What I Learned in 2025

What I learned in 2025 I learned how to love. I learned how to be vulnerable. I learned how to feel emotions better. I learned that if you show yourself to other people, be it strangers, new friends, or old, deep, friends, mostly nothing bad happens. I’m of the belief now that there’s value in emotional repression, particularly with regards to work, particularly with regards to work in a capitalist economy, particularly with regards to trading, but that this comes at a cost to one’s personal life, especially in matters of love. I changed my mind on the values of belief, faith, positive thinking, and positive psychology. This can be cashed out in “rational terms” in terms of self-fulfilling prophecies, instrumental beliefs, the attractiveness of confidence, and so on. There are sound theoretical reasons behind this, and it’s also something you can observe empirically: that people who believe that they can do things can do things; that agency is indeed, (as the annoying San Franciscans have been saying for the past few years), very powerful and in some sense “not that hard”, but it requires believing in oneself; that people who think they don’t have agency in fact do not have agency; that much of the generational despair of Gen Z’ers comes from the (self-limiting) belief that they don’t have agency; that a big part of the cause of homelessness is the belief that one doesn’t have agency (c.f. Chris Arnade); that the cultural narrative over the past years about how systems has been extremely damaging. In other words, people need to believe that they have power over their own life. Blaming the system for one’s personal problems is counterproductive. Of course, it’s true in some sense that the system IS the reason for your problems. But it’s also true that you’re responsible for your own problems. Both are true. Different lenses, different layers of abstraction. See also free will regarding determinism and compatibilism. The system view is usually the best when thinking about other people, while the personal responsibility is usually best when thinking about oneself. I gained confidence in the view that some of the greatest music of the past 30 years is video game music. I gained confidence that gossip is fun. I got better at talking to girls. I think I enjoy talking to girls more than guys now, on average. There’s less repression and it’s much easier to talk about interesting social things. I love gossiping with girls. I gained confidence that men and women are different. That girls love to gossip. I learned how to be attractive to girls in a non hyper masculine or alpha way. I learned how to physically escalate in romantic situations. I gained confidence that you can learn a TON just by paying close attention to a person. I learned (and changed my mind) how much people wear their emotions, in their face, posture, gait, basically everything; for most of us (especially men), if you’re not paying attention to this, often because you’re focused on your own world or in your own head, you won’t notice this; but all it takes is a bit of effort and then it’s all quite apparent. I learned that singing is really fun. I learned that singing is great, even if you’re bad. I learned that many people really don’t have musical talent, and though I’m no genius and unexceptional among “musical’ people, I have substantial skills and understanding that most people don’t have. In other words, I learned that there is a huge gap between “musical” and “unmusical” folks. I learned that I overestimated the philosophical sophistication and background of people. Many people, including many smart, thoughtful, educated, intellectual people, have very little philosophical background. [This has implications on explaining something meta going on with orthogonality thesis and AI safety. These are questions that have intrinsic philosophical problems, but basically everyone in AI safety doesn’t get this.] I learned that I overestimated smart people’s applied theory of mind. People typical mind really hard. This is especially bad when the person is non-neurotypical and fails to recognize that other people are importantly significantly different from them! This typical mind is usually subconscious though it comes up consciously much more often than I would expect! Specific cases: A. An anxious person thinks everyone is basically anxious. B. An autistic person denies that other people understand social things that they don’t. C. A person non-neurotypical in manner X says they don’t understand how normal-X people work, and thinks this makes them superior to normal-X people rather than seeing that this is a flaw in their world-model. (This one’s a pet peeve of mine!). I gained confidence in my erudition. I learned that I overestimated the musicalness of the average person, in great part due to selection effects, and also in part due to my lack of understanding of other people. I learned that I can be interested in other people if I want to. It’s kind of a conscious choice. I figured out how to find interesting people. And people are objectively interesting; it was a flaw in myself that I didn’t and couldn’t find people interesting (although maybe not; the counterargument is it was smart prioritization of intellectual interests.) I learned the power in being interested in people. Most saliently for socializing; I’m way better at socializing, night and day, if I’m interested in the person qua person. Also romantically very powerful. Also important for other things like understanding the world. I learned that I can change. I learned that if I set my heart to something, I can do it. I learned that I should have been writing (and, dare I say, tweeting?) for the past three years. In particular, I think I should have started a few months after the memetics revelation in Greece, which was summer 2022. I learned that I can change my relationships with people. I learned that people can learn to see me in a new light. In particular, my friends, at least those with whom I’ve put the effort, see that I’ve changed regarding openness, vulnerability, and emotions. I gained confidence that I am significantly less emotional than most people. I gained confidence in the view that almost everyone is really dumb in many ways; people, even very smart and above epistemically average people, mostly believe things based on social reasons or due to memetic forces; that the market is extremely inefficient; that true free thinkers are extremely rare; that I am a true free thinker (I cringe writing this, but I think it’s true and important). Relatedly, I learned or gained confidence in the importance of making people feel like they can speak freely in conversation. This is important for many different kinds of conversation, whether you’re just trying to have fun or whether you’re talking about emotions or whether you’re truth seeking. I learned that prompt engineering for humans is very important. I learned how to have conversations better. I learned how to prompt engineers better. I learned how to talk to people at parties. I learned how to make friends at parties. I learned the power and ability of mirroring, i.e. ​​matching your interlocutor’s body language, mood, speech patterns (cadence, register, etc.). I learned the power of register in speech. I learned how to have more fun with language and talking. I gained confidence that there are many extremely deep parallels between humans and LLMS, between how humans (and their brains) work and LLMs work. [Zvi agrees, see https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2025/12/25/ai-148-christmas-break/.] LLMs are really good at mirroring, and that’s part of what makes them so compelling to talk to. I learned how to give in to love. I am getting better at or figuring out how to love without intellectually rationalizing it. I’m figuring out the balance here, but I need more experience? I gained confidence that most people (both men and women) want something different out of romantic relationships than I do; that I genuinely don’t get jealous the way most people do. I learned that even after all my emotional and relationship work, I’m still scared of LONG term commitment. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I learned that short term commitment is great. I learned or gained confidence that my desire for other women doesn’t go away when I’m in a relationship. I’m still trying to figure this out, but I currently think it’s part of who I am in some deep sense. Relatedly, I’m also still trying to figure out “bad” what things about me can be changed without affecting the good, versus what is “part and parcel”. I learned / gained confidence that I need adventure, change, novelty in my life. I gained confidence that I’m deeply driven by learning / knowledge / the goal of understanding. I gained confidence that this is my deepest value other than some abstract “do good whatever that may be” thing. I learned that being attractive, feeling like I’m attractive, and being able to get girls is one of my deepest values, and extremely important to my happiness. I think it affects many aspects of my life. I gained confidence that I like wearing a suit. I learned that aesthetics are important and powerful. Aesthetics affect not just perception but also behavior. This is true in both a social sense (people will treat you differently based on how you look) but also in a personal sense (you will act differently based on how you look and based on the aesthetics of the environment you’re in); persona theory has helped me understand this. [Aesthetics suggest difference affordances?] I learned what hotness is: someone is hot if they’re trying to be hot. That is, someone is hot if they’re showing the world that they want to be seen as a sexual creature. Hotness, beauty, and attractiveness are distinct things. I learned that I’m hot (it seems so obvious in retrospect). I learned that I like girls who are hot. I learned that lumina probiotic works and is pretty likely super OP. This is evidence of A. inefficient market hypothesis B. medicine being bad. I learned that I need to change my writing method, because I’m way too slow. I gained confidence that I have really good thoughts about so many different things. I gained confidence that there is a type of intelligence that I’m relatively low in. What kind of intelligence is this? I wish to describe at by gesturing at what it is and what it isn’t – what is strongly correlated with and what it is mostly orthogonal to. It is STEMy, in both the math and engineering ways, it is visual intelligence or shape-rotator -y. It is NOT logical, it is not creative, it is not humanities-y. I learned or gained confidence that I am very intellectually “creative”, even compared to other smart, thoughtful intellectual people. I learned or gained confidence that I am held back by my lack of desire to build or create in the literal sense. I wonder how related these things are; part and parcel or not? I gained confidence that I would not do well working at almost any organization. I gained confidence that the legible version of me, a version you can put on a job application or a dating app or describe quickly to a stranger, greatly underpredicts the real me. This is in part due to the next point about my personal relationship with illegibility. I learned about my relationship with “personal perplexity” (“personal illegibility”?), by which I mean something like “people that are hard to describe and don’t fit well into labels”. [I’m not sure if this is the best term – I was using “illegibility” before. I use “perplexity” here more in its information theory usage, meaning “uncertainty in the value of a sample from a discrete probability distribution.”] I became more confident that I value this highly in myself, and part of my enjoyment of many aspects of myself such as motorcycling and doing drugs but not drinking come from these aspects being high perplexity. I became more confident that I find it attractive in people, both in the general sense of “attractive” – being drawn towards – and in the sexual/romantic sense. I’m thinking about the differences between starting one’s deep education in STEM and then going to humanities, versus vice versa, versus concurrent. I’m the former although there was a lot of concurrence especially with philosophy, and my feeling is that that’s the way to do it but maybe I’m just being biased towards myself, I need to think more about it. I learned what a normie is: someone who’s scared to live life in a way that breaks the “script”, and scared to have beliefs that break the script. [Perhaps we want to distinguish between two levels of normies. The strongest type of normie sticks to the script that mainstreams culture gives them. The weaker normie may eschew or veer from this script, and instead they stick to an “alternative” scripts. Think subcultures, e.g. punk, artist, etc.] I learned that I’m biased against people who don’t speak English as their first language; that I underrate their intelligence and incorrectly discount their worth as a person. I learned that people like talking about themselves. This is common folk wisdom, BUT I think there are some important caveats. More research needed, but I think something important is: this effect scales strongly with age. Children and teenagers don’t like talking about themselves that much, people in their twenties can get uncomfortable and might not like doing it at length, people in their fifties and older really love it and go on forever. I learned that many people can’t listen, and I can, although in the past I could only do so in a limited context due to my fear of vulnerability. I learned that my fear vulnerability cut both ways: I was scared of being vulnerable AND scared of seeing OTHERS be vulnerable. I learned that toxic masculinity in America is absolutely a thing, and that I was steeped in it, something I somehow failed to notice almost my entire life. I was basically entirely blind to this toxic masculinity in America phenomenon until Johan Bollen (a Belgian professor friend of the family and character) brought it up to me. This might have been the single most important conversation of my life. (I don’t know how true this is for Gen Z.) I learned that most literature academics have shockingly little to say about books, including books both they and I have read. I became more confident that most smart non-academic people have interesting things to say about books. This applies both to “intellectual” people and also to less intellectual people, although they often need more prompting. I learned that I am very good at talking about and analyzing books/media. I learned that I’m a good literary critic. I have a unique, sophisticated taste. I learned that two smart, erudite readers with similar taste can read a story or book completely differently, and get two very different things out of the work. (This applies to other media as well). I learned that two smart, socially adept people can have very different interpretations of the same social event. I learned that some people have basically nothing to say about books they read or media they consume. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on here. Tentatively, I think it involves: A. using media primarily as a form of escapism and B: a hedonic view of media in which “I liked this” or “I didn’t like this” is the ultimate form of judgement. I gained confidence that social skills can be intentionally learned as an adult; that one can get better at socializing by practicing, experimenting, paying attention to people in social situations, observing people in restaurants / bars, and… by reading! Some great topics for reading are: body language, psychology, human social behavior, status. I recommend Wikipedia! (In other words: “skill issue.”) I learned that Apple products in 2025 are amazing, in particular the Macbook and Airpods. I learned that a partially effective way to deal with insomnia is to not make a big deal about it. Just sleep when you can and act as if sleep has little bearing on most parts of your life. I learned that I don’t like to travel right now. I learned what DFW’s Octet is about. It’s about how there’s so much context required to actually understand a social situation and it’s very difficult to convey all the relevant context, whether that be in writing or speech. For example, we often tell someone about a particular social situation we were in or we were witness to, and then we ask them (and ourself) to answer questions about the situation like “was she in the wrong for doing that to him?” or “what kind of person is the guy that said that?”. Or a really good example is telling your friend about your relationship and its drama. It’s basically impossible for someone else to understand your relationship like you do, which is essential for understanding what one should actually do in a dramatic relationship situation, and thus the conclusions your friend draws, no matter how understanding and wise and caring your friend is, can be completely wrong. This is what Octet is about. And it can be generalized to how we almost never know enough about another person to be confident in our judgments about them, c.f, This Is Water. I learned that calling mental blocks and failures of perspective and self-inflicted sufferings and insecurities and so on “mental molochs” helps me see and deal with them better. I think the term “mental moloch” is really good because it’s simultaneously silly and serious. This is fitting because these issues do tend to be both silly and serious (viewed from different perspectives. And the combination of silly and serious is very useful. The silliness helps us get over the fear of confronting our problems, but pure silliness doesn’t work because it tells us that our problems aren’t real or important, which we know to be false; so you need the seriousness, too. [I’m beginning to like lowercase “moloch” as a casual noun to throw around.] I learned that people can have good chemistry and have bad sex.