Reciprocity

This is a follow-up to a previous post, In My Misanthropy Era.

In 2025, after getting my intellectual rocks off largely at hardcore rationality meetups for the entirety of the 2020s, I went to a casual philosophy meetup and it ~turned me evil. I wrote a post about this experience, because I thought it was interesting how a thoughtfully facilitated, pleasantly intellectual night out for most well-adjusted people was somehow my own personal hell. Also, that was objectively kind of a funny thing to have happened to me.

I was pleased with the final essay, so I crossposted it to LessWrong on a whim, where it promptly racked up a hundred comments and a bunch of discourse.

The comments were great! They were like dowsing rods, if dowsing rods were real and pointed you towards only incorrect conclusions. Having a dozen sincere, thoughtfully premised hypotheses for how I fucked up, all subtly wrong, was really useful for triangulating how I actually fucked up. I am genuinely grateful to all of the commenters, especially the ones who took time to write paragraphs and engage in extended back-and-forths with me. I am also grateful for Cunningham's law.

#MyRainforestPatch

In In My Misanthropy Era, I claim:

I was also very aware how much of a delicate baby I am when it comes to [epistemic/conversational norms] that I find tolerable. I am like one of those tree frog species that lives exclusively within a backyard-sized patch in the amazon rainforest, and I will be killed by like, the subtle change in microbiota if I step a toe outside it.

What the analogy leaves out is that I didn't end up in this patch by sheer chance! Actually, I worked really hard to make my home in that specific patch of rainforest — to build social circles in such a way that I am not smarter than most of the other people inside them. I did this because one of my favourite things is being intellectually outclassed. Intelligence is good, and when talking to smarter people, I get more book recommendations, more nuanced takes, more conversations that are deeper and more expansive.

At the same time, I don't want to be around smarter people and feel slavish gratitude that they give me the time of day out of, like, noblesse oblige, or like I'm drawing down some kind of credit. I want to make it worth their while to hang out with me. I want to do little enlightened exchanges that leave everyone better off.

And the wonderful thing about not being the smartest person in the room is that it provides so much optionality in how I do that. I host silly events and go on snack runs and write dumb blog posts about, like, the footwear at Lighthaven without feeling a dereliction of duty, like I'm somehow defecting from this comparative advantage thing.

Ungated Discussion Groups Are Uniquely Bad Patches for Jenns, It's True

I like being prosocial! I enjoy treating fellow humans with dignity, finding viable reciprocal trades, and then being generous when trading. But the viability of trade depends on there being something worth having on both sides. In an environment where the only thing anyone could do was discuss very introductory philosophical questions, I wasn’t enthusiastic about any of the few trades on offer.

A few things contributed to this poor dynamic. First, the event ran on rails, which meant that a broad swathe of trades was off the table. For example, I couldn't get someone to go on a tangent with me about their amazing vintage coat without feeling like I was doing something wrong.

Second, the event was structured to punish intelligence, which also barred certain trades (e.g. what were to me more exciting and generative forms of disagreement). This is a legitimate trade-off that serves important goals. Certainly it makes sense to do so in philosophy groups which aim for maximal accessibility across a broad spectrum of people.

What do I mean when I say that it punishes intelligence? I mean that people who are smarter than others must work to either hide or disavow it, in service of keeping the atmosphere inclusive towards beginners. Sure, you can put additional care into being particularly graceful and socially adept if you want to display a little more intelligence, but having to do this extra work is precisely what I'm gesturing at. This is a real midwit's trap: if you're sufficiently intelligent, this additional cost is trivial to pay. But yours truly is not enough stdevs away from the mean for it to not pinch!

So I was penned in, quite awkwardly. I wanted to be a good participant, but there were not that many ways left to do that. Actually, there was only one thing remaining that I felt like I could offer, which was to be a good conversational partner. One that actively listens, asks thoughtful questions, and lets others speak and feel seen.

But this was a terrible trade for me, because what I got in exchange were increasingly terrible takes that I hated, by people who were increasingly convinced that I liked them and valued their opinions. I challenge anyone to not turn into the joker in such circumstances.

In this framing, the contempt I felt emerged because I'd been placed in a position where the only prosocial option was a form of charity I don't find rewarding, with people I don't identify with, in exchange for nothing I value. The contempt was a signal that I needed to leave, and if I was wiser, I would have listened.

Some commenters note that the philosophy meetup is a worse place for me than a generic townie bar, and that's true. There are more kinds of trade that I can do at a bar, which means there's a higher chance that I can find one that is satisfactory. But I don't really anticipate having a particularly good time at the bar, either. I can perform the dutiful song and dance, talk to people and engage with them as full humans. But what I value — what feels scarce, what I actually spend effort and resources chasing — are environments that make me feel intellectually mediocre.

And since intelligence is broadly uncorrelated or positively correlated with other things I value from other humans (stories, skills, outrageousness, observations, humour, generosity, connection, cool outfits for me to appreciate, mouths that I can kiss, other things too I'm sure), those things are not exactly in short supply in my rainforest patch, so there's not really a good reason for me to leave and go to a bar instead.

What Fixes Me

Here's a day trip I went on recently. Zvi had put out a monthly roundup, which mentioned that he and Tyler Cowen and Scott Sumner all agreed that Resurrection is a really good movie.

So I pulled up the showtimes, and to my dismay, the last screening in the entirety of southern Ontario was that very evening, in an indie theatre in Toronto, which was a two hour train ride away. I texted J, a local rat who is frequently down for last-minute hangouts, and she agreed to meet me at the station.

Because the train does not come that often, I ended up arriving three hours before the show, and we had some time to wander around the area.

We came across the newly opened National Portrait Gallery of Canada of Bloorcourt, a cheeky little gallery, and popped in. Amongst other good works was this absolutely stunning photograph that kept rewarding me with more and more lovely detail the more I looked at it: the Canadiana, the composition, the light and shadows, the bright and lovely pops of buttercup yellow.

We chatted a bit with the curators, who regaled us with the sorry history of the attempt to get an official Canadian portrait gallery For Real, an endeavour that was killed by the Harper administration. I complimented them on the curation of their own gallery, and meant it.

Afterwards, with more time to kill, we wandered into a wine bar because it had a pretty blue door, even though neither of us were big wine drinkers.

We arrived at a slow time, so the sommelier treated us to an impromptu wine tasting of two whites and two reds, all delicious. I got to ask many dumb questions ("are orange wines made with oranges?") and learned about how the wine industry changed over the last two decades from several different factors — climate change, increased demand from Asia and South America, natural wine blowing up.

In the end, to celebrate our Chinese heritage, we split a bottle of icewine. IYKYK. It was better chilled, so the sommelier popped it into the fridge for us while we wandered out to Mac's Pizza for an early dinner before returning for it.

Then at last we went into the theatre and saw Resurrection, which was two hours of one beautiful shot after another. It was also, frankly, quite challenging to piece together what was happening in the film, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just because we were wine drunk for the first hour. After, we spent our subway ride to Union Station trying to figure out the plot of what we'd just watched, and did not get much closer to understanding by the end of it.

Then I went home, which took me until one in the morning because intercity transit SUCKS, but I didn't regret a single moment of the day, nor a single conversation. I left my rainforest patch, and of course it chafed a little, but I was glad to have done it. I came home richer.

1. Sadly, it also subjects me to more incredibly painful drive-by puns in conversation, but I suppose no rainforest patch is perfect.
2. I kind of had a sense of "there but for the grace of god" wrt not being in the mom's position in this post. Somehow the mom did not turn into the Joker, which I suppose is existence proof that it can be done by the sufficiently virtuous.
3. I mean I guess there are not that many hot single lesbians inside it. But 1) that's, tragically, a worldwide shortage and 2) we might still be doing better than most patches due to the relative abundance of catgirls?
4. ...Yes, this happened like nine months ago, before I moved to Toronto. I sware I've done more patch outings since then; it's just that this blog post has been stuck in the drafts for eight months. You know how it is :')
5. I didn't notice the yellow until J pointed it out. Going to look at art with friends is very good