Discernment is pattern recognition, which is rooted in reason.
Pattern recognition is learning by correlation, which is "faith". That's why all higher order animals are prone to superstitions, and those superstitions are more compelling than an understanding of cause and effect.
The classic experiment is from B. F. Skinner.
In fact it is the other way around: reason is rooted in statistical learning. That's how your brain works.
Hebbian learning at its root.
Animals lack abstraction so they are perception bound.
Think about it like this, perception versus conception. Concepts are universal, perceptions are personal. Men, women, children (above a certain age) all grasp the basic concept of money, but their perceptions of money are different, heck even different from person to person.
This is also factually incorrect. Even something as simple as a caterpillar can retain memories of an abstraction through metamorphosis, and even through the generations!!
Paper Video
This is actually some crazy sh*t IMO but that's besides the point.
I wrote this over ten years ago, and it isn't well written. I should re-write it.
Np, I'll get the AI to summarize a nice copy edit
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I'm using logic in my thinking as an ego shield to protect myself from either shame or submitting to other people
Close, but I mean it more in the sense that being logical is a part of the identity you've developed. It is a part of your "ego" in the sense that the ego is the observable part of your personality. Calling the ego into question is an implicit threat of death/disruption (subconsciously) so people typically engage the
Semmelweis reflex (which is extremely pronounced when the knowledge in question is the sense of self) and try to re-validate their current survival strategy (which is then easily exploited by e.g. women, managers, etc).
In that sense we can recast the feedback from BPH and BackInTheGame as follows: you've created a survival strategy that seems to be working out rather well for you, but that very comfort has stunted your development in some areas of life since you have not experienced enough pain to seriously reconsider it and move forward. Thus in some areas of life, you aren't living congruently with your biological age.
I don't know how to act like anyone else but myself.
This is more or less the key. According to Jung, the real you is in the shadow of your subconscious. It is not your current set of beliefs and habits. That is probably why you are on this forum: you recognize something needs to change in order to express who you truly are - since in your mind that person isn't a guy who struggles with young, attractive women.
I agree and simply suggest that in order to make that step, you need to let go of whatever habits and mental hang ups are keeping you from being who you want to be. And also that women find that ability extremely sexy! They love a dynamic go-getter who can think on their feet and adapt quickly. Remember too that they can't necessarily verify your internal processing anyways; women simply observe if you have the mind to be a killer/winner, or not - in fact they also are prone to the aforementioned operant conditioning and will be much more devoted if they DO NOT understand the logic behind your actions
. Nothing sexier than a man who keeps making leaps of faith and landing them each and every time. How many chicks have you seen salivating over some stupid cliff-diving Chad? Doesn't matter, had sex/fun.
Good luck Plinco, you've got this.
