I am reading Political Justice by William Godwin. Here is a summary of his position in book 2, chapter 2, followed by my comments, criticism, and improvements.

Godwin considers the maxim "that we should love our neighbour as ourselves". He likes the sentiment, but points out men are not equally valuable. Imagine a burning building with Fenelon, the illustrious Archbishop of Cambrai, and his valet, and only time to save one person? Who would hesitate to save Fenelon? This is not an unjust decision, because Fenelon will do more good works after being saved, and make important contributions that help society. He is a more valuable person. Godwin specifically mentions two ways people can be more valuable: being further above animals (more intelligent), and being more virtuous in terms of benefitting the public good.

Godwin discusses some objections, and in each case insists on impartial justice. For example, even if I am the valet, I should prefer Fenelon be saved over myself, because he is more valuable to the world. And if the valet is my brother, my father, or my benefactor, I might be tempted to save him, but I should not. What magic is there in the pronoun "my" to change what is right? Fenelon is more valuable, and thus it is better to save him.

Another objection is that I might owe the valet a debt of gratitude. Godwin acknowledges that this gratitude is important, because it comes from some benefit the valet bestowed upon me, which shows his value. However, the valet would be equally virtuous if he had done this service for someone else, so it should make no difference that he helped me personally. What matters is how valuable each person is impartially -- without giving special status to myself. And so Fenelon should still be saved; he is owed gratitude by more people.

Next, consider that we have seen proof of the good deeds of our personal benefactor, but we are ignorant of many of the good deeds performed elsewhere. Thus we might, out of ignorance, save a person we know personally, even if in fact he is less worthy. This, Godwin says, might excuse our error, but it would not make it less of an error. The truth of which person is more virtuous and should be saved is the same even if we are ignorant of it.

Godwin does give a reason to justify helping ourselves in life. It is that helping ourselves also helps the public good: we can accomplish more good if we live a long time in mental and physical health, so it is just to put effort and resources into maintaining those.

The main idea of the chapter is to live impartially. If my neighbor needs money that I have more than I do, for a better use, then I should give it to him. His right to it is just as complete as if I owed it to him for goods purchased. There is no room in a virtuous life for personal whim or fancy, or to give our favors; we should always seek only to take actions in accordance with impartial justice.

My Commentary

First, Godwin is correct that the truth of what would be best ideally is unaffected by our ignorance. However, there is also a truth of what is the best way for people to live, which is a more interesting and useful truth. The right policies for people to live by must take into account our imperfections and ignorance; we must live in a way that works well despite our ignorance, and which can handle our mistakes. One of the ways we can minimize errors is if we each individually focus our use of resources on areas where we have the most knowledge. That means using our efforts primarily to affect our own life, our friends and family, any area of expertise we have pursued, and our vocation. This is effective because when we apply resources to those areas, we best understand which projects and causes are going to work well, and which are mistaken. And we best understand which people are virtuous, and will make best use of any aid.

This approach does not guarantee a good distribution of wealth, resources, and effort. A poor distribution could result if a great many people know a lot about unimportant things, and don't know enough about important things. What they care about is skewed; their lives and knowledge focus on less valuable or significant things than they should. If that is the case, the solution is persuasion: persuade people to devote more thought and attention and resources to the most important areas. Show them why those areas are best. Demonstrate their merits with vigor and zeal. And then those areas will receive more attention, and projects in those areas will have more resources.

Second, I appreciate Godwin's strict adherence to impartiality. He takes it very seriously, and this is a great thing. However, there is perhaps an important reason to favor ourselves. It is that people are not set in stone: they can change and improve. And this will happen most if they have an optimistic attitude, and believe in themselves. So, I want to see people support their own dreams and aspirations. Consider a sport like baseball. None of the great players started at the top. And none of them got to the top by finding the best players and saying, "You are more valuable than me. I will do anything to help you." Instead they had self-respect. They worked to improve their own skill.

Third, the idea of their existing an objective, impartial, public good, which everyone should work towards, has a flaw. The flaw is: people disagree. This is related to the earlier comments about ignorance. While there is a truth of the matter about what would be best for everyone, we don't know it. We have to work with the knowledge that exists.

This leads to the question: what is a rational and just system for resolving disagreement and deciding which ideas are correct and which people are most deserving of resources for their projects?

The important issue here is that we do not suppress unpopular ideas. No one should be under pressure to abandon their idea -- which many consider bad and wasteful -- and to instead support a popular idea most people consider best. Instead they should be cheered on for trying out a new idea which might bear fruit. Or at least fully tolerated in their disagreement with popular opinion. The only reason projects should be ended is that everyone involved changes their mind -- either because they are presented with powerful arguments, or because in pursuing the project they learn more about it and decide it's a mistake.

This still leaves us to consider how resources be distributed. We don't want everyone working on bad ideas all the time, and we don't want any more resources than necessary wasted on mistakes. We want people with good ideas to have the most influence and choice over what the next projects are. In other words, we want a self-correcting system that distributes resources to the best projects while simultaneously allowing for unpopular ones.

We have a system like that! It's called the free market, or capitalism. The way it works is: people fund their own projects using their own resources. When they fail, they have less resources to use on future projects. When they succeed, they end up with more resources for future projects.

Who succeeds or fails isn't determined by some appointed judges (who might be biased). Instead, it is determined by the entire market which makes use of knowledge distributed among many, many people. And the market is able to produce an impartial answer even if each participating individual is biased. The way the market can do this is using a very good criterion for which projects succeed or fail, and thus which project participants have more resources for future projects.

The criterion is: do people want the results? If you make something people want (goods or knowledge) the market rewards you, and if you don't, it doesn't.

The market is not perfect. It can only operate using the knowledge people have, and not based on the ultimate truth of the matter. And worse, every project contains many different ideas. The author of an excellent book might end up poor because he choose an incompetent publisher. His lack of skill at choosing a publisher has nothing to do with how good his book is, but the market lumps them together.

Fortunately, there are solutions. If he believes the book is good despite its initial failure, he can try again: the market lets people try things as many times as they want to. And if he has good reasons to believe this, he can say them, and other people who agree can help him correct the error. And this brings us to the general solution: do the wrong people and projects have a lot of resources? Educate them, and they will redistribute those resources themselves to something better. All you have to do is spread knowledge of what is best -- share the truth -- and the world will reorganize itself accordingly.

In closing, I realize the idea that people can be persuaded of good ideas over personal self-interest is controversial. However, the possibility of doing so is one of the major themes of Political Justice. So Godwin, at least, would agree with me. And if you read his book, perhaps you will too.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/healthy-marriage/MH00108

lol. the study talks about the health benefits of marriage. live longer, blah blah. correlation does not imply causation! for example:

maybe screwed up people have a harder time finding a spouse, *and* die younger. marriage and better health could really really easily be effects of an underlying cause, instead of one causing the other.

they don't even say it was a correlation study, or cite a source. they just try to say it's the scientific consensus, you can take it for granted that it is correct. that's disgraceful.

btw, you may be wondering: if they don't cite the study, or say how they reached the conclusion, then maybe it wasn't a correlation study? well, what else would it be? did they do a double blind trial where people don't know if they are married? :) what they will say they did is "take into account other factors" so that the only factor left is marriage/no-marriage. but how did they do that? they could control for people with similar diets, similar drug use, similar dangerous habits (sky diving, etc), and so on. but only the ones they think of. and have the budget for. not all possible things. no matter how many they control for, it still remains that they could have missed something subtle, and that correlation doesn't imply causation.

a lot of books start slow. even very good books. (fiction books. stories.)

Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are boring for 5-10 pages, maybe more. So is Speaker for the Dead. And not a lot happens in The Fellowship of the Ring for like 50 pages.

A lot of movies start with an action scene (or something else especially cool). like The Matrix or Transformers. then they have their first more mundane scene after the action scene gets your attention.

movies have it right. if you want an audience, give them something they'll really like as fast as possible. as fast as possible is not on page 20. you don't have to introduce all your characters before you can have a scene people like. just make something cool happen that isn't fully explained yet. then the more mundane character introducing scenes will be better! b/c they will now have the added purpose of explaining parts of the first scene.

question: what do you wish you knew at 16 before you made various important life choices?

http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=P2aIOK19Df

Not all that much, really. I'm mostly satisfied with the decisions I made up until my 3rd year of college or so. And given that a lot of the problems that began then were related to a relationship, I'm not sure that there was anything I could have known that would have made a difference.

wait, seriously? he had relationship problems and can't think of any possible advice that would have headed them off? in other words, he cannot conceive of any advice that would have persuaded him not to get into the relationship. but, he also cannot conceive of any advice that would have made the relationship turn out more pleasant. he takes it for granted that the best life both 1) has romantic relationships that hurt people and 2) cannot be improved or made safer with knowledge, skill, or good ideas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/us/18portland.html

A school is offering birth control pills to students without parental notification. Good. But they say something strange about it:

"It has been shown, over and over again, that this does not increase sexual activity," said Pat Patterson, the medical director of School-Based Health Centers.

The meaning is: it isn't bad to offer birth control, because it doesn't increase sexual activity, it only reduces the harm from the sexual activity that was going to happen anyway.

And the implication of that is: even people who lobby for distributing birth control pills in schools with full privacy ... think sexual activity is a bad thing for young people.

The "liberals" are conceding the *conservative, religious position* that sex is sinful and must be kept away from unmarried people.

It's a bit like how they largely won't defend abortion, "I personally don't like abortions". They concede the moral case to the religious right that abortions are a bad thing. They shouldn't. Abortions and sexual freedom are both great things that we should be proud of. They both give people more control over their lives. Opposing them is anti-human.

I wrote a new program for writing to my blog from the command line. I'm pleased. Now i can create, view, edit, and list posts, instead of just writing new ones. Here it is (of course I had to add a new controller to handle these requests and I changed my Post model, but here's the local part):

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require "optparse"
require "curi"
require 'tempfile'
require 'net/http'

BASE_URL = 'http://curi.us/remote/'
LOCA_BASE_URL = 'http://localhost:3000/remote/'

what = nil
id = nil
$local = false

opts = OptionParser.new
opts.on("-l", "--list") {|val| what=:list}
opts.on("-n", "--new") {|val| what=:new}
opts.on("-L", "--local") {|val| $local = true}
opts.on("-e VAL", "--edit VAL") {|val| what=:edit; id = val}
opts.on("-s VAL", "--show") {|val| what=:show; id = val}

rest = opts.parse(*ARGV)

def http_post(url, post="")
  if $local
    base_url = LOCA_BASE_URL
  else
    base_url = BASE_URL
  end
  res = Net::HTTP.post_form(URI.parse(base_url+url),
  {"user" => blog_username(), "password" => blog_password(), 'post' => post})
  res
end


def textmate(input)
  if input
    tf = Tempfile.new("textmateinput")
    File.open(tf.path, "w") {|f| f.write input.strip}
    result = `mate -w < #{tf.path}`
    File.delete(tf.path)
  else
    result = `mate -w < /dev/null`
  end
  result
end

case what
when :list
  puts http_post("list").body
when :show
  puts http_post("show_pretty/#{id}").body
when :new
  blank = http_post("blank").body
  post = textmate(blank)
  puts http_post("new", post).body
when :edit
  old = http_post("show_plain/#{id}").body
  post = textmate(old)
  puts http_post("edit/#{id}", post).body
end

The Golden Age trilogy by John C Wright is excellent science fiction. Also good are the books by Greg Egan. Both authors think about what the future could be like and put interesting technology like virtual reality and nano-tech into their books. They both consider the problems of space colonization over long distances -- even once you get there communication between colonies takes a long time at light speed. They both consider putting human minds into computers instead of flesh bodies, and moral and legal issues with cloning. They both have somewhat libertarian attitudes.

One thing that makes these books especially interesting to read is to see which issues they fall into parochial misconceptions on. And on which they see something that is hard to see and weird today. For example, both authors retain roughly the modern concept of exclusive one-to-one long term marriage (even including personal fighting). But on the other hand they can imagine a world where wanting to have a physical body is just a vestige of the past, or where people converse in different languages automatically translated in real time.

One of the issues of particular interest to me is creating copies of minds. At first glance I love the idea. I could play chess against myself. That'd be awesome. Or better, I could play team games except my whole team is copies of me. We'd be so organized and coordinated. It'd let me really test out how good my strategies are.

Egan and Wright describe characters who think copying is a serious moral issue. And they have a point. At the least it's like being a parent. You are creating a new person -- a new mind. You are responsible for helping that person get started in the world and become independent. Since a copy is already an adult (doesn't need any advice or education) that might just mean giving him enough wealth to adjust to his situation (he is used to having your life and your means of income, but for most situations he'll need to find his own, at least new work doing the same tasks) and finds his place in the world.

But they take things further. Their characters have a strong distaste for copying themselves. They want immortality, so they make *inactive* copies and store them, and only wake them up if they die. They don't want two copies to run at once. They only make exceptions for rare circumstances, like sending copies to many distant planets might qualify. But even so, one of Egan's characters in Diaspora left instructions that once one of her copies arrived at a planet with life, no more should be woken up at other locations. And some people erased their Earth-copy when going to other planets, or later committed suicide once the planet expedition was a success. And another issue is one of the ships was destroyed en route (hit space debris) and people considered this a tragedy -- the 92 awake people were killed. The rest who were inactive though felt validated in their choice not to be awake -- they avoided death.

This way of thinking is wrong.

The important thing -- what people are -- is knowledge. Spreading knowledge is good. That's what we are doing when we tell parenting ideas to new people. And that's what we are doing when we build new computers -- we are putting more knowledge into more places. Having one blueprint in one place isn't good enough. It's important to spread knowledge -- copy it even -- into many locations. This makes more areas of the universe good places -- places that create knowledge, or places at least that aid knowledge creating entities. More computers embodies more knowledge -- it doesn't matter that it's a copy. It's good. Now more people can use it. More planets can have computers if we build more. More locations. More space stations. And it's just the same with minds: having more minds thinking makes the universe a better place, and it makes their particular locations better places. Being a copy isn't a waste at all. Even if you didn't diverge and have different ideas than the original, a copy means more people can have conversations with you/your-knowledge. That's great!

And this fear of death? If the knowledge is destroyed that's equally bad whether you were awake or not. This whole idea of sleeping through long flights is completely wasteful -- completely inhumane. It's horrible to have all these people pretending like they are in comas when they could be alive and awake and thinking. It's like they don't think life is worth living unless they have a planet to play with. Why not spend the time thinking? (And simulating virtual reality worlds -- you can have whatever kind of life you want, all by yourself -- except not by yourself because you can put people into your world -- your children -- but not children in the normal sense, you can make fully formed adult friends, just they are your responsibility). The only bad part of death besides the knowledge destruction -- including the prevention of completion of goals it had (which btw is prevented by not letting it wake up) -- is the suffering. But when you're going near light speed, even a human body wouldn't suffer from a collision -- completely obliterated far too fast to feel pain. And these minds in computers don't have pain nerves anyway. The only way they might suffer is if they got advanced warning of their death and that distressed them. But if that's even possible, and wouldn't allow for dodging the obstacle or solving the problem, then one could still choose not to hear about it. You don't have to watch where you're going. If you choose to be notified about impending death, and you are distressed by it, that's not rational. If you want to know you should be glad to have found out -- it doesn't make sense to want to be notified by then treat the notification as anything other than a gift -- a miracle of science -- you get to know in advance like you wanted, your preferences are more satisfied. It's good. If you don't like knowing then you should be happy not to find out. You might also say you want to know but you're suffering because you got unlucky with having an obstacle in your ship's way. But that's not rational either -- there is no reason to feel bad about luck. You didn't choose wrongly.

There is also confusion about identity. If I copy myself, who is me? And I think this is why, really, people don't like the idea of their copies being destroyed en-route *while awake*. They have very bad ideas about consciousness (the conventional ideas are just plain magical thinking). They see being awake and conscious as critical, and this person as them, and they find the idea a bit like dying themselves. This is absurd. Putting it to sleep is nothing but a disservice that prevents it from thinking. And it's not you in the same way two copies of a book are distinct. It just has the same knowledge as you. Which is destroyed whether it's awake or not.

The whole way of thinking about identity and "me" is bad. Just don't worry about it. If you copy your mind now there is this same knowledge in two places. (And it will become different over time, but no matter, that's just a natural consequence of creating new ideas and changing unpredictably.) So what? There isn't one that's "really" you -- it's the same knowledge. That's the whole point. It's like giving special status to the first book off the printing press for being the "original".

And you know there's a zillion copies of you and your mind already in the multiverse (see The Fabric of Reality). Knowledge is a multiversal structure. Knowledge can be the same over more universes because there is a reason it is that way -- it's not arbitrary. So you get larger structures across the multiverse. People are a major one. Vast regions of the multiverse -- vast numbers of "parallel universes" have very nearly or exactly the same *you*. Because your mind is a matter of knowledge and that gives it stability. If a conclusion is a matter of logic you are going to reach it in most universes so you end up the same in a lot of places. So, lots of copies of "you". Get used to it. What's one more? This one you can meet and talk with. But so what? More of you is good. It means more knowledge in the multiverse. Simple.

Whatever "consciousness" or "self awareness" or also "qualia" is doesn't really matter to any of this. I'm sure it matters for *something* but not to these fundamental issues. It's just a detail -- a property of certain knowledge. The important thing is still that copy yourself is like making more copies of OS X and spreading them around -- a good thing. As long as they can all find happy places in the world -- as long as you take on the responsibility of a parent -- then it's all good. The important thing to think about is in terms of knowledge.

Why is killing a cat not bad? Because it didn't have any important knowledge in it. It did have knowledge, but nothing important or useful. And easy to reproduce. Exact same logic as destroying a stapler. It has knowledge. Destroying them for no reason is a bit of a waste (but a small waste, of miniscule importance beside human preferences). But we can create more staplers no problem, and more cats. The knowledge in them is fungible.

If you destroy a *unique* person that's really bad. They can't be recreated. Knowledge is gone and will have to be completely reinvented. We don't have to think about consciousness or anything like that. If they are asleep it's the same.

And this way of thinking works with a fetus too. A fetus has no unique knowledge, so it's not important. End of story.

Once people have copies, destroying one won't be murder. It will be like destroying a stapler, except that people are more complex and have more knowledge. So it will be more like destroying billions of dollars of information. Except that copying data will be cheap so it might just be a small hassle to recreate it. It's still billions of today's dollars of information, it's just that stuff will be so cheap in the future that a billion dollars of wealth today won't matter at all. The exception will be if the copy diverged from the backup -- if it has new, unique knowledge. Also you will put the person out of action while they are restored -- a bit like forcing them to take a nap. That's bad but it's not murder. (Yes, parents shouldn't do that to their kids. Ever.) If they have some unique knowledge not yet backed up and you destroy it that's bad too -- quite unfortunate -- but it's not murder. Murder is killing a person-sized amount of knowledge. You've destroyed something a lot smaller -- like murdering a couple of someone's ideas. Bad but smaller. Such things happen by accident all the time today -- people get hit on the head and forget an idea. And sometimes it's someone else's fault -- he hit a tennis ball at you by mistake when you weren't looking -- and we don't prosecute him for murder, nor even for the few ideas/neurons he knocked out of our head. We just try to be more careful next time.

Relating to marriage as mentioned earlier, one character had a break up with his partner of many years. He doesn't know why, though, because she asked him to delete his memories of her. Now he only remembers that she made that request and he agreed. That's horrible! That's killing knowledge. It's destroying part of himself. And his "loved one" wanted him to be hurt in this way. His loved one wanted all the good times they had, when they helped each other, to be destroyed. And he agreed to it -- how messed up his he? She has no right! Doesn't she have no right? How much autonomy did he voluntarily give up?

There are a number of situations where convention prevents communication, pressures people into doing things they do not want to, and makes it too dangerous to even attempt problem solving (at least that involves the other people).

For example take politeness. The stakes are offending people if you are not polite, and being outcast from doing activities with them. Asking them their ideas about politeness itself and attempting to discuss bears exactly the same risk: being offending people and being outcast. If you don't like a particular thing expected of you, too bad. You can't expect sympathy. If you reveal your interest in acting contrary to politeness you'll be seen as dangerous to decorum and watched and held to an extra high standard. So you're pressured into acting politely to be safe, and reason never gets to play any role in the decision of how everyone should act.

This can happen even if everyone there hates politeness, because no one dares to say so. Few people dare to send off signals that they don't actually like expected decorum. If you do break a social convention then, even if everyone there agrees with you, the likely result is to be condemned. The reason is they still think everyone else prefers politeness, so they all have to ostracize you to avoid taking a risk themselves.

You might try to defend yourself. You might say, "I don't want to do that." At this point you can expect replies like, "So what? Everyone else has to." and, "What makes you so special?" Neither of those replies attempts to address what is the best way to act. They simply are thinking more like the status quo is good enough for everyone else and getting offended you'd imply it isn't good. Do you think you're better, or something horrid like that?

At a birthday party you are expected to bring presents. This is dumb. How should I know what he wants better than he does? And the presents are supposed to be surprises: you can't just ask what he wants you to get him. And you aren't allowed to bring money. Money is the best thing to give because it gives him the power to get what he wants. But convention hates it. You were supposed to think about what he would want and get a "personal" gift. If everyone gives each other money on their birthdays, the total result is everyone ends up with the same amount of money. If you have a group of 8 friends you give money 7 days a year, but one day a year you get money from 7 people. The whole thing is pointless. When it's not money, the total result is you pay money and end up with the things people got you -- mostly stuff you wouldn't have got yourself. So you end up spending your money and receive not what you really wanted. And the same happens to everyone else. What a waste! People should just (optionally) ask for some money from guests to cover the cost of the party, and that should be that.

By the way, gift certificates are good because they allow people some amount of choice of what to get. But they are also considered poor gifts for being too much like money. The whole way of deciding what gifts are best is how little choice they give to the receiver.

Getting lots of new things on one day isn't a very good idea in the first place. It makes for an unstable, inconsistent life. What we should be aiming to do is have a good life every day, with maintainable long term policies. One policy should be to buy new things when there is one that's important to us and we have enough money. To get 8 things on one day -- well they didn't all come out yesterday. Some you wanted a month ago, or longer. But you waited. That's bad to delay this great new thing that could help make your life better. And getting them all at once means you can't start using them all at once. It messes up your schedule. If we pretend they are all good gifts (maybe you told your friends what to buy you) then they are all things you'd be like, "yay! i'm gonna use this right away! i'm so excited!" but now 7 of them have to wait so your scheduling is messed up.

Besides gifts you might be expected to bring, say, food, to a social event. Everyone brings one dish. It's "fair". But it doesn't make any sense. Now all 8 people have to make trips to the grocery store, when it could have been one person buying everything at once. And some of the 8 people don't like cooking, or don't like dealing with what food to bring. And convention scoffs at that. It's really not nice. Everyone else did, you should too. If you say you don't want to, people think you are self-centered. If you offer money people will wonder why you are going to such great lengths as to offer actual money just to avoid doing "your part". (The only reason you would actually offer money is you are *not* self-centered: you're happy to contribute. You just don't want to do the particular task asked of you.) And that's weird because offering money isn't going to great lengths. You are asked to go to some amount of effort, and you consider giving money *less* effort.

If you question or criticize any of this stuff people think you are trying to get out of doing it, so others have to do the work for you. They view it as bad work that should be divided so everyone suffers equally. They don't imagine there is a positive solution where everyone is happy. They just accept there is some amount of pain required and any attempt to find a solution for yourself that doesn't hurt is just trying to cheat everyone else.

A similar sort of thing is illustrated by the game Truth or Dare. People establish arbitrary rules then force everyone in the group to follow them. You have to agree to it or you are excluded. You are pressured to agree. During the game if someone doesn't want to answer something, no one is sympathetic. You don't want to be hurt? Too bad. That's how the game works. Everyone else has to do it too. (It's totally irrelevant that other people have to. If they are being hurt that is no reason you should be too. And if they are, they also should try not to be.) Truth or Dare also destroys privacy, by the way. Nasty game. And you are expected to try to destroy as much privacy as possible and hurt people as much as possible by finding the questions they most don't want to answer, and daring them things they most don't want to do (but just mild and reasonable enough they can't refuse).

Dating has a lot of ways of suppressing communication. Like when you ask a girl out you are supposed to decide where to go. You do this with confidence and self-assuredness. You do not do this through discussion with her of where would be nice. If you say you don't know where you want to take her, you seem like not much of a man, shy and embarrassed, don't know what you want, that kind of thing.

At the end of the date you can't ask if the other person wants to kiss, or have sex. That's taboo. That "ruins the mood", surprises people, and lowers the chance of doing either. You have to figure it out without explicit communication. And also after a certain number of dates you have to have sex -- there is a lot of pressure to. If you don't, the relationship is "not going anywhere" so what's the point? Which reminds me there is always this pressure in romantic relationships to have progress, which sounds good, but what it means is to move towards getting married, and you have to get married by the end of about 2 years or a lot of advice says you never will and you quite possibly break up, quite possibly over the issue of marriage. "If you won't commit to be with me forever and ever, right now, because we're so perfect for each other, then I never want to see you again, it's completely over."

If you want to kiss and she doesn't, that isn't a matter for problem solving. Discussion will be interpreted as pressure. Asking why she doesn't want to and saying reasons you do is trying to force your want in to her pants. You aren't supposed to discuss, criticize, and agree. You just go on a few more dates and see if she changes her mind, and if not stop wasting money on her meals and dump her. (Buying meals for your date is a dumb custom. And yes I know I often write from a male perspective. Writing a gender neutral version is more effort, and for what benefit? Female readers should learn to be able to think about it from both perspectives. It's a good skill.)

During sex people are often too scared/embarrassed to say what they want (other person might very well tell people later, especially after you break up). So they do whatever's normal to protect themselves. Instead of trying to do what they actually want to. Which prevents learning and is part of why people stay so obsessed with sex throughout their lives -- they *still* haven't had much time, even when old, to actually do it freely without feeling pressured and to try whatever they want to. Also the girl (usually, much more pressure on her to be chaste, not slutty, shy, resistant, etc) will abort if you want anything unusual, so if you don't suppress any unusual ideas you are risking having sex at all (possibly even the whole relationship). You might be thinking: ewww, what sort of gross, "unusual" stuff does he mean? But look, the usual thing is narrow and limited, it'd be weird if people didn't have some other ideas about what might be nice (even if most of those are bad they still would like to try it and find out). Any time there is freedom of thought there will be unusual ideas.

At funerals you have to be sad. You can't bring a book of jokes and spend a lot of the time laughing, even if they are really funny. People will get mad. And God forbid you argue this point. Giving reasons it's OK to be happy not somber is "disrespecting the dead". Arguing with that is disrespecting the dead more. Criticizing that is also disrespecting the dead. There's just no way out of it. Respecting the dead means following the convention whether you want to or not, and whether it's fun and enjoyable or not (it isn't). Also funerals waste a lot of money. So do coffins or urns. Why seal away a dead body? It's dead. Who cares? The whole thing reeks of superstition. Oh and if you just stay home that's disrespectful too. If he was your friend you are expected to go. People will hold it against you for years if you'd rather go to your frisbee game or World of Warcraft raid.

Weddings are perhaps worse. You know that part where everyone is asked if they know any reasons these people should not be wed? That's a lie. A dirty lie. It's a trap. They just want to pretend they are doing the right thing. But if you actually say any reasons (and it's easy to think of lots) then everyone will gasp in shock and turn to you angrily. You will have disrespected the whole wedding. You won't be invited to the next one (when they remarry other people after their divorce -- what? it's common.) Everyone will be really offended. Certainly they won't actually discuss your reasons. The only things you can say there are like, "he cheated on her" or "he's a Russian spy". You can't say, "marriage is a bad idea because...". And you can't say that any other time either. People don't want to hear it. Especially not the girl you're dating. She's the person in the world you have the most reason to want to discuss that with and come to agree, and you both have good reason to want to find the truth, yet she really won't want to hear it, she'll be angry you got this far and might not even want to marry her, and the sort of generic response people might give is "I want it, it feels right for me, it makes me happy" or something kind of like that, so if you question it people will say stuff like "fine, don't get married" but if your girlfriend is saying that she'll be pissed that you don't feel the same as her about marriage like she expected. and this whole thing misses the point: what feels right to you does not determine what is true or best.

Political correctness consists in part of a bunch of things you can't say. Like it's hard to say that scientific research shows black people have lower IQs than white people. never mind whether it's true, saying so will get you shouted down as a racist.

In general, like with a group of friends, raising any kind of issue you'd like to improve or do something better is seen as causing a fuss. People are scared of problems so they want you to just go along with whatever is happening. they think that is easiest and having to think about what's best is hard and it's a lot of trouble. and whoever brings it up is blamed, even if they just point out a fact of reality. couldn't you just let it go?

Imagine there is a cake being split between 8 friends. They will probably cut it into 8 pieces. If you say, "I'd like a larger piece" that is just not done. They will say they would too, implying you should keep your desires to yourself like they have. They will think you are trying to take their cake, and deny them what they want, because that's the only possible way you'll get more. they won't see a problem that can be solved in a good way, they'll just see greed and be offended. and the result is you don't say you'd like more. and that means even if 2 or 3 people there would be happy to have a smaller piece because they don't really like it, you won't be able to have that cake from them, even though it'd be better, because you aren't allowed to ask. it's true people are allowed to give up their cake and offer it to everyone else, but they might be more happy to do that, or even be reminded to think about it, if they knew you really wanted more.

Often people offer you things, especially the host. They don't necessarily want to get it for you or give it to you. They might just feel compelled to offer and hope you'll decline. This is very unfortunate because you can't tell if it's OK to accept or not. If you really don't want to cause people to do things they don't want to, you have to always decline. So you never get to have these things even if you'd kinda of like it and the host would actually love to get it that time, because you don't know. Trying to communicate to find out the truth does not work. They will insist over and over it's no trouble at all and completely hide whether it is or not. It's expected. And you, by the way, are generally supposed to decline once or twice to "prove" you are considerate, before you accept. But be careful declining twice, the host might not offer a third time, and it's very awkward to then ask for it. How engaging in a fixed, well-known, ritual can prove anything about you is a mystery. But it's a common phenomenon. Opening doors for girls proves you are a nice guy. There's lots of stuff like that where you do an expected behavior, like buy her flowers, and this supposedly says something about your personality. And that something isn't: you're conventional. Somehow choices at thoughtless as getting her flowers (it takes no thought because it's so well known) are considered really really thoughtful. Actually I can sort of see how it makes sense. You see, a virtuous man is one with a voice in his head constantly ordering him to do what is expected of him. So, good men have to get flowers or they feel bad. So when she gets flowers she knows he is obedient to convention and is reassured.

Guys looking at babes on the street is another place where communication is suppressed. You all say they are hot. If you don't people call you gay. They are just joking. For now. But you better give in. If you persist, they'll get more serious and more mean. This is part of how people come to have the standard sexual preferences. They act as if they did due to pressure, and eventually they get used to acting that way and thinking that way and can't imagine anything else. This can happen even if they don't really like it at first, and don't see how it makes sense.