Astral Codex Ten

Amazon

129 min read

Amazon

Article

Amazon is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between March 03, 2023 and August 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Almost everyone in the Amazon died in the 1500s when European diseases swept through”; “the language of the Amazonian people he worked with”; “Deforestation in the Amazon has halved in the last few years”. It most often appears alongside China, Steven Pinker, /r/NootropicsDepot.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: March 03, 2023
  • Last seen: August 15, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Against Ice Age Civilizations
March 03, 2023 · Original source
Civilizations about as advanced as 1700s Great Britain The debate is confused by people doing a bad job clarifying which of these categories they’re proposing, or not being aware that the other categories exist. 2 and 3 aren’t straw men. Robert Schoch says the Sphinx was built in 9700 BC, which I think qualifies as 2. Graham Hancock suggests “ancient sea kings” drew the Piri Reis map which seems to depict Antarctica; anyone who can explore Antarctica must be at least close to 1700s-British level. I think there’s weak evidence against level 1 civilizations, and strong evidence against level 2 or 3 civilizations. Argument 1: Where Are The Sites? Supporters of ice age civilizations argue that sea level rose 120 meters as the Ice Age glaciers melted, flooding low-lying coasts and destroying any evidence of coastal civilizations. Areas likely above water during the Ice Age are in orange-brown (source) What would happen to the ancient civilizations we know about if sea level rose an additional 120m? We would lose Babylon, Rome, and most of Egypt. But: The Acropolis of Athens is 150m above sea level, and would be preserved for future archaeologists. Sparta (200m) and Thebes (250m) would also be fine.
Inline links: Piri Reis map, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Zmqa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05438735-e66c-40a9-85aa-2b391705a0fe_1069x644.png, source
The top 80m of the Great Pyramid would rise above the waterline, forming a little island. The part of the Pyramid above the water would still be taller than the entire Leaning Tower of Pisa. It would be pretty hard to miss! So a 120m sea level rise wouldn’t be enough to wipe out evidence of our crop of ancient civilizations, and shouldn’t be enough to wipe out evidence of a previous crop, unless they had a very different geographic distribution than ours. Argument 2: Where Are The Crops And Livestock? We can do genetic analysis of crops and livestock, compare them to wild plants and animals, and make good guesses about where and when they were domesticated. Wheat was domesticated somewhere around Karaca Dag, Turkey, around 9000 BC. Barley was domesticated somewhere around Jarmo, Iraq, around 9000 BC. Cows were domesticated somewhere around Cayonu Tepesi, Iraq, in 8500 BC (then a second time, in Pakistan, later on). Rice was domesticated in two places in China around 10,000 BC. All of these crops were invented exactly where the standard historical narrative says there were late pre-agricultural people of exactly the type who would domesticate crops. They spread at about the same rate as sedentary living in general, monuments, and other signs of complex civilization. The only known exception is Gobekli Tepe, a megalithic site in Turkey, which may very slightly predate known agriculture. But it also might very slightly post-date known agriculture, or exactly-date known agriculture (it’s just sixty miles from Karaca Dag, and it would make sense if they were the people who domesticated wheat). That one anomaly aside, there’s a very tight agriculture <—> things that seem to require agriculture coupling. So if there were Ice Age civilizations, what did they eat? It couldn’t have been any of our known crops, which post-date them. Could it have been their own crops, which were later lost? Seems unlikely. Throughout most of history, civilizations have risen and fallen, but they don’t lose agriculture! The empire divided longs to unite, the empire united longs to divide, but the Chinese never fragmented so hard that they forget how to cultivate rice and rice went extinct. Maize has survived nine millennia of rising and falling bloodthirsty Mexican empires. Almost everyone in the Amazon died in the 1500s when European diseases swept through, but they still left us manioc, squash, and chiles. Could Ice Age civilizations have thrived without domesticating any plants? We increasingly realize that agriculture isn’t all-or-nothing, there’s a spectrum from picking wild plants when you come across them to domestication, irrigation, and the full suite of agricultural technologies. It wouldn’t surprise me if some combination of early-non-domestication-involving agriculture and hunting-gathering off of very rich lands could create enough sophistication to build a Stonehenge or a Gobekli Tepe. But you’re not getting Egypt or Great Britain off of that, sorry. Argument 3: Lead Levels Thanks to commenter WTFwhatthehell for bringing this one up. Many ancient civilizations mined lead. Some of the lead made it into the atmosphere and settled down again in other places. You can measure the amount of lead in different places to see how much lead humans are mining. This isn’t perfect - the resolution is closer to continental than global - but you can check lots of different continents and get an okay reading. This paper finds lead levels started rising 1000 BC, which it links to the Phoenician expansion happening around that time. In theory, this could suggest that no ancient civilization reached a tech level where it started mining lead, ie the tech level the Phoenicians had in 1000 BC. This is in theory only, because I can’t find a clear record of anyone checking. I assume ice core scientists would have noticed if it happened, but there’s no publicly available dataset with lead levels 10,000 years before present, nor is there a paper titled “We Checked To See If There Were Anthropogenic Lead Emissions In 10,000 BC And There Definitely Weren’t”. Here is a paper that looks at lead level in human bones. They don’t do a great job explaining how lead makes it into human bones, but it seems like a mix of the kind of lead pollution that makes it to Greenland ice cores, plus personally wearing or consuming things that have touched lead. This study investigates skeletons from 12,000 BC onwards, and finds that lead levels start rising in 5,000 BC, when people developed “cupellation”, a technique for using lead to purify gold and silver (it then goes up much further between 1000 - 500 BC, probably the same spike the Greenland cores found). So this presents some very weak evidence against significantly elevated lead from 12,000 BC onward. But it doesn’t rule out small amounts of lead mining far away from the bones’ previous owners, and doesn’t rule out a civilization lasting from 15,000 - 13,000 BC. A Great Britain-level civilization would be expected to raise lead levels a lot, and this pretty strongly rules it out. I would expect an Egypt-level civilization to at least invent cupellation, but I don’t know if its lead would necessarily make it to wherever these bones came from. A Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe level civilization isn’t ruled out at all. Conclusion I think there’s pretty strong evidence against lost Egypt- or Great Britain- level Ice Age civilizations. I don’t want to rule out a lost Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe level civilization, but there’s not much positive evidence, and there’s some negative evidence. Stonehenge was built by Neolithic farmer-pastoralists, who had lots of domesticated crops and animals. Gobekli Tepe was built right next to the area where wheat was domesticated at around the same time. Existing early monuments mostly suggest a story where sedentary city- and temple- building civilizations either require domesticated agriculture, or invent it very quickly. None of this means Ice Age people didn’t have fascinating cultures of their own which were advanced in other ways - interesting laws, taboos, mythologies, customs, oral traditions. Tyler Cowen says that everything started earlier than you think, and this is what we’ve been finding about various forms of human culture too (cf. Against The Grain, The Dawn Of Everything). I just don’t expect lost Ice Age cities or giant monuments. I think Michael Shermer’s attempt to argue the same case is weak, relies on a still-controversial rejection of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, and generally leans too much on the absurdity heuristic without moving the needle one way or the other. All of the following predictions are about structures on Earth built by homo sapiens without time travel: 20% chance we ever find something demonstrating equal or greater architectural advancement to Gobekli Tepe, dating from before 11,000 BC.
Inline links: Karaca Dag, Jarmo, Iraq, Cayonu Tepesi, Iraq, in two places in China, WTFwhatthehell, This paper finds lead levels started rising 1000 BC, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rPgI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6265c4a7-a563-477c-afbc-7b3c9b8dd73e_1280x1247.jpeg, Here is a paper, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SS8H!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0b5de41a-38d8-4145-821d-5e2f6d2de228_534x215.png, Against The Grain, The Dawn Of Everything, Michael Shermer’s attempt to argue the same case, Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis
In theory, this could suggest that no ancient civilization reached a tech level where it started mining lead, ie the tech level the Phoenicians had in 1000 BC. This is in theory only, because I can’t find a clear record of anyone checking. I assume ice core scientists would have noticed if it happened, but there’s no publicly available dataset with lead levels 10,000 years before present, nor is there a paper titled “We Checked To See If There Were Anthropogenic Lead Emissions In 10,000 BC And There Definitely Weren’t”. Here is a paper that looks at lead level in human bones. They don’t do a great job explaining how lead makes it into human bones, but it seems like a mix of the kind of lead pollution that makes it to Greenland ice cores, plus personally wearing or consuming things that have touched lead. This study investigates skeletons from 12,000 BC onwards, and finds that lead levels start rising in 5,000 BC, when people developed “cupellation”, a technique for using lead to purify gold and silver (it then goes up much further between 1000 - 500 BC, probably the same spike the Greenland cores found). So this presents some very weak evidence against significantly elevated lead from 12,000 BC onward. But it doesn’t rule out small amounts of lead mining far away from the bones’ previous owners, and doesn’t rule out a civilization lasting from 15,000 - 13,000 BC. A Great Britain-level civilization would be expected to raise lead levels a lot, and this pretty strongly rules it out. I would expect an Egypt-level civilization to at least invent cupellation, but I don’t know if its lead would necessarily make it to wherever these bones came from. A Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe level civilization isn’t ruled out at all. Conclusion I think there’s pretty strong evidence against lost Egypt- or Great Britain- level Ice Age civilizations. I don’t want to rule out a lost Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe level civilization, but there’s not much positive evidence, and there’s some negative evidence. Stonehenge was built by Neolithic farmer-pastoralists, who had lots of domesticated crops and animals. Gobekli Tepe was built right next to the area where wheat was domesticated at around the same time. Existing early monuments mostly suggest a story where sedentary city- and temple- building civilizations either require domesticated agriculture, or invent it very quickly. None of this means Ice Age people didn’t have fascinating cultures of their own which were advanced in other ways - interesting laws, taboos, mythologies, customs, oral traditions. Tyler Cowen says that everything started earlier than you think, and this is what we’ve been finding about various forms of human culture too (cf. Against The Grain, The Dawn Of Everything). I just don’t expect lost Ice Age cities or giant monuments. I think Michael Shermer’s attempt to argue the same case is weak, relies on a still-controversial rejection of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, and generally leans too much on the absurdity heuristic without moving the needle one way or the other. All of the following predictions are about structures on Earth built by homo sapiens without time travel: 20% chance we ever find something demonstrating equal or greater architectural advancement to Gobekli Tepe, dating from before 11,000 BC.
Inline links: Here is a paper, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SS8H!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0b5de41a-38d8-4145-821d-5e2f6d2de228_534x215.png, Against The Grain, The Dawn Of Everything, Michael Shermer’s attempt to argue the same case, Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis
Your Book Review: How Language Began
July 19, 2024 · Original source
what one means by the statement “All natural human languages have recursion.” Everett generally takes recursion to refer to the following property of many natural languages: one can construct sentences or phrases from other sentences and phrases. For example: “The cat died.” -> “Alice said that [the cat died].” -> “Bob said that [Alice said that [the cat died.]]” In the above example, we can in principle generate infinitely many new sentences by writing “Z said X,” where X is the previous sentence and Z is some name. For clarity’s sake, one should probably distinguish between different ways to generate new sentences or phrases from old ones; Pullum mentions a few in the context of assessing Everett’s Pirahã recursion claims: Everett reports that there are no signs of no multiple coordination (It takes [skill, nerve, initiative, and courage]), complex determiners ([[[my] son’s] wife’s] family), stacked modifiers (a [nice, [cosy, [inexpensive [little cottage]]]]), or—most significant of all—reiterable clause embedding (I thought [ you already knew [that she was here ] ]). These are the primary constructions that in English permit sentences of any arbitrary finite length to be constructed, yielding the familiar argument that the set of all definable grammatical sentences in English is infinite. Regardless of the details, a generic prediction should be that there is no longest sentence in a language whose grammar is recursive. This doesn’t mean that one can say an arbitrarily long sentence in real life4. Rather, one can say that, given a member of some large set of sentences, one can always extend it. Everett takes the claim “All natural human languages have recursion.” to mean that, if there exists a natural human language without recursion, the claim is false. Or, slightly more subtly, if there exists a language which uses recursion so minimally that linguists have a hard time determining whether a corpus of linguistic data falsifies it or not, sentence-level recursion is probably not a bedrock principle of human languages. I found the following anecdote from a 2012 paper of Everett’s enlightening: Pirahã speakers reject constructed examples with recursion, as I discovered in my translation of the gospel of Mark into the language (during my days as a missionary). The Bible is full of recursive examples, such as the following, from Mark 1:3: ‘(John the Baptist) was a voice of one calling in the desert…’ I initially translated this as: ‘John, the man that put people in the water in order to clean them for God, that lived in a place like a beach with no trees and that yelled for people to obey God’. The Pirahãs rejected every attempt until I translated this as: ‘John cleaned people in the river. He lived in another jungle. The jungle was like a beach. It had no trees. He yelled to people. You want God!’ The non-recursive structure was accepted readily and elicited all sorts of questions. I subsequently realized looking through Pirahã texts that there were no clear examples involving either recursion or even embedding. Attempts to construct recursive sentences or phrases, such as ‘several big round barrels', were ultimately rejected by the Pirahãs (although initially they accepted them to be polite to me, a standard fieldwork problem that Jeanette Sakel and I discuss). He does explicitly claim (in the aforementioned paper and elsewhere) that Pirahã probably has no longest sentence, which is about the most generic anti-recursion statement one can make. Chomsky and linguists working in his tradition sometimes write in a way consistent with Everett’s conception of recursion, but sometimes don’t. For example, consider this random 2016 blogpost I found by a linguist in training: For generative linguistics the recursive function is Merge, which combines two words or phrases to form a larger structure which can then be the input for further iterations of Merge. Any expression larger than two words, then, requires recursion, regardless of whether there is embedding in that expression. For instance the noun phrase “My favourite book” requires two iterations of Merge, (Merge(favourite, book)= [Favourite book], Merge(my, [favourite book])= [my [favourite book]]) and therefore is an instance of recursion without embedding. To be clear, this usage of ‘recursion’ seems consistent with how many other Chomskyan linguists have used the term. And with all due respect to these researchers, I find this notion of recursion completely insane, because it would imply (i) any language with more than one word in its sentences has recursion, and that (ii) all sentences are necessarily constructed recursively. The first implication means that “All natural human languages have recursion.” reduces to the vacuously true claim that “All languages allow more than one word in their sentences.”5 The second idea is more interesting, because it relates to how the brain constructs sentences, but as far as I can tell this claim cannot be tested using purely observational linguistic data. One would have to do some kind of experiment to check the order in which subjects mentally construct sentences, and ideally make brain activity measurements of some sort. Aside from sometimes involving a strange notion of recursion, another feature of the Chomskyan response to Everett relates to the distinction we discussed earlier between so-called E-languages and I-languages. Consider the following exchange from a 2012 interview with Chomsky: NS: But there are critics such as Daniel Everett, who says the language of the Amazonian people he worked with seems to challenge important aspects of universal grammar. Chomsky: It can't be true. These people are genetically identical to all other humans with regard to language. They can learn Portuguese perfectly easily, just as Portuguese children do. So they have the same universal grammar the rest of us have. What Everett claims is that the resources of the language do not permit the use of the principles of universal grammar. That's conceivable. You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn't have connectives like "and" that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: they would just pick it up as they would standard English. At some point, the child would discover the resources are so limited you can't say very much, but that doesn't say anything about universal grammar, or about language acquisition. Chomsky makes claims like this elsewhere too. The argument is that, even if there were a language without a recursive grammar, this is not inconsistent with his theory, since his theory is not about E-languages like English or Spanish or Pirahã. His theory only makes claims about I-languages, or equivalently about our innate language capabilities. But this is kind of a dumb rhetorical move. Either the theory makes predictions about real languages or it doesn’t. The statement that some languages in the world are arguably recursive is not a prediction; it’s an observation, and we didn’t need the theory to make it. What does it mean for the grammar of thought languages to be recursive? How do we test this? Can we test it by doing experiments involving real linguistic data, or not? If not, are we even still talking about language? To this day, as one might expect, not everyone agrees with Everett that (i) Pirahã lacks a recursive hierarchical grammar, and that (ii) such a discovery would have any bearing at all on the truth or falsity of Chomskyan universal grammar. Given that languages can be pretty weird, among other reasons, I am inclined to side with Everett here. But where does that leave us? We do not just want to throw bombs and tell everyone their theories are wrong. Does Everett have an alternative to the Chomskyan account of what language is and where it came from? Yes, and it turns out he’s been thinking about this for a long time. How Language Began is his 2017 offering in this direction. IV. THE BOOK So what is language, anyway? Everett writes: (How Language Began, Ch. 1, pg. 15) Language is the interaction of meaning (semantics), conditions on usage (pragmatics), the physical properties of its inventory of sounds (phonetics), a grammar (syntax, or sentence structure), phonology (sound structure), morphology (word structure), discourse conversational organizational principles, information, and gestures. Language is a gestalt—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is to say, the whole is not understood merely by examining individual components. Okay, so far, so good. To the uninitiated, it looks like Everett is just listing all of the different things that are involved in language; so what? The point is that language is more than just grammar. He goes on to say this explicitly: (How Language Began, Ch. 1, pg. 16) Grammar is a tremendous aid to language and also helps in thinking. But it really is at best only a small part of any language, and its importance varies from one language to another. There are tongues that have very little grammar and others in which it is extremely complex. His paradigmatic examples here are Pirahã and Riau Indonesian, which appears to lack a hierarchical grammar, and which moreover apparently lacks a clear noun/verb distinction. You might ask: what does that even mean? I’m not 100% sure, since the linked Gil chapter appears formidable, but Wikipedia gives a pretty good example in the right direction: For example, the phrase Ayam makan (lit. 'chicken eat') can mean, in context, anything from 'the chicken is eating', to 'I ate some chicken', 'the chicken that is eating' and 'when we were eating chicken' Is “chicken” the subject of the sentence, the object of the sentence, or something else? Well, it depends on the context. What’s the purpose of language? Communication: (How Language Began, Introduction, pg. 5) Indeed, language changes lives. It builds society, expresses our highest aspirations, our basest thoughts, our emotions and our philosophies of life. But all language is ultimately at the service of human interaction. Other components of language—things like grammar and stories—are secondary to conversation. Did language emerge suddenly, as it does in Chomsky’s proposal, or gradually? Very gradually: (How Language Began, Introduction, pg. 7-8) There is a wide and deep linguistic chasm between humans and all other species. … More likely, the gap was formed by baby steps, by homeopathic changes spurred by culture. Yes, human languages are dramatically different from the communication systems of other animals, but the cognitive and cultural steps to get beyond the ‘language threshold’ were smaller than many seem to think. The evidence shows that there was no ‘sudden leap’ to the uniquely human features of language, but that our predecessor species in the genus Homo and earlier, perhaps among the australopithecines, slowly but surely progressed until humans achieved language. This slow march taken by early hominins resulted eventually in a yawning evolutionary chasm between human language and other animal communication. So far, we have a bit of a nothingburger. Language is for communication, and probably—like everything else!—emerged gradually over a long period of time. While these points are interesting as a contrast to Chomsky, they are not that surprising in and of themselves. But Everett’s work goes beyond taking the time to bolster common sense ideas on language origins. Two points he discusses at length are worth briefly exploring here. First, he offers a much more specific account of the emergence of language than Chomsky does, and draws on a mix of evidence from paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology, linguistics, and more. Second, he pretty firmly takes the Anti-Chomsky view on whether language is innate: (Preface, pg. xv) … I deny here that language is an instinct of any kind, as I also deny that it is innate, or inborn. These two points are not unrelated. Everett’s core idea is that language should properly be thought of as an invention rather than an innate human capability. You might ask: who invented it? Who shaped it? Lots of people, collaboratively, over a long time. In a word, culture. As Everett notes in the preface, “Language is the handmaiden of culture.” In any case, let’s discuss these points one at a time. First: the origins of language. There are a number of questions one might want to answer about how language began: In what order did different language-related concepts and components emerge?
Inline links: Pullum, 4, 2012 paper, blogpost, 5, 2012 interview, Riau Indonesian, lack a hierarchical grammar, lacks a clear noun/verb distinction
Philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (1,361,000 = 2.72 Chomskys) …well, okay, maybe I don’t entirely get Foucault’s number. Every humanities person must have an altar of him by their bedside or something. Chomsky has been called “arguably the most important intellectual alive today” in a New York Times review of one of his books, and was voted the world’s top public intellectual in a 2005 poll. He’s the kind of guy that gets long and gushing introductions before his talks (this one is nearly twenty minutes long). All of this is just to say: he’s kind of a big deal. This is what he looks like. According to Wikipedia, the context for this picture is: “Noam Chomsky speaks about humanity's prospects for survival” Since around 1957, Chomsky has dominated linguistics. And this matters because he is kind of a contrarian with weird ideas. Is language for communicating? No, it’s mainly for thinking: (What Kind of Creatures Are We? Ch. 1, pg. 15-16) It is, indeed, virtual dogma that the function of language is communication. ... there is by now quite significant evidence that it is simply false. Doubtless language is sometimes used for communication, as is style of dress, facial expression and stance, and much else. But fundamental properties of language design indicate that a rich tradition is correct in regarding language as essentially an instrument of thought, even if we do not go as far as Humboldt in identifying the two. Should linguists care about the interaction between culture and language? No, that’s essentially stamp-collecting: (Language and Responsibility, Ch. 2, pg. 56-57) Again, a discipline is defined in terms of its object and its results. Sociology is the study of society. As to its results, it seems that there are few things one can say about that, at least at a fairly general level. One finds observations, intuitions, impressions, some valid generalizations perhaps. All very valuable, no doubt, but not at the level of explanatory principles. … Sociolinguistics is, I suppose, a discipline that seeks to apply principles of sociology to the study of language; but I suspect that it can draw little from sociology, and I wonder whether it is likely to contribute much to it. … You can also collect butterflies and make many observations. If you like butterflies, that’s fine; but such work must not be confounded with research, which is concerned to discover explanatory principles of some depth and fails if it has not done so. Did the human capacity for language evolve gradually? No, it suddenly appeared around 50,000 years ago after a freak gene mutation: (Language and Mind, third edition, pg, 183-184) An elementary fact about the language faculty is that it is a system of discrete infinity, rare in the organic world. Any such system is based on a primitive operation that takes objects already constructed, and constructs from them a new object: in the simplest case, the set containing them. Call that operation Merge. Either Merge or some equivalent is a minimal requirement. With Merge available, we instantly have an unbounded system of hierarchically structured expressions. The simplest account of the “Great Leap Forward” in the evolution of humans would be that the brain was rewired, perhaps by some slight mutation, to provide the operation Merge … There are speculations about the evolution of language that postulate a far more complex process … A more parsimonious speculation is that they did not, and that the Great Leap was effectively instantaneous, in a single individual, who was instantly endowed with intellectual capacities far superior to those of others, transmitted to offspring and coming to predominate. At best a reasonable guess, as are all speculations about such matters, but about the simplest one imaginable, and not inconsistent with anything known or plausibly surmised. It is hard to see what account of human evolution would not assume at least this much, in one or another form. I think all of these positions are kind of insane for reasons that we will discuss later. (Side note: Chomsky’s proposal is essentially the hard takeoff theory of human intelligence.) Most consequential of all, perhaps, are the ways Chomsky has influenced (i) what linguists mainly study, and (ii) how they go about studying it. Naively, since language involves many different components—including sound production and comprehension, intonation, gestures, and context, among many others—linguists might want to study all of these. While they do study all of these, Chomsky and his followers view grammar as by far the most important component of humans’ ability to understand and produce language, and accordingly make it their central focus. Roughly speaking, grammar refers to the set of language-specific rules that determine whether a sentence is well-formed. It goes beyond specifying word order (or ‘surface structure’, in Chomskyan terminology) since one needs to know more than just where words are placed in order to modify or extend a given sentence. Consider a pair of sentences Chomsky uses to illustrate this point in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (pg. 22), his most cited work: (1a) I expected John to be examined by a specialist. (2a) I persuaded John to be examined by a specialist. The words “expected” and “persuaded” appear in the same location in each sentence, but imply different ‘latent’ grammatical structures, or ‘deep structures’. One way to show this is to observe that a particular way of rearranging the words produces a sentence with the same meaning in the first case (1a = 1b), and a different meaning in the second (2a != 2b): (1b) I expected a specialist to examine John. (2b) I persuaded a specialist to examine John. In particular, the target of persuasion is “John” in the case of (2a), and “the specialist” in the case of (2b). A full Chomskyan treatment of sentences like this would involve hierarchical tree diagrams, which permit a precise description of deep structure. You may have encountered the famous sentence: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It first appeared in Chomsky’s 1957 book Syntactic Structures, and the point is that even nonsense sentences can be grammatically well-formed, and that speakers can quickly assess the grammatical correctness of even nonsense sentences that they’ve never seen before. To Chomsky, this is one of the most important facts to be explained about language. A naive response to Chomsky’s preoccupation with grammar is: doesn’t real language involve a lot of non-grammatical stuff, like stuttering and slips of the tongue and midstream changes of mind? Of course it does, and Chomsky acknowledges this. To address this point, Chomsky has to move the goalposts in two important ways. First, he famously distinguishes competence from performance, and identifies the former as the subject of any serious theory of language: (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Ch. 1, pg. 4) The problem for the linguist, as well as for the child learning the language, is to determine from the data of performance the underlying system of rules that has been mastered by the speaker-hearer and that he puts to use in actual performance. Hence, in the technical sense, linguistic theory is mentalistic, since it is concerned with discovering a mental reality underlying actual behavior. Observed use of language or hypothesized dispositions to respond, habits, and so on, may provide evidence as to the nature of this mental reality, but surely cannot constitute the actual subject matter of linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline. Moreover, he claims that grammar captures most of what we should mean when we talk about speakers’ linguistic competence: (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Ch. 1, pg. 24) A grammar can be regarded as a theory of a language; it is descriptively adequate to the extent that it correctly describes the intrinsic competence of the idealized native speaker. Another way Chomsky moves the goalposts is by distinguishing E-languages, like English and Spanish and Japanese, from I-languages, which only exist inside human minds. He claims that serious linguistics should be primarily interested in the latter. In a semi-technical book summarizing Chomsky’s theory of language, Cook and Newson write: (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction, pg. 13) E-language linguistics … aims to collect samples of language and then describe their properties. … I-language linguistics, however, is concerned with what a speaker knows about language and where this knowledge comes from; it treats language as an internal property of the human mind rather than something external … Not only should linguistics primarily be interested in studying I-languages, but to try and study E-languages at all may be a fool’s errand: (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction, pg. 13) Chomsky claims that the history of generative linguistics shows a shift from an E-language to an I-language approach; ‘the shift of focus from the dubious concept of E-language to the significant notion of I-language was a crucial step in early generative grammar’ (Chomsky, 1991b, pg. 10). … Indeed Chomsky is extremely dismissive of E-language approaches: ‘E-language, if it exists at all, is derivative, remote from mechanisms and of no particular empirical significance, perhaps none at all’ (Chomsky, 1991b, pg. 10).1 I Am Not A Linguist (IANAL), but this redefinition of the primary concern of linguistics seems crazy to me. Is studying a language like English as it is actually used really of no particular empirical significance? And this doesn’t seem to be a one-time hyperbole, but a representative claim. Cook and Newson continue: (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction, pg. 14) The opposition between these two approaches in linguistics has been long and acrimonious, neither side conceding the other’s reality. … The E-linguist despises the I-linguist for not looking at the ‘real’ facts; the I-linguist derides the E-linguist for looking at trivia. The I-language versus E-language distinction is as much a difference of research methods and of admissible evidence as it is of long-term goals. So much for what linguists ought to study. How should they study it? The previous quote gives us a clue. Especially in the era before Chomsky (BC), linguists were more interested in description. Linguists were, at least in one view, people who could be dropped anywhere in the world, and emerge with a tentative grammar of the local language six months later. (A notion like this is mentioned early in this video.) Linguists catalog the myriad of strange details about human languages, like the fact that some languages don’t appear to have words for relative directions, or “thank you”, or “yes” and “no”. After Chomsky's domination of the field (AD), there were a lot more theorists. While you could study language by going out into the field and collecting data, this was viewed as not the only, and maybe not even the most important, way to work. Diagrams of sentences proliferated. Chomsky, arguably the most influential linguist of the past hundred years, has never done fieldwork. In summary, to Chomsky and many of the linguists working in his tradition, the scientifically interesting component of language is grammar competence, and real linguistic data only indirectly reflects it. All of this matters because the dominance of Chomskyan linguistics has had downstream effects in adjacent fields like artificial intelligence (AI), evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. Chomsky has long been an opponent of the statistical learning tradition of language modeling, essentially claiming that it does not provide insight about what humans know about languages, and that engineering success probably can’t be achieved without explicitly incorporating important mathematical facts about the underlying structure of language. Chomsky’s ideas have motivated researchers to look for a “language gene” and “language areas” of the brain. Arguably, no one has yet found either—but more on that later. How Chomsky attained this stranglehold on linguistics is an interesting sociological question, but not our main concern in the present work2. The intent here is not to pooh-pooh Chomsky, either; brilliant and hard-working people are often wrong on important questions. Consider that his academic career began in the early 1950s—over 70 years ago!—when our understanding of language, anthropology, biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, among many other things, was substantially more rudimentary. Where are we going with this? All of this is context for understanding the ideas of a certain bomb-throwing terrorist blight on the face of linguistics: Daniel Everett. How Language Began is a book he wrote about, well, what language is and how it began. Everett is the anti-Chomsky. II. THE MISSIONARY We all love classic boy-meets-girl stories. Here’s one: boy meets girl at a rock concert, they fall in love, the boy converts to Christianity for the girl, then the boy and girl move to the Amazon jungle to dedicate the rest of their lives to saving the souls of an isolated hunter-gatherer tribe. Daniel Everett is the boy in this story. The woman he married, Keren Graham, is the daughter of Christian missionaries and had formative experiences living in the Amazon jungle among the Sateré-Mawé people. At seventeen, Everett became a born-again Christian; at eighteen, he and Keren married; and over the next few years, they started a family and prepared to become full-fledged missionaries like Keren’s parents. First, Everett studied “Bible and Foreign Missions” at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. After finishing his degree in 1975, the natural next step was to train more specifically to follow in the footsteps of Keren’s parents. In 1976, he and his wife enrolled in the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) to learn translation techniques and more viscerally prepare for life in the jungle: They were sent to Chiapas, Mexico, where Keren stayed in a hut in the jungle with the couple’s children—by this time, there were three—while Everett underwent grueling field training. He endured fifty-mile hikes and survived for several days deep in the jungle with only matches, water, a rope, a machete, and a flashlight. Everett apparently had a gift for language-learning. This led SIL to invite Everett and his wife to work with the Pirahã people (pronounced pee-da-HAN), whose unusual language had thwarted all previous attempts to learn it. In 1977, Everett’s family moved to Brazil, and in December they met the Pirahã for the first time. As an SIL-affiliated missionary, Everett’s explicit goals were to (i) translate the Bible into Pirahã, and (ii) convert as many Pirahã as possible to Christianity. But Everett’s first encounter with the Pirahã was cut short for political reasons: (Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes, Ch. 1, pg. 13-14) In December of 1977 the Brazilian government ordered all missionaries to leave Indian reservations. … Leaving the village under these forced circumstances made me wonder whether I’d ever be able to return. The Summer Institute of Linguistics was concerned too and wanted to find a way around the government’s prohibition against missionaries. So SIL asked me to apply to the graduate linguistics program at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It was hoped that UNICAMP would be able to secure government authorization for me to visit the Pirahãs for a prolonged period, in spite of the general ban against missionaries. … My work at UNICAMP paid off as SIL hoped it would. Everett became a linguist proper sort of by accident, mostly as an excuse to continue his missionary work. But he ended up developing a passion for it. In 1980, he completed Aspects of the Phonology of Pirahã, his master’s thesis. He continued on to get a PhD in linguistics, also from UNICAMP, and in 1983 finished The Pirahã Language and Theory of Syntax, his dissertation. He continued studying the Pirahã and working as an academic linguist after that. In all, Everett spent around ten years of his life living with the Pirahã, spread out over some thirty-odd years. As he notes in Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: (Prologue, pg. xvii-xviii) I went to the Pirahãs when I was twenty-six years old. Now I am old enough to receive senior discounts. I gave them my youth. I have contracted malaria many times. I remember several occasions on which the Pirahãs or others threatened my life. I have carried more heavy boxes, bags, and barrels on my back through the jungle than I care to remember. But my grandchildren all know the Pirahãs. My children are who they are in part because of the Pirahãs. And I can look at some of those old men (old like me) who once threatened to kill me and recognize some of the dearest friends I have ever had—men who would now risk their lives for me. Everett interviewing some Pirahã people. (source) Everett did eventually learn their language, and it’s worth taking a step back to appreciate just how hard that task was. No Pirahã spoke Portuguese, apart from some isolated phrases they used for bartering. They didn’t speak any other language at all—just Pirahã. How do you learn another group’s language when you have no languages in common? The technical term is monolingual fieldwork. But this is just a fancy label for some combination of pointing at things, listening, crude imitation, and obsessively transcribing whatever you hear. For years. It doesn’t help that the Pirahã language seems genuinely hard to learn in a few different senses. First, it is probably conventionally difficult for Westerners to learn since it is a tonal language (two tones: high and low) with a small number of phonemes (building block sounds) and a few unusual sounds3. Second, there is no written language. Third, the language has a variety of ‘channels of discourse’, or ways of talking specialized for one or another cultural context. One of these is ‘whistle speech’; Pirahãs can communicate purely in whistles. This feature appears to be extremely useful during hunting trips: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 11, pg. 187-188) My first intense contact with whistle speech came one day when the Pirahãs had given me permission to go hunting with them. After we’d been walking for about an hour, they decided that they weren’t seeing any game because I, with my clunking canteens and machete and congenital clumsiness, was making too much noise. “You stay here and we will be back for you later.” Xaikáibaí said gently but firmly. … As I tried to make the best of my solitary confinement, I heard the men whistling to one another. They were saying, “I’ll go over there; you go that way,” and other such hunting talk. But clearly they were communicating. It was fascinating because it sounded so different from anything I had heard before. The whistle carried long and clear in the jungle. I could immediately see the importance and usefulness of this channel, which I guessed would also be much less likely to scare away game than the lower frequencies of the men’s normal voices. Fourth, important aspects of the language reflect core tenets of Pirahã culture in ways that one might not a priori expect. Everett writes extensively about the ‘immediacy of experience principle’ of Pirahã culture, which he summarizes as the idea that: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 7, pg. 132) Declarative Pirahã utterances contain only assertions related directly to the moment of speech, either experienced by the speaker or witnessed by someone alive during the lifetime of the speaker. One way the language reflects this is that the speaker must specify how they know something by affixing an appropriate suffix to verbs: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 12, pg. 196) Perhaps the most interesting suffixes, however (though these are not unique to Pirahã), are what linguists call evidentials, elements that represent the speaker’s evaluation of his or her knowledge of what he or she is saying. There are three of these in Pirahã: hearsay, observation, and deduction. To see what these do, let’s use an English example. If I ask you, “Did Joe go fishing?” you could answer, “Yes, at least I heard that he did,” or “Yes, I know because I saw him leave,” or “Yes, at least I suppose he did because his boat is gone.” The difference between English and Pirahã is that what English does with a sentence, Pirahã does with a verbal suffix. Everett also convincingly links this cultural principle to the lack of Pirahã number words and creation myths. On the latter topic, Everett recalls the following exchange: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 7, pg. 134) I sat with Kóhoi once and he asked me, after hearing about my god, “What else does your god do?” And I answered, “Well, he made the stars, and he made the earth.” Then I asked, “What do the Pirahãs say?” He answered, “Well, the Pirahãs say that these things were not made.” And all of this is to say nothing of the manifold perils of the jungle: malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, dangerous snakes, insects, morally gray river traders, and periodic downpours. If Indiana Jones braved these conditions for years, we would consider his stories rousing adventures. Everett did this while also learning one of the most unusual languages in the world. People on the bank of the Maici river. (source) By the way, he did eventually sort of achieve his goal of translating the Bible. Armed with a solid knowledge of Pirahã, he was able to translate the New Testament’s Gospel of Mark. Since the Pirahã have no written language, he provided them with a recorded version, but did not get the reaction he expected: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 17, pg. 267-268) When we returned to the village, I recorded Mark’s gospel in my own voice for the Pirahãs to listen to. I then brought in a wind-up tape recorder to play the recording, and I taught the Pirahãs how to use it, which, surprisingly enough, some of the children did. Keren and I left the village and returned a few weeks later. The people were still listening to the gospel, with children cranking the recorder. I was initially quite excited about this, until it became clear that the only part of the book that they paid attention to was the beheading of John the Baptist. “Wow, they cut off his head. Play that again!” One reaction to hearing the gospel caught Everett even more off-guard: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 17, pg. 269) "The women are afraid of Jesus. We do not want him." "Why not?" I asked, wondering what had triggered this declaration. "Because last night he came to our village and tried to have sex with our women. He chased them around the village, trying to stick his large penis into them." Kaaxaóoi proceeded to show me with his two hands held far apart how long Jesus's penis was—a good three feet. But the Pirahã had an even more serious objection to Jesus: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 17, pg. 265-266) Part of the difficulty of my task began to become clear to me. I communicated more or less correctly to the Pirahãs about my Christian beliefs. The men listening to me understood that there was a man named Hisó, Jesus, and that he wanted others to do what he told them. "The Pirahã men then asked, "Hey Dan, what does Jesus look like? Is he dark like us or light like you?" I said, "Well, I have never actually seen him. He lived a long time ago. But I do have his words." "Well, Dan, how do you have his words if you have never heard him or seen him?" They then made it clear that if I had not actually seen this guy (and not in any metaphorical sense, but literally), they weren't interested in any stories I had to tell about him. Period. This is because, as I now knew, the Pirahãs believe only what they see. Sometimes they also believe in things that someone else has told them, so long as that person has personally witnessed what he or she is reporting. In the end, Everett never converted a single Pirahã. But he did even worse than converting zero people—he lost his own faith after coming to believe that the Pirahã had a good point. After keeping this to himself for many years, he revealed his loss of faith to his family, which led to a divorce and his children breaking contact with him for a number of years afterward. But Everett losing his faith in the God of Abraham was only the beginning. Most importantly for us, he also lost his faith in the God of Linguistics—Noam Chomsky. III. THE WAR In 2005, Everett’s paper “Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language” was published in the journal Cultural Anthropology. An outsider might expect an article like this, which made a technical observation about the apparent lack of a property called ‘recursion’ in the Pirahã language, to receive an ‘oh, neat’ sort of response. Languages can be pretty different from one another, after all. Mandarin lacks plurals. Spanish sentences can omit an explicit subject. This is one of those kinds of things. But the article ignited a firestorm of controversy that follows Everett to this day. Praise for Everett and his work on recursion in Pirahã: He became a pure charlatan, although he used to be a good descriptive linguist. That is why, as far as I know, all the serious linguists who work on Brazilian languages ignore him. Noam Chomsky, MIT professor and linguist
Inline links: Michel Foucault, 2005, poll, this one, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AQ_l!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14f0e119-841f-41f2-a308-3a017794c284_1287x1600.jpeg, Wikipedia, hard takeoff, grammar, 1, this video, don’t appear to have words for relative directions, “thank you”, “yes” and “no”, long been an opponent, 2, Daniel Everett, Sateré-Mawé people, prepared, Bible and Foreign Missions, 1975, SIL, viscerally prepare, Pirahã people, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!42Ji!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c899185-e1a2-4358-ae6a-e9298f6c7cdb_1600x1002.jpeg, source, 3, number words, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yx-R!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F77975f2c-ef0f-47d7-9ed9-f22bbe04f78b_1024x768.jpeg, source, Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language
This is what he looks like. According to Wikipedia, the context for this picture is: “Noam Chomsky speaks about humanity's prospects for survival” Since around 1957, Chomsky has dominated linguistics. And this matters because he is kind of a contrarian with weird ideas. Is language for communicating? No, it’s mainly for thinking: (What Kind of Creatures Are We? Ch. 1, pg. 15-16) It is, indeed, virtual dogma that the function of language is communication. ... there is by now quite significant evidence that it is simply false. Doubtless language is sometimes used for communication, as is style of dress, facial expression and stance, and much else. But fundamental properties of language design indicate that a rich tradition is correct in regarding language as essentially an instrument of thought, even if we do not go as far as Humboldt in identifying the two. Should linguists care about the interaction between culture and language? No, that’s essentially stamp-collecting: (Language and Responsibility, Ch. 2, pg. 56-57) Again, a discipline is defined in terms of its object and its results. Sociology is the study of society. As to its results, it seems that there are few things one can say about that, at least at a fairly general level. One finds observations, intuitions, impressions, some valid generalizations perhaps. All very valuable, no doubt, but not at the level of explanatory principles. … Sociolinguistics is, I suppose, a discipline that seeks to apply principles of sociology to the study of language; but I suspect that it can draw little from sociology, and I wonder whether it is likely to contribute much to it. … You can also collect butterflies and make many observations. If you like butterflies, that’s fine; but such work must not be confounded with research, which is concerned to discover explanatory principles of some depth and fails if it has not done so. Did the human capacity for language evolve gradually? No, it suddenly appeared around 50,000 years ago after a freak gene mutation: (Language and Mind, third edition, pg, 183-184) An elementary fact about the language faculty is that it is a system of discrete infinity, rare in the organic world. Any such system is based on a primitive operation that takes objects already constructed, and constructs from them a new object: in the simplest case, the set containing them. Call that operation Merge. Either Merge or some equivalent is a minimal requirement. With Merge available, we instantly have an unbounded system of hierarchically structured expressions. The simplest account of the “Great Leap Forward” in the evolution of humans would be that the brain was rewired, perhaps by some slight mutation, to provide the operation Merge … There are speculations about the evolution of language that postulate a far more complex process … A more parsimonious speculation is that they did not, and that the Great Leap was effectively instantaneous, in a single individual, who was instantly endowed with intellectual capacities far superior to those of others, transmitted to offspring and coming to predominate. At best a reasonable guess, as are all speculations about such matters, but about the simplest one imaginable, and not inconsistent with anything known or plausibly surmised. It is hard to see what account of human evolution would not assume at least this much, in one or another form. I think all of these positions are kind of insane for reasons that we will discuss later. (Side note: Chomsky’s proposal is essentially the hard takeoff theory of human intelligence.) Most consequential of all, perhaps, are the ways Chomsky has influenced (i) what linguists mainly study, and (ii) how they go about studying it. Naively, since language involves many different components—including sound production and comprehension, intonation, gestures, and context, among many others—linguists might want to study all of these. While they do study all of these, Chomsky and his followers view grammar as by far the most important component of humans’ ability to understand and produce language, and accordingly make it their central focus. Roughly speaking, grammar refers to the set of language-specific rules that determine whether a sentence is well-formed. It goes beyond specifying word order (or ‘surface structure’, in Chomskyan terminology) since one needs to know more than just where words are placed in order to modify or extend a given sentence. Consider a pair of sentences Chomsky uses to illustrate this point in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (pg. 22), his most cited work: (1a) I expected John to be examined by a specialist. (2a) I persuaded John to be examined by a specialist. The words “expected” and “persuaded” appear in the same location in each sentence, but imply different ‘latent’ grammatical structures, or ‘deep structures’. One way to show this is to observe that a particular way of rearranging the words produces a sentence with the same meaning in the first case (1a = 1b), and a different meaning in the second (2a != 2b): (1b) I expected a specialist to examine John. (2b) I persuaded a specialist to examine John. In particular, the target of persuasion is “John” in the case of (2a), and “the specialist” in the case of (2b). A full Chomskyan treatment of sentences like this would involve hierarchical tree diagrams, which permit a precise description of deep structure. You may have encountered the famous sentence: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” It first appeared in Chomsky’s 1957 book Syntactic Structures, and the point is that even nonsense sentences can be grammatically well-formed, and that speakers can quickly assess the grammatical correctness of even nonsense sentences that they’ve never seen before. To Chomsky, this is one of the most important facts to be explained about language. A naive response to Chomsky’s preoccupation with grammar is: doesn’t real language involve a lot of non-grammatical stuff, like stuttering and slips of the tongue and midstream changes of mind? Of course it does, and Chomsky acknowledges this. To address this point, Chomsky has to move the goalposts in two important ways. First, he famously distinguishes competence from performance, and identifies the former as the subject of any serious theory of language: (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Ch. 1, pg. 4) The problem for the linguist, as well as for the child learning the language, is to determine from the data of performance the underlying system of rules that has been mastered by the speaker-hearer and that he puts to use in actual performance. Hence, in the technical sense, linguistic theory is mentalistic, since it is concerned with discovering a mental reality underlying actual behavior. Observed use of language or hypothesized dispositions to respond, habits, and so on, may provide evidence as to the nature of this mental reality, but surely cannot constitute the actual subject matter of linguistics, if this is to be a serious discipline. Moreover, he claims that grammar captures most of what we should mean when we talk about speakers’ linguistic competence: (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Ch. 1, pg. 24) A grammar can be regarded as a theory of a language; it is descriptively adequate to the extent that it correctly describes the intrinsic competence of the idealized native speaker. Another way Chomsky moves the goalposts is by distinguishing E-languages, like English and Spanish and Japanese, from I-languages, which only exist inside human minds. He claims that serious linguistics should be primarily interested in the latter. In a semi-technical book summarizing Chomsky’s theory of language, Cook and Newson write: (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction, pg. 13) E-language linguistics … aims to collect samples of language and then describe their properties. … I-language linguistics, however, is concerned with what a speaker knows about language and where this knowledge comes from; it treats language as an internal property of the human mind rather than something external … Not only should linguistics primarily be interested in studying I-languages, but to try and study E-languages at all may be a fool’s errand: (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction, pg. 13) Chomsky claims that the history of generative linguistics shows a shift from an E-language to an I-language approach; ‘the shift of focus from the dubious concept of E-language to the significant notion of I-language was a crucial step in early generative grammar’ (Chomsky, 1991b, pg. 10). … Indeed Chomsky is extremely dismissive of E-language approaches: ‘E-language, if it exists at all, is derivative, remote from mechanisms and of no particular empirical significance, perhaps none at all’ (Chomsky, 1991b, pg. 10).1 I Am Not A Linguist (IANAL), but this redefinition of the primary concern of linguistics seems crazy to me. Is studying a language like English as it is actually used really of no particular empirical significance? And this doesn’t seem to be a one-time hyperbole, but a representative claim. Cook and Newson continue: (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar: An Introduction, pg. 14) The opposition between these two approaches in linguistics has been long and acrimonious, neither side conceding the other’s reality. … The E-linguist despises the I-linguist for not looking at the ‘real’ facts; the I-linguist derides the E-linguist for looking at trivia. The I-language versus E-language distinction is as much a difference of research methods and of admissible evidence as it is of long-term goals. So much for what linguists ought to study. How should they study it? The previous quote gives us a clue. Especially in the era before Chomsky (BC), linguists were more interested in description. Linguists were, at least in one view, people who could be dropped anywhere in the world, and emerge with a tentative grammar of the local language six months later. (A notion like this is mentioned early in this video.) Linguists catalog the myriad of strange details about human languages, like the fact that some languages don’t appear to have words for relative directions, or “thank you”, or “yes” and “no”. After Chomsky's domination of the field (AD), there were a lot more theorists. While you could study language by going out into the field and collecting data, this was viewed as not the only, and maybe not even the most important, way to work. Diagrams of sentences proliferated. Chomsky, arguably the most influential linguist of the past hundred years, has never done fieldwork. In summary, to Chomsky and many of the linguists working in his tradition, the scientifically interesting component of language is grammar competence, and real linguistic data only indirectly reflects it. All of this matters because the dominance of Chomskyan linguistics has had downstream effects in adjacent fields like artificial intelligence (AI), evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. Chomsky has long been an opponent of the statistical learning tradition of language modeling, essentially claiming that it does not provide insight about what humans know about languages, and that engineering success probably can’t be achieved without explicitly incorporating important mathematical facts about the underlying structure of language. Chomsky’s ideas have motivated researchers to look for a “language gene” and “language areas” of the brain. Arguably, no one has yet found either—but more on that later. How Chomsky attained this stranglehold on linguistics is an interesting sociological question, but not our main concern in the present work2. The intent here is not to pooh-pooh Chomsky, either; brilliant and hard-working people are often wrong on important questions. Consider that his academic career began in the early 1950s—over 70 years ago!—when our understanding of language, anthropology, biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, among many other things, was substantially more rudimentary. Where are we going with this? All of this is context for understanding the ideas of a certain bomb-throwing terrorist blight on the face of linguistics: Daniel Everett. How Language Began is a book he wrote about, well, what language is and how it began. Everett is the anti-Chomsky. II. THE MISSIONARY We all love classic boy-meets-girl stories. Here’s one: boy meets girl at a rock concert, they fall in love, the boy converts to Christianity for the girl, then the boy and girl move to the Amazon jungle to dedicate the rest of their lives to saving the souls of an isolated hunter-gatherer tribe. Daniel Everett is the boy in this story. The woman he married, Keren Graham, is the daughter of Christian missionaries and had formative experiences living in the Amazon jungle among the Sateré-Mawé people. At seventeen, Everett became a born-again Christian; at eighteen, he and Keren married; and over the next few years, they started a family and prepared to become full-fledged missionaries like Keren’s parents. First, Everett studied “Bible and Foreign Missions” at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. After finishing his degree in 1975, the natural next step was to train more specifically to follow in the footsteps of Keren’s parents. In 1976, he and his wife enrolled in the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) to learn translation techniques and more viscerally prepare for life in the jungle: They were sent to Chiapas, Mexico, where Keren stayed in a hut in the jungle with the couple’s children—by this time, there were three—while Everett underwent grueling field training. He endured fifty-mile hikes and survived for several days deep in the jungle with only matches, water, a rope, a machete, and a flashlight. Everett apparently had a gift for language-learning. This led SIL to invite Everett and his wife to work with the Pirahã people (pronounced pee-da-HAN), whose unusual language had thwarted all previous attempts to learn it. In 1977, Everett’s family moved to Brazil, and in December they met the Pirahã for the first time. As an SIL-affiliated missionary, Everett’s explicit goals were to (i) translate the Bible into Pirahã, and (ii) convert as many Pirahã as possible to Christianity. But Everett’s first encounter with the Pirahã was cut short for political reasons: (Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes, Ch. 1, pg. 13-14) In December of 1977 the Brazilian government ordered all missionaries to leave Indian reservations. … Leaving the village under these forced circumstances made me wonder whether I’d ever be able to return. The Summer Institute of Linguistics was concerned too and wanted to find a way around the government’s prohibition against missionaries. So SIL asked me to apply to the graduate linguistics program at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It was hoped that UNICAMP would be able to secure government authorization for me to visit the Pirahãs for a prolonged period, in spite of the general ban against missionaries. … My work at UNICAMP paid off as SIL hoped it would. Everett became a linguist proper sort of by accident, mostly as an excuse to continue his missionary work. But he ended up developing a passion for it. In 1980, he completed Aspects of the Phonology of Pirahã, his master’s thesis. He continued on to get a PhD in linguistics, also from UNICAMP, and in 1983 finished The Pirahã Language and Theory of Syntax, his dissertation. He continued studying the Pirahã and working as an academic linguist after that. In all, Everett spent around ten years of his life living with the Pirahã, spread out over some thirty-odd years. As he notes in Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: (Prologue, pg. xvii-xviii) I went to the Pirahãs when I was twenty-six years old. Now I am old enough to receive senior discounts. I gave them my youth. I have contracted malaria many times. I remember several occasions on which the Pirahãs or others threatened my life. I have carried more heavy boxes, bags, and barrels on my back through the jungle than I care to remember. But my grandchildren all know the Pirahãs. My children are who they are in part because of the Pirahãs. And I can look at some of those old men (old like me) who once threatened to kill me and recognize some of the dearest friends I have ever had—men who would now risk their lives for me. Everett interviewing some Pirahã people. (source) Everett did eventually learn their language, and it’s worth taking a step back to appreciate just how hard that task was. No Pirahã spoke Portuguese, apart from some isolated phrases they used for bartering. They didn’t speak any other language at all—just Pirahã. How do you learn another group’s language when you have no languages in common? The technical term is monolingual fieldwork. But this is just a fancy label for some combination of pointing at things, listening, crude imitation, and obsessively transcribing whatever you hear. For years. It doesn’t help that the Pirahã language seems genuinely hard to learn in a few different senses. First, it is probably conventionally difficult for Westerners to learn since it is a tonal language (two tones: high and low) with a small number of phonemes (building block sounds) and a few unusual sounds3. Second, there is no written language. Third, the language has a variety of ‘channels of discourse’, or ways of talking specialized for one or another cultural context. One of these is ‘whistle speech’; Pirahãs can communicate purely in whistles. This feature appears to be extremely useful during hunting trips: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 11, pg. 187-188) My first intense contact with whistle speech came one day when the Pirahãs had given me permission to go hunting with them. After we’d been walking for about an hour, they decided that they weren’t seeing any game because I, with my clunking canteens and machete and congenital clumsiness, was making too much noise. “You stay here and we will be back for you later.” Xaikáibaí said gently but firmly. … As I tried to make the best of my solitary confinement, I heard the men whistling to one another. They were saying, “I’ll go over there; you go that way,” and other such hunting talk. But clearly they were communicating. It was fascinating because it sounded so different from anything I had heard before. The whistle carried long and clear in the jungle. I could immediately see the importance and usefulness of this channel, which I guessed would also be much less likely to scare away game than the lower frequencies of the men’s normal voices. Fourth, important aspects of the language reflect core tenets of Pirahã culture in ways that one might not a priori expect. Everett writes extensively about the ‘immediacy of experience principle’ of Pirahã culture, which he summarizes as the idea that: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 7, pg. 132) Declarative Pirahã utterances contain only assertions related directly to the moment of speech, either experienced by the speaker or witnessed by someone alive during the lifetime of the speaker. One way the language reflects this is that the speaker must specify how they know something by affixing an appropriate suffix to verbs: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 12, pg. 196) Perhaps the most interesting suffixes, however (though these are not unique to Pirahã), are what linguists call evidentials, elements that represent the speaker’s evaluation of his or her knowledge of what he or she is saying. There are three of these in Pirahã: hearsay, observation, and deduction. To see what these do, let’s use an English example. If I ask you, “Did Joe go fishing?” you could answer, “Yes, at least I heard that he did,” or “Yes, I know because I saw him leave,” or “Yes, at least I suppose he did because his boat is gone.” The difference between English and Pirahã is that what English does with a sentence, Pirahã does with a verbal suffix. Everett also convincingly links this cultural principle to the lack of Pirahã number words and creation myths. On the latter topic, Everett recalls the following exchange: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 7, pg. 134) I sat with Kóhoi once and he asked me, after hearing about my god, “What else does your god do?” And I answered, “Well, he made the stars, and he made the earth.” Then I asked, “What do the Pirahãs say?” He answered, “Well, the Pirahãs say that these things were not made.” And all of this is to say nothing of the manifold perils of the jungle: malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, dangerous snakes, insects, morally gray river traders, and periodic downpours. If Indiana Jones braved these conditions for years, we would consider his stories rousing adventures. Everett did this while also learning one of the most unusual languages in the world. People on the bank of the Maici river. (source) By the way, he did eventually sort of achieve his goal of translating the Bible. Armed with a solid knowledge of Pirahã, he was able to translate the New Testament’s Gospel of Mark. Since the Pirahã have no written language, he provided them with a recorded version, but did not get the reaction he expected: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 17, pg. 267-268) When we returned to the village, I recorded Mark’s gospel in my own voice for the Pirahãs to listen to. I then brought in a wind-up tape recorder to play the recording, and I taught the Pirahãs how to use it, which, surprisingly enough, some of the children did. Keren and I left the village and returned a few weeks later. The people were still listening to the gospel, with children cranking the recorder. I was initially quite excited about this, until it became clear that the only part of the book that they paid attention to was the beheading of John the Baptist. “Wow, they cut off his head. Play that again!” One reaction to hearing the gospel caught Everett even more off-guard: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 17, pg. 269) "The women are afraid of Jesus. We do not want him." "Why not?" I asked, wondering what had triggered this declaration. "Because last night he came to our village and tried to have sex with our women. He chased them around the village, trying to stick his large penis into them." Kaaxaóoi proceeded to show me with his two hands held far apart how long Jesus's penis was—a good three feet. But the Pirahã had an even more serious objection to Jesus: (Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, Ch. 17, pg. 265-266) Part of the difficulty of my task began to become clear to me. I communicated more or less correctly to the Pirahãs about my Christian beliefs. The men listening to me understood that there was a man named Hisó, Jesus, and that he wanted others to do what he told them. "The Pirahã men then asked, "Hey Dan, what does Jesus look like? Is he dark like us or light like you?" I said, "Well, I have never actually seen him. He lived a long time ago. But I do have his words." "Well, Dan, how do you have his words if you have never heard him or seen him?" They then made it clear that if I had not actually seen this guy (and not in any metaphorical sense, but literally), they weren't interested in any stories I had to tell about him. Period. This is because, as I now knew, the Pirahãs believe only what they see. Sometimes they also believe in things that someone else has told them, so long as that person has personally witnessed what he or she is reporting. In the end, Everett never converted a single Pirahã. But he did even worse than converting zero people—he lost his own faith after coming to believe that the Pirahã had a good point. After keeping this to himself for many years, he revealed his loss of faith to his family, which led to a divorce and his children breaking contact with him for a number of years afterward. But Everett losing his faith in the God of Abraham was only the beginning. Most importantly for us, he also lost his faith in the God of Linguistics—Noam Chomsky. III. THE WAR In 2005, Everett’s paper “Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language” was published in the journal Cultural Anthropology. An outsider might expect an article like this, which made a technical observation about the apparent lack of a property called ‘recursion’ in the Pirahã language, to receive an ‘oh, neat’ sort of response. Languages can be pretty different from one another, after all. Mandarin lacks plurals. Spanish sentences can omit an explicit subject. This is one of those kinds of things. But the article ignited a firestorm of controversy that follows Everett to this day. Praise for Everett and his work on recursion in Pirahã: He became a pure charlatan, although he used to be a good descriptive linguist. That is why, as far as I know, all the serious linguists who work on Brazilian languages ignore him. Noam Chomsky, MIT professor and linguist
Inline links: Wikipedia, hard takeoff, grammar, 1, this video, don’t appear to have words for relative directions, “thank you”, “yes” and “no”, long been an opponent, 2, Daniel Everett, Sateré-Mawé people, prepared, Bible and Foreign Missions, 1975, SIL, viscerally prepare, Pirahã people, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!42Ji!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c899185-e1a2-4358-ae6a-e9298f6c7cdb_1600x1002.jpeg, source, 3, number words, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yx-R!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F77975f2c-ef0f-47d7-9ed9-f22bbe04f78b_1024x768.jpeg, source, Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language
Links For February 2025
February 27, 2025 · Original source
8: Twitter user @fae_dreams asked the new generation of AI reasoning models to replicate Donald Trump’s challenge from my fictional 2024 debate: describe his policy in heroic hexameter while avoiding letters A, E, and I. Here’s my favorite: You can see more examples and comparisons of different models here (X).
Inline links: my fictional 2024 debate, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!duHX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F66648c84-13d2-4b91-976d-d9e720878dca_1370x628.png, here (X)
You can see more examples and comparisons of different models here (X).
Inline links: here (X)
You can see more examples and comparisons of different models here (X). 9: Related: is AI a better poet than famous bad poet William McGonagall? 10: Last month I linked Sam Harris’ claim that Elon Musk seemed to change into a different person around the start of the pandemic. I recently saw a Reddit thread asking Tesla employees for their opinion. Unfortunately, the best answer by an actual employee got deleted; the site says it was by a mod and not the original author, but I don’t know whether to trust it, and don’t want to repost something in its entirety if the author might have wanted it hidden. But I hope it won’t cause too much trouble to quote a few key sentences: I've personally had conversations with Elon back in 2018. He was polite, listened, and genuinely cared about both the employees and Tesla's mission. But something changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now he's no longer the role model he once was. And Desmolysium on Why Is Elon Musk So Impulsive? I think the article gets some of its psychiatry wrong (it would be bizarre and basically unprecedented for bupropion to radically change someone’s personality) but I appreciate the thoughtful analysis. And re sleep deprivation: 11: Intrinsic Perspective wants a law saying AI-generated text must be watermarked. I was most interested the article’s claim that there is now “semantic watermarking” - watermarking which operates on the level of ideas, and can’t be defeated by rephrasing an AI-generated text in your own words. I have skimmed the paper explaining this and think I vaguely understand what’s going on, but it still boggles me that this is possible. 12: Aella: How OnlyFans Took Over The World. There have been camgirl sites since forever. How did OnlyFans leap over all of its predecessors and achieve an unprecedented level of success? Aella discusses many factors, but one stands out: traditional camsites advertised the site as a whole, and then once you got to the site you chose which model you wanted to see. OnlyFans encourages models to advertise themselves - often on their own social media accounts, sometimes via scams - which “unlocks human creativity” on the problem of bringing new eyeballs to a porn site. 13: Nate Silver has 113 predictions for Trump’s second term. I’d be interested to see whether making each of these predictions 10% less confident (to account for possible gameboard-overturning AI) ends up beating Nate. 14: Sarah Constantin: What’s Behind The SynBio Bust? Three of the most promising synthetic biology companies - Gingko, Zymergen, and Amyris - all crashed between 2021 and 2023. Why? Producing chemicals in traditional factories is orders of magnitude more efficient than synthesizing them via microbes (except for the sort of large biomolecules that can’t be produced in factories). These companies had brilliant employees and cool tech, but no clear plan to get around this handicap, and used up their runway before they could figure one out. They also focused too hard on designing the microbes, and were too willing to outsource the actual manufacturing to other people without being sufficiently paranoid that those other people were doing quality control. 15: One of the more exciting psychiatric results (which I blogged about a long time ago) was the apparent finding that omega-3 supplementation could prevent high-risk people from having first break schizophrenia. A new RCT says this doesn’t replicate and cites two other recent trials showing it didn’t replicate. There’s also a new meta-analysis which says actually it does replicate, but usually failing a big RCT is a bad sign and I’m pretty skeptical. Thanks to Isaak F for the links. {ETA: Thomas Reilly says: “Although I don't believe omega-3 supplementation has any benefit in psychosis, I also don't think this new trial should shift your opinion much, given the total sample size was n=135 and the total number of transitions to psychosis was n=8.”] 16: Claim that predictions of global warming magnitude are gradually going down thanks to successful pledges/action: Source is CipherNews (h/t Stefan Schubert) apparently citing Climate Action Tracker, but I get the impression that this is just some people eyeballing the size of pledges and not any more sophisticated forecasting. I don’t know how to square this with the claims that such and such a thing (summer temperature, sea ice, etc) is much worse than anyone expected. 17: I don’t know anything about the Lucy Letby case, but all of my smart friends who have been right about this kind of thing before say she’s innocent. 18: A reader asks House of Strauss (edgy sports Substack) whether the vibe shift away from political correctness threatens the edgy Substack business model - as the power of orthodoxy declines, can you still get rich and famous as a brave anti-orthodoxy critic? His answer: nothing that can happen from here is as bad as the Twitter/X link deboost (which made attracting attention harder for everyone). I mostly agree: I think discoverability has suffered, people who are already famous will be able to stay famous without too much extra effort, and everyone else will have to explore new options. 19: Spectator: Could AI Lead To A Revival Of Decorative Beauty? Profiles Not Quite Past, a startup using AI and fancy printing to make customized Delft tiles. It’s a good idea and the tiles are very pretty, but the tiles are sort of a best possible case (a pretty, traditional object that can have a customized 2D image and be mass-printed). I think most forms of lost decorative beauty aren’t bottlenecked by ability to generate 2D images of the type image models are good at, and so will have to wait. 20: Some friends including Kelsey Piper wrote an emergency PEPFAR Report, collecting evidence for why PEPFAR is good/effective/important and deserves to be kept. Some key points: PEPFAR has saved between 7.5 and 30 million lives, at a cost between $1,500 and $10,000 per life saved. The US government is willing to spend at least a thousand times this much to save an American life.
Inline links: here (X), is AI a better poet than famous bad poet William McGonagall, Sam Harris’ claim, Why Is Elon Musk So Impulsive?, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1zjD!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fef2308ba-2204-4232-ba14-eeef99c637a9_670x752.png, wants a law saying AI-generated text must be watermarked, skimmed the paper explaining this, How OnlyFans Took Over The World, 113 predictions for Trump’s second term, What’s Behind The SynBio Bust?, this doesn’t replicate, actually it does replicate, says, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!S0yA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb75ee3e3-3c0d-48b7-aa98-88f5e33dbf55_748x447.png, CipherNews, Stefan Schubert, Climate Action Tracker, the Lucy Letby case, His answer, Could AI Lead To A Revival Of Decorative Beauty?, Not Quite Past, PEPFAR Report
Your Review: Dating Men In The Bay Area
August 15, 2025 · Original source
This would be demanding a reward for meeting the bare minimum requirements, and that would make you gross and entitled. This is the new guidance we’re tossing at young men. It’s the equivalent of taking away GPS from a driver and handing them a map scrawled by a half-blind cartographer tripping on acid. The obvious result is getting disastrously lost; the only question is which type of lostness will impact a man. III. Patterns Within the Pain Over the years, I’ve developed mental categories for the varieties of lostness men are faced with. Each one comes with its own unique troubles that stymie the health of men and the success of their relationships. There is no science behind my categories; they are merely my attempt to find patterns within the misery of others. Their boundaries are fuzzy, so men may belong to multiple categories, or may transition from one to another. I find it impossible to review dating in the Bay Area without utilizing these categories. My experiences with each category are wildly different; some cause me to walk away from a date feeling sad, some scared, some hopeful. Below, I offer a description of five of the most common categories I’ve encountered, the paths that lead to these particular forms of lostness, and what happens to men who fall into these categories. I also offer my review of dating men from each category and discuss how their lostness impacts relationships. I hope my experiences can be enlightening to individuals who may find themselves trapped in these categories; sometimes a third-party viewpoint can be helpful for finding yourself. I also hope to provide some insight for how women navigate dating and what red and green flags we may be picking up on. (This, of course, is merely anecdata and should be taken with a massive grain of salt.) But more importantly, I hope this framework can help people to have more empathy for men who fall into these categories. The public commons are filled with lamenting about “floundering,” “immature,” “selfish,” “hateful” men who are “toxic to society.” While much of the concern is deserved, channeling it into spite and disgust toward individuals is a waste of energy. These men did not wake up one day and intentionally decide to be filled with anger, anxiety, and apathy toward society; society failed them, and when they tried to point this out, their concerns were shrugged off. Our broken system for raising young men deserves spite and disgust; the individuals trapped in that system deserve empathy and help. I hope this framework can help to shift conversations about these lost men toward finding solutions, rather than blaming young men for their troubles. So without further ado, I present my categories of lostness. IV. The Categories of Lostness THE MAN WHO IS NOT The Man Who Is Not isn’t the sort of person you’d expect to get lost, at least not if you knew him when he was young. He was a pretty normal kid with a pretty normal childhood. Good friends, decent family, stable home life. Yeah, there were a few rough spots, but who didn’t have those? He’s not exactly a stand-out success, but he gets good enough grades that get him into a good enough college. He’s reluctant to go; he doesn’t enjoy school all that much. But his parents push him to get a degree, and after he arrives, he decides college life isn’t half bad–he makes some friends, dates a couple girls casually, and enjoys plenty of parties. The worst stressor seems to be the nagging question of his degree concentration and what career he’s going to pursue. He’s changed his mind three times already, unsure what he really wants from his life, and his guidance counselor and parents are starting to lose their patience. He finally settles on Economics. It’s certainly not his passion, but he’s always been good at math, and this seems like a decent way to make money from that talent. He still has no idea what he wants from life, but at least now he’ll have time and resources to figure it out. He graduates with his bachelors and takes a job as a data analyst at a big bank in the city. He’s excited; he’s been promised by mentors and Hollywood and Instagram that this is going to be a magical time of his life, full of new adventures and self-discovery. What he finds isn’t nearly so exciting. Work is boring and draining, consisting of the same tasks every day with a workload that grows ever larger, and he has zero emotional attachment to the end product. He quickly starts to suspect he chose the wrong major, or maybe the wrong job, although mentors shrug off his concerns. Work isn’t supposed to be fun, they say. Get used to it. It’s not uplifting advice, to say the least. He tries to distract himself from his miserable job with his social life, but it’s not as easy as he expected. All his college friends moved to different cities, and their texts grow increasingly rare. The city is huge, filled with hundreds of thousands of people, but it feels like they're a swarm of NPCs. Few people talk to him unless he approaches first, and the dialogue is always transactional. He would like to buy a cup of coffee. They would like to know where the bus stop is. He wants to sign up for a gym membership. Sometimes he tries to steer the conversations to more personal topics, and he manages to get a few phone numbers and promises to hang out sometime. But when he texts them, they never reply. He’s lonely. He doesn’t like admitting it, not even to himself, because it feels pathetic. After all, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a perfectly pleasant individual, and people have said he’s smart and funny, and he’s never struggled to make friends in the past. Yet the thousands and thousands of people who surround him couldn’t care less about his existence, and their apathy begins to grow a heavy lump of despair within him. He consults the internet, and Reddit tells him to find a community. This seems like solid advice, so he tries to form stronger relationships with his coworkers. After all, work is the closest replacement he has to the structured community he had at college. Back in school, being trapped on campus together just naturally led to friendships and relationships, and he assumes the same will happen at work. He’s wrong. People don't have time to chat during the day, and they don’t want to hang out after work. They have partners and families and hobbies to get to, and besides, what happens if they have a falling out? That would make office interactions weird. The office is a place for friendliness, but not friends, and certainly not romantic relationships. The rejection stings, but he’s not about to give up. He joins a running club and a book club and starts attending group classes at his local gym. He’s not really sure if he enjoys any of these activities, but they seem like good ways to meet people and join new communities. As the weeks tick past, people start to remember his name, and he gets added to some group chats for scheduling activities. Suddenly, his calendar is full of events, and his evenings are no longer an endless churn of YouTube and video game binges. He feels better. Still not great, exactly, but the despair has begun to recede, and he can breathe without feeling the primal fear of being alone and isolated. There’s still something missing; he still goes to work wondering why the hell he’s there and leaves wondering what the hell he’s achieved, and he has no idea what he’s trying to do with his life. But he knows he’s still young and is pretty sure there’s still time to figure it out. A life crisis occurs. It's small, but something he’d appreciate some support through. He reaches out to a few of his new friends, and they offer condolences, but none of them have time to meet up. He gets one friend to agree to a phone call, but he’s barely done explaining the issue before she insists she’s “not really sure she can help” and suggests he maybe talks to a therapist. The dismissal comes as a shock. His old friends would have made time for him and carefully listened and offered advice. It’s not like he’s asking a huge favor; this is basic friendship stuff. What kind of friends refuse to give such basic forms of help? A cold, creeping reality dawns on him: friends wouldn’t do that. Those “communities” he’s joined are just loose groups of acquaintances who enjoy the same activities. He’s never had the opportunity to have deep, emotionally-bonding discussions with any members, and that’s how they like it. After all, true communities come with effort and commitment, and who has time for that these days? His new “friends” are nothing of the sort. For them to be friends, they'd have to actually know him. And they don't. They know Running Club Him and Book Club Him and Gym Him, but none of them understands the whole of him. He starts to question whether that version of himself even exists. After all, humans are social creatures, and if you don’t have a community or a partner or a purpose, can you even call yourself a whole person? Logically, he knows he is, but it doesn’t feel like it. There’s a growing void in his soul, an absence that chokes the breath from his chest. It’s odd that a void could weigh anything, but it seems to be a black hole sucking in his emotions, condensing them in a pit of gravity until his limbs struggle to carry the weight. During a soulless work icebreaker, someone asks him how he’d describe himself. He stutters out a short answer that sounds decent enough, but he realizes he’s not sure what the honest answer is. He’s smart, he supposes, although his recent performance at work doesn’t prove it. He used to consider himself funny, but jokes don’t come easily these days. He’d never dare to say it out-loud, but the truth is he’d describe himself as sad and lost and alone and frankly rather scared, like some sort of abandoned child. It’s pathetic, and he knows it. After all, he’s not a child; he’s a grown man. Or is he? He doesn’t fit the old-fashioned definition of manhood offered by the right, nor does he fit the modern definition offered by polite society, which is basically just a stereotypical woman with a beard and muscle. He doesn’t feel like a grown man, but he doesn't feel like anything at all. He feels empty, devoid of a core identity, and uncertain how to plug that hole. He may not know what he is, but he knows what he is not: not happy. Not whole. Not satisfied. Not purposeful. Not connected. Not loved. There seems to be an obvious solution to at least the last problem: he can get another girlfriend. He hasn’t had one since college, and that was a few years ago, but he’s certain he can find another one. A girlfriend is guaranteed to offer him love and support. That’s the entire point of having a romantic relationship, after all. But dating isn’t easy in the Bay Area. The apps are soul-crushing, his jadedness and bitterness growing with each swipe and conversation with a bot. He manages to land a few dates, but they all seem to focus on the same set of questions: what are your passions? What are your friends like? What do you want from your future? It feels like a stomach-churning interview, and the judgemental frowns from the women make it clear he didn’t pass. He starts to dread dates when he lands them, and begins to cancel them last-minute, unable to face the anxiety and rejection they lead to. He feels increasingly desperate with each day that passes. Desperation isn’t attractive, and he knows it, but he’s not sure how to tamp down the emotion. The void is consuming him; every day he can feel it crushing more of his soul. Yet no one seems even the slightest bit interested in helping him free himself from its grip. As soon as he tries to express his feelings to anyone, they react as if he’s diseased, immediately losing interest in him. Men are supposed to be strong and uplift others, not complain and demand attention for themselves. Maybe he is diseased. He’s pretty sure he’s suffering from depression at this point, and the stomach-churning anxiety and dread that frequently fill him don’t seem normal. He brings it up with his doctor and gets referred to a therapist. He’s reluctant to go—it seems to be an admission of his weakness. But he’s desperate for someone to listen to him, so he decides to give it a try. It turns out the therapist doesn’t have any interest in listening to him, either. She seems preoccupied with reminding him of his “luck” and “privilege” and insisting that he needs to use it to better his life. He knows she has a valid point; he’s a straight, educated male. He has privileges in society that others would risk their life for. Logically, it would make sense to be happy and grateful, not sad and upset. Yet the void has no respect for logic; rather than tempering his pain, the rationality merely adds a layer of self-disgust onto the despair. There are so many who suffer more than him, yet he can barely shoulder this burden. He tries repeatedly to explain the pitiful truth to the therapist: he can’t help himself. He can’t. He’s tried over and over again, and it doesn’t work. He remains lost, and society continues to not care. The therapist insists he’s not trying hard enough. Her advice is baffling. Exactly what is he supposed to be trying to do? What steps does he need to take to feel whole again? What actions are needed so he can know who he is, and what his purpose is, and convince people that he matters? The therapist explains that only he can answer those questions. The whole thing feels like a cruel joke. His performance continues to slip at work, until one day he’s let go. A couple coworkers send a farewell email, but most don’t seem to even notice his departure. He knows he should start applying to other jobs, but he’s too tired. Tired of the loneliness, of the existential dread, of the rejection, of being reminded how “privileged” he is to exist as this broken shadow of a human being. The void has consumed him alive, and there seems to be no escape. He lets himself go–doesn’t shower as much, stops going to the gym and running club and book club. Some small part of him hopes this will trigger sympathy and cause people to reach out. Instead, it has the opposite effect. He transforms from barely noticeable to completely invisible. He is a ghost now, a haunted remnant of a human, yet the only person who cares is himself. And, increasingly, even that isn't true. He doesn’t want to be invisible anymore. He doesn’t want to be ignored and rejected. He doesn’t want to be tired and scared and lonely and bitter and lost. He doesn’t want to be. And the world doesn't give a single fuck. Dating a Man Who Is Not: It’s rare to actually go on a date with a man in this category. More often I find them glancing at me, only to abruptly look away when I try to meet their eyes. Attempts at conversing with them are usually met with hollow replies and an exhausted sense of suspicion. On the rare instances I’ve ended up on dates with these men, it seems they’ve already used up all their hope and energy to schedule and arrive to the date. By the time we actually sit down for coffee, they’ve shriveled back into a ghost, providing half-hearted answers to questions about themselves. When they do talk freely, it’s usually a rant. Most of them seem to realize ranting isn’t ideal behavior on a first date, but they’re clearly desperate for someone, anyone, to listen to their pain. Yeah, it’s going to scare away the woman, but she’s not going to stick around, anyway. No one ever does. At least that’s what the void tells them, and there’s nothing I could say to sway this opinion. Hypothetically, there might be something I could do–I could enter into a relationship with him and provide the love and support he desperately craves, giving him the strength he needs to discover his purpose in life. Yet realistically, this is a fantasy. A single person can rarely solve issues this severe; it requires the combined strength of an entire community to drag a soul back from such extreme depths. Any attempt at a romantic relationship would crumble under the weight of the void, and only leave the man feeling more hopeless. The best I can do for these men is recommend they join communities where genuine emotional bonds can be forged. These still exist, although they’re frighteningly hard to find in modern society. I’ve been lucky enough to join several, and it’s startling how many people have the same story: feeling depressed and isolated and purposeless, and suddenly feeling like they’re alive for the first time in years once they’ve been embraced into the community. Therapy and guided self-improvement are also helpful, of course. But it has to be the right therapist, and those seem surprisingly rare. I’ve heard some truly jaw-dropping stories about experiences with therapists, and I feel concern for the men who haven’t heard of “therapist shopping” and don’t realize it can take trial and error to find compatible and competent help. Dates with these men leave me worried. Not for myself, but for these sullen ghosts who seem on the verge of giving up. There’s so much obvious potential within them, yet society offers them so few ladders to climb back from the pit of depression they’ve fallen into. When those ladders do exist, they're often missing rungs or spontaneously snap when men put their full weight on them. We need more resources for these men, and even more importantly, we need better maps for them, so they don’t lose themselves to depression in the first place. THE MAN WITH A PLAN The Man With a Plan is the inverted twin of the Man Who Is Not. Rather than struggling to figure out what he wants, he knows exactly what his goals are: he’s going to get good grades, which get him into a good school, which earns him a good job, which finances a good house in a good neighborhood and attracts a good spouse who provides good kids. He knows this is what he wants, because it is the creed that has been repeated to him since he was in elementary school. He does not know who he should be; his copy of the map is just as butchered as any other. But he knows what he needs to do, and that is what matters. After all, we’re merely the sum of our actions, right? Life is smooth sailing for him. His mentors are right–hard work pays off, and once he graduates with that valuable degree, he lands an excellent job in exactly the field his parents always encouraged him to pursue. The money is great, and soon so is his apartment and his car. Everything seems to be falling into place. He downloads a dating app and gets a fair amount of matches, one of whom turns into his girlfriend. She’s pretty, and successful, and shares his goals of settling down in a good neighborhood to have some kids. His parents are thrilled. All their hard work has paid off, just as they expected. He knows he should also be thrilled, too, but he’s not. There’s a vague sense of unease within him. It’s haunted him since he was young, sometimes dragging his thoughts to depressed and anxious places, although he always assumed it was because he just hadn’t completed all the steps in the plan. His work was unfinished, and thus so was he. Yet as he checks off more and more boxes on the list of tasks to attain a good life, that feeling seems to be growing in strength, not decreasing. He shrugs it off, reassuring himself that it’s just work stress that’s making him overthink things. Everything in his life is good. There’s no reasonable cause for despair, so he just needs to let those thoughts go. Years pass, and he works hard to juggle work and his romantic relationship and his friends, although his friends seem to take less time these days. They’re getting married, having kids, and becoming too busy to hang out. When they do get together, it’s usually for an activity–an escape room, a movie night, karaoke. Once the event completes, people scurry off to other obligations, leaving little time for deep conversations. But he has his girlfriend, at least. She’s just as pretty and smart and ambitious as ever. She’s also getting increasingly anxious for a ring, dropping hints that eventually start to sound more like demands. This should excite him, but instead it just stirs the formless dread within him. He chastises himself for it–he needs to grow up and learn to commit. He’s too old to be yearning for the life of a bachelor. As they say, the grass is always greener on the other side. One night, as they lay in bed, his girlfriend asks him how many kids he wants. He realizes that he doesn’t know. And actually, now that he thinks about it, he’s not even sure if he wants kids. They scream a lot, and they make all sorts of noxious odors and messes, and saddling himself to a dependent for eighteen years seems rather terrifying. The thoughts come to him unbidden, and he doesn’t dare to voice them. Two kids. That’s what he tells his girlfriend, and she seems pleased enough with this answer. Yet he can’t shake the dread from his mind. The part of his mind that those fears escaped from seems to have been a pandora’s box. Now that it’s open, he can’t close it, and the dread continues to grow. He doesn't want to move to the suburbs; he knows there are better homes and schools there, but he enjoys the city. He’s not sure he wants his upcoming promotion to manager; yeah, his salary will increase, but he hates corporate politics. He doesn’t actually like doing escape rooms; he desperately misses the days of hanging out with his friends and getting tipsy and maybe a little high, and talking endlessly until the sun begins to rise. And his girlfriend… when he really thinks about it, there’s little in common between them except the same checklist of goals. She’s a wonderful partner, but is she a wonderful partner for him? He doesn’t know. For so long, he’s convinced himself that people are just a sum of their actions, and if he just has a solid plan, he’s going to be a good person with a good life. Now he realizes that’s a lie. Yes, actions matter, but so do feelings. And he’s spent his entire adult life actively repressing his feelings, tamping them down in a desperate attempt to follow the plan and gain happiness. But it’s been a fool’s errand; he’s followed the plan, and it’s only led to existential dread. He wants to discuss these things with his friends, but he realizes they hardly know him anymore, because he hardly knows himself. He lost himself somewhere in the endless march of the plan, and he begins to wonder if he’s ever fully existed at all. He’s followed his parent’s biddings ever since he was a young child, and chastised himself for any desire he’s ever had that doesn’t fit into the cookie-cutter ideal of capitalistic success. His girlfriend says he’s been acting odd lately, cold and distant. He apologizes, and then he tells her that he likes painting. She probably doesn’t know that, because she’s never seen him do it, because the last time he painted was during art class in high school. He was good at it, and he loved it. It made him feel alive. His teacher suggested he could become a professional someday, but he’d immediately rejected the idea, knowing the life of a starving artist wasn’t a good plan. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he should have embraced that life. Maybe he’d be happier, and wouldn’t wake up every morning with crushing dread at the thought of going to work. His girlfriend says they should sign up for some wine-and-paint nights. He says they should break up. He quits his job, too. He hates it; it consumes his time and sucks at his soul, leaving behind a robotic husk. He’s done with that bullshit. Done. His friends suggest he’s having a mental breakdown and needs help. It confirms his suspicions: they don’t know him at all. If they did, they would see that he is helping himself. He’s finally taking the time to find and understand himself, to discover his purpose. For a few weeks, he’s elated and excited to be on this new journey. But then the existential dread begins to creep back in. He’s never really done anything without a plan. And he’s still not entirely sure what he’s trying to accomplish; he knows he wants to “find himself,” but he’s unclear on what that requires, and the self-help books he consumes seem to have muddled and contradictory answers. He starts painting again, taking up classes at a local studio, but his skill level is that of a fourteen-year-old with potential. He hasn’t practiced in two decades, and his work is weak compared to most other artists his age. He’s not used to being the least skilled person in the room. His prior plan never allowed that as a possibility, and the sense of failure is disorientating. He also has no idea what he’s going to do with his art. He wants to make a plan, but also balks at the idea of trapping himself in yet another series of checkboxes. He signs up to see a therapist, and she assures him that he just needs to find his happiness, but this feels like picking out a gift for someone he’s never met. How is he supposed to know what makes him happy, if he’s never been given the chance to figure out who he even is? He doom scrolls on social media, wincing at the posts about people’s deep passion for their jobs and blazing love for their significant other. Part of him feels disgusted by what he perceives as disingenuity; after all, he was making similar posts just a year ago, and it was all a facade. But another part of him feels a cold wave of fear. What if all those other people aren’t faking it? What if he’s just broken, and unable to feel the same happiness and fulfillment that others experience? He feels empty. His unknown future starts to feel like a crushing concern, rather than an exciting adventure. His few remaining friends suggest that maybe he should try to get back together with his girlfriend, maybe try to piece together his old life. It’s not too late, they assure him. But he doesn’t want that. He misses sex and cuddling and having someone to tell about his day, but he doesn’t miss her. It’s probably because he’s fundamentally broken, and she deserves better than him. And as for his job, he can’t bring himself to possibly go back, despite his rapidly dwindling bank account. He turns to the dating world, hoping maybe finding a solid partner will help him solve his brokenness. Yet he seems to keep attracting women with similar forms of emptiness within them, and a void that joins with a void is still just as empty. But he’s not going to give up. He has to find someone, something to give him purpose. Otherwise, his whole life and all his work and all his pain has been pointless. And he’s not sure he could deal with that outcome. Dating a Man With a Plan: In my experience, Men with Plans are the most common form of lost men in the Bay Area. I feel like half the men I go on dates with fit into this category to some degree. These men also tend to be intensely attracted to me, or rather, to my lack of a conventional plan. I’ve stumbled through a highly unusual path, somehow getting lucky enough to gain a solid understanding of myself, pursue my passions, earn a solid living, and enjoy a happy life along the way. My story is like crack to them. They tell me they want to be more like me; they insist they want to see more of me. There seems to be a mistaken belief that they can absorb my personality through osmosis if they date me, absolving themselves of the requirement to figure out their own path and personality. It’s a sad misunderstanding of how it all works. My unconventional life isn’t the result of zany choices and the advice contained in self-help books; it’s the result of an intensely rocky childhood I almost didn’t survive. I don’t have a “cure” for these men and their lack of self-identity. I’ve figured out myself, found my community, and discovered my path, but I can’t do the same for them. Once they figure this out, they almost immediately lose interest in me. Which is for the best, as I struggle to feel romantic attraction toward men in this category. It’s hard to love someone if they don’t even understand themselves well enough to know what’s lovable. The good news is that this category seems to be the easiest for men to break free from. If they’re determined not to give up, and willing to realize that the right woman isn’t going to fix their issues, they can create a happy life of their own. They’ll often stumble around for a while–sometimes months, sometimes years–but they’ll eventually find a solid community and a purpose within it. Their brain is already programmed to follow plans and good habits, so as soon as they figure out a new map for themselves, the rest becomes easy. The process of figuring out a new plan can be rocky, though. I won’t sugar-coat that bit. The reality is that a good community is hard to find, and purpose often comes from a certain amount of suffering. Some men never manage to climb out of this category and adopt the hopeless lostness of a Man Who Is Not. But with the right support, most can escape to a bright future. THE MAN WHO PROVIDES Meet a Man Who Provides in person, and he’s often interesting and intellectually stimulating, an immediate “yes” when he asks for a date. His online profile features photos from international adventures, flashy job titles like “CEO” and “Senior Director,” and loving moments caught with his friends at Burning Man. The Man who Provides kept hold of one tattered remnant of the old map to manhood: the part that states men must provide resources. This is a vital piece, one that has guided men for thousands of years, and it has survived the great purge of manhood. Sure, people are more likely to point out that it is flawed and unfair, but the reality is that men are still expected to be breadwinners. (If you doubt this, just ask any “stay at home dad” about the hostility they’ve received for their role.) The Man who Provides takes this single piece of the map and makes it his entire identity. Much like the Man With a Plan, he takes his education and career seriously. But he doesn’t strive for a good education and career; he wants the best. In order to provide the most resources, he needs to earn as much success as possible, and he’s willing to put in the work to do it. Tiger parents are excellent at creating Men Who Provide. From a young age, the message is clear: your worth is equivalent to your ability to provide, and providing requires consistent success. Other Men Who Provide stumble into the obsession with success by themselves. Often these men are neurodivergent to some degree–ADHD, autistic, hyper-intelligent, or just otherwise “different.” They exasperate and confuse others, and are the subject of bullying by both peers and authority figures. Success is an escape valve for these men; it earns them praise their personality never receives. Before long, it becomes a costume, a mask slipped over their personality to ward off apathy or disdain. The Man Who Provides graduates at the top of his class and lands a job at a top company, which doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows him. It’s also not a surprise when he leaves the job to found his own company, which is sure to be a success. Despite his insane work hours, the Man Who Provides somehow manages to accomplish a vast amount of extra-curricular activities as well. He travels the world, speaking of it the same way most people speak of triathlons. The globe is not a tantalizing opportunity, but rather a challenge meant to be vanquished; he knows precisely how many countries he’s been to and how many he “has left.” He’s fond of drugs and brags of the enlightenment he’s found in acid and mushrooms. The amount of ketamine he consumes makes some question exactly why he’s so hell bent on dissociating from his enlightened world, but most are simply impressed by the variety of substances he’s sampled. Those “friends” in his Burning Man photos were from his startup incubator, and he hasn’t spoken to any of them in ten months. He misses speaking with them, if he’s honest with himself, but he worries they’d drag him down. Their startups haven’t been as successful as his, and he’s convinced it’s because of their attitudes and lack of work ethic. As for dating? Well, a partner is yet another thing to be optimized, of course. They must match or exceed his quality level, and a woman’s quality revolves around their job title and academic degrees. His dating life is tumultuous, to say the least. He goes through periods of casually dating many women, proving his desirability to those around him. Then he’ll enter a serious relationship, with emphasis on serious. His time is valuable, so this relationship had better not waste it. The relationship will seem perfect at first–two successful, powerful, passionate people combining forces! What could possibly stand in their way? The answer: themselves. Their relationship quickly implodes, as it turns out two individuals hyper-focused on their personal success tend to be terrible at a group activity such as dating. Back to the carousel of casual dating he goes, carrying stories of his ex who just “couldn’t match his intensity” and “resented his success.” Then into another serious relationship, this time with someone with a bit less self-esteem and a determination to prove her worth to this intimidatingly accomplished man. The relationship lasts longer this time around, a year, maybe two. Then it implodes just as violently, with the woman insisting he was a manipulative and neglectful partner. He’s baffled by the claims; she’s the one who was always offering to support his success! It’s not like he made her do anything. And besides, everything he did was for the both of them. He just wanted to provide. Back to the carousel of casual dating he goes, still carrying the hope of finding The One, a woman to complete him, to prove to the world that he’s an attractive, successful man. All the while, a void grows in his chest. Every day, he seems to wake up with less energy and more dread. A friend hints that he’s burning out, and this insinuation panics him, so he runs off to the Amazon to do some ayahuasca about it. But the travel and drugs no longer invigorates him in the same way, and it’s beginning to truly worry him. He refuses to focus on these emotions, though. Emotions make him illogical and weak, and he needs to be strong and decisive. He’ll keep his focus on his company’s success, making sure that he can continue to provide and prove his worth. And in the meantime, he’ll keep searching for his perfect match to reap the rewards of his success and reassure him that he’s truly an excellent provider. It’s a small pool of women who meet his quality bar, but he’ll eventually find The One. He knows it. After all, when he puts his mind to something, he always succeeds. Dating a Man Who Provides: Two words sum up dates with these men: pity and frustration. These dates generally begin with these men stating that their time is quite limited, hinting that they’ve made quite the sacrifice to offer some of it to you. Things only go downhill from there, with the entire affair feeling like an intense job interview. I have zero interest in passing these interviews, which creates frustration in these men. I’ve wasted their precious time, and they’ve wasted mine. They generally end the date quite quickly, convinced that I have no hope of clearing their quality bar. Yet they have no hope of clearing mine. A strong sense of self-identity is a requirement for anyone I date, and these men have never been given the chance to develop one outside of “founder” or “Ivy Leaguer” or “Forbes 30 Under 30.” This leaves their identity hopelessly precarious and revolving around their immediate success. A bad day at work or a failed business deal can spell weeks of brooding and self-loathing. You never quite know what version of the man may appear; he could be euphoric from his latest product launch, or despondent and moody from a meeting that went wrong. There’s little I can do to address the issues faced by Men Who Provide. Try to talk them out of focusing so much on standard capitalistic forms of achievement, and they’ll often accuse you of being jealous and sabotaging their success. Point out their clear misery, and they’ll insist “there’s no gain without pain,” and if they can just achieve a constantly moving goalpost, they’ll finally be happy. These men generally only shake off this mentality after burning themselves out and facing a bout of depression so severe it kills their ability to succeed in a traditional capacity. This forces them to find other ways to derive satisfaction and finally grow a self-identity that doesn’t revolve around money and success. It’s saddening that these men have to go through this burnout process to learn these lessons; I hope to see less of these men in the future, as more people come forward to describe this toxic form of living. In the meantime, I try to catch young men before they fall into these self-destructive patterns. I lecture my young interns about the hazards of a success-obsessed lifestyle, and encourage them to find senses of worth that don’t revolve around gaining power and providing money. I’ll be honest, they don’t seem to listen to me much. But I hope my words remain in the back of their mind, ready to help guide them away from misery when they’re ready to make that change. THE MAN WHO OPTS OUT The Man Who Opts Out is a growing contingent of the male population, but a rare sight in the dating world. These are men who have given up on dating, or never even attempted it in the first place. Some of these men have serious, obvious flaws that keep them locked out of the dating world, such as personality disorders, issues with violence, or severe trauma that’s gone unaddressed. The majority don’t fit this description, though. In fact, in the Bay Area, a large number of these men are very high-functioning members of society who are smart, respectful, and financially successful. Often the Man Who Opts Out is the victim of bullying or neglect as a young adult. People accuse him of being awkward, or short, or shy, or overweight, or an “undesirable” ethnicity. Or maybe no one ever directly vocalizes it, but the messages in the media are enough to convince him of his low self-worth, and his interactions with girls seem to confirm it. Most treat him as if he’s invisible, and his few female friends are quick to emphasize that they’re just friends. Dating feels impossible. After all, the goal of dating is to make someone fall in love with you, and how could someone love him when he’s so terribly unattractive? He decides to shove aside dating and focus on the other things society tells him are important: his schooling, his career, his social circle. He can actively work to improve and succeed in these areas, whereas being attractive feels miserably out of his control. When he’s a teenager, this mentality doesn’t cause much alarm. In fact, some mentors even mistake his avoidance of dating as a sign of maturity. He “has his priorities straight,” they say. Yeah, some of his peers might mock him for not having a girlfriend, but did they get into MIT? Nope. But he did. That helps to ease the pain of not having a date for senior prom. When he’s in his early-twenties, his aversion to dating starts to feel like a problem. Friends and family comment on it, voicing concern. He decides, reluctantly, to give dating a shot. Loneliness is beginning to eat at him, and he decides it’s worth facing his fears to have a girlfriend who infuses his life with warmth and affection. He’s still terribly self-conscious about his attractiveness, but his friends insist he’s “perfect boyfriend material,” so he gives it a chance. His attempts don’t go well. In fact, you might say they’re a bit of a disaster. Women have come to expect a certain level of romantic competence from a twenty-two-year-old, and he just doesn’t meet the bar. It’s a painful shock. He’d started to gain his confidence back, proving through his successful schooling and his burgeoning career that he’s really worth something, even if he doesn’t quite meet the traditional model of a hot young bachelor. At this point, he’s accustomed to succeeding at most things in life. But every attempt to flirt and date paints an entirely different picture of himself: he’s practically trembling with nerves, unsure what to talk about, prone to rambling about his niche interests until their eyes glaze over, terrified of accidentally being a creep, yet overly eager for the romantic affection that he desperately craves. He’s a bit of an anxious, awkward mess, and most women don’t enjoy the vibes. One even starts a rumor that he’s a creep. The accusation brings back an aching self-consciousness he hasn’t felt in years. He vows to stop even trying. After all, what’s the point? It’s hopeless. Years pass. He settles into his career, becomes more successful and more mature. He’s not exactly a social butterfly, but he has some good friends and enough love and connection in his life to keep him tumbling down the path of a Man Who Is Not. Yet something is missing. He tries not to think about it, but there’s a growing emptiness inside him that makes life increasingly hollow. It’s not just a missing girlfriend; it’s a lack of someone, anyone, finding him attractive. More and more friends are finding committed relationships. At the end of the day, they go home to cuddles and laughter and sex and long, deep conversations. He returns home to his silent apartment and plays video games. That’s it, he decides. He’s done feeling miserable and lesser. He’s not some hapless twenty-two-year-old anymore. He’s a good, mature man with good friends who insist he can find someone, if he just tries. He’s no longer in college, so meeting women isn’t as easy as it was when he was twenty-two and still living on a campus. He downloads a dating app, and almost immediately regrets it. He gets maybe one match a month, and it’s almost always a bot. When he does match, he carries the conversation, and the woman usually ghosts at a certain point. He spends hours and hours swiping on profiles, growing more bitter with each swipe. When he goes on dates, he feels like he’s being interviewed, and usually the woman ghosts him afterward. He takes another break from dating. More years pass, and his friends who are coupled feel increasingly alien. They’re having weddings, honeymoons, kids; buying houses and saving for college; attending recitals and soccer practices. He’s still playing Call of Duty and Dota with his dwindling group of single friends. Occasionally, some of his coupled friends will join them on Discord, playing a couple hurried rounds before having to log off to cook dinner or tuck the kids into bed. Damn, I miss being single, they’ll say, laughing. You have all the time, all the hobbies, all the peace you could ever want. They don’t address the elephant in the room–that at any time, they could dump their partner and be single again. Yet they don’t. Because being alone sucks. As he nears his mid-thirties, an interesting development occurs: women start to actively become interested in him. Those superficial characteristics that kept them at bay when he was younger no longer seem so important. So what if he’s only five-foot-six and a bit heavier than average? He has an amazing job, a stellar reputation, a gorgeous apartment, and a great sense of humor. He’s a catch. Yet once they discover he’s never been in a long-term relationship, they once more seem to recoil. He enters into a series of short-term flings, trying to make up for the lost experience. At first it’s exhilarating to have women actually show interest in him. They like him. They want him. Quickly, it becomes exhausting. Even when women initially approach him, he’s the one who must invest the most effort. The women know what they’re doing; he’s constantly trying to keep up. Some of them get tired of waiting for him to learn and walk away, opening up old wounds in his self-confidence. He considers trying to make one of the connections more serious, but it becomes obvious that she’d expect him to change so much. His hobbies, his sleeping patterns, his work habits, his furniture, his friendships… all of it would require modification to keep a girl around. And history has taught him that he’ll just end up getting rejected anyway, so what’s even the point? It all feels so futile and so unfair. All around him, he sees women who settled with crappy men who don’t treat them properly. He wouldn’t do that; he’s a good person. Maybe a bit socially awkward, maybe not the handsomest, maybe a little clueless about some aspects of relationships, but he can learn to be a good partner, if he’s just given a chance. Some of his single friends have officially given up on ever finding a woman, and they encourage him to do the same. It’s peaceful, they insist. No more pointless pining, no more painful daydreams that never come true. They’re right, he decides. He’s done. It’s over. Yet one evening, as he lays in bed, the loneliness chews at his soul as he stares at the empty spot beside him. He reaches for his phone and downloads a dating app. He’ll go on just one more date, he tells himself. Just to remind himself of why he doesn’t date anymore. Just to remind himself of why it’s futile to even try. Dating a Man Who Opts Out: A date with a Man Who Opts Out is a losing battle. They arrive defeated and suspicious, certain they’re wasting their time, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some awkwardly avoid any topic that could reveal their lack of dating experience, while others throw it in your face, wanting to get the reveal over with. I’m often surprised by the men who fall into this category; society paints them all as grungy, awkward trolls who live in their mothers’ basements, but many are not only high-functioning members of society, but also highly desirable individuals–attractive, wealthy, successful. Yet their self-confidence doesn’t reflect this success; they’re mentally trapped as the awkward, bullied teenager, convinced no one could ever truly love them. For some, this causes bitterness or apathy to spoil interactions with women; dates with these men are uncomfortable events for everyone involved. Every question is met with suspicion, with the man assuming his responses will be used to negatively judge him. For others, their lack of self-confidence causes a painful shyness and refusal to open up. They’re convinced that at any second, the woman will find something about them to reject, so they hide as much of themselves as possible. These are some of the most painful dates I’ve experienced. The nurturing side of me wants to pull the man into a hug, to assure him he’s enough, to promise I won’t judge. Yet the logical side of me knows I need to judge–ultimately, it’s a necessary part of dating. And a crippling lack of self-esteem is a death blow for the stability of any relationship. If I want a healthy relationship, I simply cannot date someone with that trait. It’s a vicious cycle–a man’s confidence in his dating ability is crushed, he finally works up the nerve to show up to a date, gets rejected, and his self-esteem lowers even more. He limps off to nurse his wounds, vowing to avoid the “pointless” exercise of dating. It might be another year before he attempts to go on another date, or two years, or perhaps he just gives up altogether. I absolutely hate being a participant in this cycle. It’s the dating equivalent of kicking a puppy and always leaves me feeling a dull ache of empathy for the men involved. I also hate the standard advice given to these men: that it’s “just a numbers game” and they need to “just keep putting themselves out there.” The truth isn’t nearly so easy. A man with severe self-esteem issues is not likely to find a healthy relationship, no matter how many times he flings himself at the dating world. The core issue of self-esteem must be addressed. For some, this means structured therapy or psychiatric treatment, for others, it means growing their social life until it’s vibrant enough to soothe the part of their soul that insists they’re not enough. Or maybe it’s a combo of all three or something else entirely. But action needs to be taken to address the lack of self-esteem; the man can’t just half-heartedly daydream about a woman who might swoop in to “love him just the way he is” and solve all his confidence problems. Also, relationships take practice. If a man is past the age of twenty-five and has never been in a committed relationship, most women will view this as a red flag. They’ve spent their teens and early-twenties doing the hard work of learning how to be in a relationship, and they don’t want to partner with someone who hasn’t even begun that journey yet. The good news is that there are ways to compensate for this. I would happily date a thirty-year-old who has never been in a romantic relationship, if he has other social relationships to prove his viability as a partner. Close ties to his friends, family, and community can prove he’s well-versed in all the vital elements of a relationship: communication, trust, empathy, honesty, etc. Yet the fact remains that the longer someone opts out of the dating world, the harder it becomes to opt back in. So my advice to men who fall into this category is to rip off the bandaid. If they want a partner, they need to start working toward it now. Overcoming insecurities and past traumas takes time and effort. The good news is that men who fall into this category seem to be pleasantly surprised at how quickly their social and romantic prospects improve, once they identify and address the root issues. Many of them happily “graduate” out of this category and go on to have wonderful relationships. I have a feeling the man I end up partnered with will be someone who graduated out of this category. After all, both my previous serious partners fell into this category earlier in their life. I seem to have a soft-spot for people who overcome insecurities; they tend to be delightfully empathetic and dynamic individuals. In the meantime, I’ll continue to try to encourage men who fall into this category not to give up. There’s a path to healthy, happy relationships. It may not be simple, but as the tired but true saying goes, nothing important ever is easy. THE MAN WHO BECOMES A BEAST The Man Who Becomes a Beast often begins as a Man Who Is Not. He is lost, and depressed, and anxious to find himself, yet unsure how to even begin. He drudges through his job, hating every moment, yet sometimes he hates being away from work even more. At work, he’s at least acknowledged as a person. As soon as he leaves, the lonely silence of his existence threatens to suffocate him. He doesn’t know what he wants from life, but he knows it’s not this. The city is filled with young, attractive women that inspire wistful daydreams. Maybe he’ll ask one out, and they’ll hit it off, and then his apartment will no longer be empty. Then maybe she can introduce him to her friends, and the empty abyss of his social calendar will suddenly be filled with dinners, and trips, and concerts, and— No. He doesn’t dare. He’s far from an Adonis–his physique pales in comparison to most men. Chances are, any girl he asks out will say no, and she’ll think he’s a creep for approaching her. Then she might tell the other women that he’s a creep, and the whole thing would be a disaster. It’s better not to directly approach women. He can find a girlfriend on the apps. Except that certainly hasn’t been going well. He rarely gets matches, let alone dates. On the rare instances they occur, the women seem bored by the conversation and pepper him with questions about his intentions and future that he can’t answer. His performance at work slips, and he’s placed on a performance improvement plan. He knows he’ll probably be fired next quarter, but he can’t bring himself to care. His doctor tells him he’s depressed and tosses some pills at him, but it only serves to anger him. The anger is a surprise. He’s not an angry person, or at least he’s never been in the past. Yet the emotion keeps flaring to life in his chest, poisoning his mind with spite. Spite toward his idiot manager who doesn’t give a shit about him. Spite toward the women who judge him without truly knowing him. Spite at the asshole doctor who mindlessly writes a prescription without bothering to understand the real problem. There’s nothing wrong with his head; it’s the rest of the world that’s the problem. He doesn’t do anything wrong, yet the world treats him like he’s less than worthless. He doesn’t need pills, he just needs someone to give a shit. He struggles to focus and turns to social media to distract his churning mind. YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok indulge him with a steady stream of entertainment, numbing his frustration and anger with an unceasing shower of fitness routines and video game hacks and soccer highlights. Gradually, the algorithms drift toward new content. A buff dude sneers into the camera, pointing an accusing finger as he rants about “betas” and their pathetic video games and tiny dicks. It’s not the first time this influencer has crossed his feed, but it is the first time he actually watches a full video. He’s not sure whether to be offended or amused. The video is so over-the-top that he wants to laugh it off, but it also hits some painful insecurities. He is wasting his life at his shitty job. He would attract more women if he worked out more. He hates feeling awkward and uncertain and invisible. He watches several more videos. The influencer sure isn’t a philosopher, but he at least has the balls to discuss the way society has neglected men. High school graduation rates are plummeting, college enrollment has taken a nosedive, addiction is spreading like wildfire, incarceration is creeping upwards, suicide rates are rocketing to the sky. Where’s the public dismay? Where’s the outrage and the activism? Nowhere, says the influencer. All those activists are too busy accusing men of being dangerous monsters to bother caring about them. Fuck those people and all they stand for, says the influencer. If you want anyone to care about you, you have to make them care. And this influencer knows exactly how to accomplish that. And then he gives it: a map for manhood. One that’s entirely different from the vague, confusing, dismissive directions that polite society has offered. One whose guidance loudly insists that being a man is a good thing, something to be proud of and use to his advantage. The manosphere map promises power, success, sex, money, belonging, and confidence if it’s followed. In contrast, the map offered by polite society offers a vague promise to not be considered a failure or a danger. The choice seems obvious. If he looked hard at the manosphere map, its contradictions are obvious. It promises the respect and adoration of women, but insists this is to be gained through mistreating them. It promises power and money, yet discourages higher education, despite this being the most sure-fire way to climb the class ladder. It insists women are less intelligent and logical beings, yet also insists they have taken over control of the world. Yet it’s hard to think critically about these contradictions; life has left him exhausted and angry, and the manosphere map insists that success and payback are just a few easy steps away. And those steps are deliciously concrete and specific. The manosphere offers millions of hours of video tutorials on the single subject of how to get a woman “out of your league” to like you. Meanwhile, polite society balks at the mere question, droning on about how romantic “leagues” are an inherently patriarchal and harmful concept. Sure, some of the advice seems off. Insulting women goes against how he was raised, and some of the money advice seems like it's using people. Yet how he was raised led him to be anxious and invisible. And the rest of society seems to be using him, so why shouldn’t he turn the tables? And besides, the map works. He knows it does. There are a hundred comments on each popular video balking at their morals, but a thousand more from men reporting the success of the techniques. He decides to give it a try. He goes out and uses the techniques at a bar, and it works. He brings a woman home for the first time in years. Yeah, she seems kind of unstable and uncertain, but that’s to be expected. She’s a woman, after all. She just needs an alpha male to give her guidance and purpose; he’s actually doing her a favor. He’s hooked. On the clear directions, on the sex, on the feeling of power. And although he doesn’t like to admit it, he’s hooked on the attention. His actions and opinions upset the people he’s determined to be his enemies; he likes their outrage, and the way he’s able to control their emotions with merely a few words. They hate him, but that’s okay, because he hates them too. The influencers were right: fuck society and their weak, pathetic norms. If you want something, you have to be a real man and take it. Dating a Man Who Becomes a Beast: There’s a unique aura that surrounds Men Who Become Beasts. Some are fit, and cocky, and smooth, exuding the hyper-masculine air that the Tate brothers exemplify. However, most remain awkward and abrasive, juggling self-consciousness with a sneering confidence that they’re more enlightened than the “sheep” who refuse to see the “truth.” Both types share a noxious mixture of arrogance and frustration, and they’re all too eager to prove their disdain for the world. I rarely end up on dates with these men; I’ve gotten good at detecting them over the years, both in-person and on dating apps. Still, occasionally they slip past my radar, and I find myself grabbing coffee with someone whose presence raises my hackles. I will always end the date as soon as possible and update my detection heuristics. Yet it seems impossible to truly avoid these men. I punched one a few months back. He tried to dance with my friend at a concert, refused to take her clear “no” for an answer, forcefully shoved himself against her, and did not appreciate me shoving him back. He grabbed my arm and yanked me toward him; I landed a jab to his throat. (Apparently, the manosphere doesn’t teach men to tuck their chins during a fight. Quite the oversight.) My jab shocked him enough to loosen his grip, and I yanked free. Three strangers from the crowd grabbed him, restraining him as he tried to lunge at me. His face twisted in a snarl as he hurled insults over the booming bass. Cunt, crazy bitch, low value whore. It was the latter insult that gave it away: he was yet another young man drugged by the toxic ideology of the manosphere. There was something darkly poetic about the scene: three strangers, all men, throwing themselves in harm’s way to stop a two-hundred-pound brick of muscle from pulverizing me. Struggling against their grasp was the Hyde to their Jekyll, a rabid animal who used his natural strength to attack rather than to protect. I pity that young man. He was well-dressed, handsome, and fit, clearly doing something right to have made it to an expensive concert in a popular city. Yet his mind has been tainted by a creed that turned him into a predator. The preachers of this creed promise success and respect, yet in reality, they doom their adherents to be unfit for society, forcibly outcast from any loving community. That young man walks the world as a predator, destined to be deprived of the love and respect he yearns for. He’ll likely gain some twisted semblance of a relationship; there are plenty of women out there who won’t recognize the warning signs. But it will be a relationship rooted in fear and manipulation, devoid of the warmth of love. He will feel that coldness. It will haunt him, and stoke his anger, and some poor woman will probably be the victim when his rage boils over. I don’t know what to do about these men. I worry it’s too late for most of them; so many have been steeping in the manosphere ideology for years, and converting them away will be as hard as swaying a religious fanatic. So I avoid them. I fear them. And I sure as hell don’t date them. V. The Man Who Is Whole Don’t let my categories of lostness convince you that all men are bumbling through life without purpose. Many men have beaten the odds and become Men Who Are Whole, and these men deserve an entire section devoted to them. A Man Who Is Whole rarely begins whole. Occasionally they do, but these are rare and frankly baffling anomalies. Most begin within another category, and through a combination of sheer will, some luck, and the support of a community, they forge themselves into remarkably solid individuals. A Man Who Is Whole has created his own map to manhood. Often, he’s been blessed with close mentors, and usually it’s coupled with an intense passion for something. Maybe he’s passionate about teaching, or building a business, or becoming a father, or creating music, or writing long-winded essays about the dangers of AI. Whatever it is, it’s a purpose he can use as his true north when piecing together his personal map. His passions lend themselves to goals, but after some trial and error, it becomes clear that obsessing over his personal goals doesn’t feel quite right. He needs to find some way to benefit his community through his goals. But what is his community exactly? He’s not sure, but he’s determined to find out. It’s not easy, and he screws up several times, burning and getting burned by various relationships. But eventually he manages to find a solid community, a real one with deep, emotional bonds and a mutual desire to provide love and support. His passion gives him motivation; his goals give him intention; his community gives him purpose. Combined, they provide a scaffolding for him to build himself into the best version of himself. He continues to flesh out his map, creating a unique path with the help of his community. Mentors guide him, peers critique him, friends and partners encourage him. The map is a messy thing, with lots of erased sections and some meandering parts, but after several years, it finally feels finished. He knows how to be a man, because he knows how to be himself, and there is no doubt in his mind that he is a man. Some of the traits are exactly what he expected when he was a boy dreaming about manhood: his confidence, his strength, his protectiveness. But others were surprise discoveries: his empathy, his restraint, his soft spot for kids and desire to mentor them. The map is his, and his alone, a hard-won victory personalized to his wants and needs. It should be celebrated and cherished, and whenever he gets the chance, shared with other young men who might benefit from its contents. Dating A Man Who Is Whole: Dating a Man Who Is Whole is a rare and precious experience. Their presence has a solidness that’s infinitely alluring and soothing, and it makes me want to nuzzle into their chest and listen to their heart, to marvel that such mundane biological pieces could somehow have produced such a magnetic presence. There’s a stereotype that Men Who Are Whole are always overtly confident and highly masculine, but I haven’t found this to be true. In fact, many of them carry a subtle sort of masculinity that lends itself to gentleness and empathy. They have little to prove to the world, because they know who they are, and so does their community, and they are respected for it. They have overcome a lot to achieve this frame of mind. They’ve bumbled through confusing directions and dead ends, but never given up, and the persistence has paid off. It makes them invaluable partners through difficult times; they know how to handle themselves in tough situations, and they’re eager to share their strength with others. They’re not perfect. No human ever is. But they know that, and they have the humility to discuss issues in an open and empathetic way, while still standing their ground when necessary. It’s an honor to be loved by a Man Who Is Whole, and it’s always a surprising delight when they choose you as the focus of their affection. But there is also an inevitable sadness that clings to the edges of their presence. After all, it’s only when you interact with them that you realize how lost all those other men are. They usually are aware of how different their existence is to many other men, and they carry the weight of friends and loved ones who have been permanently lost to other categories. I believe that most young men have the potential to become Men Who Are Whole, if they’re given the right support and guidance. I think the rarity of these men is one of the greatest indictments on our current culture and our methods of raising boys. Yet I’m hopeful that someday they’ll be the rule rather than the exception. I’m deeply lucky to have several of these men in my life. If you do as well, don’t forget to remind them how grateful you are for them and how proud you are of who they’ve become. Oftentimes, they don’t understand just how impressive and important they are. So tell them, and treasure them, and maintain hope that someday there will be more of them. VI. Crafting a New Map The sheer number of lost men make it obvious that polite society has failed to deliver an effective map to manhood. Men are miserable, and their pain is reflected in the rising rate of suicide, depression, anxiety, joblessness, and crime. The numbers don’t lie: the current map doesn’t work. Society owes it to young men to draft a new map for them, one with more positivity and concrete steps that can help them avoid getting lost. I have many ideas about potential fixes and additions to the Modern Map to Manhood, but there are five that I feel are most important: Encourage positive male role models to provide detailed directions on how to “become a man.”