Nietzsche and the Midwit & Illusions

 The real world is both simple and complicated. In particular, it's complicated enough that there's no need to make it more difficult than it actually is. That is the midwit error: they keep trying to make it complicated, and in so doing, make themselves blind to genuine difficulties. 

 At base, the elements of the real world are simple. A implies B. As long as you're only looking at A and B, it really is that simple.

 Nietzsche is all about, "In Soviet Russia, Big N reads you!!!!" in infinite variations. Consequently, I don't read Nietzsche, and neither should you. 

 It looks like honest work is not a major component of any major, famous successes. This is because it isn't. 

 It looks like quitters don't win. This is because they don't. 

 If you read midwits or Nietzsche or any faux-profound writer (Plato) you risk losing sight of these very simple basic truths. 

 However, we can already see the complexity: Famous success doesn't come from honest work, but it also doesn't come from cowardly laziness. 

 Nobody ever mentions how visual illusions don't look normal. You can immediately tell something is off. It's not like you see a turtle, it looks like a turtle in every way, you pick it up and spin it around and it feels like a turtle, and then you get the ruler out and it has the dimensions of a parakeet.
 E.g. the arrow illusion, where the one with stretch-out heads looks like it has a longer shaft. This isn't even an illusion; what it's doing is revealing that you're not measuring length. You actually don't know how long either shaft is. Since nobody else has noticed that you're not measuring length with your eyes, nobody knows what you are in fact measuring, but presumably it is more operationally useful. Height, perhaps; how imposing the arrows would be in a fight. It might be useful as a rough proxy for length, but it's not length. Thusly the 'long' arrows doesn't appear 'longer' than the 'short' arrow, it really is more X than the other one, for whatever X is. Not an illusion. Midwits being mid; making a false assumption and running with it.

 Stuff is what it appears to be. However, you can fool yourself into misinterpreting the appearance as something else. If you were measuring length it would be the wrong length, yes, but you're not...so... Indeed everyone already knows that if you eyeball a length, it's going to be rough at best. This is why we invented rulers. The only thing you can eyeball is exact lengths and, to a degree, half-lengths. Assuming the things are right next to each other, or at least the same thickness. It's not a real illusion if nobody needs training to avoid being fooled.
( You can eyeball IQ sufficiently accurately. Though folk lie about it all the time. However, the internal unit system bears no resemblance to the unit IQ, so you can't report IQs without serious training to learn the conversion function.)

 Nietzsche quips are basically a collection of optical illusions, which functionally reinforces the false assumptions underlying the false conclusions. 

 If you get the simple things all mixed up in an attempt to sound smart, you lose access to the complicated things made up of those simple things. 

 Quitters don't win. Folk off getting lost in the weeds don't win either. 

 

 Yes, apologies are for the individual being apologized to. If they won't appreciate it, they don't deserve one.

 Gifts are for being received. If the gift-giver gains more than the receiver, you gave a bad gift. 

 Being "authentic" is very secondary to getting results. (Ref lastpsych.) If you genuinely help someone, it doesn't matter if you're doing it out of agape or doing it for greedy, selfish, personal gain. The results are the point.
 Complexity: those who are flagrantly unauthentic, such as narcissists, don't get results.

 

 It seems like natural talent is a big contributor to prestige. This is because it is. Women in particular want everyone playing the same game, so they can measure length easily. Women get very upset when men won't commit utterly to whatever artificial measuring game they come up with, e.g. public school.  If it's hard to measure they can't measure it at all. Women refuse to invent the ruler-equivalent they need.

 Nietzsche was highly talented, but he turned his talents toward playing woman's game. E.g. he found that making the aphorisms short was a great way to conceal their inherently midwit nature. Plato loses some of his mystique when he tries to explain himself. Solution: don't explain yourself, lol.

 Of course it is not ironic that women also hate it when you commit utterly to their game. They want to submit to you, not the reverse. Nietzsche played the game so well that women hate him, he had no kids, and he appeals only to men...particularly The Last Man. 

 

 Prestige is basically what it appears to be. However, how prestige relates to epistemic quality is not straightforward. You can't assume you're measuring the length of the lines. You're looking at prestige, it looks like prestige. If you want to look at epistemic quality, you have to look at epistemic quality, not merely assume it's naively measured by something else that happens to be naively measureable. 

 P.S. On predictions. True predictions look very useful because they are. However, lots of folk make lots of predictions. Even someone with a track record of good predictions can change at any time, either on purpose or due to alzheimer's. There are ways to validate a prediction ahead of time, but you need to know the underlying supports of the prediction. Even if Nietzsche was right about everything, he was right in a way that was only useful to Nietzsche. (And, not coincidentally, he was personally unable to use these predictions.) 

 P.P.S. Folk go, "It should would be easier if not-everyone was lying all the time." Then go ahead and assume they're not lying all the time. Instead of, you know, trusting those who earn trust. ("But that's haaaard. I don't waaaaanna.") Then complain that trying to reconcile all these lies is super hard. "I can't figure out how to continue believing this gaslighting and also not fuck up my entire life." You don't say. Yes, that does sound tricky.
 Weirdly, when someone is deliberately trying to distort your perceptions, if you don't ignore them, your perceptions get distorted. How strange. "But I like believing things deliberately crafted to be believable by discarding any relation to the truth!" Yes, and you will get what you deserve, as everyone does.