Conversation

Ryan Faulk's theory on the left-right divide is "CPU" vs. "ASIC" thinkers. In his analogy, lefties are like central processing units--purposeful rationalizers. Whereas people on the right are more like application-specific integrated circuits--operating on unchangeable instinct, unable to explain why they do certain actions or hold specific beliefs.

There is some truth to that in how the "CPU-brained" will demand logical explanations for things the "ASIC-brained" don't question.
>"Who is drag queen story hour hurting??"
>idk... I just think it's wrong
According to him, you can generally tell a CPU from an ASIC person by whether or not they feel it's immoral to fuck a dead chicken.
>CPU: Can you rationally justify what's wrong with it?
>ASIC: idk, it's just wrong.

I had an independent explanation that touched on that, but explained a little more with it: the left are risk-takers who seek to be on the border of acceptable behavior, regardless of where that border is.

There is benefit to having some small number of your population behave this way. Say your tribe has a sphere of acceptable foods. If everybody suddenly tries something new, there's a chance it's slow-acting poison and the whole tribe dies off. It's definitely bad to have too many risk-takers. But if nobody ever tries it, there's a chance you missed out on a highly nutritious energy source other tribes could take advantage of. There is therefore some optimum level of "people willing to push the boundary" who try and make forbidden things acceptable, because they may tap into beneficial behaviors more cautious people would miss out on.

There is evidence for fear levels and disgust responses being tied to political leaning, so "Make everything acceptable" is just currently overtaking more of the population for some reason (jews, microplastics, women voting, whatever).

It explained the early Covid responses, where the right said to be cautious of a deadly virus from China, and the left called them fearmongering racists. But then a few months in everything flipped. Disagreement with locking down the country, belief masks don't do much of anything, and distrust toward a vaccine all became right views instead of left. Maybe that's the right having more accurate assessment of threats (via a more developed amygdala), but there's clearly something major being missed.

The more I thought on it, the more an integrated explanation made sense that explains most behaviors: status insecurity. The left's terrified they might look dumb or low-class, and require constant social validation reaffirming that they're some intellectual nobility. They shun arguments from instinct or nature because such base(d) forms of thinking are for uneducated peasants.
>"You don't want to eat the bugs?"
>"You don't want to sleep in the pod?"
>"You want your walls to have color?"
>"You want your food to have taste?"
>"You want to run in a field instead of on a treadmill?"
>"You care what happens to a fetus?"
>"Can't you see how illogical these objections are?"
>"I've ascended beyond those lesser human compulsions, and think only in terms of thermodynamic efficiency."
Note that it isn't actually true. They wouldn't be happy with these things.
They only need to act like it's acceptable and pretend humans are robots to convince themselves how intelligent and better-than-you they are.

Notice the facade flips when discussing poor, starving, brown third-worlders; they suddenly appear to care a lot about human comfort and dignity. Again, they don't really. It's just switching modes from "acting smarter" to "acting more empathetic."

You even see it in pretentious art and postmodernism. The toilet in the art gallery? The solid walls of a single color? They have to act like those are works of genius and merit, because it signals "If I can recognize this talent and you can't, that means I'm more enlightened and cultured than you."

His CPU/ASIC point hits some of these behaviors, but fails at explaining many others. The best explanation I've come up with is that they're just constantly putting on acts to self-sooth their insecurities. It's a kind of inward-directed signalling theory. A philosophy of cope.

RT: https://poa.st/objects/e9178338-ed55-4037-ad62-17db13ebd77b

Public

Notices

Feeds