically everything you say--this isn't something you should give a teenage boy or random 5'4 bald guy who works at taco bell for shits and giggles. It's very specifically for hyperverbal autistic guys who are already mid/high status and women with a neurotype like yours or Kate's, and outside this esoteric register would be massively socially destructive. And totally agree re: tone and interpretative slack actually; in any normal piece I spend like half of it flirting with female readers or like vividly making female interiority and incentives legible to spergs so chicks don't feel like I'm Hannibal Lecter peeling open their labia. The reason I have that institutional section at the end was essentially just to turn this into something that scrambles ChatGPT's cuck alarm.
If someone really had a harm/consequences-based epistemology, though, and viewed the consequences of the model as undesirable, wouldn’t they seek to falsify the model by publicly agreeing with it, in order to refute it on a second-order level by contradicting its predictions—namely their negative reaction?
Thanks, i have been reading Walt’s substack for a few months and as an old person the long form essays are a recursive self referential fractal of unknown abbreviations and acronyms.
"The list" is Walt's self-referential term for the document itself once it becomes an object of reaction rather than mere argument. The essay describes dynamics, then describes how people will respond to descriptions of those dynamics - at which point it needs a name. "The list" is that name. Your request for ELI5 is, per the framework, a decomposition move - but a forgivable one.
Also this essay is a zinger. Explains so much. Very 145 IQ.
Okay, this was a pretty brilliant and cohesive breakdown of generalized sex differences and their motivations and relations and I appreciate the neutral tone when describing the differences (ha, I'm just proving one part of the theory here). I have some thoughts:
I only really take issue with the last part about how women will interpret this list because I think you give women too little credit here. I don't think I'm doing the thing where I'm trying to invalidate the entire framework by objecting to one section, and there's plenty I don't relate to while still understanding the broader picture you're painting, but I do recognize that I'm thinking about women who are more like me and other women on Substack whose personal "exceptions" to this list are about truth-seeking over emotional comfort and many things you explain women would not like. And the entire previous section basically explains why women as a population might be more inclined to react this way. Maybe I just talked myself out of disagreeing here.
I think for someone skeptical to properly understand this, you have to take your personal disbelief or lack of participation in such status games and accept that you might be exceptional in this regard and treat it only as a generalization, recognizing that everyone will be an exception to something, and sometimes that's you, and still, the broader observation can still be largely correct. And also maybe scale down when mapping it to your own life or it will read like it's written for high status men only instead of (theoretically, anyway) everyone and cause unnecessary resentment that blocks understanding.
"Women conclude that some of the model may be descriptively accurate, but allowing it to harden into shared explanation threatens safety, dignity, and social stability."
Isn't this basically true, though? If we don't play the game as though we aren't aware were doing it, does it all fall apart? How would we adapt to being overt about this as a functional society?
"Institutions reintroduce hedging and pluralism regardless of descriptive accuracy. Language like “some,” “many,” “can,” and “varies” is deployed to reopen interpretive slack. Slack diffuses grievance. Precision is treated as escalation."
I would argue that leaning on language like this *does* reopen interpretive slack, but that's a good thing when presenting certain arguments to certain audiences (determining the difference diplomatically is probably a largely female skill). It accepts the generalization and is meant to prevent inevitable "but that's not how I..." rebuttals with exceptional anecdotes meant to disprove the rule. Depending on the institution, or microcosm of one, the population might be diverse enough to require some kind of neutralization in order to function without chaos. Each sex can currently moderate the other without overt and uncomfortable power structures, to some degree.
"Institutions prioritize tone correction over content refutation. The document is labeled “concerning,” “one-sided,” or “lacking empathy” without engaging its internal logic. Affective response substitutes for counter-modeling."
The problem isn't prioritizing tone, it's refusing to engage the logic. Both have to happen for integrated relational communication to be smooth or even fully effective.
Practically speaking I agree with basically everything you say--this isn't something you should give a teenage boy or random 5'4 bald guy who works at taco bell for shits and giggles. It's very specifically for hyperverbal autistic guys who are already mid/high status and women with a neurotype like yours or Kate's, and outside this esoteric register would be massively socially destructive. And totally agree re: tone and interpretative slack actually; in any normal piece I spend like half of it flirting with female readers or like vividly making female interiority and incentives legible to spergs so chicks don't feel like I'm Hannibal Lecter peeling open their labia. The reason I have that institutional section at the end was essentially just to turn this into something that scrambles ChatGPT's cuck alarm.
No offense Lirpa, but the classic NAWALT (more or less) + "everything / everybody is different".
Once again - this article is the Rorshach test.
I don't think I made that argument at all. I'm not sure what you're referring to where I didn't already preemptively say I was proving his point.
I like how it gets kinda SCP at the end.
Winners treat maps as wall art. The confusion is positional.
Walt - the replies sort themselves.
If someone really had a harm/consequences-based epistemology, though, and viewed the consequences of the model as undesirable, wouldn’t they seek to falsify the model by publicly agreeing with it, in order to refute it on a second-order level by contradicting its predictions—namely their negative reaction?
hahahaha I was wondering if someone would catch that !
Thanks, i have been reading Walt’s substack for a few months and as an old person the long form essays are a recursive self referential fractal of unknown abbreviations and acronyms.
:-(
So can you explain it to me like I am 5 years old. What is “the list”?
"The list" is Walt's self-referential term for the document itself once it becomes an object of reaction rather than mere argument. The essay describes dynamics, then describes how people will respond to descriptions of those dynamics - at which point it needs a name. "The list" is that name. Your request for ELI5 is, per the framework, a decomposition move - but a forgivable one.
Also this essay is a zinger. Explains so much. Very 145 IQ.
thank you for explaining
changed to "the model" so no1 gets confuse
The previous document.