The hedonic drive, selflessness, leftisms, and philosophy

Last night a communist joined my discord to tell me that my analysis of Marx is asinine. That analysis is that Marx is a critical theorist who was essentially asserting egalitarian ethics as supposed description. I asked the communist to elaborate and he refused, telling me to consult a very lengthy post defending the LTV further up, written by another communist. (This other communist was also upset that I had called the LTV normative. He proceeded to explain commodity exchange for thousands of words until finally saying something along the lines "wouldn't it be splendid if everyone traded commodities according to only how long they take to make?" after talking about how monopoly creates an extra cost added on to the price derived from the labor.)

I tried to ask the less wordy one some questions, and he said "aight peace Imma go watch the Dogers game." It was at this point I knew I had a live one. I had been on a kick analyzing the difference between the average phenotype and the elite, and also my own as a reference point. For lack of a better term, this was stereotypical normie behavior that I had seen a million times, and it was totally foreign to me. I had to analyze him.

I asked if I could. He was intrigued; this and the fact that a co-conspirator started engaging in small talk with him was very important. It kept him around, like light and a moth. I didn't know it yet, but we had hacked his brain chemistry just enough to get some useful insight from him.

It turns out he was a social science activist attending a top 5 university, very good at math though, and he thinks he might get a Rhodes scholarship. He was high IQ. And high status seeking. And very liberal. I call this type "Harvard smart." They'll join a Hegel reading club and get a Rhode's scholarship, but they can't see how "commodity fetishism" doesn't actually visualize anything. They can't explain commodity fetishism. If they do explain it, it takes 40,000 words and they accidentally end up arguing that it's indeed a normative statement. I asked him again to explain why he believed in Marx. He refused.

This refusal was key to the unlocking of what I believe to be the underlying logic of this phenotype, dare I say the elite phenotype given his position, views, capabilities, and aspirations (of course not every one of them makes it, and those who become professors and scholars are not the actual elites. There may be a money-lust dimension predisposing some of these types towards business, but I digress).

The contradiction inherent within this phenotype is that it is stingy with its time towards me, citing quite clearly, "I don't feel like explaining it," yet it very graciously donates its time to authority. I asked him why he went to school. Why he did his math homework. He was perplexed. I explained: the oneness behind the contradiction must be hedonism. The reason why he is overly obedient to the authorities at HYPSM yet won't do me an intellectual courtesy is because unconsciously he is weighing the hedonic outcomes of his behavior along whatever time scale his time preference specifies. He doesn't think I can punish him, so he disobeys me. The Cathedral can punish him, so he gives up tons of time so that he may have success. (Importantly, he has a good time preference, probably about 5 years if not more).

This theory made tons of his offhand comment clique. He had talked about my project, and he said he didn't see the point. Shouldn't I just focus on being successful in real life? His outright refusal to discuss mildly boring or uncomfortable topics contrasted with his willingness to make small talk was also explained. The latter was slightly positive per his hedonic function, while the former was predicted to be negative. Near the end I asked him about his belief on HBD. He had hardly considered it but he said he didn't believe in it. When asked why he overtly cited the type of people who follow it. He basically thinks they (me included) are losers, and neglected the actual truth value of it. Importantly, I think I revealed this contradiction to him, and in real time the last thing he said on the topic was that truth value and percent of losers (in vaguer language of course) who believe in something correlate positively. He then shut down and refused to consider the topic further. Shortly after, I lost him. I believe this may have been an example of status-seeking, hedonic motivated self-deception activation in real time en vitro.

I have come to believe that high hedonic drives (or perhaps low selflessness drives - perhaps these should be seen as the same thing, like hot and cold) imply status seeking behavior, which both imply self deception. I have pontificated on these latter two behaviors somewhat routinely, after having noticed that they probably have something to do with the elite. But now everything is coming together. Status seeking feel good, and those low in selflessness are going to be totally immodest, so they will seek it relentlessly. Distractions, like producing a dry scholarly work pseudonymously, will not get in their way. The more selfish/hedonic you are, the more focused you are on your own status. Both the selfishness and the drive for status produce a bad attitude towards the truth. The truth might hurt you, and accepting it would be selfless, so those truths are rejected. Importantly those are likely to be rejected via self-deception, since they may be info-hazards to the ego. For instance, the analysand kept insisting that top schools do not discriminate against conservatives, even though this is obviously untrue, as shown by loads of data. The truth is also often toxic to status, because it hurts others, so consequently those truths must be rejected as well (how much of this is by self deception is an open question for me).

More on selflessness: I believe selflessness evolved via group evolution, but occasionally, especially during "good times" (these create bad men!), it becomes adaptive in the short term to be selfish. The selfish, however, have to pay homage to the virtues of selflessness, and have to hide themselves, so consequently we get signaling a la Elephant in the Brain, and deception. It is possible that selfish people have been slowly accumulating over the last 10-20 generations. It is even possible that this simple distinction explains the left vs. right distinction in politics. Leftisms are generally self-empowerment movements and are very hedonic. What is the communist utopia? Rightisms, meanwhile, have recently been explicitly about group evolution. What is the fascist utopia? A society of evolved ubermensch, as opposed to a bunch of workers as they are now deciding what their digital bodies will look like.

In a very real sense, the truth is the domain of the selfless. What use does a status seeker ever have for naughty ideas that betray an ethic of self gratification? Both sides can enjoy technics, I suppose, but in a deep sense, the unadulterated scientific method, its praxis Positivism and its logos Mathematics, are in the domain of the selfless. This explains the ideological behavior of the guy above -- not even the communism per se, but the sloppy epistemology. The lack of visualizable statements.

I believe I'm on to something here. In general I think that deviation from the scientific method in intellectual life is always hedonic in nature, and the greater its extent, the greater the selfishness. Just today I argued with some posters on another forum about the utility of literature and philosophy -- as usual, they immediately got haughty, and their reasoning boiled down to the idea that those things feel good, and scientific research does not (yet woe is me if I compare their pastime to drugs and video games! That threatens them or something. I don't know. it's a bizarre contradiction that needs more investigation). Perhaps this makes sense of why Marx is so popular in philosophy now days.

Before leaving off, I want to share my current concept of elite vs. average phenotype:

Elite - high IQ, good time preference, low selflessness / high hedonism

Average - average IQ, meh time preference, mid selflessness/hedonism

What do you all think?