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2026-05-23

Why do I even want a relationship, besides having sex?

Disclaimer

• personal
• target audience - strictly myself

Main

• The more I think about it, the more I feel like all my answers for this are fake, and having sex is the only real reason I want a relationship. You consistently have sex with someone, you end up developing a deep sense of caring about them, and that's it? [1]
• Like, I don't want to hang out with male friends very often, why would it be any different for women, if I removed the sex from the picture? This is an empirical fact not theoretical, that I don't want to hang out with most male friends very often, even people I care about.
• I can speculate all sorts of theoretical reasons as to why this is happening, but I have to trust the empirical fact more.
• I have a theoretical reason for hanging out with women which is that female-pattern psychology is different from male-pattern psychology, and hence a woman might be able to give feedback to fix blockers to effective action, that are more emotional in nature. And having someone who can repeatedly do this is great. But, I don't actually have empirical evidence here, this is just theory.
• There is this thing called Understanding All the Way Down or Karnofsky's Minimal Trust Investigations or similar that I find relevant. Don't just say "inputs from female-pattern psychology will help you solve problems in life better", but ask specifics. What specific property of female-pattern psychology will help you solve what specific problem?
• Conclusion - I need to understand female-pattern psychology better? But I don't know, I do feel like I understand some things about it at a more theoretical high level. I just don't understand the details, and the details matter?
• Random empirical fact - a lot of women on dating apps do seem to implicitly prioritise someone who is peaceful or has resolved all their internal conflicts, or has "emotionally intelligent" ways of resolving their internal conflicts, whatever that means. Many don't say it aloud but some do.
• I am quite suspicious of this term called "emotional intelligence."
  • Like, on one hand, I am convinced it is pointing at a real thing that has tremendous value.
  • On the other hand, it feels like a lot of what people are pointing at when they use the phrase "emotional intelligence" is a bunch of cached heuristics to lobotomise any part of you that wants to deviate from the social order.
  • For instance, the social order in many places is basically liberalism ultra pro max, which means everyone is entitled to their opinion, everyone is free to pick whatever goals, don't judge anyone blah blah. If you instead say that everyone else has shit opinions based on shit data and picks shit goals based on shit understanding of themselves, I'm sure there's atleast one woman out there who considers this take "emotionally unintelligent." But why? Apart from the obvious fact that saying this aloud in itself threatens the social order, what other reason is there for this to be unintelligent? Oh, important question, is it believing this statement that is unintelligent or saying it aloud so bluntly that is unintelligent?
• Yeah, I think I need to rephrase this question. What properties of female-pattern psychology are valuable to me, besides higher ability to track and resolve bullshit interpersonal drama?
  • I have no interest in resolving most interpersonal drama, or even in learning the skill of resolving interpersonal drama, I can just distance from said person and get on my way. Women on the other hand want to play some 4D chess to maintain a complex web of relationships, if they ideally could. Not that they always succeed at it, many of them fail ofcourse.
• Maybe this is a worthwhile survey question? Like, just go ask some people, imagine you couldn't have sex with your partner anymore (imagine you both have a disease or something), then what will you do together? I'm sure people will give the obvious boring reasons like hobbies and household chores and travel and whatever. Okay, no, I should specifically ask, what conversations will you have?
• Lol, looking at myself through the mind sims of some of my friends, it is true that I really am going in a more ascetic direction.
  • I increasingly don't seem to want anything from anyone.
  • Not in the "oh I want to be hyperindividualist, because dependence makes you vulnerable" sense. (That is also somewhat true, but not the primary driver here.)
  • But in the more fundamental "I actually don't need much in life right now, that I can get from anyone else. And the few things I do need, most people are clearly unable to offer them to me."
• [Deleted one section of this post, because privacy of other people]
• I want to cry.

pause

• Okay I took a pause and I'm back.
• Maybe this is actually a good thing? Maybe it is good to not need a lot of things? But then, if I don't need anything, why am I unhappy? I'm not unhappy literally right now, but I have often been unhappy.
• [Ugh sorry, having to delete more stuff, it is all connected with privacy of other people]
• Why is there so much chaos in the world? ugh. so much chaos in people's minds. It's like, I open my door and walk outside, and the chaos of the world threatens to eat me alive.
• "What do you want that you don't already have?", I want to say to people.
• I know it is lowkey privileged of me to say that with > 5 years runway in the bank, but still.

more pause

• The only two years of my life I have actually been happy where when a) had close friends who made me feel seen and heard for first time ever b) was not sober for most of the time.
• How incredibly fucking painful was Reality itself, that the only years I was truly happy in life was when I was drowning myself with substances? Holy Fucking Shit.

death

• I don't know, I visualise some of these Disney movies, like maybe the villain in doctor strange, or the dragon hordes in how to train your dragon, or the god-like figure in one of those Miyazaki films. Just, imagine a being with a gravitational vortex at the edge of spacetime, a being you cannot pass because it lies at the very edge of the universe, pulling everything in its path. The God of Death, so to speak. (Goddess of Death sounds cooler in terms of pronounciation, but I am definitely imagining a male figure here)
• WHAT WAS IT FOR? (the voice thunders)
• What was all of this for?
• Part of me wants to just pack up my things and go meditate in a forest about the fact that I might soon die.
• I obviously can't do that, I have stay here and fight. But it is fun to imagine.
• I'm sure even if I did try this experiment I will get bored in a few days.

[1] I know having kids is another (obvious) reason to have a relationship. But I don't plan to have kids anytime soon anyway, so not talking about it here.

Whispering Death

• haha I remember the dragon's name
• and also the wind sounds I used in the youtube clip I made
• "Smite Them with the Fury of a Thousand Suns"
• This is what I want to say to those building ASI.
• I was just reading George Hotz' blog recently. I don't actually understand why people underestimate intelligence this much. I want shake people awake and say, if your clone ran 100x faster than you, you would worship him as you would a God. If even 10 years spent on the same goal is enough to shape human history, what would you do with 100 years? What about a 1000 years? You would obviously transcend the powers that all mythologies written so far have historically ascribed to various gods. Your creations will be more complicated and more surprising than those described in any scriptures.
• I don't know, I wish I had more free time to read really old books. Like, it is funny how big a revelation probability and statistics was considered back then and how dead obvious it is now. Or newton spending so much time writing about christianity. The old political books are actually the less surprising books. Some things never change.
• I bring up historical books because they allow you to see why culture in different times was different in many ways, yet artificial fucking superintelligence could shatter everything. Imagine taking a shovel and digging Newton out of his grave and performing an exhorcism to wake him up then scream in his ear. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
• Dumb fuck species, man. I start reading history hoping to find that people were different or maybe even more wise in some narrow ways as compared to today. But in truth, they were the same blundering idiots that we are now. The same blundering idiots.

Should I make art?

• I don't actually have to talk to people to make art. Important point.
• I gave up on all the political stuff because I realised I hate talking to people. But that doesn't mean I can't make art.
• I wish artists had more political power. But audience is stupid and just wants more hedonism. More sex and more drugs, and more art referring to said sex and drugs. I'm sure there are niche audiences that are better than this, maybe I should search for them more actively. But in any case, such artists will remain niche and will likely never get to rule the world.
• lol note to self - cold email nolan and ask him to make an ASI takeover movie that is more realistic than all the other takeover movies. update - tried searching, but this is too much work

ugh

• Forget about artificial intelligence, these fuckers underestimate human intelligence.
• Also lol lmao even this writeup eventually ended up on the topic of ASI
• Actually I wonder if even I am underestimating myself honestly. Fuck Bernie Sanders, fuck all these lame ass politicians with their lame ass agendas, even thinking of these people makes me feel degraded. Why am I playing into such a lame ass game?
• If I want to influence politics, I should become the inspiring person myself. But holy fuck, the people are retarded. I just want to take a blackboard and write "The People are Retarded" over and over for days together. If I ever made art, this is the type of art I would make lol.
• I think I will be on the safe side and not pass any public comments about Osho's video. But that is obviously what to came to mind.

2026-05-23

• I searched reddit anecdotes and in my head, it basically says I am right?
• Some additional points from reddit search
  • Women carry different energy, you usually end up "softer" with them. - My guess is this translates to "you are more unwilling to say things that hurt their feelings, and they are unwilling to say things that hurt yours." This matches my personal experience honestly, men I know default to more of advice, and women I know default to more of making someone feel seen/heard/understood/accepted/etc. Many reddit comments also mention men on average are okay with darker humour and insults (as humour) than women, which yes, also matches my experience.
  • Physical intimacy besides sex. Duh
  • Men automatically become more protective of women, and women also reciprocally appreciate this. - I agree with this too, and this also matches personal experience.
  • Women gossip more and tell more lies on average, as per one redditor. - This also matches my experience. Women are more interested in interpersonal drama, and lying is part of many strategies to keeping around people that you aren't actually close with.
  • Women have different information in their heads. - Women understand the experiences (both positive and negative) of other women way better than men, so if you are in platonic or romantic relationship with a woman you might get access to this information. Fair enough.
• Okay so if I fit this back into my earlier ontology
  • "What specific properties of female-pattern psychology will help me solve what specific problems?"
  • The properties are "better emotional listening skills" and "willingness to receive your protectiveness of them." There might be more but these are the top ones I am noticing so far.
• Okay but what does any of this have to do with value differences? My earlier notes on this topic are all about how value differences tend to break apart marriages.
  • Yeah I think it is as simple as "emotional listening is harder to do across a large value difference." Women may be better at it than men, doesn't mean it is not hard.
• Holy shit
• "How to do emotional listening across large value differences" is a skill I may want to invest in. I can't see any fundamental reason a man can't get good at this skill, I just never chose to do this.
• I am fucking excited lol, all the gears clicked into place. It's like, you build one cluster of world models here and a different cluster of world models there, and then you're like, holy shit, this is how both clusters connect.
• Okay so fitting this back into my earlier ontology
  • "which value transitions are likely to break a marriage apart?" should correlate with "which value transitions make it harder to make the other person feel emotionally seen/heard/understood?"
• Okay so now back to some more theoretical rambling on this
  • One obvious set of things that makes listening harder is when both your priorities are directly competing for some shared resource. For instance if you want to put money in cryonics and your wife wants to put money on her parents' healthcare, you can just split the money 50-50 or something, and say "you do you, I'll do me." But if there is some shared resource involved, let's say whether you live in the same city or not, you want to stay in another city but your partner wants you stay back in the same city, then these two priorities conflict.
  • Basically, Place, large amounts of Attention (aka time) and large amounts of Capital - these are the three scarce resources, invoking another world model of mine. If either partner makes large demands of the other, based on conflicting priorities, then this makes it harder to make the other person feel seen/heard/understood.
  • Apart from this, there is some stuff around "ideals"? Like, human beings are by default groupthinking idiots, but once you have crossed those maslow's hierarchy thresholds, and you are doing things for reasons besides "need minimum capital to not starve to death" and "need minimum attention from others to not starve to death mentally", then basically get to pick your own ideals. Some ideals are more in tension with each other than others.
  • In an earlier note I took this to an extreme and said, what ideals are you willing to die for and what people are you willing to die for. But even milder versions of differing ideals could make it harder to make the other person feel seen/heard/understood.
  • Note to self - Make a map of all the ideals people assign here, and then pairwise analyse which ideals make it harder or easier to make the other person feel seen/heard/understood.
• Why am I doing this so theoretically? Why can't I collect more real world data here? I need to meet more people who aren't just doing "corporate slavery" plus "half-assed hobbies" plus "half-assed or full-assed attempt at obtaining more sex."
  • I don't know, I seem stuck in some bad bubble where most people just want sex lol.
  • Ugh. Won't rant, don't wanna ruin my mood here.
• One of my ideals is clearly Power, as in bend reality to your will, how Yudkowsky defines it.
  • The typical ways of acquiring Power are to acquire a huge excess of Capital or Attention. The typical way to acquire a huge excess of Capital or Attention is to become among the best in the world at some niche skill, or niche pair of skills.
  • But there are lots of different skills that get you there, and which skill you choose to get good at, transforms how your mind works. Okay so these are also different ideals?
  • Two people who both want Power above all else, might still on a day-to-day basis be doing very different things and hence have very different ideals (sort of?) and life experience. Making both these people feel seen/heard/understood would lead to two very different experiences. Like, imagine the difference between being Patrick Collison's wife versus James Donaldson's wife. I'm sure there are similarities but also big differences, because Collison and Donaldson look at the world differently, pay attention to different parts of it, obsess over different parts of it.

note to self

• go read a couple of academic textbooks on female psychology. Not evo psych, and definitely not dating advice.

hmm

• ok if I summarise my current view of dating in very surface level terms
  • to attract women - status (have some niche group of other men or women respect you), looks (includes the appearance of physical strength, fashion etc), humour (proxies for traits like having resolved internal conflict)
    • or ofcourse use dumb hacks like lovebombing people lol
  • to keep women - resolving internal conflict, ability to make someone feel seen/heard/etc across value differences, protectiveness
• this sounds about right, seems lame but true

2026-05-26

• Am I insane or does literally everything on this list correspond with your values?
  • Status - It is very easy for me to claim high status by hanging out with people who are dumber than me or less wealthy than me or less accomplished than me in some hobby or similar. The problem is I don't want to hang out in any of those groups or claim status in any of those ways. I want to earn people's respect for things I consider valuable, not things they consider valuable. And if that can't happen, then I don't respect them or want their respect either. I would rather play the long game and have society respect me 10 years later, even if they don't respect me now.
  • Looks - Maintaining a habit of going to gym or similar requires some discipline, which is fine, I can do this. I will experiment with this next few months. Fashion I am bottlenecked on actually, I figured out one trick here which is pay someone else to buy me clothes, the problem is this then matches their fashion sense and not mine. I don't yet know what art I really want to signal, as a result of my ASI risk beliefs. This is not on my priority list at the moment, but might be in the future. I don't know lol, I like being able to just purchase a tshirt of blinkit and go wear it. I am genuinely extremely minimalist, I like that my attention is pulled in less directions, and I can have purity of vision.
  • Humour - Ability to laugh at things correlates atleast weakly with having resolved your internal conflicts and having more stable values. This is a way of doing humour from a position of strength. There is also another way of doing humour from a neediness to get others to like you. I am definitely not the latter.
  • Resolving internal conflict, having high self-esteem - literally values
  • Ability to make someone feel/seen/heard/etc across value differences - depends on values
  • Protectiveness - I think I can be highly protective of someone with very different values from me, I have empirical data here. But also, having shared values doesn't hurt.
• Okay so what are next steps for me
  • priorities - build muscle (experiment and see for few months, can't hurt), do the marriage value transition surveys, figure out internal conflicts I have in values more (more specifically - why do I hate the world so much and can I do less of this? how do I forgive people for abandoning me and abandoning themselves, when the stakes are this unimaginably high?), meet more mission-focussed people
  • not priorities - figure out my taste in fashion, try to become high status anywhere or join any group, try to be funny

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