entropy of language and relationships

As the relationship between two people matures, the language they use get subjected to entropic forces which can endanger the relationship itself:

- Silences become more meaningful since the two parties know so much about each other. This leads to more interpretation-heavy dialogues and thereby causes an increase in the number of misinterpretations.

- Two parties sooner or later feel that the standard words in circulation are inadequate for describing the quirkinesses of their shared lives. They effortlessly invent new words whose repeated use can make events feel cuter than they objectively are. The unconscious drive for these inventions are guided not by a desire for transcendence but by a dire need for enrichment.

- As the two parties become more adept at comprehending each other, they feel greater liberty to increase the energy-efficiency of their communications. When speaking to each other, they start to use less words per sentence and pronounce words faster than usual. These compression attempts inevitably lead to more misinterpretations. 

- As the two parties spend more time with each other, the average anticipated value of their dialogues diminishes. This leads to less care and empathy which in turn lead to less "real listening" and more conflicts. 

asynchronous harem instinct

There is no doubt that we are a polygynous species.

There is considerably more variation when it comes to mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from mothers, than in Y chromosome DNA, bestowed upon subsequent generations exclusively by fathers. In other words, over the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, a relatively small number of men produced children with a relatively large number of women. As a species, we have had a greater variety of mothers than of fathers. 

David P Barash - Is God a Silverback?

Of course it is extremely barbarian to voice this fact in our modern society. We are supposed to get married to a single person and stay married to that person until death does us apart.

Despite being suppressed, the harem instinct is nevertheless alive with us. But it manifests itself in an asynchronous form via a proliferation of step brothers and sisters from successive marriages.

cahillik ve güven

Başkasına olan güveniniz karşınızdaki kişinin geçmişte yediği bokların yüzde kaçını bildiğinizle doğru orantılıdır. Bu yüzden iş dünyasında babalar oğullarına başkalarının oğullarından daha az güvenir.

Öz güven ise kendinizle ilgili cahilliklere dayanır. Bu yüzden olağanüstü başarılara hep sektör-dışı iş adamları imza atmıştır.

Kısaca her tür güven bir tür cahilliğe dayanır. 

güven problemi

Güven problemi olan insanlar şüpheciliklerinden ötürü yırtıcı, garantici ve bencil bir tavır takınırlar. Böylece iş dünyasındaki partnerliklerin yolda parçalanma riskini artırırlar. Parçalanma anında ise "Ben size demiştim." sözünü yapıştırırlar ve güven problemleri daha da kötüleşir.

Toplumlar da benzer bir girdaptan ötürü dağılabilirler. Mesela Türkiye'de Silikon Vadisi'ne benzer bir ekosistemin yaratılamamasının en önemli sebebi güven ve paylaşımcılık eksikliğidir.

against small doses

Constant stream of small doses of anything is not only addictive but depletive as well.

Social media provides small doses of your friends and family members, and thereby gives you a false sense of connectivity. The sense of missing someone never really builds up. You end up meeting up a lot less often in physical life. 

Similarly, magazines and blogs inject you with small doses of natural scenes and articles. You end up not travelling to as many places and not reading as many books as before. You feel like you have seen and read enough already.

Quit all these virtual lifelines and go get a big dose of life.

Miss your friends or forget them completely. Read deeply or do not read at all. Explore places genuinely or just focus on your own habitat.

momentum of ageing

How can something so symmetrical as an age difference be played against you? Why don’t your parents try to understand you instead?

Generational gaps affect only the means through which age specific tendencies get manifested, not the tendencies themselves. Humans have not changed much after all. We still pass through the same stages of life! Since understanding involves cutting across appearances and reaching beyond manifestations, the gap between you and your parents is indeed quite symmetric.

…or is it not?

Ageing has a forward momentum. We age forwards and our exceptionally enlarged frontal lobes are enlarged for thinking forwards. So physically and cognitively we have a better grasp of our immediate future than our immediate past.

Your parents are ageing with a momentum that is directed away from you, while you are ageing with a momentum directed towards them. Although the age difference indeed stays static, this asymmetry skews the situation against you: It is fundamentally easier for you to understand your parents.

masculinized femininity

Since there is a innate need to preserve balance of power, masculine women are naturally inclined to marry feminine men. But such relationships eventually create positive feedback loops that make them even more masculine.

It is well-known that long experience in business life makes one more fierce, unforgiving and masculine. That is essentially why business women are over-represented in pole dancing lessons. They are desperately trying to restore their femininity.

My advice: Marry a man more masculine than yourself if you worry about your femininity.

forms of cruelty

There are two types of concerns when it comes to evaluating the pros and cons of an economic policy: Efficiency and equality. The former type arises more from intellectual deliberations, while the latter type stems more from emotional considerations.

All forms of cruelty are exercised in the name of either efficiency or equality. Masculine types are more ruthless about matters related to efficiency, while feminine types are more ruthless about matters related to equality.

pessimistic marriage metaphors

Plastic Band Metaphor

Marriage, by raising the cost of a defection, causes each side to be more committed to the relationship. This has the following undesirable consequence: The magnitude of what each side is willing to bear increases. If one thinks of a relationship as a plastic band, the marriage contract has the effect of augmenting the elasticity of this band. Severe fights and disagreements, which would under normal circumstances result in the resolution of the relationship, will now be tolerated by each side. In other words, because of its greater elasticity, the band can now be strained more before it breaks.


Dog Ownership Metaphor

A dog that you can safely unleash on a public space is a joy to have. You can let it roam free with the assurance that it will come back to you after a while. A dog owner, who keeps his dog always on leash, suffers from loyalty problems. He is afraid that the dog will disregard his commands, and inflict harm to others or simply run away. A marriage contract can be pictured as each side putting a leash on the other. The need to enter such a contract hints at the presence of something unhealthy about the underlying relationship.

içselleştirmek vs anlamak

"Artık onu daha iyi anlıyorum" lafı bir uydurmadır. Karşınızdaki kişiyi daha iyi anladığınızı zannetmeniz aranızda geçen aktivitelerin sayısının, uzunluğunun ve yoğunluğunun artışından ileri gelmektedir. Bu bir nevi o insana daha alıştığınız anlamına gelir.

İnsanoğlunun en zayıf yönü içselleştirdiği şeyleri daha iyi anladığını zannetmesidir.

Bu gözlem daha da genellenir ise, çoğu bilim diye sıfatlandırılmış akademik alanların aslında sadece "yeni alışılagelinenler" listeleri oldukları açıkça görülecektir. Daha iyi tanımak derivasyon yapabilmeyi gerektirir.