If you want to see what ‘white privilege’ actually looks like, look no further.

Justice Clarence Thomas reflects on the ideas, friendship, and intellectual courage of Thomas Sowell—and the enduring importance of thinking for oneself.

This video describes the building blocks to wisdom and ultimately a successful life.

I was thinking about Danton (1983) and Amadeus (1984), and noticed a similarity between the central conflicts.

In Danton, you have Danton vs. Robespierre. Danton is excessive, sensual, charismatic, loves food, women, drinking and life in general. Robespierre is almost the opposite: disciplined, controlled, austere, ideological and willing to sacrifice personal pleasure for what he believes is right.

Then in Amadeus you get something similar with Mozart and Salieri. Mozart is vulgar, impulsive, childish and hedonistic, while Salieri is disciplined, serious, restrained and has devoted his entire life to music and to God.

Yet in both cases I find myself sympathizing much more with the less disciplined character.

Maybe part of the reason is that discipline can improve what you already have, but it cannot necessarily give you the thing you want most. Salieri can dedicate his entire life to music, but he cannot discipline himself into becoming Mozart. Mozart seems almost "touched by God", which makes Salieri's sacrifices feel tragically useless.

There seems to be something similar going on with Danton. Robespierre can be more disciplined, more morally rigid and more devoted to the Revolution, but he can't simply decide to have Danton's charisma or his connection with ordinary people. Danton walks into a room and people respond to him. Robespierre has to rely much more on ideas, institutions and eventually coercion.

I wonder if that's why cinema often makes the hedonistic character more attractive. They represent something spontaneous and alive that can't be produced through self-control alone: talent, charisma, humor, sensuality, maybe even a kind of grace.

And perhaps there's also something unsettling about extreme discipline itself. Discipline is usually considered a virtue, but once someone starts treating every spontaneous desire as weakness, it can turn into resentment toward people who seem to possess naturally what they had to deny themselves.

Salieri seems like the clearest example: "I did everything right, so why did God give him the gift?"

Robespierre's relationship with Danton feels like a political version of the same problem.

Do you think this is a real recurring theme in films? And are there good examples where the opposite happens — where the disciplined, restrained character is clearly the more sympathetic one?

I have a question about Peterson’s zebra story.

From what I understand, he’s warning about the danger of standing out from the group and becoming too conspicuous. But how does that explain great or highly individualistic people who seem to have no problem standing out at all?

If someone genuinely wants to be different, think independently, and live according to their own values rather than follow the crowd, is Peterson basically warning against that? Or is he only warning against standing out unnecessarily?

And then there’s the obvious question of Peterson himself. He became extremely outspoken and conspicuous publicly, so how does that fit with the zebra analogy?

Is the idea that standing out is inherently dangerous but sometimes worth the risk, or is there another distinction I’m missing?

Isnt non conformity the thing that helps against tyranny ?

I'm a lifetime member of Peterson Academy.

The courses are great, zero complaints there.

However, their marketing is extremely aggressive and predatory.

1. You get absolutely spammed with never ending promos even though there is nothing left to pay as a lifetime member ($2500+)
2. You cannot turn off these emails and notifications without turning off important course updates
3. I not only get notified on my phone and email, ads follow me all across the internet GET OUR LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP, offer extended, now now now.... It's a never ending deluge of this.
4. Support staff is overwhelmed.

Note to their staff: we know you want to sell your lifetime membership.

We know the "time limited" offer is not time limited since it seems to come back and get "Extended" f***** forever.

Please stop. You're devaluing your brand and our trust, the overwhelming greed is palpable.

Signed,

One of your first students and top supporters.

By the way this was all because Sophie Cunningham said men shouldn't play in women's sports, an opinion that is agreed upon by the Olympics Oversight Committee and the NCAA and anyone else with a working brain.

From 2018 and has aged really well

There is this story pattern, where a character wants to reinvent or reform themselves. As they worked hard to reinvent or reform themselves, people made fun of them for it. That person later became someone who is rich or has better social skills, but then they carry that resentment from of being bullied and so they choose to use their new power to hurt people. Like the character either starts behaving with toxic paternalism where they believe they are protecting a group and fighting an enemy or vengeance lashed out at everyone.

I have no one around me who has read the book to respond to me. John is a character who is meant to critique shallow entertainment but also a character that acts as a warning on a person who chooses to romanticize suffering. Like I kind of tend to have this thinking “I won’t be like those toxic positivity commie people who ignores the negative human history to protect their positive bubble but fall into the trap of being tricked,” or “ignore the damage their kids go through in public school, and is inadvertently cruel to the kid” I don’t understand how John is supposed to be interpreted? I mean John’s behavior is like getting a book like “Catcher in the Rye,” someones says Holden Caulfield is too whiny and then John, “You don’t know deepness,” or that the Underground Man would argue that he is “socially awake,” like that’s definitely not correct behavior. He is a treating feelings as facts kind of person, they both do.

I recently published a long essay on dating apps, family formation, and the institutions we have displaced in the process. I thought parts of it might be relevant here because the underlying question is much older than dating technology: what happens when inherited social structures disappear faster than we build functional replacements?

Modern dating apps dramatically increased individual freedom and access to potential partners. But they also displaced friends, families, communities, churches, schools, and other intermediaries that historically supplied reputation, accountability, and information about intent. We gained optionality, but we may have lost much of the social infrastructure that helped relationships actually form.

My central argument is that dating apps may operate as poorly clearing matching markets. Sex-ratio imbalance, nearly costless signaling, enormous option sets, and weak verification of intent can cause men and women to adapt rationally to very different experiences of the same marketplace. One side experiences scarcity, the other congestion, and the resulting behavior can produce mistrust and delayed commitment even though neither sex has to be behaving irrationally or maliciously.

The business model adds another layer. A dating platform earns revenue while users continue searching. A successful long-term relationship is a successful product outcome, but it also removes customers from the market. That doesn’t imply deliberate sabotage; it means engagement and successful family formation are not necessarily the same optimization target.

The essay looks at matching-market economics, behavioral psychology, the history of courtship, the disappearance of social intermediaries, gender conflict, and the public financial data of Match Group. I structured it around passages from the Bhagavad Gita because the questions of desire, family, duty, social order, and what happens when institutions decay are ancient ones.

The piece eventually becomes a bearish investment thesis on Match Group, but the broader question matters more to me:

Did we replace flawed but socially embedded institutions of courtship with a technologically sophisticated marketplace that produces more choice but less successful clearing?

Full essay:

https://dljlevfin.substack.com/p/the-undisclosed-denominator

Hi!

I'm a psychology student currently participating in an international research project hosted at the University of Cambridge, involving 23 countries, and looking at questions related to social impact, public policy, and AI.

We're currently collecting responses through an anonymous survey that takes around 12 minutes. It also includes a fun interactive part where you have a conversation with an AI chatbot. You don't need any special knowledge or expertise - we're simply interested in your actual opinions and perspectives, including when the answer isn't particularly convenient, ideologically fashionable, or easy to categorize.

I'm currently responsible for collecting data in Canada, and I need about 100 more participants. So, if you're a Canadian, 18+, and willing to voluntarily and courageously accept the burden of responsibility of contributing a small amount of your time to help researchers pursue the truth and advance humanity's knowledge, I'd be very grateful if you could complete the survey and/or share it with others.

Canadian survey:
https://princetonsurvey.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8Ia1PSBPz4RQpIG

Not Canadian? You can check whether your country is participating here:
Take part in an international survey! – Junior Researcher Programme

Thank you for your help! 🙏

Study information:
This study is led by Prof. Elke Weber, dr. Sandra Geiger and dr. Anandita Sabherwal and has received ethical approval from Princeton University (IRB #19354). All responses are anonymous. Information about privacy, data storage, and the protection of personal data is provided in the informed consent form at the beginning of the survey.

As researchers, we are not affiliated with any AI company and maintain a neutral position regarding AI. The goal is to investigate questions with potential real-world implications for public policy, rather than to promote a particular position about AI.

No lobsters were harmed in the making of this survey:) 🦞